Bursting any bubble is very important.. Any of us, probably, as a child, blew into a straw in a glass of juice or a milkshake and admired the foamy bubbles, but especially the sound. Because everyone created their own music of change.

For this we were scolded as for bad manners. But what could be sweeter to a child’s heart than ill-mannered behavior However, what used to be bad manners is now a cultural norm. And calling someone to some standards is the shortest path to digital zeroing.

That is, technically, our personality remains just as far from those ideal dimensions, proportions, orientations and rules that we vehemently impose on others. But our “habitus”, the image embodied in the consensus lies of social networks, dies a few seconds before the creation of the next one, also false..

It was such a disclaimer: complaining about the existence of bubbles when you yourself are its inhabitant and co-creator, it looks a little stupid, no?

How is our eternal fight against corruption. She also looks kind of sly. Which, however, does not mean that you need to indulge thieves. This repair shop only stocks these tools:. If you don't like it, come back tomorrow.

[see_also ids\u003d"

So, about tomorrow, formed yesterday. We are brought up in a system of values \u200b\u200bthat doomed us to gravitate towards a certain ideal, precisely located outside of us. That is, we, “little Ukrainians,” are not able to formulate our own goals, missions and paths of achievement.. There is always some wise Europe, or, God forgive me, America.

This flawed narrative of the weak-minded perpetual victim has a very long history.. From Muscovy’s centuries-long instillation of repression and bribery of “Little Russianism” - right up to modern emissaries of pacifying Ukrainians with cookies and money.

Progress is obvious. At least cookies (or the promise of cookies) to everyone. And money is not for everyone, only for the obedient.

The Moscow bubble is now in the process of bursting. We see sincere (or not so) tears over the fact that some parts of this swamp cultural code are simply becoming an anachronism. The Sumerian language was also once a cultural phenomenon, but no one writes on clay tablets in cuneiform anymore. The Third Reich was pompously called the “thousand-year”. eternal - well, where is it all now The process is inevitable, but it still stinks.

The Euro-American bubble is still inertia in the process of cultural and political inflation. It was sharpened historically for such dynamics of invasive progress. But it has already divided, as in the above-mentioned milkshake, into European and American bubbles. Same substance, different sounds. The instruments of influence on us are many times more pleasant than those from Moscow, at least from the point of view of aesthetics and style.. Raising “useful idiots” and promoting them into public space and government service. “Cancel culture” of everyone who ideologically, religiously, culturally, orientationally does not fit into the “Procrustean bed” of convenient standardized political beef. It, too, is starting to slip very much, and also for absolutely objective reasons of changes in the world paradigm.

It is true that extremes converge and both Muscovites and our friends/neighbors may have the same interests - this always happens.

As the first head of the CIA, Alain Dulles, once said: “There are no friendly intelligence services, there are intelligence services of friendly countries.”.

So the good news is that this era is over for everyone. The bad thing is not that they tell us that we can still “shove in what we can’t push in,” but that we, against our will, hold on to everything that has happened as a fulcrum.. Well, it gets pushed in, and then we suffer from cognitive dissonance.

Let's take a broader look.

[see_also ids\u003d"

What we tend to think of as humanity's shared reality is actually a sophisticated cognitive filter, not a universal truth.. Modern man lives with the feeling that he sees the whole world through the smartphone screen. In fact, this “global digital world” is not representative: the digital space does not reflect the characteristics of humanity, but acts as a filter that adjusts the picture to the user’s existing ideas. This is the effect of an information bubble - the objective picture is imperceptibly replaced by an algorithmic simulation. The global digital space is primarily an infrastructure shell of American origin, which increasingly allows local rather than unified content to pass through it..

The Economist describes this paradox using the example of major sporting events: the World Cup or the Olympics are still capable of keeping the planet close to one screen for a short while, but as soon as the broadcast ends, the audience splits into local niches. In Brazil, 96 of the 100 most popular artists on streaming are local artists, and research company Ampere recorded back in 2023 that North America's share represented less than half of global streaming revenue for the first time.

And the most important thing for us: the rest of the planet is no longer waiting for a signal from the collective West, it is building its own alternatives - and Ukraine needs to understand that digitalization without a demographic foundation and real security remains a vulnerable structure.

There is a media ecologist named Andrew Meare who is called “McLuhan on steroids” (Google who Marshall McLuhan is). His key thesis: digital media has reached the physical limits of speed, reach and demographics, and reaching the boundaries of technology is precisely the condition for its reversal..

Hence the feeling that everything seems to have been turned upside down: the infrastructure remains global, but the content within it becomes increasingly local. The world adds an important detail: the evolution of digital media makes tighter regulation of online behavior almost inevitable: fragmentation into local bubbles is not a temporary glitch, but the future state of the network.

The bubble bursts under the influence of a combination of various factors that cause pressure: it does not matter what exactly we blow into the straw - be it the holy spirit or fumes. The main thing is pressure.

The demographic collapse of the Euro-Atlantic region is reducing part of the population that has historically defined the cultural dominance of the Western world. Digital media have exhausted their expansive potential, having already reached almost everyone, states are actively drawing digital borders, and users are less and less interested in a unified global product.

This is not a hypothetical future - the process is already unfolding: the population of Europe, according to the UN, will fall by about 150 million people from its peak in the early 2020s by the end of the century.

[see_also ids\u003d"

When the illusion of a global digital world finally dissipates, the first blow will be dealt to the economy. Overvalued technology assets will fall in value, confidence in financial markets will waver, and regulation of the online environment will increase (censorship).

But the socio-psychological consequences are more important: social identity will lose its imaginary global stability and become fragmented. A return to local bubbles will turn out to be a natural state of the psyche, unable to endlessly process the scale of global chaos. We will want to go back to the cave, to our tribe.

As one Ukrainian politician said: “This has already happened”.

People tend to imagine the end of the usual world as an instantaneous explosion. History teaches otherwise. The Bronze Age catastrophe of approximately 1200–1150 BC and the fall of the Western Roman Empire were long processes - and unnoticed by most contemporaries. The Bronze Age ended quickly by historical standards, in about 50 years: the Mycenaean civilization disappeared, the Hittite Empire collapsed, Egypt deflated. But for those who lived at that moment, the collapse remained invisible - changes occurred within one or two generations.

The fall of Rome lasted almost 400 years, and it was precisely because of this duration that the inhabitants of the empire did not realize that their world was falling into decay. They perceived this as a normal transformation with the transition to feudal states.

Today's digital bubble exhibits the same symptoms, but at a fundamentally different speed: its active phase takes not centuries, but six to ten years - but nevertheless, this collapse is also not realized by those who live in it.

While the West is in captivity of reflection about its snowflake exclusivity and indispensability, the rest of the planet is already building alternative centers of power.

The most noticeable shift is taking place in Africa: the UN predicts its population will grow from the current approximately 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion by 2050, and the continent's share of the world population will increase to 25–28%. African governments are focusing less and less on former metropolises - their own regional unions and digital platforms are being formed, which are less and less dependent on Western infrastructure.

[related_material id\u003d"

Former demographic giants are entering a phase of turbulence. In China, only 7.92 million children were born in 2025 - 17% less than a year earlier, this is the lowest figure since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Similar dynamics have affected India, where the birth rate for the first time in the country's history dropped to 1.9 children per woman - below the level of simple population replacement, although the Indian population itself, which has already exceeded China's, will begin to decline only in a few decades.

The vector is clear: young Africa, which is growing demographically, is preparing the basis for dominance in the post-global world, without waiting for the end of the Western digital era.

Russia demonstrates a separate and much sadder version of digital isolation. If Africa or even China are building their own digital ecosystems as an alternative to Western infrastructure, the Kremlin is moving in the opposite direction - towards isolation without replacement.

On March 1, 2026, a decree came into force in Russia, which gives Roskomnadzor, together with the FSB, legal powers to redirect Internet traffic in real time and, if necessary, completely disconnect Runet from the global network. This is no longer just a theory: in the same month, mobile Internet disappeared for several weeks in the center of Moscow, banking applications and transport services stopped working, and residents returned to walkie-talkies.

The level of digital censorship in Russia has already exceeded China, but unlike Beijing, which has been developing its own platforms and technological base for decades, Moscow restricts access to someone else’s, without having a developed replacement.

This is the path to the model of North Korea or Iran: increasingly complete information autarky in the absence of its own competitive digital economy turns technological isolation into a tool of internal control.

Ukraine is at the epicenter of this global crisis, where cutting-edge technology and the war for survival are intertwined. The birth rate due to war and migration has fallen significantly below the critical line, and this decline has been recorded since 2013.

At the same time, sociology shows an unprecedented consolidation of society: 95% of respondents identify themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, and 76% declare belonging to the Ukrainian cultural tradition - in 2006 this figure was only 56%. The cultural foundation is stronger than ever, but the number of speakers of this culture is physically decreasing.

At the same time, Ukraine has demonstrated noticeable success in digitalization - from Dii to situational awareness systems and drones, ahead of many EU countries in digital comfort.

[see_also ids\u003d"

This leads to the main conclusion: the digitalization of Ukraine without a demographic and security foundation remains a vulnerable structure. And belonging to the global infrastructure is no longer a guarantee of physical survival - we have already seen this in the example of the Budapest Memorandum. Local bubbles are a new normal that will last for a long time, for decades.

And therefore it is necessary to expand the horizon of strategic ties towards the markets of the Global South, which will dominate numerically in a few decades. After all, back in the 16th century, a historical principle was formulated: cuius regio, eius religio - “whose power, his faith”.

What should we do with all this, how to properly gurgle into our milkshake?

The protracted war keeps Ukrainian society in a state of chronic stress, affecting the psyche in measurable ways: concentration decreases, background anxiety increases.

The main trap is that the West is subconsciously perceived as a single unshakable fulcrum. But the demographic crisis of the Euro-Atlantic region and its weakness in the face of authoritarian regimes make this image less convincing. Recognizing this fact is not a reason to panic, but a step towards a healthier strategy.

The first step is the decentralization of the West in one’s own consciousness: giving up the illusion that someone from the outside is guaranteed to solve everything, and this in itself reduces anxiety. The second step is localizing the fulcrum: shifting attention to the family, community, professional environment, where horizontal connections give a real sense of stability. It is useful to critically filter information from abroad, accept fragmentation as the new normal and plan autonomously, focusing on one’s own strengths - this restores a sense of control over life.

We need to remember about the Bronze Age and Rome: these are long historical processes that stretch over generations, and not instant apocalypses, so there is more time for work and struggle than it seems in moments of panic.

One should consciously rely on the sociocultural monolith demonstrated by Ukrainian sociology: 95% of ethnic unity and 76% of common cultural identity are a real resource of mutual support.

[related_material id\u003d"

In practice, this means a short planning horizon, daily hours without news feeds and more time for concrete business for your community than for abstract geopolitical discussions.

The global digital world turned out to be not a universal reflection of humanity, but a temporary infrastructural illusion that had its heyday and has its decline..

History shows: major civilizational shifts are almost never recognized by those who live in their midst, but end in deep localization and the birth of new forms of social organization.

The modern bubble is bursting tens of times faster than in the Bronze Age or the time of Rome, but the logic is the same: the collapse is already happening under the guise of everyday changes, and will not happen one day in the future - and it is this understanding that is the first step of adaptation.

For Ukraine, a rather simple, albeit harsh, formula follows from this:.

You shouldn’t build the future solely on Western support as a guarantee. We need to look for additional support in local connections and a wider range of partners. Critically filter information noise and consider current upheavals as part of a long historical process, and not as a one-time catastrophe.

Digitalization without demographic reproduction and real security remains a fragile structure - a convenient state interface does not replace people in private homes and on the lines of defense.

This is not a reason for panic, but a rational understanding of the new world normality.

Don't blow into a straw, don't blow stupid bubbles, just drink and enjoy while you can.

[votes id\u003d"