The 50/50 Problem: How the Internet Is Distorting Our Reality

Much good about the net, sadly the ease of isolation and not having true face to face interactions with others has huge negative impacts. The more “connected” people think they are the more alone they really are.

I see it with some of my kids age friends. Covid made it much much worse for all.

 

The internet was such an amazing idea… until people ruined it lol.

 

Thanks, Al Gore.

 

Life was better before the internet.

 

Meh, there are some real shitty things about the net but it’s made life far better in many ways.

Banking, online retail, traveling, just being able to search about any topic in a moment is a huge plus IMHO.

 

The internet is almost like an adult beverage in that kids... maybe they should wait till they're older to consume it.

It appears to be far more harmful to young minds than to the older population. But even for adults, it should never be a full-time occupation to surf the web endlessly, unless it's your job.

 

Remote work is not helping the situation imo

 

On a different political subforum on a gator message board years ago - somebody posted a thread about a woman who cops stopped, for what she called “walking while black”. Why this is relevant is that the events in question happened about 1/2 mile from our house here in north Texas in the same subdivision, and I learned of it from a completely unrelated news source. I probably would have never heard of it from local media which I typically never consume.

 

I disagree with this. I know some older folks who were perfectly rational and easygoing (and polite) in person, but once on-line (after they retired), they needed a cause to rally to, and for a few of them, that cause became the republican party. And they would re-post everything negative and nasty about democrats on Facebook dozens of times a day, with no other posts about themselves or their lives. They did not filter out the obvious lies, either. If they came across it, they re-posted it. As a republican, I didn't see the need to post lies about the democrats. It is one thing if it was something funny, then that would be understandable. But malicious lies with nothing funny about them? No need to re-post that. I had to de-friend some of them.

I think that older people and younger people (who did not develop a social life before becoming addicted to the internet) are most likely to have this problem.

 

Yeah but you have to admit hand writing brilliant responses to disagree with BigCypressGator to the wing of a carrier pigeon was a pain in the butt.

 

Lol... if I ever met you in a sports Pub, you would never know I'm a Pub voter... and you would never suspect it. Not because I'm hiding it or even ashamed of it... I'm actually very proud to be a Pub voter, but because I don't have to defend myself in the real world like I do here.

And the friends I have in the real world do care about my political views, even though they know what I believe in. Many of them re liberals, and we get along just fine out there. I get long with everyone public that understands the concept of equal respect.

But with regard to kids... there is nothing scientific or logical about your post... purely anecdotal and not really believable. Idiot adults on-line come in all flavors. And they usually do not hide in who they are in public.

And to think that children are less susceptible to peer pressure to be like their friends, and following the crowd versus adults, is not science based. Kids are more likely to fall to the conformity of others, like their friends on-line. They have far more pressure to conform that any adult I know. This is regardless of political beliefs.

Maybe lay off the Republican hate and try to understand how to relate to friends outdside of the political realm.

 

Couldn't you say this about any mediated experience? TV? Movies? Writing/Books? There are probably people that say reading books distorts your reality, but they definitely don't have the credibility of people making essentially the same argument about the internet.

 

What'll really bake your noodle is when you realize just how many interactions on social media are driven by bots. Even before "AI" (which isn't really artificial intelligence as we think about in science fiction), the "dead internet theory" was gaining traction and you can see it at work in any popular post on Facebook or X/Twitter.

Many of the accounts pushing certain narratives are fake and/or operated by people in far off lands who do not share your values and interests.

 

Agree. Those people I just silence.

Sometimes I’ll ask for a link to verify their claims but rarely do they give one.
Just my way of trying to point them to the truth.

 

I don't hate republicans. I hate liars. (I am a republican, actually.)

 

It’s made certain aspects of life easier and more convenient. I disagree wholeheartedly that it’s made life better for the average American like myself.

 

The whole human race would be fine if it wasn't for people screwing it up. Freakin' people.