How following the exodus of Germany’s worst YouTuber to TikTok opened a private hell of lolcows for me. To a point where I don’t think I understand society as a whole anymore. What is this shit? And where is it all going to end?

Opening Remarks

Going forward, I am changing how your feedback is incorporated into the show. I am aiming to involve it more directly in the individual episodes, instead of having a dedicated section for it. I hope this will encourage more engagement from the listeners that haven’t been providing feedback so far.

Drachenlord and the Future of Our Society

In response to the previous episode, Evgeny Kuznetsov said on the forum:

I’m starting to think that a big problem with people who make laws is the lack of accountability. I mean, take that issue with the teacher from the last podcast, and imagine that after reversing this law and declaring it should never have appeared in the first place, the people who signed this thing into a law would be held accountable and charged: the money spent for this long lawsuit, the damages to the teacher, etc, etc…

This is hardly feasible, of course, but I can’t see how else this “people make laws without bothering to figure out the thing they’re regulating” can be fixed.

To which Fadi Mansour replied:

Well said, but the question always remains how can you make a complex system (society) where some cannot hide behind the complexity. Again a point where some kind of cost-benefit calculation needs to be done. And on the down side: I hope human socities are not going to hell with handbasket!

I think society is indeed going to hell in a handbasket. And nothing has convinced me of this more than the TikTok rabbit hole I fell into trying to figure out what happened to Rainer Winkler after he got kicked off of YouTube.

I have obviously covered the Drachenlord phenomenon before, but nothing could have prepared me for the fresh hell this research opened up. It doesn’t happen often that I do not understand, or can even begin to understand, what is going on with a topic – especially where digital technology is concerned. But I do think I have reached this point here.

Credits

First and foremost, I would like to thank everybody who provided feedback on this or previous episodes. You are very important to the continued success of this podcast!

This podcast is provided free of charge and free of obligations under the value-for-value model. However, as a freelance journalist volunteering my time to produce this show, I need your support. If you like my work and want to make sure The Private Citizen keeps going, please consider joining my Patreon.

Showrunners

  • Sir Galteran

Executive Producers

  • Butterbeans
  • Jaroslav Lichtblau
  • Rizele
  • Sandman616

Supervising Producers

avis, Bennett Piater, Dave, ikn, Jackie Plage, Jonathan M. Hethey, krunkle, Michael Mullan-Jensen, Tobias Weber

Producers

Andrew Davidson, astralc, Barry Williams, Cam, Captain Egghead, Dirk Dede, Fadi Mansour, Florian Pigorsch, Joe Poser, MrAmish, RJ Tracey, Robert Forster

Associate Producers

D, Jonathan, Juhan Sonin, Kai Siers, RikyM, Steve Hoos, Vlad

Thanks to Bytemark, who are providing the hosting and bandwidth for this episode’s audio file.

The show’s theme song is Acoustic Routes by Raúl Cabezalí, licensed via Jamendo Music. This episode’s ending song is Pull Me Close, Baby Love by Big Girl, licensed via Epidemic Sound.

Podcast cover art photo by GegenWind.