Thumbs up, thumbs down — democracy is now a virtual game

Flag parades are antiquated and Luddite yet still survive in our stateless, online age, writes Nicky Larkin

ATEENAGER in an orange sash took a selfie as she marched up the Lisburn Road. The Flag Parade was flanked by armed police, monitored from the sky by helicopters, and filmed on phones from a hundred different angles.

Tweeted, then retweeted. Liked and shared.

A curious coalition; the merging of our new digital, stateless, online identities — with the antiquated, Luddite concept of identity involving flags and patriotism.

But a quick look on social media will tell you flags are big business in July. Canada Day was on July 1. The Star Spangled Banner got its run out on July 4, and Bastille Day in France is next week.

In Ireland we have a blindspot on nationalism. We consider our nationalism as different, exempt, detached from its traditional toxic farright baggage. We see our nationalism as separate from the nationalism that spawned people like Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen — or the nationalism that caused Brexit and elected Trump.

We claim our nationalism is different because of the complicated history between our peoples. However, a similar refrain rang out across the Balkans in the 1990s, as towns were wiped out in hours, and buried in mass graves.

But those people didn’t have smartphones. They didn’t have the internet or social media to find out what was happening to them. Surely we couldn’t fall for anything like that again, now we all have Facebook? Now that we’re all wired up to The Matrix, information junkies, constantly in the loop?

But instead of making us more cynical and world weary, this endless flow of information has made us more gullible. Social media has reduced us to a pack of spooked wolves seeking reinforcement of our existing viewpoints, and attacking anything we don’t understand.

The ultimate irony is that in these Post-Truth times, nationalism is sold to us on Twitter. Donald Trump has 33 million followers. Responding to criticism last week that his use of Twitter was not presidential, Trump agreed that it wasn’t presidential. He said it was ‘Modern Presidential’.

Trump realises that our lives have moved online. He recognises that we are no longer analogue creatures, we’re carefully curated digital representations of physical entities.

You may regard this new reality a dystopian wasteland — a bleak place punctuated by selfies, pornography and neon virtue-signallers. A lonely dimension over-populated by narcissists, frantically swiping left and right — under constant video surveillance. Or you might consider our new digital reality as an interconnected utopian paradise. A place of unrestricted freedoms and possibilities where you can talk to anybody, anywhere, anytime. But whether you’re perched over the toilet in a tin-foil hat, or selling weapons, drugs and black-market organs on the dark net, one essential truth remains: however you regard it, our new digital reality has no borders.

It exists everywhere and nowhere — above and beyond all notions of nation.

So for how much longer can our stateless virtual identities co-exist with our old-fashioned notions of nation? How much longer can we continue to define our identity by where we were born, as opposed to where we exist? And as we move further into the age of the artificial intelligence and automated machines, what relevance will celebrations of nationality hold?

The British elections demonstrated how this new reality of digital representation can penetrate further into untapped voter demographics than doorstep electioneering and traditional print media ever could. Jeremy Corbyn understands our new reality much more than Theresa May.

Mark Zuckerberg understands our new reality more than anybody — he helped create it. With his cheesy smile and geeky all-American awkwardness, Zuckerberg is the most influential news editor in the world.

It’s a position that’s never previously existed. Zuckerberg’s sphere of influence is so truly global that he could win almost any election in almost any state in the world. Nobody has ever wielded that amount of ‘soft-power’ before. And we gave it to him, without any elections. Without any flags, anthems, flutes or drums.

So perhaps social media represents the ultimate instant democracy: thumbs up, or thumbs down? Governing our new digital environment, a virtual place where flags and patriotism are as outdated as postage stamps and phone boxes.

‘Our digital reality exists everywhere and nowhere’