!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
I think we turned a corner in 2014-2015.
That's when Facebook really started embracing making people angry on purpose to keep them engaged. We aren't just that bad, some of the most used social networks have been actively bringing out the worst in us for over a decade now.
The moment journalists started just reporting social media posts as news was the downfall. The internet has never reflected reality but journalists being lazy or news corps being greedy spent years convincing everyone that it was.
More people can comment now, also there are bots that I always talk about. They are programmed with a certain agenda. Like to comment horrible things so people respond to them.
Before smartphones, the Internet was a self-selecting space because the only people regularly posting on it were the kinds of people who consciously chose it as a hobby.
Now that anyone can access it anywhere they go and it's easy enough for people with zero technical capabilities, it reflects society as a whole a lot more.
I find that sad because I was one of the people who self-selected into it before smartphones. I always hoped that if more people were using the Internet, society would become more similar to (my experiences on) the Internet, and not (as actually turned out) the other way round.
It's a small vocal minority of people being mean on the internet.
It seems like it's also a small vocal minority of people being mean IRL.
A phenomenon I've seen that's rather interesting is I moved from the US to Spain, and everyone here is friendly and far more trusting and kind to random strangers than the US ever was. My suspicion and anxiety around strangers has dropped significantly.
The number of random conversations I get into is much higher, people take an active interest in small talk even when standing in line, I've had more people randomly approach me to ask for help, and the idea of someone hurting you physically is an alien concept.
If you're from the US, I think the US is just cooked man. Spanish internet, at least from what I've been able to find, is also more civil, even in places talking politics. Now maybe I'm not in the myriad of WhatsApp groups where people are actually getting I to it, but the public facing side of things is far more civil, and I rarely see Spaniards in mainstream socials like reddit and whatnot. The joke I've heard is that Spain "hasn't really gotten on board with the internet yet".
I think that the modern internet is fed by a social media stream that incentivises devisiveness. Engagement is higher on negative posts, and engagement drives the algorithm. I've long been against algorithms feeding you content because those algorithms are slanted to keep you engaged longer, which means showing you content that will upset you, then calming you down with kitten photos until you're ready to get into another fight.
So to answer your question, I don't think it's a chicken and egg problem, I think it's a problem with amplification. I think the English speaking internet has long been US centric (or at least caters to the US unfairly) and the US has bred a suspicious and anxiety ridden society. Then corporations came along and figured out just how much gas to put on that fire to squeeze money out of people through social media to take control of what was once a free space of creativity and turn it into an engagement farm, where art and conservation has been converted to "content" and distressing news and devisive conversation has become tools to keep you invested in your feed long enough for them to build a consumer profile on you to ship you targetted ads on Amazon. This in turn amplifies the suspicion and fear already inherent in the meatspace sphere, which feeds the online polarization.
When you stop either one - either unplugging or entering a calm and connected IRL space (like I did) you break the amplification, and the anxiety stops. This is why "internet detox" is a thing people try to do.
The internet in its current form is addictive, and like a parasite corporations have learned exactly how much they can take from you and not kill you. It wants to keep you engaged and scared, but it is also exploiting societal issues that were already present to begin with.
The Internet can only be what people make it. It has no goals or motives.
Yes, we are that bad, and we've been MUCH worse prior to the creation of the Internet.
Yes, and with the internet we are now much more aware of the awful things that people do.
There’s a layer of separation online that doesn’t exist elsewhere. As a result people let their thoughts flow more freely, without as much of a (or any) filter.
The early days were filled with mostly snarky tech nerds, so it could be mean if you were a noob. A tradition that lives on today.
I think people were always mean online. But not everyone.
At one point, I was too. It didn’t last long because I had compassion and empathy and it just wasn’t that fun.
Then I easily reacted to vitriol and was easy to manipulate.
These days, I get mean replies or DMs and I just go “huh, okay” and then continue about my day. Stoicism. It may not do anything, but hey, I feel less bad about hate mail.
Huh. I wonder if this is a thing.
The phases of Internet use:
When did the Internet come to reflect society?
When it became ubiquitous to industrialized societies. 1995-ish, in my opinion.
Were we always distrusting mean and vindictive before the net?
Absolutely.
Are we really that bad?
Without a doubt.
"The world is far better and worse than you can possibly imagine."
"You may have me at 'better', Dr. Sattler, but you can't hold a candle to me on 'worse'."
It's been going on a long time. Penny Arcade coined the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in 2004.
I think it's a lack of consequences. If you stood in your town center and said something dumb, people would call you out and shame you for it. It would change your reputation too, at least for a while. If it was really that off the rails you could get arrested or beat up, and you may never want to show your face there again.
Having a global communication system is amazing. Some guy I never met can show me how to fix my house or see things from a different point of view.
BUT there are way more people that are willing to say something dumb, not only in their local chats and posts, but everyone else's. There can be public ridicule, but there is little chance that someone will find you and kick your ass. Not only that there isn't really a way for victims to walk away either, which makes cyberbullying so unrelenting.
People want to go to the town square (or internet forum) to present their case, but they refuse to engage in challenging their own position to improve it or change it.
There seems to be an emotional connection to opinions, that result in people ignoring or deflecting from direct evidence that challenges it.
But why aren't we like our forefather's both of them. The founders of a country and the founders of new tech? Would it really be that bad if the net got together and built something in the real world besides doing everything for money or likes or upvotes or karma? I am from the DOS days and dialup so I may be biased, but it's almost like we forgot stuff the can be tangible, can be held, and loved....now we get enjoyment out of harassing others or putting them down but in the real world they would never do it in the middle of a wal-mart or in school or college....is there even a saving grace for the net besides porn?
I think it's a lack of consequences. If you stood in your town center and said something dumb, people would call you out and shame you for it. It would change your reputation too, at least for a while.
that used to be true, but I'm not so sure it is anymore.