The concept of "gender ideology” functioning as an empty signifier stood out to me because it explains how such a vague term can bring together people with otherwise very different grievances. It takes on a different meaning to suit the agenda of a given group or individual, while still offering a common issue to rally around on a larger scale. This is particularly interesting in the context of social media, wherein complicated political ideas are frequently reduced to a single "ragebait" style phrase in order to illicit emotional responses, despite the lack of clarity.

Guilt tripping women seems to be a massive issue, whether it be abortion, their clothing and appearance, their choice to have/not have children, or even their parenting choices once they do have children. I would argue that even women are adept at criticizing and guilting one another rather than providing support. Mothers in particular tend to be the target of scrutiny and I have heard many express frustration that they "cannot do anything right". Anything from breastfeeding to toys to education can create discourse and lead to women being shamed. If you homeschool your child, you are not adequately preparing them. If you do not homeschool them and work full time, you are not an involved mother. If you send them to a public school, you are not setting them up as well as they might be at a private school. Rarely do men seem to be held to these same standards. In fact, so long as men are merely present, people will often behave as though they are inherently wonderful fathers. This overarching narrative of women being solely responsible for their children's success and being forced into traditional roles in the name of upholding the household is detrimental to women's autonomy and overall, to their own wellbeing.

Something that I hear all too often, even from "progressive" individuals, is that feminism has basically done its job, and that gender inequality is an issue of the past. As much as great progress has undoubtedly been made (though I wouldn't go so far as to say it's been solved), people tend to forget that feminism is a global issue, extending beyond the western world. The quality of life, if you can even call it that, for women in Afghanistan is truly the most appalling thing I have encountered in recent years. It is an evolving situation that I revisit from time to time but which I have had to distance myself from at times because it upsets me/angers me so deeply. What few rights remain for these women erode every day. The dehumanization and oppression is such that Meryl Streep aptly described their freedom as being less than even stray cats, because at least the latter have the ability to go unchaperoned to sit on a porch and feel the sun on their face. One of the most horrific recent rulings is the repealing of girls' rights to attend school past grade 8, meaning that they are pulled from classes before ever reaching high school. Additionally, because of the strict rules prohibiting women from seeing any male doctors, and the fact that of course, women are not permitted to reach the level of education required to enter the medical field, there is massive barrier to accessing medical care. The result of this is that the women who are already forbidden from so much as exiting their homes or frequenting public spaces unless they are being accompanied by men, are also being subjected to a healthcare crisis and a rapidly increasing rate of deaths related to childbirth.

The description of the open web as a “radical” concept called to mind a handful of videos I’ve come across recently in which people have been discussing the nature of traditional libraries and how strange or even radical they might sound if they were pitched for the first time today: a publicly funded building where anyone can walk in, borrow just about any book, film, cd, or video game they want for free, and access information without having to prove in any way that they can afford it. Obviously libraries are far from radical nowadays, being long-established and something that all of us have grown up around. In fact, the idea of free and open access to knowledge has become so normalized that we almost take for granted how unusual it is compared to systems where access is determined by those who can pay. We’re spoiled, even complacent, and I would say this is especially true of those of us who have scarcely known life pre-internet. We’re so accustomed to being able to access an enormous amount of information, literature, art, entertainment and online communities for free that it feels like that level of openness is guaranteed. The reality is that it is very likely to become increasingly filtered and controlled by companies whose primary incentive is greed and to whom free access is a missed opportunity for monetary gain.

Regarding the all-powerful, almost mythic control held by multibillionaires and their media corporations, Meta unsurprisingly comes to mind. Facebook long had one primary competitor in the form of Instagram, a social media platform which largely monopolized the younger portion of the population Facebook could not reach. What did Meta do in response? Bought out Instagram. They then turned to their remaining competitors, honing in on any unique features that attracted users, such as stories on Snapchat and short form vertical videos on TikTok, and in turn added stories and reels to their own newly-acquired platform. Similarly, they saw that sites like Kijiji, Craigslist or Varagesale were having great success, and introduced Marketplace to ensure that users had even fewer reasons to ever step out from under the Facebook umbrella. The whole process by which Meta absorbs and ultimately replaces its competitors assures the maintaining of a monolopy and the lining of Zuckerburg's already ample pockets.

I remember just a few short years ago becoming familiar with the concept of "dead Internet theory" and brushing it off, perhaps naively, as a conspiracy theory or something decades away from being possible. Today, I have witnessed first hand when social media platforms or other corners of the web are populated almost entirely by AI bots thanks to the advent of bot farms. It's a disturbing and isolating sensation as a user to discover, upon even brief inspection of the "profiles" in a comment section that none of those interacting with particular content are human beings. Publishers are evidently beginning to recognize this same danger with bots; if AI can consume and reproduce human-created content while also flooding the web with content of its own, it seems inevitable that the internet will become increasingly difficult to distinguish from something that is largely, or entirely, automated.