Ask Lemmy

What about the idea of burning oil products in general? Sure, that made powerful and light engines possible, and they have transformed economies, logistics, trade, and entire countries. However, if we hadn’t invented that, progress would have been a lot slower.

Nevertheless, I would argue that the past 200 years of industrial progress weren’t worth the climate crisis.

I've been alive long enough to have become an adult before social media happened.

Social media is the correct answer.

I've never witnessed something have a more detrimental effect on society.

As an American, our discourse, especially political, went absolutely apeshit at the same time social media and smart phones started becoming a household thing. We absolutely would not be in the situation we currently find ourselves if not for social media.

There are simply too many ignorant humans for social media to be anything other than a total disaster.

The only correct answer in this thread.

It's the biggest industry in the world by a very large margin and the most destructive one on a global scale.

Some level of advertising is surely okay, right?

If I open a bakery and put a sign out front that says "Baked good for sale!" I don't think anyone would complain but that IS advertising.

This begs the question: What level of advertising is okay?

It's easily disprovable, but even in the face of countless arguments against it, people still willingly throw themselves into it by the millions. They're too fearful of the unknown, they're fearful of belonging somewhere when we die and religion is the prime example of how easily controllable people are when they're fearful.

Amen

I'm in mixed mind about them because you're right, they're too destructive, but for the time being their existence has prevented conflicts from breaking out, and since wars are typically only waged with the promise of financing it afterwards via looting or expansion, nobody is really willing to render land unusable in the process of conquering it.

Interesting fact, the same man, Thomas Midgely Jr, invented both tetraethyl-lead as a fuel additive and CFCs, almost killing everyone on earth twice over.

Karma got him in the end after he got tangled in one of his contraptions after he became bedridden with polio and died of strangulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

Never actually did anything and never actually claimed to. Most people assumed it was a headache relief but the company never said that. They just said to put the shit on your forehead

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

That was actually a great invention, considering it replaced the unlimited hour work week (60-96 hours being normal in Victorian times). I agree that we should go further though.