Internet users are the new surrealists, and they keep changing the world

As 2021 continues to progress at a dizzying rate, one of the recurring social phenomenon we’re seeing is the surreal eruption of online activism in the real world. From the recent explosion of GameStop share prices – hiked up by amateur investors co-ordinating online – to the large-scale protests and riots in Washington following the 2020 Presidential election, the communities in cyberspace continue to spill out into the real world. The question is: why are these kinds of actions becoming an increasingly unsettling occurrence in the usual running of society?

In the lexicon of web-design, the term UX, user experience, is often used to describe how an individual may interact with a product, specifically a webpage. Its principle idea is that how we use any webpage is guided by the impetus of its designer, expressed in the shapes and details of the virtual space. When extrapolated to the internet as a whole, there is of course no single designer, certain principles and codes might organise the webpages present into certain general categories, but every website has a different way of connecting to the user.