Video from Wisecrack: the Internet Was a Mistake.

[Underseer]

The Internet was supposed to make people more informed and more engaged. While it did exactly that in certain specific cases, mostly it had the opposite effect. Weirdly, some of the flaws of the Internet mirror (and amplify) things that already happened with other media long before.

Many of us become less engaged because the Internet provides the illusion of engagement (hit "Like" if you agree!). It's great if you want to create a limited campaign to raise money for ALS research such as with the Ice Bucket Challenge, but we failed to use it to actually do anything about Darfur.

Then of course there's the issue of Balkanization (echo chambers), which were predicted fairly early on by an MIT paper. QAnon is a perfect example of that. (Obligatory "both sides" argument: liberals are exactly as bad because we think Killary Clinton wasn't running a child sex slave ring out of the basement of that one pizza restaurant. Also, we think Obama was born in Hawaii even though we all know long form birth certificates can be faked.)

I doubt anything in the above video will be controversial to anyone. Many have been noticing the same things about the Internet for some time now.

 

[prideandfall]

i suppose it could be argued that this is my hobby horse in a way, but... i have voice disagreement with the notion that this is the internet's fault.
this is the fault of basic human stupidity, and i really don't understand why there is such a strong thread within the zeitgeist of western culture of utterly refuse to even acknowledge much less address this.

human beings are by and large fucking idiots who aren't intellectually capable of dealing with reality or processing information, much less taking in the huge amount of information available via the internet and applying it appropriately to their understanding of reality.
trying to act like "the internet" and "the media" are these globe-spanning cabals of illuminati lizardmen who use magic to deceive people into believing a bunch of nonsense just strikes me as the laziest possible form of deification of homo sapiens.

and the examples about darfur and ice buckets ignore the fact that "engagement" is both relative and variable - sure most people didn't donate or recruit others for darfur, but those people wouldn't have done either thing about darfur anyways but now it can be argued they're at least aware of its existence.
the video (and not just the video but a broad attitude by certain types who want to blame media and internet for the failings of the species) seems to want to imply that if it wasn't for facebook those people would have been out on the streets yelling... something... at somebody... something-something darfur. but given that there's a genocide or an ethnic cleansing or whatever happening somewhere in the world pretty much *all the time* and the rest of us aren't constantly shitting ourselves and running head-first into brick walls about it seems to suggest that, like the whole east germany/west germany thing, the reality is that provided we're personally getting by better than we would be if civilization didn't exist and we were living in the wilds without any technology whatsoever, we're reasonably content to just sit and eat and fuck and live and not get too worked about it.

towards the end of the video the narrator talks about what "the internet" cares about: 'the internet doesn't care about quality, it just wants quantity"
... no it doesn't. "the internet" isn't a conscious entity doling out demands and controlling our brains with government chemtrail satellite waves. it's simply a platform by which humans are capable of indulging in their most boiled-down essential nature without having to put any effort into it.
and that nature is pure unadulterated fucktardation on a scale that quite honestly is pants-shittingly horrifying to anyone with two functioning neurons and a piece of lint to rub together.

 

[Underseer]

Yes, but we didn't have this many idiotic conspiracy theories before. Something changed recently, and the Internet is most likely the reason.

The same thing that made it easier for oppressed minorities (e.g. atheists, transgendered) to find communities and end isolation also provided amplification chambers for certain forms of stupidity.

 

[prideandfall]

Yes, but we didn't have this many idiotic conspiracy theories before. Something changed recently, and the Internet is most likely the reason.

well, firstly i'd argue about whether we didn't have this many before - i think we always had this many, it's simply a question of the scale of dissemination.
once upon a time you needed a zine to proclaim your lunacy and people had to go find it, which was both more locally centralized and involved more movement.
the internet just means that every dipshit who buys into the same brand of stupid as you can babble about it in a shared space without having to move around at all, which certainly raises the public awareness of that idiocy but i don't know if it's necessarily propagating it.
i don't think the internet is the 'reason' so much as the internet is a tool by which essential human nature is capable of growing more robustly.

The same thing that made it easier for oppressed minorities (e.g. atheists, transgendered) to find communities and end isolation also provided amplification chambers for certain forms of stupidity.

right, but doesn't that strike you as being obviously about humans and how stupid they are and less about the insidious evils of something without consciousness or will?

 

[OLDMAN]

Yes, but we didn't have this many idiotic conspiracy theories before. Something changed recently, and the Internet is most likely the reason.

well, firstly i'd argue about whether we didn't have this many before - i think we always had this many, it's simply a question of the scale of dissemination.
once upon a time you needed a zine to proclaim your lunacy and people had to go find it, which was both more locally centralized and involved more movement.
the internet just means that every dipshit who buys into the same brand of stupid as you can babble about it in a shared space without having to move around at all, which certainly raises the public awareness of that idiocy but i don't know if it's necessarily propagating it.
i don't think the internet is the 'reason' so much as the internet is a tool by which essential human nature is capable of growing more robustly.

The same thing that made it easier for oppressed minorities (e.g. atheists, transgendered) to find communities and end isolation also provided amplification chambers for certain forms of stupidity.

right, but doesn't that strike you as being obviously about humans and how stupid they are and less about the insidious evils of something without consciousness or will?

I think for a lot of people thinking logically is hard work. Simple answers suffice to get them through the day. Sort of like a bear taking the easiest meal. I have a skeptical mind, but I am really lazy when it comes to learning, I can't be bothered to read reams of info about things, so when I feel I have the basic understanding of an issue, I generally move on. I can see people who do not have a skeptical mind feeling the same way, problem is they have accepted an answer without proper questioning of the information given.

Furthermore, some people see everything black and white as opposed to issues having grey areas. People are seen as not complex but either good or evil...people you do not know are especially subject to this judgement. Communities without much racial mix allow for racist views to go unquestioned and the judgement to be much easier. IMHO

 

[prideandfall]

I think for a lot of people thinking logically is hard work.

right, humans are stupid, i agree with that.

 

[ZiprHead]

I think for a lot of people thinking logically is hard work. Simple answers suffice to get them through the day.

I'm not sure they're thinking at all, just letting in anything that serves their feelings handed to them by charlatans. I think QAnon is a massive troll effort being foisted on the stupider end of the Republican party and it's working.

 

[Sarpedon]

I missed the old days when conspiracy theorists were a repressed minority.