Over the last two days, dozens of Conservative personalities are reporting that their number of Twitter followers has taken a huge jump and their engagements have skyrocketed. Clearly, their claim that they were being 'shadow banned' was correct. In truth, Twitter has been a 'Liberal' propaganda machine masquerading as a 'town square' for quite some time. Elon Musk likely will expose that, which is why Twitter management is trying to undo what they have done. He may be able to lower the moderation of the platform. However, It won't work.

If Musk does manage to make Twitter a true free speech 'town square', which is not a foregone conclusion, he will run right into a reality. That is that few people actually want one. People, being the way they are, will find that the resulting animosity and ad hominem diatribes are not a pleasant experience. Few people really want to hear the other side; in fact they steadfastly refuse to do so, up to and including the wholesale blocking of dissonant voices. In other words, if he actually creates a free speech town square it won't be very successful. First, there will be a binge of 'blocking', thereby effectively creating an isolated Conservative community and a Liberal community within Twitter. Second, because that will only partially resolve the user issue of 'marauding, moronic and rude mobs of x deniers and y believers'', they will, over time, leave Twitter for more collegial and urbane virtual communities. After the announcement of Musk's purchase, the most faithful Liberals immediately announced that they will leave Twitter. Whether they do or not, they are openly announcing that they want Twitter to be a Liberal domain, not a 'town square'.

Even generally open and agreeable people do not want to have their beliefs regularly challenged on their social media. There is a time and place to entertain thoughts, ideas and beliefs that are contrary to one's own. However, that place is not every place and that time is not all the time. For the most part, people do not want their beliefs challenged. That results in a profoundly unsettling experience.

Rather, they want them to be validated. Almost exclusively, they consume news, analysis and commentary that conforms to their world view. On social media, they tend to block people who most vehemently and persistently disagree with them. Furthermore, if they are Liberals, they tune into MSNBC where their beliefs will be validated. If they are Conservatives, they will watch Fox News where their beliefs, while contrary to Liberal doctrines, will be validated. MSNBC watchers know Fox News only as MSNBC presents it, which is in a bad light. Fox News watchers know MSNBC only as Fox News presents it, which also is in a bad light. That is because validation is not just a process by which one is assured that one is correct, but also one by which one is being assured that the other guy is wrong.

This tendency to isolate oneself from counter cultural messaging is being called Internet Silos. Despite protestations, it is obvious that the current management of Twitter has, at least partially, turned itself into a Liberal Silo. In response, the Conservative movement created Gettr. What has developed is a Twitterverse and a Gettrverse that really support completely different realities that don't appear sane to the other. The Twitterverse has YouTube. The Gettrverse has Rumble. The Twitterverse has Paypal. The Gettrverse has Stripe. The virtual world is moving toward Silos that will include every kind of product and service imaginable.

I am not going to say that the evolution of the Internet into Silos is bad. In fact, I'm completely in favor of it and I advocate for many more than two Internet Silos. That is because there are more than two belief systems. Polymathica, for example, is a cultural viewpoint that I have described and promoted that does not fit neatly into either the Liberal or the Conservative world view. It is a distinct subculture of Western civilization. In other words, we subscribe to Enlightenment principles, but not in the same way as the Left or the Right. Our dedication to intellectual sophistication, including lifelong, polymathic learning, objectivity and intellectual discipline, makes us different. In support of that, we need different social structures. It is specifically why I have created Polymaths.Locals.com and MichaelWFerguson.Substack.com. We need our own Silo.

There is a currently poorly described subculture that, for the most part, embraces extreme environmentalism, LGBTQ+ views on gender and sexuality, and an equally poorly described but deeply held belief in Marxist principles. To both the traditional Left and Right, they seem loopy. However, they have a right to exist as long as they don't try to impose their profoundly anti-normative belief system upon the whole world. In other words, they deserve their own Internet Silo.

As the traditional Western civilization, which was a homogeneous culture, sharing Enlightenment principles and with only superficial political differences, morphs into a civilization comprised of many subcultures that do subscribe to Enlightenment principles but with profoundly different cultural beliefs and practices, Internet Silos will become the norm. They are the only way that Western civilization can keep from ripping itself apart.

Within this context, Elon Musk buying Twitter should not be viewed as a way to heal the West, but rather as a watershed moment when the lie of a homogenous culture will finally be put to rest. Internet Silos that protect their population from incessant dissonant messages and acrimonious discourse, rather than being something to fix, is just the way humans are. Given a choice, it is the relationship that the vast majority of people will choose to have with the world at large. It is also the only way that functional subcultural populations can sustain themselves.