Mirage New Years Manifesto

We said in a post a week or so ago that we're at war. It wasn't hyperbole. You could be forgiven for not having the time to pay attention to events unfolding globally. God knows it's difficult enough to keep up with what's happening in just America for example. But for those with a sharp eye for global events, you'll know exactly what we mean by said claim.

Ladies and gentlemen, everything is at stake in these next few years. The world we knew and loved is at risk of vanishing entirely into the abyss. With every passing day now it seems there's a fresh attack on freedom and civil liberties. We're gaslit at each juncture for noticing. For voicing concerns. Everyone knows deep down that something isn't right but there's an overwhelming sense of helplessness. "What can I do?" is something we hear all the time. A fair question. One that we hope to answer here.

Divide and Conquer

As a society, we're being fractionalised into smaller and smaller groups. Classic divide and conquer tactics, employed to near perfection, direct from Sun Tzu's Art of War. It's entirely by design. Separate the masses into enough pieces that they'll never mobilise with enough force to change the status quo. It succeeded with overwhelming success. We've never been more fragmented. The apex tactical ploy to provide the perfect smokescreen for the powers that be to operate freely with whatever agendas they may have for the world in general. Politics, gender ideology, culture wars, guns, abortion, religion, the list goes on and on and on. Whilst we're all at each other's throats, the world is collectively collapsing around us. Something must change.

This is not any kind of political analogy, by the way. Just raw facts. Take a look around you. America is on the brink of a tax revolt amidst one of the largest scandals in modern history, following the expose of Somali fraud in Minnesota. That's all we know about just one state. Who knows the full extent when we look nationwide? Americans can't afford homes, inflation has been destroying the middle class, and homelessness in major cities, coupled with a drug epidemic, is ravaging the nation from within. Yet taxpayers are footing the bill to exacerbate the problem. That's without even opening Pandora's box on how much is shipped off to other countries to fund wars on their behalf.

The Western Decline

The importance of the American decline cannot be understated. As the leader of the Western world, what happens in the United States is exported elsewhere, particularly from a culture standpoint. With America now distancing itself from mainland Europe, it doesn't take forensic inspection to see what an absolute dumpster fire it has become. EU bureaucrats are seemingly hellbent on destroying the continent from within. Unfettered, endless immigration has a lot of countries on the brink of revolt. The UK is crumbling from within, all the while teetering on the brink of falling to the insanity of a far-left authoritarian that will lock you away for 2 years for social media posts. The French are rioting almost every other week. Ireland is on its knees as politicians are draining the coffers to benefit themselves, whilst importing people from the corners of the planet to the detriment of their own people, who can't afford homes. Since 2023, there have been almost 450 bombing attacks in Sweden. The list of so-called democratic nations living on the edge of anarchy and collapse is almost endless.

The Attack on Free Speech

What are governments and bureaucratic institutions doing to solve the problems? Attacking free speech. Quite literally as simple as that. We all have eyes. We all see what's happening. But you dare use your voice to speak out against it, and they'll whip you down with derogatory terms meant to subdue dissent. "Racist". "Far right". "Fascist". Add whatever you want in front of the word phobic, also, and you've got another batch of insults oven-ready to go there also. For a while, it worked. Incredibly successful, might we add. Most people generally tend to want to avoid conflict. Avoid duress or hardship. The threat of losing a job may be overhanging in the event they speak out. They've rinsed every single last drop they could out of these methods. The simple reality now, however, is that we no longer give a single fuck.

The powers that be know this. There's only so long you can beat a dog down before it bites back. It would certainly appear we're approaching that point. Now, they're moving to cement their grip on the matter. Hate speech bills. Banning social media for minors. The last sting of a dying wasp. They know we know. The panic and scramble are now on to legislate further draconian measures to desperately cling on to power and control. Orwell would take one look at the current state of most of the world and think to himself, "not even I could have predicted these bastards would take it this far".

We Hold All the Cards

Lost somewhere along the way of our modern evolution as a species was the knowledge within ourselves that we hold all the cards. 25 saw a wave of youth-led protests across multiple continents dubbed the "Gen Z protests," with demonstrations occurring in Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Peru, Madagascar, Morocco, and beyond. Leaders fell in Nepal, Madagascar, and Bulgaria, while administrations from Indonesia to Peru and Serbia grappled with relentless youth-driven unrest. How many of these did you hear about on your daily news stations?

By using social media platforms like Discord, Instagram, TikTok, and Telegram to organize and coordinate protests, these countries were toppled. Discord especially gained popularity for its decentralized networks, making it harder for governments to identify and crack down on individual leaders. Now you do understand the rush to clamp down on internet usage in the "democratised West"?

It Is Time for Mirage

Reddit has strayed so far from its inceptionary path that it's almost unrecognizable. Compromised from within by political ideologues that are petrified at the thought of uncensored discourse or hearing an opinion that's ever so slightly outside their echo chamber of information consumption. If there's one thing in this world worth fighting for, one hill worth dying on, it's absolute freedom of speech, and we're ready for that fight. Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube are all still susceptible to censorship and deplatforming. Reddit is as good as gone. Twitter, whilst starkly improved from the Jack Dorsey days, is again far from perfect as users are very much at the behest of algorithms and there are still certain prevalent and controversial topics that are untouchable.

It's time for a new alternative. A censorship-free decentralised communication protocol. Something the cypherpunks that kickstarted the space we all know and love would be proud of. It's time we fight back. It's time for Mirage.