I ran across a very interesting post on X (formerly Twitter; I will probably continue to call it that reflexively for a very long time) that offers an explanation of how we got to the level of polarization and splintering of society that we now have.
The post itself is by Devon Erikson, a sci-fi author. But it starts out with a quote that seems to have originated on Hacker News in 2021:
I blame the internet. Back in the days before it, we had to learn to live with those around us, now you can just go out and find someone as equally stupid as yourself.
I call it the toaster f*cker problem. Man wakes up in 1980, tells his friends "I want to f*ck a toaster." Friends quite rightly berate and laugh at him, guy deals with it, maybe gets some therapy and goes on a bit better adjusted.
Guy in 2021 tells his friends that he wants to f*ck a toaster, gets laughed at, immediately jumps on facebook and finds "Toaster F*cker Support group" where he reads that he's actually oppressed and he needs to cut out everyone around him and should only listen to his fellow toaster f*ckers.
This is a pretty accurate description of what happened once everyone was on the internet. My husband and I got online in July 1996, and one of the first things I did was go looking for fellow fans of the Shannara series of fantasy books by Terry Brooks.
I’d been a massive fan since 1979, but most of the sci-fi fans I knew in person thought the series was stupid, a knock-off of LotR, etc. (And I will confess that those are all legitimate criticisms, but that didn’t change my love for the series.) The internet was my first opportunity to find other people who liked what I liked.
And I did find them. In fact, I ran a listserv for Terry Brooks fans for a couple of decades, until all of the original members (including me) eventually got frustrated with the diminishing quality of the books and stopped reading or talking about them.
But it wasn’t all unalloyed joy. I encountered people in my fandom quest that I strongly wish I’d never met. In a lot of ways, the internet was far more bad for me than good in the late 90s. Going back to college and then to graduate school—in spite of all its distresses—got me back out into the real world in a substantial and liberating way.
Not everyone who was online then or since has escaped the uglier aspects of the internet. This is where Mr. Erikson’s own continuation of the t-f problem gets more pointed:
Every social group has an axis of prestige. They have to compete with each other for status somehow. That's what humans do.
And in the toaster-f*cking group, the axis of prestige aligns with f*cking toasters.
So first they compete to see who can f*ck the most toasters. Then, when that is saturated, they one up each other by being most open with the general public about their toaster f*cking ways.
Then they make toaster-f*cker pride t-shirts and hats and bumper stickers.
Obviously, not every group on the internet goes in this direction. But due to the viral tendencies of the internet, it doesn’t take a lot of groups or a lot of people. And then the splintering gets started in earnest:
Pretty soon normal people, who ten years before would shrugged and said "that's weird", are now sick of toaster-f*cker flags everywhere and their kids being told to f*ck toasters by sickos, and now they're going to burn every toaster-f*cker flag they see, and Florida just passed a law requiring you to be 21 years old with proof of ID to buy a toaster. And Utah has banned toasters altogether and the Mormons have stopped even eating toast, bagels, waffles, or any other heated bread product.
In other words, the response to the insanity also gets crazy. And then there’s war:
A few toaster-f*ckers get beaten with fence posts by people sick of hearing about toaster-f*cking, and other people, who didn't see or hear the toaster-f*ckers' prior behavior, say "holy shit, toaster f*ckers really are oppressed." And they decide to become "toaster-f*cker allies," despite the fact that they haven't the slightest real interest in f*cking any toasters themselves.
But it doesn't stop there. Because toaster-f*cking has become a sacred cause, it must now must compete with other sacred causes […] and there are clashes in the streets between the Toaster F*cker Pride March and the Stop Raccoon Shaving protests.
Before the internet, it was difficult to assemble enough people who were like-minded about very fringe ideas to impose those ideas on a large portion of the population. Fringe ideas stayed on the fringe.
Now they don’t.
Now it’s possible to convince a million people—in the blink of an eye—that your idea isn’t fringe at all, and that anyone who thinks so is evil.
I don’t know that there’s an answer. Or any way to solve the problem of fringe magnification that we have in our globally connected world.
But it does seem as if we let our doom in through phone line.
Thoughts?
This is all absolutely true of course. It's becoming increasingly difficult to even find people I agree with, because they usually become so extreme I can't listen any more. Listening to opposing viewpoints becomes impossible for the same reason. And of course, everyone talks about their issue as if it's the only issue and any damage their solution causes is ignored or accepted without much thought.
But I can't blame the internet for everything. Lack of rigor, lack of curiosity, lack of quality education predate modern technology. And they are a large part of the reason the internet has turned into a warren of hell holes.
Using your metaphor, if we go way back (about 60 years), we find a group of people who are disillusioned with the state of the small appliance industry. They start talking about a world where any appliance can do anything we want it to do, can be interacted with in any way we can imagine (including but not limited to toaster f*cking). They know it's not real but they like to think about it and talk about it and teach others about it.
Some of the people they teach start thinking that even though toasters are obviously not meant to be f*cked, if we talk about them as if they are it would help us to solve a lot of the problems we're seeing in the small appliance industry as a whole. In fact, talking about toasters as if they are not sexual objects is what's keeping us from solving those problems.
And then the ur-grifters show up, and tell us that not only are toasters meant to be f*cked, they want to be f*cked, everyone who claims they don't want to f*ck toasters is lying to us or themselves, f*cking toasters is the natural order of the universe, anyone who opposes toaster f*cking is a monster, etc... They sell a lot of books, because there are always people who are disenchanted and looking for reasons why. Which leads to more books, and when the internet comes along it all explodes.
But the important thing is almost all of the people being introduced to toaster f*cking are arriving during the second or third act of the play. They don't know it started as a though experiment. They don't know it's an academic tool meant to change the discourse around toasters in useful ways that might solve a lot of problems. They think we're all supposed to actually start f*cking toasters, or failing that fight to ensure that toaster f*cking is protected as a human right. Because that's what the grifters are telling them. There is little money to be made by adopting a moderate rhetorical stance, or telling the truth, even pre-internet.
Take all this and throw it into a blender with the internet and click bait content and ever shorter videos designed for ever shorter attention spans and you wind up with elementary school kids being given toasters without their parents' knowledge.
Well, toaster f*ckers unite! I'm so glad that the internet hath wrought Jotting in Purple and all the other groups that allow me to find and engage with like-minded souls who help to keep me informed and SANE in this era of complete insanity!
That said, this was another great and informative topic, Celia. I recently read an interesting and enlightening book called Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone, Eileen Stevens, et al. It's worth a read.
Have a great weekend, fellow t-f's!