 my younger ones use foalbook, but i do not. |
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Jul 2, 2017 14:58
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I really don't like how the internet's become homogenized. Used to be you'd join a forum that was primarily about the thing you were interested and they'd have subforums where you'd talk about other things with the people who joined because their main interest was the same as yours. (like how SA is mainly a forum for a comedy site) These days everyone joins the same big sites and if you want to talk about cars you talk about them with car guys, you talk about movies with movie guys, etc. It feels isolated, instead of talking about your tertiary interests with people who share the same primary interest, you're generally talking with people who have it as a primary or secondary interest. It's generally anti-dialectic, instead of going in with an opposing viewpoint and either forming a synthesis or arguing antithesis back and forth, you pretty much get kicked from the group, or if on Reddit, downvoted into oblivion and then kicked. I don't know, modern social media sites just feel less inviting and harder to form an actual community around; old forums felt like small towns where everyone knew everyone and the big social media sites feel like a big city full of people who barely know each other. That's part of why with Twitter I mostly stick to following people I know from other sites or people who are well known on the internet.
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Jul 4, 2017 01:10
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Yeah to use an admittedly corny overdone and sightly jingoistic metaphor, in my time the internet has gone from being the wild west, to being the wild west with big cities here and there, to being a well groomed modernist landscape. Someday a nat geo journalist will write about "Something Awful: The Website Time Forgot" the same way they write about little old towns in wyoming |
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Jul 4, 2017 03:04
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super sweet best pal posted:I really don't like how the internet's become homogenized. Used to be you'd join a forum that was primarily about the thing you were interested and they'd have subforums where you'd talk about other things with the people who joined because their main interest was the same as yours. (like how SA is mainly a forum for a comedy site) These days everyone joins the same big sites and if you want to talk about cars you talk about them with car guys, you talk about movies with movie guys, etc. It feels isolated, instead of talking about your tertiary interests with people who share the same primary interest, you're generally talking with people who have it as a primary or secondary interest. I think the internet became less about niche communities and more about literally everyone being apart of one big thing where everybody is supposed to know everybody and it makes it easier to play morality police and call out one person with possibly sketchy evidence of them being a pedophile/terrorist. there's no real privacy anymore. once upon a time people valued privacy a lot more and minded their own business, but modern news and the internet has people so well informed and freaked out that they MUST know what their neighbor is up to at all times- hence Facebook. the only true virtue on the internet is anonymity because the minute you put a spotlight on yourself and become an "e-celebrity" that means being subjected to this insane level of scrutiny. even on SA if you gain a high enough of a profile and made a few particularly bad posts that poo poo can follow you for the rest of your internet career. it used to be easier to pick up and move on to another forum (or town) but at this point everyone leaves so much of an internet footprint that it makes stalking and doxing simpler. I'm not saying that these people shouldn't be called out for dubious behavior either especially when their opinions are supposedly meant to be taken seriously, but it's become too easy for someone to tweet or make a Reddit post with unsubstantiated evidence presented in a myopic fashion. I think it can be damaging to people who didn't really deserve it, and it forces people to choose sides over stupid poo poo too. it's a real "with us or against us" mentality. you either fade into obscurity a like (???) or live long enough to see yourself become Schmorky. that's just my hot take anyway. I think you're definitely right about it being harder to form "real" communities though. instead of trying to connect to a small group of like-minded individuals it's about connecting to EVERYONE ON THE PLANET. I hear people use the phrase "echo-chamber" a lot referring to Reddit and I think that's essentially accurate.
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Jul 4, 2017 03:18
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One thing I've always found weird is that nobody wants to talk online anymore. In the 90s and early 2000s you could easily find tons of non sexual chat places to talk about whatever, now almost nobody does that aside from super niche discord or IRC channels. It's like the Internet is actively regressing. |
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Jul 4, 2017 20:09
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It's kind of funny how serious, and accurate, this thread has become since its comedic opening. Also kind of funny how my intention with this reply was to Super Sweet's comment, "It's generally anti-dialectic, instead of going in with an opposing viewpoint and either forming a synthesis or arguing antithesis back and forth, you pretty much get kicked from the group, or if on Reddit, downvoted into oblivion and then kicked." This is super true. I'm actually doing it right now. Groupthink isn't typically a great thing. I have met and made IRL friends from the days on ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. I actually made a girlfriend and we dated for about 6 years on my high school's mIRC channel. I haven't made any IRL friends online since the early 2000's. As stated before, I just moved to NYC, and I haven't met or made friends with anyone outside of work. Trying to meet people, it seems like everyone is a lot more in a bubble than they used to be. It also seems like people are defensive when being approached by a new person. I'm from the South, so maybe it's just a cultural difference. I do think the constant sharing of bad news and crazy people hurting each other via social media has a big impact, though. Everything gets sensationalized and over-generalized to make it seem like everyone should be wary of new people. I agree with precision as well... it does seem like the internet is regressing. This is twice in the same thread that I have made myself sad 
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Jul 5, 2017 16:28
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I'm quite sure I'm not the first to say this but cell phones and facebook have diluted pretty much the entire social experience. you used to have to remember the phone number of everyone you might need to call on a moment's notice (you could write them all down but lol at people that carried little black books), now your phone does that for you so you can "have more friends" but paradoxically spend way less time ever interacting with them. text messages and facebook give an illusion or approximation of social interaction but emojis convey like five orders of magnitude less information than body language and tone/inflection do, so you have a LOT more misunderstandings and arguments and when you get started on facebook/texting as a teen this does what i am quite sure is a large amount of damage to your social growth younger people than me, especially drastically younger people (20somethings) seem to have internalized this so that even when you do talk to them in person, you'll notice that most of the time they adopt a dead-eyed stare as if they're just waiting for their turn to talk (reinforced by how text messaging works) or if they disagree with you they just keep interrupting you as if you're not even a human being i've been with my wife for a little over 3 years now and not long after we got together she drifted away from all her early-20s friends because they all act like that. everyone is always just "waiting for something to happen". most of my younger friends think that it's practically an alien concept to come hang out at our house just to get high and watch movies, they keep checking their phones, it's depressing. if we all go out to see a band, my wife and i are usually the only ones near the stage with our phones put away (i usually leave mine in the car) and even when the music is super upbeat (shout out to my friends in knoxband paperwork) hardly anyone is moving or seems excited. now i am very sad too 
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Jul 5, 2017 20:40
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Conversation is a lost art. My GF and I are on our phones a lot, and I'm willing to concede that it's because I know that I have a limited attention span and bore very easily, probably a side effect of how I grew up (I'm really bad. I usually keep a monitor on running some kind of television because I like the background noise). regardless though, we still have really involved and excellent conversations because the two of us know how to give and take. in my last relationship, most of our conversations were mainly relegated to me making a long point and her saying "Mhm." I can also say I strongly agree with Precision saying that texting and chatting is more likely to create arguments and misunderstandings because of the lack of tone, physical gestures, etc. This was how most my fights with my ex started- through text. Me and my friends all range from mid to late twenties, and we don't seem to have too difficult of a time just hanging out, maybe have a few drinks or smoke a little, and playing some video games while we all talk about something. I guess what I'm saying is that to me, this is millenialism at it's best. Sure, we all check our phones and prefer playing a game to watching a movie because it's a little more involved, but we don't forget that that there are other people in the room or NEED to be connected to others who aren't there through our devices. What is a problem though is hanging out one on one with anyone who's not my GF or whom I would consider my best friend. I used to think that it was because a couple of them just had difficulty generating abstractions and critical thinking but now I'm starting to wonder if it's something more than that. My one friend will also occasionally send me snapchats of him hanging out with other people  I have no idea why.That's another problem I have with facebook and new social media- it's not enough to just hang out with people but you also have to let the world know how much fun you're having at all times.
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Jul 5, 2017 21:18
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My favorite part of the phenomena being mentioned here is the immediate "well they said the same thing about television/telephones/telegraphs/trains/whatever" response. As if the speed and disruption of the industrial revolution are how things always were. We've been on this path a while but that's very different than saying it's the "correct" path. George Washington never traveled via any method Julius Caesar did not. Think about that. |
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Jul 5, 2017 21:21
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itt this explosion of speed and access also dominates even "good conversations" because someone will inevitably start looking poo poo up on wikipedia or checking the news sites in mid-conversation to correct minor factual details when the conversation is about general concepts. abstraction has taken a massive hit and it's funny to me that the old cliche of the "lazy stoner" was "guys who hang out together and TALK ABOUT poo poo" which is something i really miss. my best friend of all time (died 6 years ago), all through the 2000s we would get together at his house and even if nobody else was around we would literally just listen to music and talk and talk and talk and it was so good! even better when it was a full house. we even joked about how we were recording a show that they were watching in Andromeda. if we had set up a camera we probably could have become youtube superstars lol ---------------- |
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Jul 5, 2017 21:39
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Starman Super DX posted:That's another problem I have with facebook and new social media- it's not enough to just hang out with people but you also have to let the world know how much fun you're having at all times. and in a forum where i have made myself sad twice, at least i find solace in knowing that somewhere else, someone is having the time of his or her life. i will be happy vicariously through them and their selfies. just kidding. ----- |
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Jul 5, 2017 22:26
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