The Internet of Beefs: Eine Konflikttheorie der Multiplayer Online Battle Arena formerly known as The Web

„We are beefing because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually, and collectively as a species.“

Venkatesh Rao mit einer neuen Konflikttheorie der Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, die er als „Internet of Beef“ bezeichnet und in dem sich Armeen aus „Mooks“ („Wicht“) in die Kulturkämpfe ihrer Netzwerke stürzen, die sich selbst organisieren und in denen sich semi-aristokratische, harsche Hierarchien ausgebildet haben und der „Wicht“ möchte in der Hierarchie seines Netzwerks natürlich ganz nach oben und benutzt dafür die schärfeste und verletzendste Sprache, um seinen Gegner (meist ein anderer „Wicht“) wortwörtlich zu vernichten („Delete your account“ etc.) Und die Mooks bilden durch ihre schiere Masse einen Markt, mit dem die sogenannten „Knights“ (also Wortführer bis hin zu Politikern und Prominenten) Aufmerksamkeit aus diesem „Empörungskapital“ abschöpfen, das von den „Mooks“ erzeugt wird.

Das Internet of Beefs ist laut Rao ein selbsterhaltendes System, dessen einziges Ziel es ist, Konflikte zu erzeugen, da diese Konflikte die einzige wirklich sinnstiftenden Interaktionen innerhalb des Netzwerks darstellen. Das Internet wird so laut Rao zu einem Netz endloser Konflikte, die aus reinem Selbstzweck geführt und nie aufgelöst werden, eine unendliche Shitshow formerly known as The Internet und ihre konflikt-erzeugende Empörungsökonomie.

Ribbonfarm: The Internet of Beefs

The Internet of Beefs, or IoB, is everywhere, on all platforms, all the time. Meatspace is just a source of matériel to be deployed online, possibly after some tasteful editing, decontextualization, and now AI-assisted manipulation. […] Conflict on the IoB is not governed by any sort of grand strategy, or even particularly governed by ideological doctrines. It is an unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict with a feudal structure, at the heart of which is an involuntarily anonymous, fungible, angry figure desperate to be seen as significant: the mook.

The semantic structure of the Internet of Beefs is shaped by high-profile beefs between charismatic celebrity knights loosely affiliated with various citadel-like strongholds peopled by opt-in armies of mooks. The vast majority of the energy of the conflict lies in interchangeable mooks facing off against each other, loosely along lines indicated by the knights they follow, in innumerable battles that play out every minute across the IoB.

Almost none of these battles matter individually. Most mook-on-mook contests are witnessed, for the most part, only by a few friends and algorithms, and merit no overt notice in either Vox or Quillette. Beyond a local uptick in cortisol levels, individual episodes of mook-on-mook violence are of no consequence. In aggregate though, they matter. A lot. They are the raison d’être of the IoB. […]

In a real conflict, you would seek an overwhelming advantage, and ideally, to win without firing a shot, at no cost. On the IoB, knights seek balanced matches, actual fighting, and no outcome, at the highest cost possible. You cannot predict the course of a culture war by trying to understand it as a military conflict. You can only predict it by trying to understand it as the deliberate perpetuation of a culture of conflict by those with an interest in keeping it alive. […]

The IoB is, at its core, a vast zone of wartime fan fiction generated by copypasta mooks LARPing knightly patterns of conflict, and attempting to write themselves into the end of history as heroic Mary Sues, one meme at a time.