[epistemic status: no idea whether this is actually true or not, but it’s an idea that deserves a more thorough exploration than a Tumblr shitpost can provide, and I hope I’ll get around to that at some point]

Posited: From a political/ethical perspective, the defining technology of the Present Age is “infinite high-quality entertainment.”  Television, video games, certain sectors of the Internet (YouTube etc.). 

Rationale: Infinite high-quality entertainment means that virtually every life is worth living, and that virtually everyone has a lot to lose.  No matter how poor/despised/downtrodden/oppressed you are, no matter how shitty your situation is in terms of health or education or work or sex or friendship – if you live in the First World, at least – your worst-case scenario involves sitting in a room somewhere and having the world’s greatest storytellers and troubadours divert and delight you, nonstop.  Which is, by the standards of human history, pretty darn good. 

Ethical spin: Pretty much the obvious, at least if you’re a hedonic or semi-hedonic consequentialist.  IHQE may represent a floor for human welfare, when it’s available.

Political spin: Certain kinds of political change depend on there being certain people (read: “low-status unattached young men”) who are so aggressively unhappy that they’re willing to throw their lives away, in large numbers, to show how pissed-off they are.  IHQE, when it’s available, puts a damper on that.  It’s one thing to fight and die for the Revolution when the alternative involves endless days filled with boredom and humiliation and loneliness and nothing else.  But, nowadays, those endless days can be filled with WoW and Minecraft!  No matter how much of a loser you are, no matter how much the Man is keeping you down, life can be entertaining for the low low cost of a good broadband connection!  So maybe we’re just never again going to get a critical mass of people who are self-destructively angry enough to overthrow the System.