Information Collapse: The Evolution of Systemic Deafness

Preface
We live in an era in which the crisis of the information ecosystem is perceived as a given. Yet most discussions of "fakes," "deepfakes," and "AI regulation" suffer from a fundamental flaw: they treat the current state of affairs as the result of an external invasion (malicious bots, greedy corporations, or cunning algorithms), while ignoring the deep evolution of the very subject who consumes information.
This essay is an attempt to reassemble the history of the information crisis, discarding the familiar rhetoric of "victim and aggressor." The central thesis is that the present-day collapse of trust and meaning is not a system malfunction but the natural outcome of its market optimization, in which the technologies of recent years (including generative AI) have turned out to be nothing more than a perfect mirror of our own preferences.
Part I. Four Stages in the Degradation of the Source
Stage 1. Monopoly on Truth (The Era of the Vertical)
At the first stage in the existence of mass communications, information was broadcast from top to bottom. The state, or a narrow circle of ideologists, held a monopoly on the production of meaning. Newspapers, radio, and television were mouthpieces of power.
In this model, lying was instrumental and centralized. The citizen occupied the position of listener, having neither the ability to verify what he heard nor, still less, to create an alternative narrative. Society existed in a mode of double consciousness: public acceptance of official theses alongside private doubt.
The key characteristic of this period is asymmetry: a few centers spoke to millions. Malfunction of the system was evident, but institutionally controllable.
Stage 2. The Oligopoly of Attention (The Era of Commercial Realism)
The second stage arrived with the commercialization of the media and the declarative acquisition of "independence." The monopoly of the state gave way to an oligopoly of editorial offices oriented toward ratings and advertising budgets.
Here the first shift took place: the criterion of truth was replaced by the criterion of interestingness. Editorial policies came to be formed not on the basis of what needed to be said, but on the basis of what would attract attention. Local investigations gave way to scandals; analysis gave way to emotional stories.
This was the era of the birth of the information market. The reader ceased to be an object of influence and became a buyer of content. Yet the gap between producer (the journalist) and consumer was preserved: editorial offices retained the role of filter, albeit a filter oriented toward ratings rather than toward truth.
Stage 3. The Decentralization of Production (The Era of Bloggers)
With the appearance of social platforms, the first true revolution took place. The production of content ceased to be the prerogative of institutions. Any owner of a smartphone gained access to a global audience.
The role of "filter" disappeared. Algorithmic selection came to replace editorial selection: content was promoted not by the criterion of quality or reliability, but by the speed of engagement. Emotional reaction became the main currency.
This was the moment when the ratio of producers to consumers changed radically. Millions began speaking to millions. The journalist lost the status of expert and became one of many voices in the noise. The information field turned into a market of narratives, in which the winner was not the one closer to the truth, but the one whose story provoked a stronger response.
Stage 4. The Fusion of Subject (The Era of Generative Models)
The present stage is marked by the disappearance of the last boundary — between author and instrument. Generative artificial intelligence makes it possible to produce meaningful (or seemingly meaningful) texts, images, and videos at an extremely low cost.
Here a key qualitative shift takes place: the source of "nonsense" (or, more gently, "informational garbage") is no longer localizable. It does not belong to the state (Stage 1), is not determined by the market (Stage 2), and does not depend on a charismatic blogger (Stage 3). Nonsense (informational noise) is produced automatically in response to user requests, themselves generated by their own preferences.
In other words, the system has arrived at a state of autocatalysis: a request for entertainment or confirmation of bias gives rise to content that shifts the perception of reality even further, which in turn generates new requests.
Part II. The Economics of Demand and the Myth of the External Enemy
The paradox of contemporary criticism of the information landscape lies in its unchanging externalism. Analysts and regulators persistently search for an external enemy: state propaganda, corporate manipulators, AI technologies. This search is understandable: to acknowledge the internal nature of the crisis would mean acknowledging one's own complicity in it.
Yet the evolution of the media described above demonstrates a clear trajectory of satisfying demand, rather than forming it from above.
At Stage 1, the state instilled ideology. At Stage 2, commercial media studied and satisfied the tastes of the audience in order to sell it to advertisers. At Stage 3, platforms identified and amplified whatever provoked the maximum emotional reaction, without evaluating substantive value. At Stage 4, AI simply reflects and scales what users ask for.
If, over the course of four decades, content has consistently degraded from analysis to entertainment, from verified facts to emotional narratives — then this is precisely what the market demand is. The notion of a "victim of disinformation" becomes increasingly problematic when that very same subject votes with clicks for scandal rather than for investigation, for a deepfake of a cat rather than for a report on the municipal budget.
Major technology companies (Google, Meta, and later the creators of generative models) acted within the framework of market logic: they gave users what they came for. If the audience had massively demanded factual content, the algorithms would have quickly adapted to that demand. This did not happen. The attention market made its choice.
Part III. Institutional Paralysis and Belated Reaction
An important characteristic of the current moment is the systematic lag of the institutions of response.
State regulation, the judicial system, and even professional journalism function at a pace set back in the era of vertical media (Stage 1). They require months and years to work out solutions, whereas information cycles are measured in minutes, and the generation of content in seconds.
This lag is not technical but political-economic in nature. Institutions are not so much failing to keep up with technology as they are unwilling to acknowledge the radical character of the changes that have taken place. To acknowledge that the information ecosystem is unmanageable in the classical sense would mean acknowledging one's own incompetence.
A characteristic example is the discussion of "AI regulation." The proposed measures (watermarks, content labeling, mandatory authentication) lie in the plane of technical fixes and do not touch the structural problem. Even if technical solutions are implemented, a user accustomed to consuming entertainment content will have no motivation to check these markers. Unlabeled content will exist on unofficial platforms; content with forged labels will circulate just as actively as content without them.
The problem is not the absence of identification technologies. The problem is the absence of a social demand for identification. The system cannot be saved by regulations as long as the subject itself does not change its relation to what it consumes. But market logic does not presuppose such self-cultivation: it presupposes the maximal satisfaction of current desires.
Part IV. The Cycle of Self-Reproduction
The contemporary information system has turned into a closed cycle, which can be described as follows:
Demand: The user seeks confirmation of his convictions or emotional engagement.
Supply: An algorithm or generative model produces content that maximizes engagement, irrespective of truth.
Circulation: The content produced is disseminated through social platforms, incorporated into news agendas, and commented on by the journalists who remain.
Legitimation: State and commercial media cite this content as a "public demand" or a "news occasion," lending it institutional weight.
Reinforcement of demand: Having seen the content circulating in the media, the user becomes convinced of its importance and generates a new request — for the next portion of the same kind of content.
The cycle has closed. Producer and consumer have merged into a single organism, in which cause-and-effect relations are indistinguishable.
It is precisely in this context that the term used to describe this phenomenon becomes comprehensible — the circular oral-anal syndrome. This is not merely an emotional characterization, but a precise description of a structure in which the output (the content produced) immediately becomes the input (a new request) without the participation of any external evaluative criterion.
Part V. Consequences and the Absence of an Exit
Several consequences follow from the structure described, which render most of the solutions proposed today ineffective.
First. The regulation of sources (banning deepfakes, mandatory labeling, punishment for disinformation) does not work, because the sources are infinite in number and possess no stable identity. The closure of one generative service leads to the appearance of dozens of others.
Second. Raising media literacy (teaching critical thinking) is likewise problematic, since critical skills are not competitive with emotional engagement. A person tired of informational noise will choose the simple explanation rather than the complex investigation.
Third. Subsidizing quality journalism (the Scandinavian model or its analogues) may preserve individual institutions, but does not change the structure of demand. "Quality" content will exist in parallel with "mass" content, and the audience will continue to vote with clicks for the latter.
The only change that could break the cycle is a change in the subject itself. But this requires time, educational effort, and, above all, an awareness of the problem on the part of those who participate in it. The information ecosystem cannot be reformed from without, since any external force (the state, a corporation, an international organization) is itself part of this system and is guided by the same principles.
Institutions respond to the crisis belatedly not because they are ineffective, but because their legitimacy is built on the belief in the possibility of control over processes that, in principle, do not admit of such control. The more actively regulations are proposed, the more evident their powerlessness becomes before the speed of content generation.
Conclusion
The evolution of the information ecosystem from vertical monopolies to decentralized generation is a history not so much of technological progress as of market adaptation. At every stage, the system optimized itself for the demands of the audience, successively discarding complexity, factuality, and institutional responsibility in favor of emotional engagement and speed.
Generative AI is not the cause of the current collapse, but its most perfect embodiment. It reflects what we were seeking — confirmation, entertainment, simplification — and returns it to us in a purified, concentrated form.
The illusion that the problem can be solved through regulations, labeling, or international agreements is sustained because it allows us to avoid asking the main question: what exactly is it in ourselves that makes informational garbage more attractive than truth?
Until this question is answered, any talk of "saving democracy from AI" will remain a rhetorical exercise that does not touch the structural foundations of the crisis. The informational common good is being destroyed not by an external enemy, but by an internal consent to its destruction.