“La Casa Tomada” (The House Taken Over) is a story written by the great Julio Cortázar. It tells the story of a couple of brothers who live alone in a large house that strangely begins to be “taken” by something immaterial and Ominous. It is never known what exactly it is that “takes” the house, it is only known that little by little the brothers “can not” enter certain rooms, not because they are closed or blocked, they simply “can not”. I am not going to tell the ending so that those who have not read it can look it up and read it on their own.
Cortázar wrote the story in the context of a dictatorship in his home country, Argentina. It is impossible not to see a parallel between the story and Cortázar’s situation then, living abroad, unable to return home because it has been “taken”.
Since all this “digital migration” started in several networks, I have not been able to stop thinking about “La Casa Tomada”, in how it seems that little by little the digital spaces we inhabited have been “taken” and now we “can not” to be in them anymore. There are several factors that are causing this: the shittification, the rise of reactionary ideas, the bots and AI, the increasingly intrusive advertising, all an abominable and amorphous amalgam that seems to engulf everything around us.
But let’s not kid ourselves, this didn’t start with Musk. The Internet has been taken over since Facebook and other social networks came out. It’s been slow and systematic, it’s just that now it’s become unbearable.
The Fediverse has become to a greater or lesser extent a refuge for those fleeing the maelstrom. It is far from perfect, paradises do not exist, but that does not imply that it is not worth fighting for.
After all, the Internet can’t really be dead as long as we are here. It has been “taken”, and sooner or later it will have to be taken back.
EDIT: More accurate English title of the story. PDF of the story in English. Wikipedia Page of Cortázar.
Unfortunately, the only way to “take back” the spaces you’re talking about is to go back to them and start flooding the channels. You’d have to bring enough people to overwhelm the current tones. Across MeWe, Facebook, Xwitter, you name it, you would have to go back and bring your voice to overwhelm what you perceive as other tones.
I was daydreaming about this recently. Assuming the content wouldn’t be removed or suppressed (it would), what kind of information could be spread of platforms that would make the majority, most or even all people stop wanting to use it?
How do we liberate even the most captured consumers of the most terrible platforms?
Unfortunately, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
You can’t “flood the channels”, not if there’s someone who controls what you can say and hear. That’s the whole point of the dictatorship analogy.
Nah, that would be like going back to the chess board with a player that already took all your pawns, towers and Your Queen (and is blatantly cheating). It’s not taking back form the inside but from the outside. Make our own Spaces grow just as their networks grow so many years ago an overwhelm them just as they overwhelmed us.
As well as owning the board itself and being able to change the rules. It’s a sucker’s game to fight on a battlefield controlled by the enemy without overwhelming advantage.
Exactly 👏
Hence why it has to be a huge, concerted effort. Quantity has a quality all its own.
I disagree, I think enacting legislature in a democracy that holds these entities to strict rules and accountability would be taking them back. The only true way for a people as a whole to hold more influence over it than it’s billionaire owners.