💾 Archived View for sud0nim.smol.pub › the-internet-has-ruined-people captured on 2023-07-10 at 13:25:32. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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I used to think it was only really bad social media like twitter that made the internet so insufferable, then I thought it was all social media, then I thought it was the web, but I have come to the conclusion the internet is the single most destructive invention humanity has created.
(I'm being hyperbolic)
I was doing some Gemini-surfing earlier this week when I found a series of threads calling for creating feeds of Gemini pages without right-wingers. Imagine for a moment that the internet was never invented, or at least never got faster than dial up and the only way of sharing large files was trading USB drives. Imagine how much more sociable people would have to be, no longer being able to dwell in their caves staring at the dopamine brick for hours on end. No longer could people cling to these identities that only serve as identifiers as members of an in-group. They'd be forced to talk to other people, people who don't see eye to eye. There would be no MAGA, no Vote Blue No Matter Who, no Skeptics, no AnCaps, no Tankies, no Centrists. People would be forced to develop their ideas without having a group to constantly praise them and/or deride them. Society wouldn't be obsessed with the Current Thing. People could make mistakes and not be haunted by it for years on end. Tech companies wouldn't dictate the rules of society. Despicable and depraved pornography wouldn't be a few clicks away from 12 year olds.
I naively thought Gemini was this place, harder to reach and not a dopamine farm, of course it isn't. People came here for various reasons, not all have seen their anti-social tendencies for the ugly thing they are.
I grew up during the Iraq war, I never saw a world truly without internet, but even when the American popular culture was at its most Jingoistic, strangers were your friends. The internet wasn't dictating society, it was helping you find information and it let you play fun little games. When you turned off the computer the internet wasn't clawing back at you, drawing you in with little dings on your phone.
The internet has also made it easier than ever to get education on any given subject; It's made it easier to create, easier to share, easier to become better. It's enabled humanity to be so much more connected, yet it has driven us so far apart.
But alas we don't live in the peer-to-peer, slow world of imagination. We live in the real world and we have to overcome these challenges. Humanity is good at overcoming the impossible, we've put a man on the moon and a helicopter on Mars, I still have hope we can overcome our technological mistakes.