Growing up I experienced a hopeful world with a calm togetherness, now I am old and I look around that world is barely recognisable.
I live in the UK but for the most part the issues I see here up close and personal are also being experienced around the globe.
With the advent of the www there came a huge sense of collaboration, everyone was suddenly equal, you couldn't really pay to have a louder voice than anyone else and this fostered a real sense of a democratic web for all.
Something happened though, gradually at first so that it went unnoticed, but now the freedom once offered by the web is owned by a small number of "bosses" and they're not afraid to wield their power over us all. Like children shining a magnifying glass at an ants nest these people play with our lives with no thought as to the consequences of their actions. Just consider Elon Musk, bored with playing with rockets and taking recreational drugs he decides to become the puppeteer of a right wing movement in order to topple an established government, for what looks like no more than a bit of fun regardless of the real harm it is doing.
In order for these bad actors to play out their fantasies they find people they can use as their most prominent puppets, typically less intelligent or greedy individuals that can be easily manipulated and don't really have any opinions or core beliefs of their own other than a desperate need for power, it would seem that the more insecure the better because it makes manipulation so much easier.
This process seems to be a recursive one, in that people of power identify people with less power that fit the bill and manipulate them so that they remain or gain further power. For example imagine the majority of working class people in the UK, they have very little choice over the work they do and employers know this
