Are you annoyed with your current online experience?

[Solister]

Well... here I go rewriting this topic after I lost everything...

This is a subject which has been interesting me recently, and knowing it has some popularity, I decided to write a topic.

I've been wandering through the internet almost as long as I can remember, but I can state since 2011 for sure. Of course that's not even near to what some of you have been around, and I wasn't even born since TSS was created, but that's definitely enough to catch some great changes.

While on the subject, I don't think I'll talk about the quality of posts, memes, reposts, videos, etc, but mainly the way we use internet these days, or should I say... the way internet use us?

I'm pretty sure you once considered giving up everything and, if not the whole internet thing, at least some social media. One of the best examples is Facebook. It has been over 6 months since I last opened it on my PC browser, but lately I've fallen into the temptation of the mobile app, and while it's been about a month I've been doing this, I can't even compare how trashy it was compared with the PC version (when I used AdBlock).

Lots of suggestions of things you are not even interested in, cringe ads, and the worst for me, ads in the middle of the video. I can't count how many times I gave up watching a video just because after 1 min or even 30 seconds an ad came in, and I wasn't fully interested on the video, and just continued scrolling. This would be quite ok if it wasn't a page I wasn't following, but even pages I've started following the day I created my account and could give my life for that brand, an ad come and make me rage-quit.

(And even things I could possibly interest and accepting suggestions, I've never received an ad)

Of course many of you'll say "oh, but the enterprise needs money to continue operating" or "just add an AdBlock" (I really wish I had this option for mobile).

So I started reflecting Do the internet really is a safe and fun place at all? Do you really like being annoyed on your free time to receive ads, help other enterprise boost their sales, have your data tracked, be annoyed with "suggestions" of things you are not even interested in, all this without your own consent?

This was when I came to the conclusion that I don't think I'm more than 20% happy with our current internet. Things which before were the standard, now require you to go down 7 layers in the options menu to disable it.

Despite I don't even liked it at all, but I think it's impossible to not mention it when talking about this subject, the documentary "The Social Dilemma" does a great overview in this subject, despite I really think it was very boring, repetitive and didn't bring me up any information I didn't know about.

Moving up, another thing I believe many of you are certainly tired of are YouTubers/influencers/reaction videos. Of course there are a minor parcels of them who does great stuff, but the simple concept these receive more money than teachers or medics on our current society is enough to make me pissed.

Similarly, and as I'm getting near and nearer to start working, one of the things which also irritates me, is how simple today is to receive notifies from your school/work/college while resting. You're in the middle of your vacations when you receive the news your salary will be reduced. Sunday morning, your boss ask you to do a "simple" task which in the end won't even be added to your salary... ugh.

All this to not mention on how we are being manipulated by the big medias and bipolarizing the world. For example, news without reliable sources or just being sent to a certain pattern of persons. I even have the feel that, if the world is a story written by someone, we completely lost the track of it since 2014.

So yeah, this is almost common knowledge: WE are the product. In these past days I've been really annoyed with this and disabling most options on my most used programs, apps, accounts, changing search engines, uninstalling apps... I'm curious. Am I the only annoyed with this? Why didn't no one moved forward to change our current internet? This is just a simple example, but I think we can easily say how many things we "lost" just because of the greedy of a very few: Quality internet, quality social media, quality news, quality music... and the list goes on.

[Mr Loopone]

In terms of the Internet, my enjoyment has gone downhill over the years. Currently it is about 20-30% and that depends on the day.

It gets annoying now that a majority of websites, you have to go through so many options before you get onto a website. In the past, you just went to the website but now you have to click Manage My Choices/Cookies, check to see they are off (or bare essential ones) and if they are not then tap no, then scroll down to accept/save (but it doesn't really save). Some websites have a Decline option but not many do. The more options/companies that it has, the more annoying and time consuming it is. The term of "personalising" your Internet annoys me, it's not personalising me but rather for all sorts of companies out there getting a profile on you. Oh and many companies are getting wise to adblocking and filters. To give an example, in the past you could just go on YouTube and you get the video playing. Now before you can get there, you get a pop up unless you sign in and Google wants to accept their "privacy" policy. I have to inspect the element, clear about ten things in the code and then play the video. Even using Opera and/or Firefox with their filtering options/addons, it is still a hassle. I've also known websites to be absolutely broken because of filter/addon conflicts.

One awful website is Healthline, you just can't go on the website at all without accepting consent from about 50 companies because it is clever regarding filters and code. They give you a very limited selection of articles if you live in the UK/EU/EEA and is very patronising about their wording, Red Ventures the company who owns it just want more money, they get enough from a price comparison website and commission from the companies. So if you want to look for a health issue (a really important thing in your life especially now with the quality of service from doctors has gone downhill), you can't.

When I first started using the Internet, the main focus was that it can be used for research since streaming wasn't quite a thing yet and downloads took ages (the only real plus of the Internet as time goes on as a observation is that the quality has improved in terms of videos and faster download/streaming speeds). As mentioned, it's very hard in this day and age to find truthful or reasonable information. It's like the influence of those newspapers seeding through. I still research things online and have been towards one of my interests but the fun in that has declined over the years. Would even go as far I have been toying over the years to drop the Internet, think once it gets really pricy and not everywhere gives you the best connection (my area cannot get fibre broadband and it goes down now and again) but then again the Internet is becoming a standard especially what happened within the past year.

The main problem with the Internet and has been say since the mainstream adoption of 2007-2008 would be social media. While social media did exist as forums like here and people did use AIM or MSN Messenger, now there's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, TikTok or WhatsApp the latter if you have a phone (or other country alternatives). You have to be on one of those websites/apps since many of the small scale ones closed down and many forums that the members are drying up or at worst tearing each other apart. Yes, there was a time when people were making their own websites but now the Internet is very corporate and the cost to make your website is higher. The thing is, is that when someone does not feel comfortable using these services, it pushes you out. Why? The people. It is getting as time goes by pushing towards one side or the other, the middle (not quite the middle technically, there's a bias but not extreme) is shrinking and as mentioned before like walking on eggshells to make sure that you're not attracting either side for condemnation. Then again people were just as bad in the early days. Oh and I dislike influencers, basically advertising disguised as a person for money. Oh buy X product, I love it. I buy what I buy thanks.

Relating to that I do not have any subscriptions to streaming services or donate to Patreon, the latter getting more common. For the former, it's the case of the lack of content that they have towards my "picky" tastes and wouldn't spend money on something that I will use little of, plus a lot of the good stuff is US only. It's a mixed issue for me, on one hand it is giving people entertainment or encouragement but on the other hand it is becoming moneywalled, something that has already happened for the news and streaming services are creating a profile about you.

There are websites that I just more or less stopped using. Taking the YouTube example, the last time that I put something on there was 2016 but you wouldn't know since that account has been personally deleted and the amount over the years got less and less. What could have been hours is sometimes mere minutes once every so often now. People go on about what's the current term... (prefix)-Tubers? A lot of the younger people watch YouTube but to me the personalities have put me off. A long time ago I watched something called GameSack but went off that, then it was Retro Core but went off that too. When it's people screaming, getting overly excited or being smirky, it just gives you a headache.

Geolocking is another big issue that has popped up when the Internet became more corporate. VPN seems to be a band-aid (and one that has cost) but it will be a matter of time where companies get wise blocking (and lobbying governments to banning them), and it has already happened in some countries however it is the government rather than the companies.

Another recent annoying thing is 2 factor verification. A good idea in practise as it is more secure due to hacking but the issue is down to having a phone and even in this day and age not everyone has one or needs one. It also doesn't help that as a example someone can't read their emails because it uses Duo Mobile and their phone that isn't that old doesn't allow to install the app on Google Play because Google wouldn't let you, the company also doesn't have an apk on their website regarding this. I know not everywhere uses this 2 factor verification and some use the code sent to your emails but this will be a big issue as time goes on due to reading about college and university students require this.

It doesn't help that many countries are moving towards the all digital future where we would all be glued to our phones and computers. Money is already going to be a thing of the past since many stores (the ones that are left, mainly supermarkets) have switched to credit/debit card only. I've known supermarkets doing this overnight especially if they have a self service checkout, one happened last week. Plus it's not just companies but governments too. The UK does a Census every 10 years but this year, you had to add a lot more personal information than beyond name, address, how many live at your house such as what job if you have one and all of your details (outside of pay), your health, your qualifications if you have any. Oh and it's online this time.

[Guest]

People online act like total garbage now. Online bullying was a thing before but places like Twitter being used by damn near everybody makes it so much worse, so much easier to get hate mobs to go after targeted individuals... it's so bad. It sucks that I had to delete social media to escape how mean everyone is. And I have no IRL friends so I'm left in the dust basically. Everyone is too cliquey to really include me.

[Piko]

My main problem with the internet is how centralised it is nowadays; almost everything is on like 5 apps, which makes it really hard to find like-minded people. On smaller sites (like this one! ) there's a sense of community because 1) not many people use it and 2) the site is usually based around a common interest; it feels more like a group of friends than a website. Unfortunately most of them no longer exist or haven't been active in years and if they are still active, the users tend to be...unpleasant to put it nicely.

Social media has destroyed the internet and I feel like leaving it entirely (or at least the ones I don't use as much) but I'd be missing out on a lot if I did.

[FlameStream]

Interesting discussion. I'd say that one of the major issue at hand here that has not been discussed is that the internet is too accessible and resulted in many of the inconveniences discussed here. What I mean is that any individual has the power to be given a much bigger voice and connect with other people. This results in more opportunity to maliciously (or ignorantly) falsify information.

Where you used to have some control in interaction in the past, any uneducated person's voice can be as big or bigger than a scholar. Any kid can argue with a celebrity, etc.

This is one of the many cases where too much good (accessibility, privacy) can be bad.

[Iko]

I agree with everything in this thread.

5 hours ago, Piko said:

My main problem with the internet is how centralised it is nowadays; almost everything is on like 5 apps, which makes it really hard to find like-minded people. On smaller sites (like this one! ) there's a sense of community because 1) not many people use it and 2) the site is usually based around a common interest; it feels more like a group of friends than a website. Unfortunately most of them no longer exist or haven't been active in years and if they are still active, the users tend to be...unpleasant to put it nicely.

Social media has destroyed the internet and I feel like leaving it entirely (or at least the ones I don't use as much) but I'd be missing out on a lot if I did.

Smaller communities based around a common interest still happen today, but now they happen on Discord/Telegram/similar... and that's not very good IMO. They usually are hidden underground communities that you have no way of knowing they exist unless someone invites you, and due to them being that "private", they're usually filled with racist humor and discriminatory behaviors, and stuff like that. Those practices are slowly influencing the new generations of people and the society feels more and more toxic with each new day.

Another thing that I dislike of the modern communities is that they usually implement some popularity systems that give more visibility to popular posts and make the more obscure posts almost disappear. People stopped posting their actual opinions, people now post what other people want to hear, so they get likes and become popular. Those services have the power to decide what type of posts can get more visibility and what can't, and if you continuously make posts that are considered controversal (that does not necessarily mean violating the rules, it may also just be expressing an unpopular opinion), you can even face a "Shadowban", that consists in the website/app obscuring your posts without you noticing (you are convinced that people read your posts but they don't, or only like an 1% of people can see your posts while the majority don't even see them).

All this is in my opinion disgusting, and I didn't even talk about the AI/bots posting fake reviews on online stores and such.

Yeah nowadays internet sucks hard, but it became a necessity so you can't really avoid using it.

[Guest]

On 3/15/2021 at 7:21 AM, Piko said:

Social media has destroyed the internet and I feel like leaving it entirely (or at least the ones I don't use as much) but I'd be missing out on a lot if I did.

I can't leave; I have nothing outside of this. Otherwise I would.

But yeah it sucks what happened, as a misfit I had to rely on the internet to socialize, now I can't even do that well.

 

[batson]

Trust me young ones, as bad as being on the internet can be nowadays, it's nothing compared to being on the internet in the 90's, when you seriously had to wait 45 minutes for a single image to load.

 

[Salamander]

I know all these things have a certain amount to do with when you grew up and what you were familiar with, but I really do think peak Internet for me was fandom messageboards and Flash gaming.

On comparatively small messageboards like this, then, as outlined above, it's like a community; and there's more room to have something resembling a discussion, to really feel like you're exchanging ideas with people on your level.  Whereas social media is just so isolated and isolating; it's not structured for discussion, it's structured for individuals screaming into the void.  You might say that messageboards are villages, and social media is the city.  (If I'm honest, I don't really like the way the status updates are used as a chatroom, either.)

Flash gaming, meanwhile - well, I'm sure I've expressed this view here before, but the amount of creativity you could experience from amateur developers across the world just for light-bite games you could finish in a few minutes or hours at most was incredible, and what was an offer was just so much fun.  Escape games in particular were my jam.  I'm impressed that they now exist in, if you like, live-action, as things you can engage in with groups of actual people, but that's... sort of the opposite of everything which ever made them interesting to me, so.  Some of this still exists in indie gaming, of course, but it's not quite the same, and not just because it's no longer free.

Corporatisation, centralisation, anonymisation, alienation.  These social malaises affect every generation in different ways, and this debate has been going on for centuries.

[batson]

For me personally, the peak of the internet was the 00's. And part of it was the fact that at the time, the internet was still seen as something fundamentally different from real life. Basically, people didn't take the internet seriously; it was a fun toy that you used on your spare time. This means that the internet as a social platform wasn't considered to have the same stakes as real life. Someone saying something stupid on the internet wasn't considered the same thing as saying something stupid in real life. This created a playful and iconoclastic internet culture where being funny was basically the end point to everything. Meanwhile nowadays, there basically is no difference between our internet identities and our real life identities. People percieve their lives on the internet to have the same importance as their lives in general. This means that people are expected to behave essentially the same on the internet as they do in larger society. Basically, the internet is "serious business" in a way that it wasn't 15 years ago. The internet of 15 years ago was like a raunchy Las Vegas Casino "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". I miss that anarchic spirit.

[Solister]

First all, thank you everyone for posting, and I agree with everything here as well each post seems to complement each one. Something pretty curious, if you ask me, because even some of my most detailed Reddit posts never got this much interaction.

As many of you mentioned, the 00s really seemed to be the peak of the internet, despite I just used mainly during the early 10s. Ah, staying the whole morning playing LEGO Flash Games...

Another thing I just remembered moments later after I finished posting the post, is around Captchas. It's funny once as a very kid I thought they were kinda cool, like a mini video game in the mid of doing something serious like creating an account. But I think these days it also resonates around the idea of the thousand bots which are around, and likely the trend is to have even more and more complex captchas to avoid bots to do their stuff.

Other than that, I find more surprising that you guys commented more regarding the "human" part of this rather than the big enterprises and greedy AIs.  It's funny and seems quite magic that, between the moment I posted this, not even 3 days, I recently accessed my Facebook app and no annoying ads appeared! It really makes me surprised if it has something to do with this topic, the same way I was experimenting Private Navigation and somehow was still tracked and suggested on my normal browsing.

But yeah, I don't have many experiences to share with other social medias because other than SSMB, Reddit, barely Facebook and some minor old school forums, I don't have any big activity. Now I wonder being born in the early 2000s, something made me feel that forums were a more comfortable ambient than most social media (Really, my FB account is newer than my SSMB one by about 2 years, yet my first forum account was like, early 2015?)

Closing up, at least I'm glad that Internet at least made me connect with people from places I sometime never heard of and also made me more interested on a few subjects I was never much interested at first. I do think how ironic sometimes feel that my father, for example, would have died to live in a world with established internet around his teens, meanwhile I'm not too far from wishing I was born, perhaps, 10-30 years earlier.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, batson said:

the internet was still seen as something fundamentally different from real life. Basically, people didn't take the internet seriously; it was a fun toy that you used on your spare time. This means that the internet as a social platform wasn't considered to have the same stakes as real life. Someone saying something stupid on the internet wasn't considered the same thing as saying something stupid in real life. This created a playful and iconoclastic internet culture where being funny was basically the end point to everything. Meanwhile nowadays, there basically is no difference between our internet identities and our real life identities. People perceive their lives on the internet to have the same importance as their lives in general. This means that people are expected to behave essentially the same on the internet as they do in larger society. Basically, the internet is "serious business" in a way that it wasn't 15 years ago. The internet of 15 years ago was like a raunchy Las Vegas Casino "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". I miss that anarchic spirit.

Hit the nail right on the head. It no longer works to escape my shitty real-life. It's just sad and depressing.

[Azure Blue Tori]

On 3/15/2021 at 9:49 AM, Iko said:

Another thing that I dislike of the modern communities is that they usually implement some popularity systems that give more visibility to popular posts and make the more obscure posts almost disappear. People stopped posting their actual opinions, people now post what other people want to hear, so they get likes and become popular. Those services have the power to decide what type of posts can get more visibility and what can't, and if you continuously make posts that are considered controversal (that does not necessarily mean violating the rules, it may also just be expressing an unpopular opinion), you can even face a "Shadowban", that consists in the website/app obscuring your posts without you noticing (you are convinced that people read your posts but they don't, or only like an 1% of people can see your posts while the majority don't even see them).

Another problem is how quickly posts get forgotten. One of the nice things about classic forums is that fans often try to archive things to preserve not only the discussions, but also the memories. Meanwhile, if you post on a place like Instagram or Reddit, you only have 1 day to make your post count before it effectively disappears forever. People end up recycling the same conversations over and over again, and ironically, modern social media has made things feel even more impersonal by making everyone compete for attention.

People used to become forum celebrities just for having a consistent track record of being kind and helpful towards others, but when that track record disappears so quickly, it becomes primarily about attention-grabbing memes and similar posts that don't really reveal that much about a person's character.

[Stasis]

I miss the days of simple internet. Now we're all just ad revenue and everything online is based around that.

These days I pretty much use eBay/Amazon for shopping, YouTube for anything I want to know and SSMB for Sonic updates and banter. That's it. 

While I'm on various forms of social media, I hate the ass kissing aspect that is a part of it. "Oh, today you ate an avocado? That's totally worth the 10.6K likes". 

The internet for me will never be like the early 2000's as mentioned. While I use it every day, its just a thing now.

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, Stasis said:

I miss the days of simple internet. Now we're all just ad revenue and everything online is based around that.

These days I pretty much use eBay/Amazon for shopping, YouTube for anything I want to know and SSMB for Sonic updates and banter. That's it. 

While I'm on various forms of social media, I hate the ass kissing aspect that is a part of it. "Oh, today you ate an avacado? That's totally worth the 10.6K likes". 

The internet for me will never be like the early 2000's as mentioned. While I use it every day, its just a thing now.

I find it funny how YouTube is where I spend the most time now too... I don't even leave comments or interact with anyone, but I get my news from there and basically have one-sided discussions when I listen to my favorite channels.

This is filling the purpose that forums used to serve. Whereas YouTube used to be for funny random skits and home videos, not news and discussions.

Social media is a popularity contest now, plain and simple.

[Simasuu]

Hell yes I am, and I'm also very concerned about it.

I think it is safe to say that the internet has become a way of life. Everything is there: entertainment, news, your daily needs like food ordering, social media etc.

But I can't help but feel something is very wrong. Forgive me but there are some feelings I can barely put to text, but I'll try...

Like there is just so, so much bad shit going on in the internet .. Bad energy you could say. Everywhere I look at I can see people are starting to argue about issues, whatever the case. Not saying this didn't happen back in the day but now it's more like an rule than exception. Most of the people just don't treat each other with respect but with hate - I guess this is easier to do since you're communicating online.

Social media at it's worst is making everyone's life miserable. To it's defense I have to say that platforms like Facebook give an opportunity for like minded people to meet up in groups, but even that I feel has gone downhill. As for the bad, I can see why mental illnesses and social media go hand in hand; when you browse your feed day by day and see other people's "perfect lives" where it's all smile and shine (despite you have no idea what happened 30 min. prior the photo) you might start to feel envious, sad and angry.. It's a competition, a race which has no end, until people just burn out, or in worst case die.

One of the issues that personally grinds my heart is to see my precious YouTube transform into Youtube™ and that there's nothing I can do about it. Why in the fuck do I have to see an commercial for a 2 minute Sonic Adventure music track? Let alone 2? Because that's what's happening, they just keep on adding the commercials as time goes by.

There's only a handful of reasons I still stick to platforms like Youtube but to be honest, it's becoming more and more redundant for me.

So what I think are the alternatives to internet?

Books, outdoor activies, learning to do stuff, making your own content. These things make you feel better in general than just browsing that FB feed for more bullshit.

So turn off that phone (or whatever you use) for a while, dress up and get outside, just go and don't stop for a while.

[Strider_Xhaiden]

I don't quite have the same depth of reference as a lot of people, since I've never bothered with social media at all, but I am growing increasingly irritated at seeing "Accept Our Tracking Cookies" on practically every website I visit now, and even moreso at YouTube since it feels like every video I watch now gets interrupted every two minutes - or prefaced - by some unskippable ad for something I have absolutely zero interest in.

It's still extremely convenient, and if I'm honest I wouldn't have any non-work social interaction if not for places like this, but there's a reason I restrict my internet usage to a mere handful of sites nowadays.

[Guest]

On 3/30/2021 at 4:31 AM, Simasuu said:

One of the issues that personally grinds my heart is to see my precious YouTube transform into Youtube™ and that there's nothing I can do about it. Why in the fuck do I have to see an commercial for a 2 minute Sonic Adventure music track? Let alone 2? Because that's what's happening, they just keep on adding the commercials as time goes by.

There's only a handful of reasons I still stick to platforms like Youtube but to be honest, it's becoming more and more redundant for me.

So what I think are the alternatives to internet?

Books, outdoor activies, learning to do stuff, making your own content. These things make you feel better in general than just browsing that FB feed for more bullshit.

So turn off that phone (or whatever you use) for a while, dress up and get outside, just go and don't stop for a while.

This one hurts the most.

The old YouTube used to be a place for losers and dorks like me to just... be ourselves, among each other. Not having to compete with billionaires and superstars for a chance to be seen. Not forcing ourselves to follow trends. Just posting whatever comes to mind. No fancy video editing (Windows Movie Maker, maybe), or super-expensive 8K cameras. No cinematography courses needed.

Well the internet made it very clear they don't want anyone like me. And that's that. More and more I just find other things to do, as painful as it is to leave the place I called my only social home for well over half my life (nobody IRL will go anywhere near me).

[KnuxDLX]

I hate social media. You’ll only find me on forums. I have an Instagram to follow artists I like and a Snapchat to keep up with friends, but corporate social media is a joke. I have been banned from basically everything for political statements, always liberal ones. 
 

Checkmarked Twitter users can spew all kinds of hate speech but no one is allowed to tell them to **** off. Corporate social media is a centrist nightmare. A bunch of weak morals, shallow virtue-signaling, and more and more censorship.

 

I never looked back from Facebook, the biggest fad of the 2010s.

[Guest]

18 hours ago, KnuxDLX said:

I hate social media. You’ll only find me on forums. I have an Instagram to follow artists I like and a Snapchat to keep up with friends, but corporate social media is a joke. I have been banned from basically everything for political statements, always liberal ones. 
 

Checkmarked Twitter users can spew all kinds of hate speech but no one is allowed to tell them to **** off. Corporate social media is a centrist nightmare. A bunch of weak morals, shallow virtue-signaling, and more and more censorship.

 

I never looked back from Facebook, the biggest fad of the 2010s.

It just plays into trendy identity politics. And if we point out how it's often used to bully or doxx people, we get banned.

[KnuxDLX]

3 hours ago, Angyu said:

It just plays into trendy identity politics. And if we point out how it's often used to bully or doxx people, we get banned.

Corporate social media tries to appear woke, but it’s always business as usual. 
 

I had a very nightmarish experience on Reddit in particular.

[Tori Himemiya]

I guess I'm probably odd duck in all of this. I'm not particularly annoyed by my current internet experience. Its mostly because I don't actually interact with people outside the few circles I'm in and nobody really cares about me so its mutual. I managed to put on a filter and ignore pretty much the world, well I guess the English speaking world if I'm being honest. I don't know what's trendy or what's a meme anymore but that's fine because I don't really care. I just like keeping to myself and everyone is giving me my space.

Yeah I did ran into a few bad apples randomly but it wasn't anything serious. They just try to put me down and leave. At this point I'm just using social media to follow my interests and my friends that I made over the years. But that's just me. I can be a social butterfly at times which does contradict what I just said but I just don't really pay attention to whatever is going on in the world and I'm happier not knowing.

[Guest]

On 4/3/2021 at 9:28 PM, KnuxDLX said:

Corporate social media tries to appear woke, but it’s always business as usual. 
 

I had a very nightmarish experience on Reddit in particular.

I've had them on every popular site at this point. I'm just so done but I need to socialize somehow.

On 4/3/2021 at 10:06 PM, Crow the BOOLET said:

I guess I'm probably odd duck in all of this. I'm not particularly annoyed by my current internet experience. Its mostly because I don't actually interact with people outside the few circles I'm in and nobody really cares about me so its mutual. I managed to put on a filter and ignore pretty much the world, well I guess the English speaking world if I'm being honest. I don't know what's trendy or what's a meme anymore but that's fine because I don't really care. I just like keeping to myself and everyone is giving me my space.

Yeah I did ran into a few bad apples randomly but it wasn't anything serious. They just try to put me down and leave. At this point I'm just using social media to follow my interests and my friends that I made over the years. But that's just me. I can be a social butterfly at times which does contradict what I just said but I just don't really pay attention to whatever is going on in the world and I'm happier not knowing.

If I weren't so lonely, I'd do the same.

[Danj86]

On 4/4/2021 at 3:06 AM, Crow the BOOLET said:

Its mostly because I don't actually interact with people outside the few circles I'm in and nobody really cares about me so its mutual.

This prior statement is a fallacy and you know it!

-------

Anyway....I can add somethings to this topic that I've been unlucky enough to notice. The internet seemed pretty chill in the 00s and the slow and expensive version we had in the 90s is a damn sight more preferable over the bowel sludge social media fuck fest we have now. Groups of freaks with no empathy or social skills looking to destroy anyone that dare say the slightest thing they deem as controversial. Censorship destroying creative story telling, complicated issues being reduced to "it's a race/gender thing." Suicide rates in the UK and US constantly getting higher with each passing year. I don't even know the numbers for last year but with the virus being prominent, I can believe it would be higher again. Comedy is dead since one of its principals was surprise. Now that you are no longer allowed to hurt the feels of others, you end up with bland, predictable "something." It ain't comedy, just..."something"...

At some point, somebody thought that Twitter spoke for the world and what is said their is how real people feel and think. That has never been true and I'm thankful that data exists to support that theory. Now I'm seeing common talking points from Twitter enter the mainstream media in the UK.

...Oh great. Let's bring in talking points from a website where discussion goes to die!!

To top all this off, a consistency that I've noticed is still being maintained, despite certain media claiming otherwise. Mental Health is still for the most part, being ignored.

A perfect example comes from the usual place for stupidity, Twitter. So some people believe that white people don't know what it's like to be discriminated against and so should not have an opinion on it. Unfortunately, I'm white, but I also grew up fat and autistic. I know very well what its like to be discriminated against!? This is why I strongly dislike complicated issues being reduced to one thing or another. It'll never be resolved that way because at most it can only be partially true. Other issues will remain which were being ignored.

Having big tech companies climbing down from their ivory towers to claim they stand for diversity and inclusion is also a fucking joke. The only colour they care about is green, never forget that.

[Guergy]

Whether 'SJW', 'Anti-SJW', 'Anti Anti SJW', I really wish I was never exposed to that word or the connotation behind it. I was never that well versed in politics outside a few basic things but I really am out of my depth when it comes to these topics. If I can go back in time, I would avoid those topics as much as possible or at least go into university to better understand these topics.