SUMMARY: Cyberix cannot call itself self-sufficient if: 1: it needs Discord/4chan/Reddit/etc. continually supplying new people and activity 2: it needs imported cultural assumptions to tell it what legitimate behavior looks like 3: or, conversely, its culturally independent population is so inert that it needs the outside world continually supplying novelty, motivation, projects and events in order to potentially be of any value. --------------- The purists are slackers. They're too lazy and wallow in their own dysfunction. I have found it difficult to appease them. By virtue of their own laziness, not much is required to appease them, but simultaneously, not much is required to anger them. If you are to anger the purists, you will have to put great effort into ensuring they are satisfied once more, often at the expense of yourself or whatever it is that you are working toward. The purists want, and thus do the bare minimum that is required for them to be content with the situation that they are placed in. Despite this, the purists will forever proclaim to want more. And the purists will not work towards achieving more. They will fundamentally misunderstand the path required in order to obtain more. They are reliant on outside inputs and external impulses in order to persist. Without it, they have no grounding. They have no familiarity with a self-sufficient community, and so, this is simply their natural behavior. It is completely alien and impossible to them. The way to achieving such requires compromises, and it is unfortunately that what they are traumatized with is poor, unnecessary compromises leading to inferior, worse behavior in the pursuit of a larger profit margin. If left alone, they remain stuck forever in an unchanging loop. The heretics are hypnotized. They are blinded and their senses dulled. They speak illusion, because illusion is all they know. They are, however, incredibly dedicated. They will spend ungodly amounts of time and effort toward perfecting their craft, no matter how logically flawed its foundation may be. They will establish their own strange village, with their own strange rules and customs, designed uniquely around the very wrongs that keep them going, with adequate defense available for converting or combating those who may not be as deep in the mentally toroidal quicksand as the rest of them may be. They tend to be ideologically opposed to the purists, despite sharing common values. This, unfortunately, means that it would not at all be an easy task to create a space where heretics and purists mix into a proper, productive mass, if it is even possible. The heretic doesn't necessarily arrive intending to destroy Cyberix. He arrives carrying an environment inside himself. He naturally attempts to recreate the only conditions under which he knows how to function. Appealing to the purists directly requires heavy minimalism and ideological purity, sacrificing usability, reasonability, and service reliability in exchange for a more "purer", "authentic" experience. It, however, also entails the purity of enforcement, which can be destructive for growth. But, the purists are traumatized and only associate the concept of "growth" with that of an invading army of foreign soldiers looking to loot and plunder their kingdom. By all means, the purists have an upper hand over the heretics when it comes to their values. Their values are logical and correct from a particular standpoint. These values, however, fall incredibly short and mean nothing when the purists are not interested in taking these values to a PROPER extreme and demonstrate their worth in a setting that's grounded in reality. The purists' laziness is their downfall. Appealing to the heretics REQUIRES heavy ideological purging and a set of rules and guidelines. The heretics know nothing of the purists, and, if they do, they often despise them, but not for their laziness. The heretics, as a result of them being direct offspring of the Bubble, are still accustomed to the meaningless social customs and common beliefs & filters associated with it. The only values and culture that the heretics are aware of are only that which the Bubble fed to them. The heretics require a particular form of control in every space that they inhabit in a particular way that practically enforces the infestment of one particular worldview, set of beliefs, customs, or values under the threat of expulsion, aggressiveness brought on by a collective hivemind, or unknown, yet direct forms of sabotage to anything that they can get their hands on in relation to their target. The purists, whose values are largely comprised of being heavily ideologically opposed to everything related to the Bubble, are fundamentally incompatible and cannot co-exist with the heretics. The heretics wish to corrupt and disembowel everything they come into contact with in a desperate effort to twist it all into their false beliefs. For, they are offspring of the Bubble, what they achieve in reality is the extension of the Bubble's influence and parasitism into the territory that the purists should've conquered and fortified long ago. The builders are infected. They are the heretics. The Bubble is parasitic. Those within its grasp are subject to its influence across all angles. Disinfecting them is a monumental task. The purists are pure, but lack the soul energy and free will required to build independently. The purists looked at Cyberix and thought only about what it must not become: no "Redditification", no sanitization, no "normies", no mainstream moderation logic, no growth-at-any-cost, don't change what works, etc.. My counterargument became: okay, where are the projects? where are the files? where are the personal pages? where are the games? why are fifty people sitting in one chatroom arguing about an alternative Internet instead of constructing one? As of late, it has been better. What they have discussed has been more unique and felt more "human" recently. That should be kept up. I appreciate it deeply. It still, however, has not escaped the chatrooms. The heretics looked at Cyberix and thought "this place violates assumptions that are so obvious to us that we don't even regard them as ideological assumptions". This is the fundamental flaw that I failed to realize in my plan. Productivity does not necessarily mean compatibility. The level at which the heretics were incompatible with what Cyberix truly aims to be is immeasurable. It would not be easy to onboard those from the Bubble without first cleaning house and completely purging the purists, posing a massive risk to Cyberix as an organism. A genuinely autonomous system has to reproduce its own conditions of existence in order to persist. It seems I am learning the lessons that led to other things being developed that most people despise without knowing the true backstory behind "why". I am rediscovering why certain "irritating" systems exist. I am rediscovering why certain design decisions are so common across the Internet and in real life. I am rediscovering the fundamental processes that led to things being the way they are now. I am, through Cyberix, and Cyberix, through me, are experiencing the natural evolution of principles and doctrines that allow me to obtain the true answers that explain why things are the way that they are today. A truly independent network isn't necessarily the one with the fewest rules, least public identity, or most primitive anonymous posting system. It is the one that can operate indefinitely without depending upon the Bubble to supply users, culture, moderation, infrastructure, content, motivation... or legitimacy. Why should I care about what people outside of this website think of us if they are not interested in our goal? I appeal only to those who are interested in our goal of having a completely self-sufficient isolated Internet node. Self sufficiency is a property of infrastructure, but I have recently realized that it is also a property of culture. Importing productive people isn't at all self-sufficiency if Cyberix is to continuously modify itself to remain palatable to the external culture those people came from. And, preserving a tiny population of culturally compatible people isn't self-sufficiency either if those people won't actually produce enough internal activity to sustain the organism that is Cyberix. Therefore, the third option, the middle way, is not appealing to the heretics. It is not appealing to the purists. It is simply existing and propagating oneself. The core members we do have were always the ones who were pure enough to understand the goal while having the soul within them required to be capable of building on their own without being encouraged or forced to do it across unique hobbies, interests, and crafts. Only then by paying more attention to the inner self organism that is Cyberix shall we attract more who align with us naturally. That, I believe is the conclusion, so long as we are not ever in need of reaching out in a desperate attempt to stay alive. CULTURAL INDEPENDENCE ^ | PURISTS | CORE | Low Output <------------+------------> High Output | APATHETIC | HERETICS | v CULTURAL DEPENDENCE The middle way is not meant to be a COMPROMISE between only purist and heretic, for it rejects the axis on which their conflict exists. So, Last week's question was: "What would Cyberix look like if the existing core simply built the network they actually mean when they say 'self-sufficient isolated Internet node'?" "Why are we designing Cyberix for an audience instead of ourselves"? The core is independent enough not to require the Bubble's worldview but energetic enough not to require the Bubble's impulses. The core is that which truly understands the goal that Cyberix wishes to achieve. The core is what actually defines the Sophisticated Man.