💾 Archived View for sbg.one › gemlog › 2020 › 11-10-Too-Much-Noise.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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10 November 2020
There is too much noise on the Internet. What I mean by that is that there is too much bullshit being spewed by people to where it's difficult to know what is real, or what is "fake news." There is also a lot of nit-picking and whining out there on just about every topic imaginable. It's a bit of a meme and an old one at that, but we used to call it "first world problems."
Earlier this year I quit the last of my social media accounts, Twitter. I remained on an Internet forum however, of which I joined 10 years ago. I also joined a different forum very recently and am a member of a couple of others that I don't visit all too often.
But now I'm at the point and/or the user base of forums, generally speaking, has changed significantly. I think the tendencies of social media has crept into forums and I don't like it. It used to be that we could have good conversations about a topic where an exchange of ideas and questions could be articulated and considered among forum members. Those conversations, for the most part, were civil and engaging and refrained from the petty nonesense that we see on social media everyday. It's not so any longer for forums. I'm seeing far too much petty one-sided, needy and entitled opinions that rarely objectively consider other positions. I've also noticed that many users are posting superflouous comments in repitiion, which at one time could have been a conversation starter. But they don't end up that way anymore.
On the forum I spent literally 10 years on, I posted my last post on the 10 year anniversary of joining. I've been back off and on to look around, but haven't posted anything. As it stands I don't see myself going back again. It isn't anything to do with the site or the people that run it, but everything to do with the members there. It has become harder and harder to find quality discussion that doesn't devlove in one way or another after a few posts.
Of another forum I had joined over the summer, it was quite newly formed this spring and so there weren't a lot of people there yet. The forum is backed by a major internation coroporation who is readying the launch of a long awaited product back into it's lineup. A siginificant milestone happened in regards to the companies website last month and that brought in a lot more new members to the forum and instantly I started seeing the same noise that I saw on the other forum which is total bleed-through from social media and opinionated entitlement. For unrelated reasons I have chosen to not buy this forthcoming product and go in another direction. So those two things combined has caused me to give up on that new forum already.
I am on two other forums still, but one of them I interact very little and mostly just lurk to learn nuggets of valuable information for one of my hobbies. The same goes for the other forum where I have no intention of posting even once. I only made and account so that I could have persistent dark mode enabled on it. Otherwise I only visit it once in a while to see what new product information is floating around.
So all the social media bleed-through has finally gotten me to abandon forums now. It's a sad day, really. I cannot abide by it as it aggrevates me greatly to read through it in search of anything worthwhile to read and chat about. Getting away from social media and what traditional forums are becoming is in the best interest for my own sanity and mental health.
It seems the Internet is becoming more toxic than it's worth to me to hang around in when I have time. Maybe all I have left is my own blog here where I can ramble on and into the ether ever wondering if people actually take the time to read this stuff. Even if no one does, at least I still enjoy typing it all out and posting it online.
If you value your mental health, take a serious look at your social media usage and if you're a forum goer, take some time to evaluate that too. Ask yourself if you'd live a better and healthier life with or without it.