“The Internet & Masks & AI; Oh My!”

“The Internet & Masks & AI; Oh My!” A visual of how society is handling evolution. Image by author (AI-generated with ChatGPT)

Two things are happening at once: what we see on the surface, and what’s happening just beneath it.

The Internet

On the surface, people say the internet is dangerous, overstimulating, addictive, and harmful.

“I don’t let my kids have screen time.”

“Social media is destroying society.”

“It’s all fake.”

That’s the performance.

Saying you don’t trust the internet has become a kind of social virtue signal. It sounds smart, responsible, protective. But the whole time they’re saying that, they’re still on the internet, scrolling, posting, arguing, buying. They’re on TikTok telling people why TikTok is bad. They’re in the comments saying, “We shouldn’t be online so much.”

It’s a performance of distance, while in reality, we’re all completely immersed in it.

Underneath the noise, the internet has been the great equalizer. It’s how ordinary people learned to publish, protest, and program. Kids in rural towns learned design from YouTube. Whistleblowers learned encryption from Reddit threads. Entire subcultures built languages of their own.

It’s also become the world’s nervous system, every meme, comment, or post a signal firing through a collective brain. Sometimes chaotic. Sometimes brilliant. Those who say it’s just a distraction fail to recognize that this is what collective intelligence looks like in its infancy, still learning how to organize itself.

And now, it’s starting to pay off.

We’re seeing AI-generated videos that put words in people’s mouths. They look real. They sound real. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know they’re not. This is where critical thinking actually matters, where slowing down, observing, and asking, “Wait… something’s off” becomes essential.

But here’s the problem: we’ve been discouraged from thinking.

We’ve lived through a wave of anti-intellectualism. Trump famously said, “I love the uneducated.” Charlie Kirk called college a scam. Media has pushed outrage over nuance.

It’s been years of being told that questioning, researching, and learning is elitist, unnecessary, even dangerous. And now, suddenly, we need those exact skills to survive what’s coming.

Every day, there’s a new headline: government shutdowns, leaked documents, another politician caught lying. Everyone’s blaming each other. No one really knows what’s true.

The danger isn’t just the events, it’s the speed. There’s too much information, too many opinions. It’s all designed to keep us reacting instead of thinking.

That’s why critical thinking matters now. Not just for fact-checking, but for staying calm enough to see what’s real before getting swept into the noise.

The Mask Debate

COVID and masks were another example of that surface-and-underneath dynamic.

On the surface, everyone was arguing:

“Masks are anti-American.”

“Masks are control.”

“Masks mean you’re a sheep.”

But underneath, something deeper was happening.

The mask wasn’t just fabric; it was a boundary. It showed how entitled people feel to access others.

People weren’t just mad about the mask. They were mad that they couldn’t see your face, couldn’t demand eye contact, couldn’t make you smile. They were mad that you had a right to exist in public without performing openness.

For some of us, the mask wasn’t control, it was relief. It was finally being allowed to have a boundary in public without being questioned or shamed for it.

No, I don’t want to smile.

No, there’s nothing I believe I should be smiling about.

As a woman, you’re expected to perform friendliness just to exist. You’re expected to make eye contact, acknowledge everyone, make sure no one feels ignored. If you don’t, people take it personally, like they’re owed your face.

During the pandemic, people said they “missed smiles,” that humans are “meant” to see each other’s expressions. But what they really meant was: “I can’t handle not having access to you.”

That’s what drove me crazy. It exposed how much of everyday life is performance, smiling, mingling, pretending to be open when you’re just trying to get through the day.

When I moved from Memphis to California in the middle of the pandemic, the contrast was striking. In Tennessee, people were furious about masks, like being asked to care about others was an attack on their freedom. Out here, people just did it. No drama. Even my college professors wore them. It wasn’t political. It was practical.

The contrast made it clear: the mask debate was never really about safety. It was about ego, culture, and who refuses to be told “no,” even when “no” just means please don’t breathe near me.

Every public debate has these two layers:

The surface shows what people think they’re fighting about.

Underneath is what we’re actually learning as a species.

The AI Debate

On the surface, people are joking, panicking, and loudly declaring AI evil.

Underneath, we’re watching how people handle what they can’t control: fear, denial, and the need to dominate what they don’t understand.

You see it in comment sections. A video of AI-generated cats goes viral, and suddenly everyone’s an expert:

“Now this is how AI should be used.”

“This is the kind of AI I can get behind.”

As if evolution needs their approval.

The same voices that claim to hate control can’t stand the idea of something evolving without their permission.

It’s the same tone people use when they talk about humans.

“We’re not meant to act this way.”

“Humans aren’t built for that.”

Says who? Where’s the blueprint?

History proves humans have always done what we weren’t “meant” to do. That’s how we got here.

That’s what gets me. People talk about “stopping” AI like that’s even possible. They think outrage can freeze evolution in place. But this isn’t something you can shut down or shame into extinction. It’s already happening.

Under the Surface of AI

This same pattern is repeating.

Remember when people mocked AI for not knowing how to make hands? That was the big joke for months:

“It can’t even draw hands.”

“It’ll never be as good as humans.”

So many people laughed, thinking it proved something, that AI was flawed and humans were still in control.

But underneath, that reaction revealed more about us than about AI. It showed our arrogance. Our insecurity. We mocked it instead of studying it. We didn’t try to understand how it worked or what it could become; we just assumed it would fail.

And while they laughed, AI kept learning. It improved. It adapted. Now, those same people are shocked. They’re seeing things they can’t distinguish from reality and wondering how it happened.

They thought ridicule would stop it. That public mockery would keep it small.

But AI isn’t just another tool; it’s a mirror. It’s showing us our limits. It’s revealing how quickly we dismiss what we don’t understand, how deeply we feel entitled to control progress, and how afraid we are of anything that learns faster than we do.

People say,

“AI is stupid.”

“AI is dangerous.”

But they’re missing the point. This is the next stage of human learning.

This tool, the one people mocked, can help people who think deeply, who feel intensely, who want to make sense of themselves and the world around them. I can tell AI what I’m feeling, and it renders that emotion into something I can see. That’s powerful. That’s the connection between mind and machine.

So while the surface is full of fear and jokes, underneath, humanity is being forced to evolve.

Systemic Enforcement vs. Evolution

None of this is random. It’s systemic.

A social enforcement culture pretending to defend morality while actually preserving control. It rewards the loudest, cruelest voices, the ones who can humiliate fastest and most brutally. It cloaks itself in words like “accountability” and “justice,” but often, it’s just the crowd policing what feels unfamiliar.

The ones who aren’t in on it? They’re the ones who still believe fairness is real. They take things at face value. They expect rules to mean what they say. And because they notice the cruelty instead of joining it, they become the next targets.

On the surface, it looks like morality, people defending what’s right, protecting society. But underneath, it’s the same old game:

Power guarding itself with shame. Control hiding behind virtue. The crowd pretending it’s protecting the truth when it’s really protecting its ego. We’re living in a time of massive transformation. And the split is becoming obvious: Some people will do anything to stay the same. Others are desperate to evolve because the pain of not changing has become unbearable.

That’s what this moment really is: a species-level breaking point.

We evolve, or we cease to exist.

Thank you for reading,

Keelee