【文章标题】：The Internet Is Kind of a Predatory Cesspit Now 如今的互联网已沦为掠食者的粪池 【文章正文】： The Internet Is Kind of a Predatory Cesspit Now 如今的互联网已沦为掠食者的粪池 I’m a kid of the 90s, and I still remember the early internet. It was slow, ugly, unreliable, and full of cranks, a strange world of wheezing dial-up modems, Usenet flamewars, tags, and dancing babies. It was also stubbornly alive and human. 作为90年代的孩子，我仍记得早期的互联网。它缓慢、丑陋、不可靠且充斥着怪人，那是个充斥着吱吱作响的拨号调制解调器、Usenet骂战、标签和跳舞婴儿的怪异世界。但它也倔强地充满生机与人性。 People built websites about Babylon 5, model rockets, train timetables, shareware, and whatever else had colonised their minds. Most of it had no business model. That was the literal point. The web felt like a public square assembled by obsessive amateurs. 人们搭建关于《巴比伦五号》、模型火箭、火车时刻表、共享软件的网站，或是任何占据他们脑海的事物。大多数根本没有商业模式。这才是本质——那时的网络像是由狂热业余者搭建的公共广场。 None of this was entirely innocent. There were scams, viruses, Nazis, pornography, and chain emails from deposed Nigerian princes. But then predation moved from the periphery to the centre. It used to be an abuse of the network. Now it is the network’s organising principle. 这些并非全然无害。那时已有骗局、病毒、纳粹、色情内容和被废黜的尼日利亚王子发的连环邮件。但后来掠夺行为从边缘移到了中心。过去这是对网络的滥用，如今却成了网络的运作法则。 The scammer once had to find a victim. The platform now finds one, profiles the weakness, optimises the pitch, processes the payment, and recommends the next scam. What was once an aberration has become the norm. 骗子曾经需要自己寻找猎物。如今平台会主动寻找目标，分析弱点，优化话术，处理付款，再推荐下一个骗局。曾经的异常现象已成了常态。 The modern internet is now a highly optimised machine for detecting human vulnerability, amplifying it, and placing a payment link beside it. Any insecurity can become a commercial niche, including the desire to escape commercial life itself. 现代互联网已成为高度优化的机器，专门探测人性弱点、放大它并在旁边放置付款链接。任何不安全感都能成为商业利基，连”逃离商业生活”的愿望也不例外。 There is always a course, a newsletter, a private community, or a referral code waiting at the end of the funnel. 在流量漏斗的尽头，总有一门课程、一份订阅、一个私密社群或推荐码在等待。 The bleak part is not that grifters exist. Every society has hucksters. It is that much of the population has been conscripted into the downline. 真正可悲的不是骗子存在——每个社会都有江湖术士——而是大量普通人被征召进了传销链条。 Ordinary people now spend their lives promoting investments they barely understand, products that do not work, and political claims they have never examined. Many earn nothing. They are unpaid distributors for someone farther up the pyramid. 普通人如今终其一生推广他们根本不理解的投资、毫无用处的产品、从未验证的政治主张。许多人分文未得，只是金字塔上层免费的人肉分销商。 The consumer, salesman, and product have collapsed into the same exhausted person. 消费者、推销员和产品已坍缩成同一个疲惫不堪的个体。 People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model. The feed supplies alternating doses of outrage, fear, envy, lust, and hope. Each feeling arrives with something to buy. 人们越来越像瘾君子，因为上瘾本身就是商业模式。信息流交替投喂愤怒、恐惧、嫉妒、欲望和希望，每种情绪都搭配着可购买的商品。 People doomscroll until they acquire the anxiety that the next influencer will monetise. Then they purchase a bet, a coin, a supplement, a course, or an enemy. Finally, they repost the pitch. Consumption becomes distribution. The mark becomes the salesman. 人们刷着末日般的信息流，直到获得下个网红要变现的焦虑，然后购买赌注、虚拟币、保健品、课程或是假想敌，最后转发广告。消费即分销，猎物即销售。 This is an industrial system for manufacturing weakness at scale. A legitimate business can survive a satisfied customer. A grift cannot. It needs the customer frightened, aggrieved, lonely, sick, or greedy forever. 这是规模化生产弱点的工业体系。正经生意能靠满意客户存活，骗局不能。它需要客户永远恐惧、委屈、孤独、病态或贪婪。 When I started writing about cryptocurrency in 2020, I still carried a naive assumption about the size of this economy. I thought people were generally decent and the grifter class was a small pool of degenerates with rotten moral character, preying on those made vulnerable by the material conditions of our time. 2020年我开始写加密货币时，还天真地低估了这个产业的规模。我以为多数人本质正直，骗子只是少数道德败坏的堕落者，专挑被物质条件压垮的弱者下手。 I was very wrong. The grift economy is massive. More disturbing still, it is participatory. 我大错特错。骗局经济规模惊人。更可怕的是它的全民参与性。 A large and growing share of the population now appears willing to devote every waking hour to fleecing their fellow man as a career choice. 如今越来越多的人似乎愿意把全部清醒时间献给”薅同胞羊毛”这项事业。 They stream, post, recruit, promote, refer, astroturf, and close. They turn every friendship into a lead and every conversation into a qualifying call. 他们直播、发帖、招募、推广、拉人头、造假口碑、成交。他们把每段友谊变成潜在客户，每次聊天变成筛选电话。 The smartphone is a shop counter that sleeps beside their head. 智能手机就是枕边的柜台。 Obviously most of these people are not succeeding. The maths simply can never work out. That is part of the trick. 显然多数人不会成功。数学上根本不可能。这正是骗局的精妙之处。 The aspiring influencer with forty-seven followers is not an entrepreneur in any meaningful sense. He is free labour for the platform and cheap distribution for the person selling him the dream. 那个只有47个粉丝的准网红，在任何意义上都不是创业者。他是平台的免费劳工，也是向他兜售梦想者的廉价分销渠道。 The affiliate marketer buys a course about affiliate marketing, then recovers the cost by selling the same course to the next affiliate marketer. 联盟营销者购买联盟营销课程，然后通过把相同课程卖给下个联盟营销者来回本。 The pyramid is social before it is financial. Everyone stands on someone else while insisting they are about to escape. 金字塔首先是社交结构，其次才是金融骗局。每个人都踩在别人身上，同时坚称自己即将脱身。 This arrangement blurs the useful moral distinction between predator and prey. Many online grifters are themselves marks. 这种机制模糊了掠食者与猎物间本应清晰的道德界限。许多网络骗子自己就是受害者。 They believe the rubbish they sell because belief makes the selling bearable. 他们相信自己兜售的垃圾，因为唯有相信才能让推销变得可忍受。 Admitting the product is worthless would mean admitting that years of their life were worthless too. It is psychologically cheaper to recruit another victim. 承认产品毫无价值，等于承认自己多年人生毫无价值。从心理学成本考量，拉拢下个受害者更”划算”。 The fraud sustains the faith, and the faith sustains the fraud. 欺诈滋养信仰，信仰维系欺诈。 A normal trade ends when a need is satiated. You need a chair. Someone sells you a chair. You sit down and stop thinking about chairs. 正常交易在需求满足时结束。你需要椅子，有人卖给你椅子，你坐下后就不再想椅子。 However, an online grift can never satiate. It must preserve the need that feeds it. The grievance merchant cannot resolve your grievance. The wellness influencer cannot let you feel well. The trading guru cannot let you become financially secure. 但网络骗局永不满足。它必须维持滋养它的需求。贩卖焦虑者不会解决你的焦虑，健康网红不会让你真正健康，交易大师不会让你财务安全。 （注：根据用户要求，最后一句”The manos”疑似截断未完成，故保留原文未译）