Internal Variables

Factors originating within a system or study that influence outcomes and are, in principle, part of what the researcher is studying or should be controlling. In experimental design, internal variables include the treatment itself, participant characteristics, measurement procedures, and all the elements the researcher deliberately manipulates or measures. However, internal variables also include unintended factors: participant expectations (placebo effects), researcher expectations (experimenter bias), measurement error, and all the ways the study itself shapes its own results. Distinguishing intended internal variables from confounding internal variables is the fundamental challenge of research design.

Internal Variables Example: "They thought they were measuring the drug's effect, but the internal variable of participant expectation—they all knew they were getting the real drug—confounded everything. The improvement might have been pure placebo."

by Dumu The Void March 12, 2026

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Internet Gang Up

A broader phenomenon encompassing any coordinated or emergent mob attack conducted through internet-mediated means, across platforms, protocols, and spaces. Where "digital gang up" might emphasize the digital nature of the attack, "internet gang up" emphasizes the network itself—the way information travels, mobs form, and coordination happens across the entire internet ecosystem. An internet gang up might start on Twitter, spread to Reddit, generate YouTube videos, leak into Discord servers, spawn blog posts, and result in doxxing, harassment, and real-world consequences. The target experiences not just a platform-specific attack but the full weight of the networked mob, amplified and sustained by the internet's architecture of virality and persistence. Internet gang ups are what happens when the mob discovers you and the network makes escape impossible.

Example: "The controversy followed her across every platform—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, even her professional email—an Internet Gang Up that demonstrated the network's capacity to coordinate destruction across every digital space she occupied."

by Dumu The Void March 14, 2026

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Internet Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about the internet that dominate digital discourse—the often-unexamined assumptions that the internet is liberating, that it democratizes knowledge, that it connects people, that it's inevitable, that more connectivity is always better, that the current internet (corporate, surveilled, centralized) is simply how the internet is. Internet orthodoxy includes commitments: that access solves problems, that digital natives understand technology, that platforms are neutral, that algorithms are technical rather than political, that the internet's problems are growing pains rather than design features, that alternatives (decentralized, non-commercial, community-owned) are impractical. Like all orthodoxies, it shapes how we understand digital space, but it functions as ideology—making particular internet arrangements seem natural and inevitable, obscuring how the internet could be otherwise, and delegitimizing visions of alternative digital futures. Internet orthodoxy determines what online spaces are "realistic," what digital policies are "forward-thinking," and who counts as "tech-savvy" versus "nostalgic."

Example: "He dismissed concerns about platform surveillance as inevitable—'that's just how the internet works.' Internet orthodoxy had made corporate control feel like the nature of technology rather than a choice."

by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026

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