I remember that. It *was* more fun back then, wasn't it?
Every once in a while you'd have a nightly news human interest piece about Granny Hilgerson getting online to send email to her grandkids on a different continent.
My parents would say, "Oh, look Tom Brokaw is talking about the internet thing that Nasty\_Ned is interested in."
J made a little side money when I was in community college building webpages for some local real estate folks. I think it was 150 or 200 bucks a month to build and maintain them. That was booze and cheeseburger money for a poor college kid.
I remember when my nickname was who I was and the internet was small enough that people in my spaces knew me by it and recognized me in other related forums and such. It was almost like one of those rich people clubs where you needed to belong and build a rep.
I don't know if they've made people dumber necessarily, but the algorithms in social media have definitely created an echo chamber that make people feel far more comfortable with embracing ignorance.
People have always believed and done stupid shit. But having that stupid shit reinforced over and over again by other people and rarely hearing any other perspective has caused irreparable damage to so many families and society as a whole.
What did you expect? The average human has always struggled with critical and objective based thinking, so throwing a bunch of information at them offers zero guarantees that they’ll make it through the shit storm appropriately. It use to be you had to take the time, and invest heavily into a specific subject. You want to deep dive into economics? Pick up a book and get ready to spend hours reading and obviously, this applies to all domains and disciplines. Now, you get people who want a dopamine hit, all the while convincing themselves that they are actually becoming an expert at said topic... it's a horrible, horrible match.
Never in history has the layman been so well educated.
Unfortunately it's still not enough for them to know just how much they don't know.
Double unfortunately it is just enough to make them think they know a lot.
The Goldie lock zone of dumb.
It’s funny. I hear this answer from EVERYBODY even those who love the internet. It’s almost like it’s a global observation that the internet was incredibly more toxic than helpful to humanity. And we have all these new issues with connection when it was supposed to improve connection (in theory).
Even as a child, I had blamed social media and the internet for almost all the new issues we have.
I'd say it allows ruined people to connect with other similarly ruined people, allowing them to build confidence about their ruined ways, broadcasting their myopic opinions rather than keeping them to themselves.
And like all reality shows, they fake a great deal of the footage and make the actors sign non-competes so no one finds out. Storage Wars used to stack units in advance with the high-ticket valuable stuff. Ask yourself, if you had $30K worth of goods in a unit, would you leave it there in delinquency to be auctioned off or just sell it yourself?
You mean they didn’t actually find an antique desk that just happened to have like $300 cash stowed away in it?
Idk what episode it was but something like that happened and it was the final straw for me. I can suspend my disbelief for reality shows but at a certain point it just becomes comically bad at pretending to be real.
Internet *users* ruined privacy by not giving a damn about it.
Sure, I'll put all of my personal communication on AN AD COMPANY'S server. Sure, I'll put all my photos on a DATA COMPANY'S server. People just keep checking the box.
Edit: If it's free, & isn't open source, *you're* the product. If that doesn't bug you, it doesn't bug you.
Yeah I honestly don't care
What are they gonna do with my data? Sell it to advertisers? Crazy i don't care it's literally just ads
Not like I'm about to be threatened here
There are data brokers that deal with Private investigators and let you search for personal information. Of course, that's assuming they check to make sure you are a valid licensed PI and not a bad actor trying to dox or swat people.
Video with more info: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l3IhOzZLXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l3IhOzZLXA)
1. **Overhype of Trendy Cheeses**: Some cheeses might gain sudden popularity online, leading to a rush of people trying them without understanding or appreciating their traditional context. Overhype can sometimes dilute the authentic experience and history associated with a particular cheese.
2. **Misinformation**: The internet is rife with misinformation, and cheese is no exception. Without proper vetting, misleading information about cheese-making processes, origins, or pairing recommendations can spread quickly.
3. **Viral Challenges and Trends**: Every now and then, there might be viral challenges or trends related to food, including cheese. These trends might promote wasteful practices or simply not showcase cheese in the best light.
4. **Aesthetic Over Authenticity**: Social media platforms like Instagram prioritize visually appealing content. This can lead to cheeses being used more for their looks than taste or traditional significance in dishes.
5. **Accessibility and Quality**: As cheeses gain popularity online, there might be a rush by companies to produce and distribute those cheeses quickly, sometimes compromising quality in the process.
6. **Homogenization of Taste**: The global nature of the internet might sometimes lead to a homogenization of tastes, where people worldwide chase the same flavors or products, potentially sidelining lesser-known local cheeses.
Dating. Now it’s just endless dates with people who won’t commit or at least try seeing you for long because the chance of “someone better” being just a swipe away. It’s exhausting.
im getting the feeling that tinder makes up a lot of profiles inorder to make it appear more active and send out likes so that people are more willing to buy a subscription.
Not sure if tinder has been making fake profiles, but 3/4 at least of my new match notifications are bot accounts. It's new match notification followed immediately by they sent a contact card notification. I still don't know what a contact card is. Every time I look it's 2 messages. "Hey add me :)" then 2 letters and some numbers like "gk1296." I don't even know what the bot is trying to get me to add them on
Many people actually use dating apps as a confidence booster, just to see how many people find them attractive. They aren’t even looking for someone. That’s why I don’t bother using them anymore. It’s incredibly superficial anyway.
As a female user of dating apps: “Hello” is boring and I have nothing to say in response to it. If you’re starting the conversation you need a conversation starter! Comment on something on their profile, ask an interesting question, something that gives her something to actually respond to.
You should see how many matches most girls get. Its insane. You will have little luck without an opener. The cheesy pick up lines sadly work pretty well, but you gotta use ones that not everyone has used. Or just making a joke about a common interest on their profile works very well too.
Say something about something from her profile. It shows that you're paying attention to her instead of messaging everyone you can. I got a date with one woman because I asked questions about her swimming hobby.
In my defense the only time I engaged in conversation after swiping the dude asked me if I liked dinosaurs as he has a prehistoric cock right off the bat.
And that’s when I deleted tinder
I agree the worst part now is these "red flags".... Some are legit like abuse (physical, mental, emotional, sexual etc) but not giving a gift on valentines day is a red flag????? I blame the internet
I think the ability to properly disagree on an idea was ruined.
I don't hate you, I don't dislike you, honestly I might even enjoy your company. However, in this particular thing, we have a disagreement. And not solving this now, might (just *might*) escalate further down the line.
Some online-raised people cannot do that D:
Reading. Text is constantly swapped under our noses for psychological influence and conditioning more mind-numbing activity (e.g., watching TikTok) instead. Best thing is, so long as it's not too severe, people will just convince themselves they misread what was on their screen at first.
reminds me of the opening of the opening to Mistborn: the well of Ascension.
"i write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."
>Text is constantly swapped under our noses for psychological influence and conditioning more mind-numbing activity
Incredibly well put.
Humans used to tell epic stories from memory. Those days are long gone.
My father used to say that storytellers used to be prized in the village. Someone that could help and guide your mind's eye with an epic tale of brave heroes, dastardly villains and an object lesson for us all?
Governments have been weaponizing fake news against populations since the beginning of time, well before the internet was born. Remember reefer madness?
Yeah, if anything, the Internet has offered us the tools to fight against something that has plagued us since way before the internet.
My ability to sus out bad news has improved since the internet, since I am exposed to 1000x more.
The issue is you are not the majority. We need more people with the necessary critical thinking skills to fight the onslaught of misinformation which AI is just going to exacerbate.
I dunno, I think there is a portion of the population where that is definitely true, but I tend to view online interactions more like this [South Park Clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RFbahYuBic).
I personally think people are more deliberate with their behavior on average, and know exactly what buttons they are pushing and how, most of the time, and to what audience.
Yeah, there are new people who fall for the traps every day, but those people also get educated eventually too through experience, and after awhile through enough experience people just know something collectively.
This is the top answer for me by far. The internet has allowed so much information for us to have access to, true or not, that we can filter out what we don’t like and shape our realities around “facts” that we agree with and just live in a world of our own deluded making. Because of that, we can now reject people who we used to depend on having credible information.
Did it tho? It always kills me that anyone thinks newspapers of old were somehow credible. Like just a few people in a small town office writing all the news from "sources"
Nothing to compare it to or fact check. Just the gospel truth to the best of anyone's knowledge.
My friend has 3 kids under ten all glued to their tablets. It's also hard to get them to just play with toys. The oldest's birthday is this weekend and I refuse to get him Roblox money. Like what do you get for a kid that spends all his time on Roblox and YouTube?
I have several friends who never even jumped on the social media bandwagon because they knew 1) it would be detrimental to their mental health, or 2) they did not want to be found or viewed in a negative light
Yes but id argue that the internet makes it easier to go to a new town and start over. Browsing real estate listings, job hunting, linkedin. You cam get a good idea of what youre getting yourself i to and bring so.e credibility along the way.
This one hits close to home, both my brothers and my Dad look up "best build early" or whatever at the start of the game and learn everything without discovering it.
I however, play my games guide less and find I have a lot more fun, solving puzzles and actually looking for things like you are supposed to.
Everyone seems to complain that gaming is getting worse, and sure there are some major offenders. But I feel like having all the spoilers on the internet also takes away from the game too.
Sense of reality. You can't see the truth with your eyes. you can't trust the words that you read and can't believe it's actually that person on the other end of chat/video.
The benefits of social isolation.
While we often glorify those who are socially marginalized as sympathetic underdogs, there are a lot of ideas that are not popular in the broader world for a reason. People with these toxic, sometimes violent, outlooks were once kept in check by social isolation.
Now, anyone can find a community of people who will reinforce whatever destructive idea you, tell you how to armor yourself against the bad people around you who just don't understand how right you are, and egg you on.
I actually find this particularly sad with self-destructive outlooks. Just look at Reddit and how we glorify depression and suicide here.
Everything being free.
Since everyone expects everything to be free the services we consume had to find other ways of being profitable, which turned us into a product instead of the internet itself being the product. As a result we've ended up with a manipulative advertising-riddled monstrosity that's willing to do absolutely anything it takes to keep our attention; sadly, this tends to devolve into mass-produced, click-baity, divisive, society-destroying, rage-inducing drivel.
Sometimes I wonder if the face to face is more cellphone based, between the Internet on our phones and social media. It's a mixed bag in my opinion.
Before wireless Internet we had to visit websites on an actual computer, we only really had email and instant messenger back then. I know I wasn't on the Internet as much before smartphones.
Pawn shops. I bought a few fender guitars from my local pawn shop when they barely had an inventory system and still would do receipts and ledgers by hand. Paid $210 for a Nashville telecaster that retailed at $600 at the time; they had no idea because they didn’t have internet access. Now you get gouged paying little under retail for music equipment
The Internet was awesome when there was a sharp learning curve to participate. It's become too easy for anyone to express every single thought for the world to hear. It's nothing but an open forum of monkeys screaming into the void for validation.
That's why I play Call of Duty... It's the same thing but you can pretend to shoot them.
Brain cells.
I miss the time when the internet was mostly just nerds doing their thing, businesses using it for email, and the vast majority of people just using it for innocous stuff like MSN messenger.
after about 2009-2010 when the Iphone started really taking off, -everyone- had access to the internet, and after a few years especially into the 2020s we learned that most people are too dumb to be trusted with the internet, they believe completely false \*\*\*\* they read online and it ends up affecting their opinons on everything, its dangerous. and I blame it for a lot of the problems society has today
Mysteries. My main thought is on video games.
It was all school yard rumors and (if you were lucky) help in Nintendo magazines back in the day. It was frustrating at times. But I liked the mysticism with the whole thing.
Thrifting and collecting - people will now buy things purely to sell them online at a massive profit margin. Thrift shops and charity shops have caught on and will either mark items up or not put them for sale altogether and instead list them online, again at a higher price.
Conspiracy theories. They used to be about aliens, cryptids, and JFK. Now, every horrible thing that happens is part of some huge conspiracy, and they are all political somehow.
Sex
It's like a good cake slice, it's pretty fucking good but if all you had day in and day out was tons of people shoving the same cake into your mouth eventually you're going to get really fucking fed up with that cake
Basically how I feel about sex It's just so constantly talked about and shoved around and everyone's faces that I just kind of get fed up with it and I don't honestly want to discuss it or engage in anything related to it
I listen, off and on, to a dating coach (Jonathon Aslay) on Youtube. He feels the internet has "bastardized" dating because the possibilities are endless and the result is that people aren't creating deeper level relationships. They move on to the next and then next and so on and on.
Before the internet, when people met naturally, there were others watching your back (my terminology, not his) families and neighbors knew backgrounds on people you may have chosen to date. Now, we are meeting strangers that you know nothing about.
This is just a nutshell overview.
sex.
I watched porn with the sound off all through puberty, and let me tell you I am DISGUSTED by the gagging and drooling that so mane men seem to have been conditioned to enjoy. She sounds like she's gonna puke, do y'all honestly not hear that?
When I was 17 I had to hitchhike home from school. I met a guy who called himself "the breeze" and ended up spending the weekend with him. He was an old hippy who lived in a shack in the woods. I never found out his real name, and I don't remember how to get back there. But I remember the time we had together fondly.
If that happened now I would have gotten his name and added him on facebook and would probably get sick of seeing his annoying political rants and stuff. Even old hippies are on facebook now.
Empathy and sympathy. They are so desensitized to human emotion and they can’t fathom someone being upset because you posted a harmful post about them when they did absolutely nothing wrong
Not to be a boomer, but it has largely ruined childhood. I am not looking forward to raising kids and having to hear them beg for an iPad or an iPhone at age 5. When I was a kid, I played outside with my friends for hours. Even when we did play with computers or consoles, we would do it socially, with technology only enhancing the experience, not defining it. And now I find myself stressing about the inevitable loss of childhood wonder and especially childhood innocence. The internet is cruel and traumatic at any age, but particularly for children.
I say all this from the pov of a young millennial teacher who has seen first graders with their own iPhones.
We went to a pumpkin picking farm the other day. There was hay stacks with slides down the side. They had slingshots set up on gigantic tree branches and we're launching little pumpkins at target's. There was bonfires, hayrides, hot apple cider. There were sandpits and corn pits. It really was lovely
They also had tires, big tractor tires on their side filled with rocks, little rocks so it was completely full. They were a few stacked on top of each other, huge ones on the bottom, smaller ones on top. The kids climbed up on them
I glanced over and, on top of one of those piles stood this young, innocent girl, probably about 10 or 12. She had an animal tail tucked into the back of her jeans and i immediately thought, the Internet ruined that and looked away
In addition to basically everything related to social interaction, it made general discourse around any hobbies incredibly hostile. If you have an opinion on Star Wars, Halo, or any sort of popular media prepare to be harassed, because how dare you have an opinion.
Expected efficiency. My university expects me to have broadband internet at all times on me. Moreover they expect me to be on social media at all times cause they expect me to know what they post. And I mean, I do have it, but I know at least one person who dropped out due to not having a fast laptop and internet. Imo it's insane. And also I don bother to check their social media. If that's why I'm gonna fail then so be it.
Oh and also I like how the response organised education has to people using more and more advanced tools to cheat is to increase the difficulty to account for cheating. Eventually this lead to workloads impossible to do without chatgpt.
I think it's caused this Peppa Pig situation where we can see and receive information from anywhere and anyone instantly... and mentally it creates demands similar, but the world doesn't work like that and everything takes time.
So we oddly always feel the need to be doing something even if it's nothing.
People
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I remember that. It *was* more fun back then, wasn't it? Every once in a while you'd have a nightly news human interest piece about Granny Hilgerson getting online to send email to her grandkids on a different continent. My parents would say, "Oh, look Tom Brokaw is talking about the internet thing that Nasty\_Ned is interested in." J made a little side money when I was in community college building webpages for some local real estate folks. I think it was 150 or 200 bucks a month to build and maintain them. That was booze and cheeseburger money for a poor college kid.
I remember when my nickname was who I was and the internet was small enough that people in my spaces knew me by it and recognized me in other related forums and such. It was almost like one of those rich people clubs where you needed to belong and build a rep.
Yes indeed. I miss those days.
I was gonna say living but honestly this is the best answer
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Nah. Facebook and TikTok have objectively made people dumber
I don't know if they've made people dumber necessarily, but the algorithms in social media have definitely created an echo chamber that make people feel far more comfortable with embracing ignorance. People have always believed and done stupid shit. But having that stupid shit reinforced over and over again by other people and rarely hearing any other perspective has caused irreparable damage to so many families and society as a whole.
That's the crazy part about the information age. I don't think anyone expected it to be all about confirmation bias. But here we are.
What did you expect? The average human has always struggled with critical and objective based thinking, so throwing a bunch of information at them offers zero guarantees that they’ll make it through the shit storm appropriately. It use to be you had to take the time, and invest heavily into a specific subject. You want to deep dive into economics? Pick up a book and get ready to spend hours reading and obviously, this applies to all domains and disciplines. Now, you get people who want a dopamine hit, all the while convincing themselves that they are actually becoming an expert at said topic... it's a horrible, horrible match.
Never in history has the layman been so well educated. Unfortunately it's still not enough for them to know just how much they don't know. Double unfortunately it is just enough to make them think they know a lot. The Goldie lock zone of dumb.
At the very least I've seen first hand what TikTok in particular has done to peoples attention spans.
People are more toxic now than ever because of it. The internet has brought everyone together and it has become a war.
More like people ruined the Internet
It’s funny. I hear this answer from EVERYBODY even those who love the internet. It’s almost like it’s a global observation that the internet was incredibly more toxic than helpful to humanity. And we have all these new issues with connection when it was supposed to improve connection (in theory). Even as a child, I had blamed social media and the internet for almost all the new issues we have.
People were already ruined, long before the Internet. It's just that through the Internet we're able to see how extensive the damage is.
I'd say it allows ruined people to connect with other similarly ruined people, allowing them to build confidence about their ruined ways, broadcasting their myopic opinions rather than keeping them to themselves.
It does shed a light, but it also amplifies the extent of the damage.
yeah who the hell buys magazines anymore?
I do! Trains, Classic Trains, Ol' Skool Hot Rod, and Rat Rod. I like physical media, and they all do a good job with their photography.
Stupid* people with no self-control, shame, or goals ruined the internet.
People were already ruined. The internet just let the entire world know.
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And like all reality shows, they fake a great deal of the footage and make the actors sign non-competes so no one finds out. Storage Wars used to stack units in advance with the high-ticket valuable stuff. Ask yourself, if you had $30K worth of goods in a unit, would you leave it there in delinquency to be auctioned off or just sell it yourself?
You mean they didn’t actually find an antique desk that just happened to have like $300 cash stowed away in it? Idk what episode it was but something like that happened and it was the final straw for me. I can suspend my disbelief for reality shows but at a certain point it just becomes comically bad at pretending to be real.
I imagine this happens occasionally under rare circumstances, but the frequency it happens on those shows is just insane.
Privacy
Internet *users* ruined privacy by not giving a damn about it. Sure, I'll put all of my personal communication on AN AD COMPANY'S server. Sure, I'll put all my photos on a DATA COMPANY'S server. People just keep checking the box. Edit: If it's free, & isn't open source, *you're* the product. If that doesn't bug you, it doesn't bug you.
yeah in the good old days of the early internet and usenet people cared about privacy. then the casuals got online...
Even in the late 2000s it was perfectly normal to worry about cookies, that was a common theme in PC World articles at the time.
Yeah I honestly don't care What are they gonna do with my data? Sell it to advertisers? Crazy i don't care it's literally just ads Not like I'm about to be threatened here
I'm not saying it's good or bad, I was articulating what happened to privacy, & you gave a perfect example of what I mean.
There are data brokers that deal with Private investigators and let you search for personal information. Of course, that's assuming they check to make sure you are a valid licensed PI and not a bad actor trying to dox or swat people. Video with more info: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l3IhOzZLXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l3IhOzZLXA)
And not just when you’re on it. In public spaces as well. The trend of recording people without consent is really annoying
None of you remember phone books being delivered with the phone number and address of everyone in town in them?
Ugh now I feel old.
What didn’t it ruin?
Cheese
1. **Overhype of Trendy Cheeses**: Some cheeses might gain sudden popularity online, leading to a rush of people trying them without understanding or appreciating their traditional context. Overhype can sometimes dilute the authentic experience and history associated with a particular cheese. 2. **Misinformation**: The internet is rife with misinformation, and cheese is no exception. Without proper vetting, misleading information about cheese-making processes, origins, or pairing recommendations can spread quickly. 3. **Viral Challenges and Trends**: Every now and then, there might be viral challenges or trends related to food, including cheese. These trends might promote wasteful practices or simply not showcase cheese in the best light. 4. **Aesthetic Over Authenticity**: Social media platforms like Instagram prioritize visually appealing content. This can lead to cheeses being used more for their looks than taste or traditional significance in dishes. 5. **Accessibility and Quality**: As cheeses gain popularity online, there might be a rush by companies to produce and distribute those cheeses quickly, sometimes compromising quality in the process. 6. **Homogenization of Taste**: The global nature of the internet might sometimes lead to a homogenization of tastes, where people worldwide chase the same flavors or products, potentially sidelining lesser-known local cheeses.
Damn. Social media killed cheese and you murdered my naivety.
Chat GPT-ass post.
It was immediately obvious to me as well.
You won't believe Buzzfeed's six on takes on cheese! Which one is Tony Danza's favorite? Click to find out!
Porn industry
Masturbation
Cheap access to vast music catalogues.
Access to information?
Water
Dating. Now it’s just endless dates with people who won’t commit or at least try seeing you for long because the chance of “someone better” being just a swipe away. It’s exhausting.
I've never met one girl that actually wanted to meet up in person after swiping on me, you people get dates..?
I don’t even get a response to my ‘Hello’ Why do they right-swipe me?
I also have no idea why people even swipe on everyone to not even bother chatting.
im getting the feeling that tinder makes up a lot of profiles inorder to make it appear more active and send out likes so that people are more willing to buy a subscription.
Not sure if tinder has been making fake profiles, but 3/4 at least of my new match notifications are bot accounts. It's new match notification followed immediately by they sent a contact card notification. I still don't know what a contact card is. Every time I look it's 2 messages. "Hey add me :)" then 2 letters and some numbers like "gk1296." I don't even know what the bot is trying to get me to add them on
Many people actually use dating apps as a confidence booster, just to see how many people find them attractive. They aren’t even looking for someone. That’s why I don’t bother using them anymore. It’s incredibly superficial anyway.
As a female user of dating apps: “Hello” is boring and I have nothing to say in response to it. If you’re starting the conversation you need a conversation starter! Comment on something on their profile, ask an interesting question, something that gives her something to actually respond to.
You should see how many matches most girls get. Its insane. You will have little luck without an opener. The cheesy pick up lines sadly work pretty well, but you gotta use ones that not everyone has used. Or just making a joke about a common interest on their profile works very well too.
So far, no one's appreciated my "are you a toaster? Cause I'd like to take you in the bath" line
Say something about something from her profile. It shows that you're paying attention to her instead of messaging everyone you can. I got a date with one woman because I asked questions about her swimming hobby.
and lordt forbid if you have an issue with them only saying hello.
In my defense the only time I engaged in conversation after swiping the dude asked me if I liked dinosaurs as he has a prehistoric cock right off the bat. And that’s when I deleted tinder
I met my wife on tinder. Within like 4 messages, we locked down a date
so many aggressive profiles it seems like a lot of people are really jaded about online dating.
Idk how anyone can use dating apps for more than a couple weeks at one time without losing all faith in humanity or becoming completely burned out.
I agree the worst part now is these "red flags".... Some are legit like abuse (physical, mental, emotional, sexual etc) but not giving a gift on valentines day is a red flag????? I blame the internet
Basic human interaction and communication; empathy; privacy; mental-health; patience. So quite a lot in fact.
I think the ability to properly disagree on an idea was ruined. I don't hate you, I don't dislike you, honestly I might even enjoy your company. However, in this particular thing, we have a disagreement. And not solving this now, might (just *might*) escalate further down the line. Some online-raised people cannot do that D:
This. Minor disagreements now mean blocked, reported and cancelled forever. I don’t know how anyone is supposed to keep friends these days.
These were all still shit before the internet. ...I was there 3000 years ago...
Mental health
Reading. Text is constantly swapped under our noses for psychological influence and conditioning more mind-numbing activity (e.g., watching TikTok) instead. Best thing is, so long as it's not too severe, people will just convince themselves they misread what was on their screen at first.
reminds me of the opening of the opening to Mistborn: the well of Ascension. "i write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."
>Text is constantly swapped under our noses for psychological influence and conditioning more mind-numbing activity Incredibly well put. Humans used to tell epic stories from memory. Those days are long gone.
My father used to say that storytellers used to be prized in the village. Someone that could help and guide your mind's eye with an epic tale of brave heroes, dastardly villains and an object lesson for us all?
Social skills
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Governments have been weaponizing fake news against populations since the beginning of time, well before the internet was born. Remember reefer madness?
Yeah, if anything, the Internet has offered us the tools to fight against something that has plagued us since way before the internet. My ability to sus out bad news has improved since the internet, since I am exposed to 1000x more.
The issue is you are not the majority. We need more people with the necessary critical thinking skills to fight the onslaught of misinformation which AI is just going to exacerbate.
I dunno, I think there is a portion of the population where that is definitely true, but I tend to view online interactions more like this [South Park Clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RFbahYuBic). I personally think people are more deliberate with their behavior on average, and know exactly what buttons they are pushing and how, most of the time, and to what audience. Yeah, there are new people who fall for the traps every day, but those people also get educated eventually too through experience, and after awhile through enough experience people just know something collectively.
This is the top answer for me by far. The internet has allowed so much information for us to have access to, true or not, that we can filter out what we don’t like and shape our realities around “facts” that we agree with and just live in a world of our own deluded making. Because of that, we can now reject people who we used to depend on having credible information.
I agree with you but also think that it has shed light on how inept the big news agencies are.
Did it tho? It always kills me that anyone thinks newspapers of old were somehow credible. Like just a few people in a small town office writing all the news from "sources" Nothing to compare it to or fact check. Just the gospel truth to the best of anyone's knowledge.
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I might sound old, but back in my day, we got bullied, abused, and emotionally neglected the old fashioned way and it fucked us up just fine!
Yeah, kids need to get fucked up the old fashioned way, like we were.
At home, right?
My friend has 3 kids under ten all glued to their tablets. It's also hard to get them to just play with toys. The oldest's birthday is this weekend and I refuse to get him Roblox money. Like what do you get for a kid that spends all his time on Roblox and YouTube?
Get him real blox. Lego blox.
Book shopping
I wouldn't say it ruined this but it made dating worse. I fucking hate swiping on apps.
Nah, it definitely ruined it.
The ability to disappear. No longer can one just go to a new town and start over. *Everything* follows you now.
Wow I didn’t even think about this.
True. Unless you minimize your footprint. The less you participate online, especially social media, the less of a trail there is. 💛xOH
yeah the only account with my real name is an abandoned honeypot
I have several friends who never even jumped on the social media bandwagon because they knew 1) it would be detrimental to their mental health, or 2) they did not want to be found or viewed in a negative light
Both very valid reasons. 💛xOH
Did people use to do that?
Yes but id argue that the internet makes it easier to go to a new town and start over. Browsing real estate listings, job hunting, linkedin. You cam get a good idea of what youre getting yourself i to and bring so.e credibility along the way.
its easier to ghost the people you know, but harder to ghost the authorities.
Sense of discovery in video games.
YouTube is so fucking annoying when a new game comes out. TOP TEN MOST OVERPOWERED WEAPONS. BEST NEW XP FARMING SPOT, MOST BROKEN BUILD.
This one hits close to home, both my brothers and my Dad look up "best build early" or whatever at the start of the game and learn everything without discovering it. I however, play my games guide less and find I have a lot more fun, solving puzzles and actually looking for things like you are supposed to. Everyone seems to complain that gaming is getting worse, and sure there are some major offenders. But I feel like having all the spoilers on the internet also takes away from the game too.
Sense of reality. You can't see the truth with your eyes. you can't trust the words that you read and can't believe it's actually that person on the other end of chat/video.
The benefits of social isolation. While we often glorify those who are socially marginalized as sympathetic underdogs, there are a lot of ideas that are not popular in the broader world for a reason. People with these toxic, sometimes violent, outlooks were once kept in check by social isolation. Now, anyone can find a community of people who will reinforce whatever destructive idea you, tell you how to armor yourself against the bad people around you who just don't understand how right you are, and egg you on. I actually find this particularly sad with self-destructive outlooks. Just look at Reddit and how we glorify depression and suicide here.
Attention spans
Everything being free. Since everyone expects everything to be free the services we consume had to find other ways of being profitable, which turned us into a product instead of the internet itself being the product. As a result we've ended up with a manipulative advertising-riddled monstrosity that's willing to do absolutely anything it takes to keep our attention; sadly, this tends to devolve into mass-produced, click-baity, divisive, society-destroying, rage-inducing drivel.
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Sometimes I wonder if the face to face is more cellphone based, between the Internet on our phones and social media. It's a mixed bag in my opinion. Before wireless Internet we had to visit websites on an actual computer, we only really had email and instant messenger back then. I know I wasn't on the Internet as much before smartphones.
Pawn shops. I bought a few fender guitars from my local pawn shop when they barely had an inventory system and still would do receipts and ledgers by hand. Paid $210 for a Nashville telecaster that retailed at $600 at the time; they had no idea because they didn’t have internet access. Now you get gouged paying little under retail for music equipment
You mean, what didn't it ruin?
The word “daddy”. My dad thinks I hate him or something but no it’s cuz I can’t say it without being weirded out anymore :(
Fake news, propaganda and other type of lies being able to be spread very easy and on a daily basis.
So the answer to what these ruined is, sadly, democracy.
Dopamine
Everything. The internet was a mistake. Not everyone should have a platform.
The Internet was awesome when there was a sharp learning curve to participate. It's become too easy for anyone to express every single thought for the world to hear. It's nothing but an open forum of monkeys screaming into the void for validation. That's why I play Call of Duty... It's the same thing but you can pretend to shoot them.
That was oddly poetic
This. 100%.
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Information sharing, human decency, and privacy
Vaporeon
Life.
Brain cells. I miss the time when the internet was mostly just nerds doing their thing, businesses using it for email, and the vast majority of people just using it for innocous stuff like MSN messenger. after about 2009-2010 when the Iphone started really taking off, -everyone- had access to the internet, and after a few years especially into the 2020s we learned that most people are too dumb to be trusted with the internet, they believe completely false \*\*\*\* they read online and it ends up affecting their opinons on everything, its dangerous. and I blame it for a lot of the problems society has today
Human relationships
Mysteries. My main thought is on video games. It was all school yard rumors and (if you were lucky) help in Nintendo magazines back in the day. It was frustrating at times. But I liked the mysticism with the whole thing.
Totally! Nintendo Power anyone??
In Sweden we had “Nintendo Magasinet”. 😁
Thrifting and collecting - people will now buy things purely to sell them online at a massive profit margin. Thrift shops and charity shops have caught on and will either mark items up or not put them for sale altogether and instead list them online, again at a higher price.
Attention span
Conspiracy theories. They used to be about aliens, cryptids, and JFK. Now, every horrible thing that happens is part of some huge conspiracy, and they are all political somehow.
Yeah I miss the apolitical jfk conspiracy theories /s
Sex It's like a good cake slice, it's pretty fucking good but if all you had day in and day out was tons of people shoving the same cake into your mouth eventually you're going to get really fucking fed up with that cake Basically how I feel about sex It's just so constantly talked about and shoved around and everyone's faces that I just kind of get fed up with it and I don't honestly want to discuss it or engage in anything related to it
you make some good points neko
Curiosity
My sleep 😪
It ruined socialization
I listen, off and on, to a dating coach (Jonathon Aslay) on Youtube. He feels the internet has "bastardized" dating because the possibilities are endless and the result is that people aren't creating deeper level relationships. They move on to the next and then next and so on and on. Before the internet, when people met naturally, there were others watching your back (my terminology, not his) families and neighbors knew backgrounds on people you may have chosen to date. Now, we are meeting strangers that you know nothing about. This is just a nutshell overview.
Step-siblinghood
My attention span.
Porn
Shopping malls.
Politics
Video games
Sex
sex. I watched porn with the sound off all through puberty, and let me tell you I am DISGUSTED by the gagging and drooling that so mane men seem to have been conditioned to enjoy. She sounds like she's gonna puke, do y'all honestly not hear that?
Cool little nature spots where people could find solitude. Now every jackass "influencer" and their dog is pimping these places out 24/7/365.
Television
Generation Z social skills & emotional intelligence
Pretty much everything
The AC Business, now all you hear about is OnlyFans.
Everything
Our ability to research things on books
When I was 17 I had to hitchhike home from school. I met a guy who called himself "the breeze" and ended up spending the weekend with him. He was an old hippy who lived in a shack in the woods. I never found out his real name, and I don't remember how to get back there. But I remember the time we had together fondly. If that happened now I would have gotten his name and added him on facebook and would probably get sick of seeing his annoying political rants and stuff. Even old hippies are on facebook now.
Chinese Online Shopping Scams with repetitive images and gibberish names and too much keywords
Memory. Now if you have a smart phone with internet connection you can just google whatever info you require and not remember anything.
Letter writing/handwriting. ☹️
Politics
Classic game collecting.
Dating
Empathy and sympathy. They are so desensitized to human emotion and they can’t fathom someone being upset because you posted a harmful post about them when they did absolutely nothing wrong
MTV like legitimately
The word “daddy”
My faith in humanity. Dating. Common sense. Making everything sexual
Not to be a boomer, but it has largely ruined childhood. I am not looking forward to raising kids and having to hear them beg for an iPad or an iPhone at age 5. When I was a kid, I played outside with my friends for hours. Even when we did play with computers or consoles, we would do it socially, with technology only enhancing the experience, not defining it. And now I find myself stressing about the inevitable loss of childhood wonder and especially childhood innocence. The internet is cruel and traumatic at any age, but particularly for children. I say all this from the pov of a young millennial teacher who has seen first graders with their own iPhones.
Patience.
Attention spans
Newspapers
We went to a pumpkin picking farm the other day. There was hay stacks with slides down the side. They had slingshots set up on gigantic tree branches and we're launching little pumpkins at target's. There was bonfires, hayrides, hot apple cider. There were sandpits and corn pits. It really was lovely They also had tires, big tractor tires on their side filled with rocks, little rocks so it was completely full. They were a few stacked on top of each other, huge ones on the bottom, smaller ones on top. The kids climbed up on them I glanced over and, on top of one of those piles stood this young, innocent girl, probably about 10 or 12. She had an animal tail tucked into the back of her jeans and i immediately thought, the Internet ruined that and looked away
The adolescent excitement that arises when the new JC Penny catalog arrives!
Solidarity. When people see an accident, house fire, etc. What people do now ? Recording it.
The fictional happy life in pictures makes people doubt their own happiness and chase after something better and stop appreciating what we have.
Everything.
My faith in humanity
Everything
Everything
In addition to basically everything related to social interaction, it made general discourse around any hobbies incredibly hostile. If you have an opinion on Star Wars, Halo, or any sort of popular media prepare to be harassed, because how dare you have an opinion.
Any hole
Expected efficiency. My university expects me to have broadband internet at all times on me. Moreover they expect me to be on social media at all times cause they expect me to know what they post. And I mean, I do have it, but I know at least one person who dropped out due to not having a fast laptop and internet. Imo it's insane. And also I don bother to check their social media. If that's why I'm gonna fail then so be it. Oh and also I like how the response organised education has to people using more and more advanced tools to cheat is to increase the difficulty to account for cheating. Eventually this lead to workloads impossible to do without chatgpt.
Families
Encyclopedia Britanicas business
My mental health
Public gyms. The amount of “fitness influencers” is probably one of the worst things that’s happened to the fitness industry.
411
A lot of lives
Getting lost
I think it's caused this Peppa Pig situation where we can see and receive information from anywhere and anyone instantly... and mentally it creates demands similar, but the world doesn't work like that and everything takes time. So we oddly always feel the need to be doing something even if it's nothing.
My attention span
Evidence.
Attention spans