Comment on The internet connects people

• aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Would you say smaller forums where people largely know each other are communities then? IRC? Discord?

  Probably not, but they’re at least closer. Real communities provide you care, support, relief from loneliness, a sense of purpose, etc. etc. etc.

  It’s possible for some to find tiny nuggets of these benefits in even the worst online “communities”, but by and large it’s does not exactly scratch the same itches that your grandma’s sewing circle or bridge club used to.

  Because I struggle to think what else could or has ever fit such a strict definition.

  It’s difficult to reason about because if you’re anywhere close to my age group (old ass millenial) online “communities” appeared and replaced existing physical communities across the country (I’m speaking in US terms). We’re now basically as lonely as we’ve ever been as a country, and I think it’s at least partially related to us going inside and screen timing it up for a number of decades on these platforms where “the community” is a bunch of strangers angrily typing messages to you through the Internet.

  I find it no small coincidence that loneliness in America skyrocketed even as people became more active on social media. It points at the exact lack of benefit you get out of these “communities” that you used to get out of the old type.

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  • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This seems like a rose-tinted glasses view of the past. Sure there were communities for rich white cishet men where they organized around mutual shared values of racism, misogyny, football and queerphobia but for the rest of us it was being shunned and gathering with the few other local shunned people in nasty dungeons.

    Thankfully the internet came and solved all that. Now queer people have dating apps which work pretty flawlessly for us, and the space online is endless for us to gather and be ourselves with each other, freely, across all borders.

    communities provide you care, support, relief from loneliness, a sense of purpose, etc. etc. etc.

    but by and large it’s does not exactly scratch the same itches that your grandma’s sewing circle or bridge club used to.

    I’m sorry you’re struggling with loneliness, personally I’m definitely not and I can’t say I know anyone who is.

    Socializing online is great and the communities there are much more true and real than some IRL circle of Karens and their Christian bleach enema method and their TERF enclaves.

    It’s also a much more efficient method of meeting people you actually get on with as well, rather than the endless NPCs on Tinder and IRL who only want to consume alcohol, travel and go to the gym. It’s crazy that I could be with someone who appreciates all the same things I do, my gf and I are def soulmates.

    I find it no small coincidence that loneliness in America skyrocketed

    Sounds like we’re just measuring mental health awareness, plus the rise in boomers using the web and often exposing people to their alienating rhetoric.

    You get the point, you said what I knew you were gonna say because I have a radically different experience.

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    • aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m sorry you’re struggling with loneliness, personally I’m definitely not and I can’t say I know anyone who is.

      It has nothing to do with me personally. I’m a bit of a hermit myself. I’d say my social needs started to not be met around 2022 (after approximately 2 years of near total isolation due to COVID) but now I’m completely back up to baseline again.

      It has to do with the country: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone.

      The data also doesn’t tell the story you’re telling anecdotally here: wgbh.org/…/loneliness-most-prevalent-for-bisexual…

      Yes, it’s possible for people in marginalized communities to reach each other digitally using the Internet, it’s also possible for them to encounter more hatred and bigotry online than they used to in real life (albeit with hopefully less dire consequences).

      Sounds like we’re just measuring mental health awareness, plus the rise in boomers using the web and often exposing people to their alienating rhetoric.

      I don’t think I’m “just measuring” anything. If you want to plug your ears and pretend that I’m not talking about real problems, that’s all fine and dandy. Go ahead about your day and enjoy your dating apps, but social media isn’t all roses.

      There is research indicating that, for one thing, these platforms cause real harm to girls in adolescence specifically: noemamag.com/social-media-messed-up-our-kids-now-…

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      • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I’m a bit of a hermit myself.

        That seems like the problem.

        religious groups (Knights of Columbus, B’nai Brith, etc.), labor unions, parent–teacher associations, Federation of Women’s Clubs, League of Women Voters, military veterans’ organizations, volunteers with Boy Scouts and the Red Cross, and fraternal organizations (Lions Clubs, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, United States Junior Chamber, Freemasonry, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc.

        Honestly wouldn’t miss these if I knew what any of them are. They sound like cults.

        Everett Carll Ladd claimed that Putnam completely ignored existing field studies, most notably the landmark sociological Middletown studies,[8] which during the 1920s raised the same concerns he does today, except the technology being attacked as promoting isolation was radio instead of television and video games

        Sounds like he was reasoning backwards.

        Other critics questioned Putnam’s major finding—that civic participation has been declining. Journalist Nicholas Lemann proposed that rather than declining, civic activity in the US had assumed different forms. While bowling leagues and many other organizations had declined, others like youth soccer leagues had grown.[10]

        And was wrong

        In their 2017 book One Nation After Trump, Thomas E. Mann, Norm Ornstein and E. J. Dionne wrote that the decline of social and civic groups that Putnam documented was a factor in the election of Donald Trump as “many rallied to him out of a yearning for forms of community and solidarity that they sense have been lost.”

        So like I said they yearn for the ethnostate.

        “People who feel on the margins, who don’t always feel included socially, for whatever reason, that those people are more likely to have higher levels of loneliness,”

        So it isn’t social media or erosion of civic institutions or any of that made up nonsense, it’s just the fact that so many people are still bigoted as hell. That figures. I would suggest them the internet because unlike IRL they have block buttons, adblockers etc to cultivate their own better world.

        it’s also possible for them to encounter more hatred and bigotry online than they used to in real life (albeit with hopefully less dire consequences).

        Just block the bigots? Change platforms? It’s ez.

        I don’t think I’m “just measuring” anything. If you want to plug your ears and pretend that I’m not talking about real problems, that’s all fine and dandy. Go ahead about your day and enjoy your dating apps, but social media isn’t all roses.

        You measure more COVID you get more COVID. Then you go “Oh no! It’s on the rise!” and the cycle repeats.

        Social media is shit because of corporate control. The early internet free from it was really good.

        noemamag.com/social-media-messed-up-our-kids-now-…

        This just references the book and makes a bunch of extrapolations. Being ungovernable sounds really cool actually. Also something about the “kids born after 1995” and “coddling” and “colleges making kids distorted” set off my dogwhistle alarms off so I went to look this “magazine” up and would you know it: it’s run by a think tank funded by a NY slumlord billionaire: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berggruen_Institute

        Honestly I expected worse but I wouldn’t really take them at their word for opining on how girls these days only know Xanax, twerking, be bisexual and hot chip before examining real material factors for why everyone is so stressed (hint: it’s housing and everything being fucking expensive and an exploitative scam and has fuck all to do with technology).

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