I hate the internet. Super rant. Caution

[andrew90]

Caution badly written rant.

Remember the Internet in 1998? No facebook, myspace, youtube, wikipedia.

When you had to actually search for an encyclopedia article about something you wanted to know.

When you didnt waste time on forums, Youtube, looking at pointless crap.

When you didnt take pictures of yourself just so you could tag yourself on facebook, but because you actually wanted to take pictures

Wasting time. I hate the internet now its just this big life-sucking thingy-majig

Omg. I hate society its so pointless. Making us go through all these social norms just so I end up in the same position as I was before. But the worst part is Im a hypocrite, if I refuse going into university and getting a job Im a social outcast and Im not that strong on my ideals.

Godam I wish I was born in like 1400 AD.

Sure I would have died when I was 30.

But at least riding horses would be fun; I mean to me life is all relative anyway: a rich man and a poor man both live the same quality of life its just relative to their expectations...

Everything we have now we take for granted and when I see all the spoilt people walking around on the street so ignorant, and just stupid to the fact that they are being manipulated by the great gears of society__ but ho no. What do they do? They acknowledge, then move on.

F*ck it. What can we do? Nothing. Is it enough to acknowledge these thoughts? Whatever.

Just keep living your life, society has conditioned you well. mindless automaton.

 

[EmeraldsAndLime]

But it makes sense though, that as something grows larger and more universal, people begin to seek out the convenience of having something localised to a certain spot. Don't complain that it's all becoming "social norm"; would you still go a hospital/doctor if you're sick, or a Chinese restaurant if you feel like Chinese food, or a library/bookstore if you're after a book? Of course you would, because you have the definitive knowledge that these places offer the services/products you're after, so why would sites on the internet be any different. Wikipedia is a centrality for general information, YouTube for entertainment, Facebook and MySpace for social networking.

People use these services because practically everything they need is readily available to them, and with the knowledge that "practically everything" is available on these sites, it becomes apparent to the user that they don't need to go anywhere else, or waste time scouting out new places. They are also 'efficient' in the sense that they are constantly up-to-date, reflect current attitudes/events in society, they're easily accessible and they can [often] guarantee to have what you're looking for. But even so, if someone were to venture out of the realm of their "usual sites", powerful search engines like Google can help them find what they want with relative ease, and with minimal time wasted.

 

[krebstar]

Just keep living your life, society has conditioned you well. mindless automaton.

At first i didn't agree, but then you really sold me with this last sentence

 

[h3g3l]

Spoiler

Caution badly written rant.

Remember the Internet in 1998? No facebook, myspace, youtube, wikipedia.

When you had to actually search for an encyclopedia article about something you wanted to know.

When you didnt waste time on forums, Youtube, looking at pointless crap.

When you didnt take pictures of yourself just so you could tag yourself on facebook, but because you actually wanted to take pictures

Wasting time. I hate the internet now its just this big life-sucking thingy-majig

Omg. I hate society its so pointless. Making us go through all these social norms just so I end up in the same position as I was before. But the worst part is Im a hypocrite, if I refuse going into university and getting a job Im a social outcast and Im not that strong on my ideals.

Godam I wish I was born in like 1400 AD.

Sure I would have died when I was 30.

But at least riding horses would be fun; I mean to me life is all relative anyway: a rich man and a poor man both live the same quality of life its just relative to their expectations...

Everything we have now we take for granted and when I see all the spoilt people walking around on the street so ignorant, and just stupid to the fact that they are being manipulated by the great gears of society__ but ho no. What do they do? They acknowledge, then move on.

F*ck it. What can we do? Nothing. Is it enough to acknowledge these thoughts? Whatever.

Just keep living your life, society has conditioned you well. mindless automaton.

Give it more time.

You'll look back on this as the Golden Age of the Internet, marking, psychology, and freedom.

I remember the Internet of WAIS, Archie, Veronica, FIDO/ECHO-Net, BBSes, and newsgroups. This graphical stuff with anonymous folks ... meh.

There is a much larger river of (mis-)experience flowing through your post; I wrote up something on it a couple years ago and should likely return to it.

Long story short: the rift is wider and the chasm deeper than you (and I) can appreciate.

They are also 'efficient' in the sense that they are constantly up-to-date, reflect current attitudes/events in society, they're easily accessible and they can [often] guarantee to have what you're looking for. But even so, if someone were to venture out of the realm of their "usual sites", powerful search engines like Google can help them find what they want with relative ease, and with minimal time wasted.

And these things, Lukie, are what make it so horribly, chillingly, efficiently, ruthlessly bad. We are now able to live in the perpetual now. When all you have (easy) access to is now, only the scholars and those with architected leisure time will be able to look to our past. The gulf between the secular, academic, and orthodox worlds will widen and erode all common understanding and ground.

The perpetual now is the Internet's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Yes, sites like archive.org can offset this very slightly, but unfortunately with ease comes complacency.

Just listen to a grizzled engineer go on about slide-rules.

 

[Mysterious]

Something tells me that if you were alive back then you'd find things that bugged you there as well, no person or thing is perfect. Sure there's lots of conformities and such in society, if you look there always were in society. I can understand being tired of them, but if you're not going to do anything about it... There's really no room to complain. Overall though I think you are generalizing society too much. People see what they want to see, so if you see all of society as pointless and horrible, and you hate society in general, you likely had a disposition against it as it already. If, as you said, that standard of living is subjective, then why not take that idea and use it to your advantage? Oh well, probably seems like I'm aimlessly babbling and not really stringing thoughts together well. Either way really, just try and perhaps look on the bright side of things.

 

[EmeraldsAndLime]

And these things, Lukie, are what make it so horribly, chillingly, efficiently, ruthlessly bad. We are now able to live in the perpetual now. When all you have (easy) access to is now, only the scholars and those with architected leisure time will be able to look to our past. The gulf between the secular, academic, and orthodox worlds will widen and erode all common understanding and ground.

The perpetual now is the Internet's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Yes, sites like archive.org can offset this very slightly, but unfortunately with ease comes complacency.

Unfortunately that's always going to be the case with any media-rich environment. It's difficult to step-back to the outdated, yet we can't step forward to what hasn't been innovated yet, we can only wait until the future arrives at the present. Interactive media is so focused on now, that we lose our hindsight and neglect foresight. The present day always surfaces new challenges, new questions, new ideas and new events that it's hard to not report on these new matters, only to repeat the same behaviour the very next day.

 

[quattrus]

As any human invention, Internet has its pros and cons. And some side effects too.

The atomic bomb is a "side effect" of nuclear energy.
The electric chair is a "side effect" of electricity.

But both nuclear energy and electricity are something we couldn't do without in nowadays' world.

Internet's side effects are such things like countless hours randomly spent looking at pointless things, virtual contact taking the place of real human contact, the internet itself becoming the receptacle of human perversions, the "everything and immediately" effect that is affecting also the rest of our lives, where we don't consider acceptable anymore to have to wait for something, and so on.

But at the same time internet is an immensely powerful instrument of communication, and an unlimited source of ready-available knowledge. Take e-mails, for example, and how much useful are for nearly any job you could be doing, with the possibility to communicate real-time and send documents and media files from one side to the other of the planet just like you were next door to your interlocutor.

The important thing is keeping in mind that internet is - as I said - an instrument, and not the ultimate aim, exactly as the mentioned sites (facebook, youtube, etc...) are just another communication possibility we're given. But clearly it's easy to forget it, as a lot of people seem to be living their life more on the "virtual" world than in the real one, and this is the reason I perfectly understand your rant, and somehow agree with it, although in the end, as always, you don't have to blame the means technology provides you with, but the way people decide to use them.

 

[Valentine]

Well Andrew no one is making you waste your time on the internet, and there are still plenty of horses around if you want to ride one.

 

[Flanders]

The electric chair is a "side effect" of electricity.

Some people would argue that this is good for society.
~Ned~

 

[kevindhca]

If you find yourself wasting too much time on the internet, just turn off your computer, and go outside.
Ride a bike, do some gardening, go for a walk, watch the stars, life for us is really not alot different from the past.
There are just many more choices for your time, it's up to you, how you spend that time.

Who says if you don't go to university, you'll be a social outcast?
I am a tradesman, I never went to university, and I am very much in demand.
My customers don't care that I never went to U , they just want quality work, delivered on time and on budget.

Find something you are good at and enjoy doing, and don't worry about what anyone else thinks you should be doing.

 

[quattrus]

Some people would argue that this is good for society.
~Ned~

And I'd politely disagree. :tongueout:

[/OT]

 

[WoXxY]

I liked the internet when it was still complicated enough to keep the single digit IQ 'tards out.
These days all it takes is a fuckwit that can move a mouse and click on a picture.
*sigh*

 

[dogboy]

Let me tell you, the 1400's weren't that much better. I can remember when we all went to Omar's the blacksmith. It was easy and convenient to have him make all of our latest novelties, out of iron of course. The guys would keep saying, let's go to Omar's, lets go to Omar's. I could remember when we had to make all this stuff on our own. We also would paint our faces on the hind quarters of horses along with a little information about ourselves. After awhile, everyone had their face on some horses ass. You're right, it does get old after awhile.

 

[daria7483]

LOL at dogboy's post -- nice one, man.

The atomic bomb is a "side effect" of nuclear energy.
The electric chair is a "side effect" of electricity.

Couldn't agree more. I think what you have to ask yourself, as we progress and change as a society, is "is the quality of life generally better for people today than it was in 1400 AD?"

I think the answer is yes. For the most part, we don't have to fear losing our children or parents or other family and friends to horrible diseases and/or accidents. Yes, of course there are car accidents and cancer and suicide and other things, but the odds of seeing your offspring live to adulthood are much better now than they were then. For the cancer and suicide issues, we at least have decent docs now who know what they're doing and can often effectively treat cancer and mental health conditions -- but as a "side effect" of that, we have HMOs and people being denied that care because they can't afford health insurance.

People are always going to point to times of the past and say it was so much better and people were so much better than because of whatever -- I bet they did that in 1400 AD too -- but progress is usually a good thing, with some not-so-great side effects. Most people have always sought to connect with friends and get information in the easiest way possible -- it's just that that easy way has gotten easier and easier.

 

[Gil]

I liked the internet when it was still complicated enough to keep the single digit IQ 'tards out.
These days all it takes is a fuckwit that can move a mouse and click on a picture.
*sigh*

Thats probably what I hate the most, the people with ZERO intelligence finding their way on the internet.

 

[h3g3l]

Thats probably what I hate the most, the people with ZERO intelligence finding their way on the internet.

And now we've come full-circle.

While I agree with the spirit of Dogboy's post, above, I have to chip in the fact that it was easier to die in the 1400s as a result of doing something stupid.

Darwin Awards and all, you know?

Now about the only time that someone can die easily from stupidity is to prepend the action with, "hey, watch this!"

Also, to respond to the OP: in the Internet World Wide Web of 1998 - and before - we found other ways to waste our time. For instance, I'd while away hours online in 1992 or so slogging through newsgroups. I seem to remember following an online newsgroup posting out of Brown University that dealt exclusively with [the philosopher] Nietzsche.

I also remember reading a "web serial" in 1995-1996 or so. It was called, "What if Nietzsche Worked at a Convenience Store?" Pure genius, that.

UPDATE: If anyone could help me find an archive of this story, I'd really appreciate it!