Politics After Platforms

Feeds allocate visibility; visibility becomes leverage. A Strange Loop series on order vs chaos in a world optimised for reach.

Oct 19, 2025

I don’t like writing about politics.

This is, as ever, a series about technology: the global system we built, ceded governance to, and now live inside. To run a 24/7 technocapitalist machine we fired the humans and wrote algorithms, then let them allocate what is seen, valued, and acted upon. Everything flows downstream of that layer: economics, culture, identity… and yes, inevitably, politics. Naming the system clearly is, in itself, a political act.

As Morocco faces another Gen-Z mobilisation, it feels like a song you think you’ve heard before but can’t exactly place. The news is somehow repetitive and accelerated at once. The reason is simple: distribution governs reality. From Rabat to Manila to Kathmandu to Brasília to Washington, the same infrastructure sits under all of these events:

feeds allocate visibility
visibility becomes leverage
institutions arrive late and misread the terrain
their response is packaged as content
that response becomes the next spark

The core claim of this series is straightforward: left/right is the wrong lens for the most abhorrent headlines we face on a daily basis. The live split is actually order vs chaos, from Charlie Kirk to the Capitol riots to youth-led formats in the Philippines, and the system’s optimisation target isn’t truth or consensus but reach and maximum reaction. That is why performances outpace policies, why bans backfire, and why the same scenes keep replaying.

Today’s map, stated plainly:

Tech builds the surfaces.
Algorithms allocate attention.
Politics adapts to maximise exposure.
Edgelords are the system’s optimal tactic; line-skating with deniability.
At scale, that behaviour coheres into a transnational party without a charter, enforced by clout (what I will call the Extremely Online party).
Media and officials read it through left/right, misread symbols, and deliver exactly the outcome the Extremely Online actors want.
The misdiagnosis produces late, heavy responses that escalate rather than solve.

What We’ll be Covering in Three Parts

Part I: The Right to Stay Logged On: Gen-Z Protests in Platform Time

What’s happening: Morocco, Nepal, the Philippines. Youth coalitions are organising on Discord and TikTok. When states pull a lever (blocks, throttles, bans), the movement routes around and often scales up.

What I’ll show: Why platforms are the substrate, why memes beat manifestos (formats travel faster than law), and why latency decides outcomes. We’ll use one rule to read it in real time: Spark → Invitation → Show → Crackdown, and how the crackdown becomes the next spark.

Why it matters: If you can spot the Invitation phase early, you can predict the next 72 hours. If you can’t, you inherit a live-streamed Show and a blunt, late response.

Part II: How the Extremely Online Became a Party

What’s happening: Five fast vignettes (Philippines → Nepal → India → Brazil → US) reveal the same operating physics across very different politics. Coordination now behaves like a party with no charter, enforced by clout.

What I’ll show:

How formats (not manifestos) jump borders at feed speed.
How symbol ≠ structure (gamer codes, meme slang) keeps being misread and why those errors pour fuel on the fire.
Why bans backfire first (routing, martyrdom) and fragment later (audience shrinks; hard-cores migrate).

Why it matters: You’ll see why left/right keeps misclassifying events, and how to read the distribution layer instead of a CNN talking head.

Part III: Edgelords, Moderation, and Why Left/Right Keeps Failing

What’s happening: In a system optimised for reach, the rational tactic is plausible-deniability line-skating. That’s the edgelord operating system.