A Question That Troubles Me

Monday, August 10, 2026

This’ll be quick – I have to head to the airport in about 20 minutes.  It’s been 25 years since Instapundit made blogging “a thing.”  I started about the same time.  And it has me wondering…

There was much discussion in those early days about gatekeepers and keeping the tin foil hat crowd out of the fray.  That effort fell apart completely when Twitter happened.  It takes no brains or argument when there are only 160 characters.  But even then it was still fairly simple to sort the wheat and chaff.  BUt not anymore.  AI has of course made matters much worse, but long before AI, the internet demonstrated that we are, simply, cattle – more prone to herding than originality.

The internet, once thought to set thinking people free to think and be original has instead had a virtually opposite effect – people crowded into little corners from which they are easily excommunicated should they stray from the dogma.  This would indicate that we are essentially social creatures, bending to social pressure far too easily since there really is no sociability on the internet.

The question then becomes – What is wrong with us?

I think the answers are easy.  Why do we rush to reject them so?