Comment on The internet connects people
aesthelete@lemmy.world 4 months agoWould 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.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 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.
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.
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.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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).
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-…
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
That seems like the problem.
Honestly wouldn’t miss these if I knew what any of them are. They sound like cults.
Sounds like he was reasoning backwards.
And was wrong
So like I said they yearn for the ethnostate.
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.
Just block the bigots? Change platforms? It’s ez.
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.
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).
aesthelete@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No, you just personalize everything.
Again, I’m not making up the statistics. I’m not writing the books or doing the analysis. People who spend their whole career doing this stuff are doing it, and you find it easy to dismiss all of it because you agree with the “criticisms” section of a wikipedia page, have a confirmation bias, and you like the little tech bubble you live in…so it must not be a problem overall if it doesn’t affect you personally.