Marc Andreessen on how the internet changed news, politics, and outrage | The a16z Show

Marc Andreessen draws a direct line from the founding principles of CNN to the current state of internet media. The original concept for CNN, as envisioned by its founder Reese Schonfeld, was something called “randemonium.” The idea was to have a 24-hour news channel that would lock onto the single most compelling, controversial, or transfixing event happening anywhere in the world—“the current thing”—and cover it relentlessly, often with raw, unverified, real-time footage. This model proved incredibly successful during events like the 1991 Gulf War.

Over time, CNN drifted from this model, but the internet, and specifically social media platforms like X, has reinvented and accelerated it.

The Global Village and the Viral Meme

Andreessen applies two key concepts from media theorist Marshall McLuhan to explain the modern media environment:

1. The Global Village: McLuhan predicted that modern media would connect everyone on the planet into a single “village.” This isn’t necessarily a positive development. In a small village, everyone is in each other’s business, and there is no privacy. The internet has actualized this on a global scale, creating a “brain-melting experience” where we are expected to process and have relationships with billions of people, far exceeding our natural capacity (the Dunbar number of ~150).

2. The Medium is the Message: McLuhan famously observed, “If it’s on television, it’s a television show.” Meaning, the medium itself shapes the content into its native format (e.g., a half-hour comedy or an hour-long drama). Andreessen’s modern corollary is, “If it’s on the internet, it’s a viral social media meme.”

Any real-world event, from a political scandal to an alien invasion, is now processed through the internet’s native format. This format involves:

• Transformation into a viral meme.
• The formation of opposing tribes.
• A subsequent moral panic and outrage cycle.
• A search for scapegoats.

This cycle typically spikes and decays over about two and a half days, after which the collective attention moves on to the next “current thing,” almost completely forgetting the previous one. This makes long-term political predictions incredibly difficult, as an election’s outcome may depend more on the viral panic of the day than on events that occurred months prior.

Political Polarization and Historical Context

While many believe we live in an era of unprecedented political polarization and anger, Andreessen argues this view lacks historical perspective. He posits that the period from roughly the end of the Cold War to the mid-2010s was an era of “suppressed volatility,” largely due to a highly centralized media landscape (a few TV networks, consolidated newspapers).

Historically, media was far more fragmented and contentious, from the dozens of partisan newspapers in Ben Franklin’s Philadelphia to the propaganda posters of the Spanish Civil War and the use of radio by fascist regimes. Political violence was also far more common. Andreessen suggests a counterintuitive theory: the ability to engage in “virtual combat” online may actually be reducing real-world physical violence. People are channeling their rage into social media scrolling and arguments at home rather than into physical altercations in the streets.

The Anatomy of “The Current Thing”

For an event to become “the current thing,” it needs specific attributes:

• It must activate outrage: The news is called “the news,” not “the importance.” People are drawn to the novel, hot, and outrageous.
• It must enable tribal formation: The issue must be something people can form “moral tribes” around and “go to war” over online.
• The underlying truth is often secondary: The outrage cycle can function regardless of whether the initial event is true, false, or exaggerated. In fact, ambiguity can make it easier to argue about. The focus is not on the event itself but on its utility as a proxy for a larger moral or political battle.
• It personalizes the issue: The most potent “current things” often revolve around a specific person or a small-scale event, as a “single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

Ops, Dark Money, and “Availability Entrepreneurs”

The conversation addresses the question of whether these outrage cycles are organic or manufactured “ops.” The answer is messy—it’s both.

• Availability Entrepreneurs: This term describes people or groups who intentionally inject a topic into the public consciousness to trigger a viral cycle, or an “availability cascade.” Rosa Parks is cited as a historical example; she was a trained activist, and her act of defiance was a deliberately planned event designed to spark a larger movement.
• The Blurring Line: An op can become real. If a manufactured event successfully taps into genuine public sentiment and sparks a real, broad-based movement, its origin becomes a historical footnote.
• Dark Money: There is a significant legal gray area where organizations can pay influencers to promote a political or moral stance (e.g., AI doomerism) without the disclosure requirements that apply to product advertisements or direct political campaign donations. This allows for well-funded, opaque influence campaigns to shape public discourse.

The First True Internet Election

While past elections have been influenced by the internet—Obama’s online fundraising in 2008, Trump’s use of Twitter in 2016, and the rise of podcasts in 2024—Andreessen argues that the first true internet election has not happened yet.

He describes Donald Trump as a “hybrid” candidate, fluent in both social media and traditional television, a medium he still watches closely to gauge the public pulse. A future candidate, likely in 2028 or 2032, will be a true creature of the internet, paying no attention to television or newspapers and running a campaign entirely within the online ecosystem. This will mark a fundamental shift in politics, fully aligning it with the new media reality.

• Tags:
• Feature
• Social Media
• Media
• Internet Culture
• Marshall McLuhan
• Political Polarization
• CNN
• The Current Thing
• Legacy Media