One thing I've noticed about 'terminal online' is that people vastly underestimate how much it affects them. Myself included.
It seems if I ever call out a loved one, whether my brother or wife or friend, for being on their phone too much, they immediately get defensive and argue they were just doing some one task. Even if this was initiated after them being zoned out for an hour or longer. And I've done the same when reading something super interesting and getting lost in time.
Honestly, it doesn't seem much different than how addicts act in an intervention. We need to realize that this is an addiction, label and treat it appropriately.
My wife finally relented when our kid asked me to do something while I was working because 'mom is too busy with Facebook again.' I think that really hurt her feelings, even if she never admitted as much.
My mom's been lost to Facebook and gambling apps for years. At some point in the last couple years I told her I didn't love her anymore because being around her is only negative and her screen addiction has put my life in danger on the road my entire life, and caused her to completely skip out on providing for her children.
Zuck, Zynga, all of them can be launched into deep space for all I care.
It’s so sad, I wonder if we’ll ever learn the full impact on kids from their parents’ phone addictions. I recently took my daughter to a playground and watched in horror another young couple there. Their 5 year old was nearly crying for them to pay attention and play with her, but there were mom and dad: hunched over their phones, doing that zoned-out zombie stumble-walk that people do when they are addict-scrolling. Really heartbreaking.
A lot of educators have voiced concerns that kids in the last few years have displayed extreme regression in social skills. I don't think these two things aren't related.
My ex wife is an ex wife because she zoned out into Facebook constantly and stopped doing anything with the family. Then she went bananas and ran away with someone who ironically she split up with because he was always on Facebook. It can go pretty bad.
I’m super happy though as the kids stayed with me :)
I'm struggling with this currently. My partner spends 3+ hours a day scrolling Instagram (I know, I checked it in her Apple phone metrics).
When we watch movies, it's me watching it and her scrolling. When we're in the car listening to music, it's just me listening to music and her scrolling. I'm starting to struggle initiating conversations because she's simply not paying attention. Whenever we're out, half her time is spent through the lense of her phone so she can take photos for her story.
She refuses to admit its a problem, disregards any argument I put forward about how it's disrupting her life, and when I really sit down with her and tell her how it makes me feels, she attacks me about the time I spend at my laptop (which I track meticulously and know its at most an hour outside of work, so she is simply using it as a defense).
I've dated girls with drug addictions before, and it was easier than this because they at least admitted it was a problem. I feel like I can't even initiate the first step with her. It's crushing, because besides this issue, she's pretty much perfect.
Honestly looking back at my situation which paralleled yours, life’s not worth suffering through. Took 7 years to sort it out here which was a big chunk of my life. If you’re not happy, get out of the situation that makes you unhappy as soon as you can. The regrets hurt more than the relationship problems did.
I'm sorry to read this, I also have a similar same situation with my father.
He's in his late 70's and a year ago bought himself an iPhone. He now spends ~4 hours a day reading a tabloid newspaper app, which has endless content. His attention span has fallen noticeably and he can't keep up with conversations that happen in the same room while he's "scrolling".
When I visit he's on his phone, and we go out for a walk (in the beautiful countryside around us) he stops and disengages when his app sends him the latest notification about what's happened on "love island", or some other nonsense. When I leave he's on his phone.
I tried to talk to him about it, and about how it's particularly effecting my mother, who I can see is lonely and lost a person she could talk to, important at their time of life. He just gets defensive and angry, which leads no-where.
Will he spend the most of the rest of his life looking at a screen?
Well, I'm 10 years younger than dewclin Senior and I recently switched to a Nokia dumb phone for the summer and I have been keeping a record of screen time and what I was actually doing on the laptop. Using a paper page a day diary.
I'm not in the tabloid market segment, and perhaps I had the insight to self-diagnose? Did dewclin Senior do much before the iPhone arrived?
Perspective: I remember that Uncle Dave spent most of his (long) retirement watching sport on the telly back in the 1970s/80s. Any chance of sparking an outside interest?
Similar with my father but he's got a dumb phone and browses on his laptop. When we have conversations with family he seems to always tune out after a few minutes and goes on the computer. His whole world view has been flipped upside down by conspiracy and hoax content. We've talked to him about not mentioning that stuff while we're over but it seems to be affecting his happiness nonetheless.
Mine too. It seems like every old father has fallen into the right wing conspiracy cesspool that has warped their mind. An entire generation lost. I really wonder what makes them so susceptible to that content. Internet illiteracy? Old age? It's just who they are? In other words, they want the conspiracies to be true, they want a reason to hate Fauci, Greta Thunberg etc.?
And even more, I wonder if it can be cured. I think it ties into how socially isolated men are, especially old men. Once you retire and your work social network is gone, their only social ties are online. They need to identify with a community, and I guess there is something appealing to being in a conspiracy in-group. It's just impossible to pull them out, because you have to replace that group with something else. And there's just nothing there for them.
Maybe a life of manual labor, always feeling like you can't get ahead in life. Then a group of people tell you it's because of some simple reason that you need to get angry about. Obviously it's something that you can't actually do anything about. So it makes you feel worse and makes you feel like you're at least doing something when you consume the content and spread it to others.
But the extreme ends do have similar features (hatred of certain ethic/racial groups, black and white thinking, desire to destroy the existing political order instead of reform it, conspiratorial thinking, etc.). The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.
Why would the extreme left have hatred of certain ethnic/racial groups? Which ones would that even be? I hope this isn’t some the left hates white people thing. Bigotry of superficial things doesn’t make sense for what the hard left is about.
Conspiratorial thinking for the hard left is nothing close to what it is like for the alt-right. They are basically not similar at all. The alt-right is about Q, saying Trump lost a rigged election, or thinking moderates are grooming children and molesting kids. What is the equivalence with the hard left?
The black and white thinking is also super simplistic. How do moderates not have black and white thinking in comparison to the extremes? IE a moderate would say don’t vote or spend time on any one but the two main party candidates in the US. In other countries, they’d say focus on who has a proper chance of being elected. Black and white thinking and self fulfilling.
> The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.
Or maybe I know they aren’t equal because they aren’t. Perhaps it says more about you and only you, that you jump to such an assumption and conclusion without knowing me.
> Why would the extreme left have hatred of certain ethnic/racial groups? Which ones would that even be? I hope this isn’t some the left hates white people thing.
I think Asians are considered privileged (so almost as bad as whites), and there was something wrong with Israel, too.
> saying Trump lost a rigged election
Some people on the left said similar things when Trump won the 2016 election.
Something wrong with Israel isn’t racism or bigotry.
Why would the left be the ones that put Asians on a pedestal? Fox, and alt right places put Asians in America on a pedestal enough already. It’s a regular thing when shitting on black people or brown migrants need to be kicked down by the [hard] right. I’d be curious of even minimal widespread hard left caring of Asians in a specific way.
Also, “almost as bad as whites”? Are you saying the hard left finds white people to be [really] bad? That’s something I specifically called out as an incorrect thing. It is a random talking point that to stir things up. I wish people wouldn’t take bullshit peddled seriously. Knowledge of hard left principles and people would show this is wrong.
Finally, some people everywhere of any kind are always saying something. A small portion of hard left people saying X is rigged is not comparable to the significant chunk of the moderate and extreme right doing the same.
———
I hope I have been able to keep the record straight that the extreme left isn’t the same as the extreme right and most assumptions or accusations of what the hard left is, have not and are not correct.
This can be especially difficult for people who work online and particularly in social media where responding quickly to comments can be part of the role/expectation/defensive response.
If you don't have kids with her, move on. She's made clear what her priorities are, or she needs the wakeup call that a failed relationship will bring.
Sounds horrible. How did you even start dating a person like that? She must be really something special but I just can't wrap my head around it because in my experience only exceptionally dull and dumb people are like that.
That said, I am a happily married old fart so it's only natural to not get some aspects of modern life.
maybe she's not perfect. maybe you just don't know her well enough because she's not there most of the time and you don't have projects you both really care about
I have a similar issue with my wife. The reason you can’t initiate the first step is because they are in denial that it’s a problematic addiction. Everything is telling them that social media is “sort of okay” even though the studies abound proving it’s a nefarious addiction.
It’s easier with hard drugs cause society, government, and even business mostly agrees it’s likely bad for you (except alcohol, that one still gets a free pass).
For me, I still try to remind her to be in the moment. She’ll ask to watch a show or movie and within 5 minutes her brain has pulled up her phone to read Reddit. I pause the show and then I’ll ask, “do you want to stop watching?”
She’ll reluctantly put her phone away (sometimes I have to wait a whole minute for her to actually put it down) and then I’ll resume the show on the TV.
The addiction is very very real and their diminishing attention span shows in their behaviour in other ways as well.
Having done a fair share of substance abuse, I can tell you that screen and social media addiction is exactly like any other addiction. The brain mechanics behind it are the same. "Just another hit and then I am done".
The Power of Habit (the book) helped me identify my bad habits the moment they triggered.
Also, what's fascinating is that addictions seem to bundle together. If I get off the sauce, start working out, etc, it becomes immediately easier to ignore the phone, social media, and other reflexive behavior, like snacking for no reason.
One way I think about it: Marvin Minsky long ago wrote a book called Society of Mind, looking at human cognition as a series of semi-independent non-conscious agents. If I feel bad long enough, there's a collection of feel-better-in-the-short-term agents that work well together: mindless snacking, doomscrolling, playing video games, binge watching, overeating etc. Basically anything that helps me avoid being present in feeling bad. Even if in the long term they make me feel worse.
But there's a competing set of agents, the ones that mean regular exercise and eating healthily and good sleep and low stress levels. That set not only works well when I'm feeling good, but they're what helps keep me feeling good in the long term.
Either set can achieve a stable equilibrium, but the two sets aren't really compatible.
Not sure if that makes any sense, but that's one way I think about it.
I hate to throw a purely negative comment up as a naked response to a post, but this is really just a contemptful screed about people engaging in online interactions the author doesn't jibe with. It's not even like they're presenting their opinion to elicit other perspectives-- it's presented as an objective list of unhealthy habits and patronizing instructions to align your behavior with the author's values and priorities. Not sure if the author intended this to be publicly consumed in this form but I'll skip their other blog entries.
What does 'objective' even mean in this context? This is a post about what the author believes is healthy and positive for individuals and society.
I don't see anywhere where contempt is shown, in fact quite the opposite. The post is written in a very empathetic way in my opinion, and I think displays a good level of insight into, and understanding of, the attractiveness of things that can do harm.
I'd challenge you to entertain the idea that this post has some good advice, and follow some of it. I have no data, but I expect you'll be happier as a result.
If you don't see contempt in the author's evaluation of other people's behavior, you're either not looking, or not a great judge of it.
> I'd challenge you to entertain the idea that this post has some good advice, and follow some of it. I have no data, but I expect you'll be happier as a result.
Personally, I don't fit any of the implied criteria for "terminal onlineness," so your challenge isn't possible. You don't merely lack data, you lack a valid reason for assuming this advice applies to me or any other person whose habits you know nothing about. I recommend you entertain the idea that neither righteousness in your conviction nor confidence in your words transform your assumptions and personal experiences into broadly applicable maxims.
Even if this advice addresses problems you, personally, struggle with, that's not necessarily true for everybody. I know brilliant, happy, well-adjusted people, like my wife, who engage in behavior this author deems undesirable. It's just not that cut and dried. Perhaps the author's conclusions suffer from sampling bias? Regardless, I will still skip the rest of their blog entries.
I think where you can see contempt, is in the characterization that the internet breeds a certain sense of humour and that it's an objectively bad one. Irony is not unique to the internet, nor is self-deprecating humour, or cynical humour, or are slang words. Usually when you hear an internet-slang used in real life it's a reference, not an earnest attempt to use the word legitimately. Like when people reference TV shows or movies, you've have to have seen it to enjoy the reference. If using it works for your in-group then that's great, you all understand eachother.
For me in this context "presented as objective" means using the authorial voice of an expert. I agree it's a bad fit for me here, because it sweeps a lot under the rug.
In contrast, I'd be interested in reading something on the same topic that was presented in a subjective way, where the author isn't hiding their personal relationship to the topic. For example, "I was terminally online and here's why and how I changed". Or "my friend was terminally online and I like that they stopped". Or even "here's why I am frustrated dealing with terminally online people".
But for me, the pseudo-expert advice from somebody with no obvious expertise and no claim of it leaves me cold. I don't understand why I should care what they think, or why I should trust them.
This is the problem with framing the problem of online harms as an aspect of individual morality. Blaming the victim isn't helpful, nor is excusing the victim on the grounds that the activities aren't immoral.
Honestly, I'm an information addict. I'm online far too much mainly reading news etc.
I think I've forgotten how I lived without a constant stream of information. I'm seriously tempted to get a dumb phone to remove temptation to browse when I have a few minutes to spare.
The stupid thing is for all my reading, I don't feel any wiser or even knowledgeable. At the same time I think I'm less able to engage in normal conversation.
Instead, try cutting the triggers with an ad blocker and a few changes to your settings.
I hide recommended content, unsubscribe from everything, unfollow everything, and generally have a "don't call me, I'll call you" approach to information.
I went as far as removing pagination buttons on websites I tend to browse too much.
I also use Pocket to save more interesting articles. Combined with a "things I don't understand" to-do list, I spend more time reading about practical things instead of just browsing. I don't regret that sort of reading.
I was like you few months ago. When summer started I decided to stop reading news from online. It was hard at first but quite fast I started seeing the benefits. More focus, more happiness, not being so worried all the time. Now I only read HN (way too often of course :)) and I ordered a newspaper to my home which is published 3 times a week. I get distilled look on whats going on in the world but it’s not eating my focus.
I tried to do this as well... bought a year subscription to the local paper. Unfortunately I live semi-rural and it is written so egregiously its only worth is feeding the firebox each week.
I have a few rules and habits that helped me kick. They might help you?
Never to walk down the street looking at my phone. Eyes on the road. If I need to look at my phone, I stop somewhere out of the way of foot traffic.
All notifications are silent except calls or text messages from specific people. Calls from people I don't know and text messages get only a slow blinking light. Social media get no notifications.
When I am with someone or a group in person, phone goes away.
If I wouldn't allow someone to interrupt a conversation, the phone doesn't either. I won't answer it if someone is talking to me, especially something important. When there's a pause in the conversation, I'll ask politely to check to see who called.
Finally, and this might be the biggest, I am constantly listening to audiobooks and podcasts. It scratches that itch of needing constant stimulation, but I can still be aware of everything around me.
Do you listen to audiobooks and podcasts while working? I code for work and I actually find myself increasingly doing this. Sometimes when I really have to focus I stop it but ultimately, it doesn't feel so bad.
Same symptoms as you and was also on the Nokia website a few days back looking at dumb phones. Others also mentioned the Apple watch also was a good alternative.
> The stupid thing is for all my reading, I don't feel any wiser or even knowledgeable. At the same time I think I'm less able to engage in normal conversation.
100% if I spent all the time I spend online reading actual books, I'd be much better off.
>"I think I've forgotten how I lived without a constant stream of information. I'm seriously tempted to get a dumb phone to remove temptation to browse when I have a few minutes to spare."
Up until few month ago my phone did not even have data plan. I ordered it now but purely for business needs. I use my phone strictly for phone calls and as GPS (I have offline maps). I use another phone to control gizmos like drone. For everything else I use PC and since I spend enough time doing various physical activities I consider my life balanced.
Something that really helped me was a smartwatch. I picked up an Apple Watch (cellular) a few weeks ago so I didn't have to carry my phone around, and subsequently, would not be tempted to mindlessly use it. I think the experiment has been pretty successful. For the most part my phone stays on the charger all day, and I don't feel like I am missing out on calls or texts since they come to my watch. Being able to leave the house without a phone is a particularly freeing experience.
You realize a problem so you are on a good path. Two things that help me: prefer not carrying an iPhone and rely on my Apple Watch. Also, instead of spending over an hour a day on YouTube watching alternative news commentaries from people like Matt Taibbi, etc. I try to cut down on that substituting YouTube channels on philosophy, Thai Chi exercises, etc.
Also, having a library card at your local library gets you books to read, both physical books and eBooks through the Libby book reading app.
Anyway, congratulations on recognizing the problem: you are ahead of the game compared to most of my friends in real life and family.
I am listening to the audiobook "Stolen Focus" and it has some good points on internet addiction. Most importantly, it's useless to blame yourselves completely for the addictive behaviours. The tech industry is spending billions on experts to get you hooked. In a way, tech industry is like Purdue pharma. But the responsibility is still individual's.
The way I like to think about it is that lots of people or places might be responsible: society, big industry, governments failure to regulate, so on and so forth. Those are interesting academic, or political discussions if we're talking about collective political actions that we might take.
On the other hand, understanding that you are addicted, and why, are the first steps towards individuals feeling empowered to quit. Which, in many, if not almost all, cases - they absolutely are able to do. And it certainly improves their odds if they have a network of supportive friends, family, and the like.
For someone who isn't an addict, taking a non judgemental and understanding approach to get the addict to ask him or herself those questions or set themselves on the path to recovery may be a way to meaningfully help them. But it can only really work if they're already open and receptive to that. And that depends, to a great extent, on what your relationship is with them and how much they trust you.
Recently I was arrested and had all my electronics seized by the police.
The whole experience was a wake-up call, not just in terms of being arrested but being without a computer or any way to get online for a couple of weeks.
It really made me realize how 'addicted' I was to the internet, and going cold turkey was horrible, time slowed down and I was sure I was missing out on everything.
But I read so much more and all the days seemed longer (time dragged so much) and then when I finally got back online I hadn't missed sh*t.
Online reading is all sizzle and no steak. It’s akin to making a meal out of condiments: Each individual element is tasty but the overall meal leaves you dissatisfied.
In general I agree with you. As interesting as stuff on Twitter (I follow some very interesting people) and HN is, I use https://freedom.to to time-box my access. I don’t time-box my access at all for reading books.
That said, I have some low quality conversations with friends in real life also. However that is a different dynamic because conversation does not have to perfect and periods of silence while, for example, hiking with friends is also good.
I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but our civilization is changing: more automation, less work required from a large fraction of the population. We need to get “being a human” in this new world right. Going on a Cal Newport style digital diet is just a part of a strategy for life.
Don’t tell Project Gutenberg, or Wikimedia, or Codecademy.
(Your assessment is an unfair and inaccurate overgeneralization. One can use the internet to read books, blogs, articles, courses, etc, but of course you know this.)
I really think much Internet content is more like cheap magazines/newspapers - small articles that can be read in under 5 minutes, ads and distractions peppered everywhere, and comment sections that are often large collections of short text. Social media is that experience on a higher scale.
The experience is not the same as sitting down and reading a 300 page book cover to cover which is also the product of an author sitting down and spending months or even years writing it. Of course that experience is definitely possible on the Internet - ebooks/PDF. But someone "reading" social media is not the same as really reading.
Reading online doesn't feel like reading. Most offline material is long form and has a clear purpose, otherwise it wouldn't continue existing. When you read it you are more likely to come away fulfilled, with new thoughts and ideas to process. You can't usually say the same coming away from most social network type interactions on the internet - You might have satiated your FOMO temporarily, but otherwise will likely feel empty. Obviously it's not all like that, there exists long form content on the web, but that's not really what we are talking about.
It's a balancing act and for me, Internet use is an addiction like gluttony. Forgive my lack of empathy, but addiction takes on a whole other quality when you're addicted to some necessity of life.
Food is, of course, a quintessential necessity, and someone who overeats or has an eating disorder needs to come to terms with temperance, moderation, and balance of lifestyle, rather than quit eating altogether.
15 years ago, it was realistic to hang up the modem, unplug the computer, get face out of screen, and get some fresh air for long stretches of time. But my reality today is that I use a device online to manage my household and do ordinary, everyday tasks, including working for my employer is 100% online. Implicit in this article is the fact that the Internet is no longer something to be avoided or removed from our lives; the article simply suggests that we can use it differently, improving our attitudes and our approach.
So rather than a "kick the habit" strategy, we typically need to devise time-management techniques and ways to form better habits around good, productive use of our devices, while balancing that with actual needs to unplug and take a walk in the fresh air.
That may mean that I don't obsessively check bank balances and twiddle my bill payments 3 times a day, 7 days a week. And it means that I'm not allowing every email and SMS to distract me from a task. And perhaps channels about home meal preparation and gentleman's grooming should be dominating my YouTube suggestions, above SNL and Avril Lavigne tracks.
I also need to cope with being triggered. If I have an anxiety attack or fit of rage over someone who's Wrong on the Internet, I am guaranteed to suffer insomnia and all the rest. And so we need the skillsets to short-circuit and defuse those situations, and sometimes the situation is avoidable and sometimes we need to find a way to push through it without losing our heads.
This blogger offers 15 pragmatic, common-sense strategies for coping. And it can get better. Do not believe that you can escape the Internet by avoiding it, nor can you escape real life by going online. Develop good hygiene, good habits, be productive, and learn to cope when things inevitably get difficult.
Well it is a good message but a tad poorly researched and underdeveloped thoughts.
Being stuck in a "compulsion loop" online is not healthy for your mind. It doesn't matter if it is Twitter, TikTok or even Hacker News. What I'm seeing online now and those around me. Online behaviours that take the form of addictions are not healthy and should not be a part of a healthy persons lifestyle. And I wish that it would become a trend.
I think the internet has accelerated the evolution of "mind viruses". New arguments and rhetorical tricks arise and mutate very fast. If you jump off it, that'll be good for you, but when you get back on after a long time, you might have no "immune defense" against what the internet came up with in the meantime. Similar to how the USSR was outside Western cultural evolution for awhile, and when it broke up in the 90s, people turned out very vulnerable to colorful ads, bubblegum and Ponzi schemes.
Maybe the fear of such "falling off the wagon" is part of what keeps us on the internet. We don't want to lose the world's thread of conversation, because in the end one way or another it will affect us anyway. It's like not coming to the forum where future laws are decided.
I don't know if you're aware of this, but this "mind virus" is the original definition of the word "meme" (before it got adopted to mean a particular kind of image-based online joke). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
Besides that, I agree completely. Twitter is a sort of highly competitive petri dish in which only the most infectious viruses can survive, with "viruses" being 160 character pieces of text. These messages do not need to be true or actually informative to survive and spread.
It's a good guide but it only addresses fairly vacuous and not that great online activities.
My Twitter feed is a collection of funniest, most deranged takes on any subject. People IRL have no chance to compete, no one can outdo the best two seconds of 800 people.
Same with HN. Conversations like these are rarely happening offline.
And then there are communities I sunk into. Private forums I have been a member of for nearly a decade. I know the in-jokes, we follow the stories of more interesting (chaotic) posters, there's even some real emotional investment.
All of that reachable fully asynchronously. Went to the gym alone? Read between the sets. Waiting for something? It's right there on your phone. Sadly, also, someone being boring... well, better stuff is in your pocket.
> Same with HN. Conversations like these are rarely happening offline.
May I suggest that you might be looking in the wrong places offline?
HN-style discussions are a staple of lunchtime banter at any number of tech firms. Likewise you can find similar discussions at any number of universities, or on the tech conference circuit. Not to mention your local nerd-leaning special-interest communities (be it tabletop, D&D, hacker space, BDSM, etc).
The internet makes it really easy to find a community of folks who share similar interests, all without leaving your house. But unless you live in the middle of nowhere, one can generally find such a community IRL
If you like that, then can I interest you in some crack, it's amazing compared to sobriety. Whenever I have to engage with people, all I am ever thinking is, "this is rubbish, I have some crack in my pocket, what am I doing here?" How can people be expected to compare with crack? It's ridiculous :)
Whether my online activities are less vacuous or not, by the numbers I spend an inordinate amount of time on the computer or other device. Granted mostly for work, but even after I get through evening chores, I tend to want to go straight back.
I think one mistake of perspective we have, when terminally-online and evaluating the alternative, is looking for other sources of passive constant stimulation as a substitute for social media feeds. Not bombarding your senses is part of the point. Daydreaming and thinking doesn't have to be boring, even just enjoying a moment of quiet.
Saying that, I think most people lack social validation in everyday life and try to satisfy it virtually. Having interesting conversation is separate from that, but also a consideration. We seem to be disappointed by our offline social lives but don't do a whole lot to rectify. That would require change (scary) and effort.
> There is an insurmountable asymmetry that degrades any local event or exchange. Because of the infinity of content accessible 24/7, there will always be something online more informative, surprising, funny, diverting, impressive than anything in one’s immediate circumstances.
- 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep" by Jonathan Crary
Yes, I think this is the least understood point about addictions. They kind of work. I mean, people do those behaviours because they are getting something out of it.
I try to write down what I'm about to use the internet for before I open the web browser. This way I can glance and see if I've gotten distracted and try to get back on task. This works wonders when trying to list something on FB Marketplace. In the past I would be three posts deep in my feed before snapping out of it and remembering why I opened FB in the first place. I can see why the feed was such a game changer for FB. Before you can use FB for anything you will be forced to glance at the feed :(
This could be an awesome extension. Something that asks you in a couple textboxes - what is your goal with this browser session/how much time do you think you need to accomplish it - and then keeps these items of info visible below the tab bar.
One more option to complement the rest: what I do is have the cheapest, smallest, mobile data package that lets me get done the stuff I actually value (3 GB/month, turning my commute into a focused time for various online learning courses).
There’s some spare bandwidth for habitually chatting, but not much.
The lack of capitalization made me sprint through the text. I wonder if anyone else had this experience. I had to come up for air towards the end. Even after I realized I was doing it I couldn't slow down.
Health and online activity are inextricably linked at this point.
Mental health. Cardiovascular health. Health of interpersonal
relationships. Work life balance.
I sincerely think we are at an equivalent situation as the tobacco
industry in the 1970s. The decisions we make now will affect the lives
of generations to come.
Cal Newport's site has a Ledger of Harms [1] at the Center for Humane
Technology, and I wrote what I hope is an accessible and lightly
challenging overview of the problem of technology overuse in Digital
Vegan [2].
I may be mistaken but Center for Humane Technology which compiled the
"Ledger of harms" is an umbrella for critical thought on digital tech
whose members include folk like Roger McNamee, Cal Newport, Jonathan
Haidt, Max Stossel, Tristan Harris and others. Actually it would be
fairer to call it Harris' site (since he is the "president" of it)
I got part way through Digital Vegan, but admittedly haven’t finished it yet.
It’s been a few weeks since I had to put it down for another book, but here is my main takeaway (so far) - it’s all true, but in my opinion it comes across with very strong views and some extreme options as something to hand non-technical friends. It’s also relatively expensive to obtain in the US.
But thank you for your contribution to the discussion on this topic. I think you’re probably closer to where we should end up, but I don’t see a path to get there.
I broke my phones screen the other day & decided not to install Facebook and other apps like Reddit on my “old” backup phone, so far I’m liking it.
Certain communities on Facebook are quite interesting but my main feed is filled with so much viral junk that I end up scrolling through crap for hours a week.. Once I start, it consumes me for a while. Kind of sad really, I would rather spend time doing other relaxing things offline instead.
Just came back from a 2 hour walk outside with my son through our local park and farm, usually I'd of checked Facebook at least twice, I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more without “having to check” this or that.
I miss the simple days of just having forums and IM.
A lot of good questions to ask yourself here. But,
> have you ever used/applied "internet slang" (cringe, based, cuck, chad) in/to real-life situations?
I take slight issue with this one. To me, there is no difference between “internet slang” and just “slang”. The internet is ubiquitous and the language we use online and offline is largely the same now.
Didn’t always be this way. I still remember the first time I heard a friend say “epic fail” in really life circa 2005 or so, and it was like some sort of glass wall had been broken between our real lives and our internet lives. But that wall is long gone, and I think that’s probably okay.
There are actually a huge chunk of the population that just isn't very online, and genuinely don't know these terms. (Even many young people.) It was a real eye opener to meet some 'terminally offline' people and realize you can actually just escape and things are fine without being here constantly.
I can be online constantly and escape whatever the flavour of the month is. The only time it bites me in the ass is when I get banned for not being up to date on whatever everyone good and decent has to agree with to be good and decent.
Yeah, online communities reflexively "other" anyone who does not agree with their increasingly robust (aka fascist) political dogma, given that that sort of thing seems to be inescapably creeping into everything
How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought?
How many times have I witnessed adherents dismissing moderates or centrists? Accusing them of helping the "enemy"?
What about people who think for themselves and have concluded something out of the mainstream? Throwing in some other unrelated political cause and accusing anyone who doesn't agree to be wrong?
It's disgusting, and those communities should be ashamed of themselves
I'm assuming, of course, that GP is a decent person and independent thinker, as those types tend to get railroaded in this glorious new dawn of political groupthink
I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to get away from oppression. And when those people got to the US, quite a lot of them were eager to become the oppressors. Looks at the predominance of blue laws across the US. Look at who got tarred and feathered. Who got lynched. Who dealt with segregation and Jim Crow. Look at the Red Scare, the socially narrow dominance of mass media, or how eager and how violent the forces of conformity were in the 1950s.
I think today people are generally freer that at any point. But two big things have changed. One, the rise of the internet means the one-way, conformist channels of mass media have given way to everybody talking to everybody. And two, cultural power is no longer concentrated in a narrow slice of society, such that people previously unheard are now having some things to say.
I get why some people see that as "political groupthink". When you're in a dominant group, you're not used to getting challenged. But personally, I find it bracing, causing me to rethink a lot of things I took as givens because that's what the people around me believed. The death of old paradigms is always uncomfortable, but personally I'd much rather live in this era of ferment than in one where everybody believes the same comfortable old certainties.
The past as you see it here doesn't exist, by my own perception. There were a lot more extremeist groups in the shadows, but that contained them and isolated those that sought to join them. With so much of this extremeism out in the open, people are now seeing social reinforcement where before they would have seen chastisement, and I think this is a bad thing. We were much better as a country as the great melting pot, than we are now as the salad bowl.
I think its wonderful that so many oppressed groups are given opportunities at the podium, but the problem is that many of these oppressed groups are oppressed for good reason (like white supremacists), and there needs to be some sort of filter that keeps them sidelined. Unfortunately I don't see how to achieve that without some sort of orthodoxy, and right now the people that are trying to write that are fucking crazy.
I think you are meaningfully contributing to the conversation, but you don’t get to drop a “[citation needed]” and then proceed to state your un-cited opinions.
The parts that were my opinions ("I think", "I see", etc) were clearly cited to me. But a fair bit of what I wrote was pointers to things people can look up. If there's something apparently factual that you're having trouble looking up, let me know and I'm glad to give you a pointer. Because I'm happy to give citations when people ask for them.
The reason I put a "citation needed" in was that was phrased as an objective claim, not a personal opinion. An objective claim I believe to be false. (And which I'll note that the author didn't give any further data on despite me asking.)
Growing up I do not remember political associations to be so strong in folks. Twenty years ago, when 9/11 hit, we put aside our differences in a remarkable display of national unity. (Granted, not all good came out of this; a number of racial groups saw a ton of negative attention at the time. But even with that, the climate felt like one of unity, at least for me.) Comedians like Trey Parker/Matt Stone, Dave Chapelle, even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would regularly poke the bear on a wide range of social issues without constantly sparking nationwide outrages.
Now, we have... this: an endless cacophony of unqualified and undeserving voices spouting off whatever they want, for every purpose other than advancing productive debate. Where all get to be heard regardless of merit, yet original ideas suppressed because of pedantry (like "citation needed") and not having the backing of the melange of different social issues and media idols that we suffer under today. I don't think the political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism, and for this I blame Twitter and social media.
I don't understand how you think such flowery, subjective language constitutes an objective statement of reality; all of my input into this matter is pretty clearly stated as opinion and observations outlined serve to reinforce it.
Besides, sitting there banging out "Citation Needed" like this was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual as a comment board. You can save the nitpicking for r/AskHistorians, where the rules clearly require it.
> Growing up I do not remember political associations to be so strong in folks.
Depends on when you grew up, but assuming the 1985 is your birth year, then political polarization has been asymmetrically increasing since well before you were born. Take a look at the DW-NOMINATE data for the US House: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/
This asymmetric polarization mirrors doctrinal polarization among white US evangelicals, who have, for example, gone from having a plurality of views on abortion to treating it as an absolute doctrinal litmus test: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-bib...
I can believe that for you personally 9/11 felt unifying, but that wasn't the case for a lot of people. Not just including the Sikhs and Muslims lynched, of course, or all the people who saw that and got nervous. But also the notable percentage of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, which Bush began beating the drums for just months after 9/11.
I also believe that you perceived American culture as more unified then. But based on what? Twitter didn't launch until 2006, and didn't really take off until 2010. If a bunch of people were upset about something, how would you have known? Especially if they were in some group that didn't get a lot of mass media attention, you wouldn't have. It's not that edgy comedians were any less awful then. It's that the people they were being shitty about generally didn't get the chance to express their feelings on it. I think the problem you're seeing is not differing views, but people with those different views finally getting their say.
> political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism
Oh? Why don't you break that down for me with some examples. Go through the major harms of the Red Scare era and then some examples of people similarly harmed today. I think that's wrong, but I'm happy to learn something.
> was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual
I don't think you quite understand what counterfactual means, but I think take your point. Your notion seems to be that this is a fact-free zone, and that it's shockingly rude to ask if their claims have any basis in fact. I obviously think that's ridiculous. If you want to go entirely unchallenged, maybe get a talk radio show or something. But as long as I've been here, asking for evidence has been a popular activity.
No, I am not saying this is a fact-free zone. What I am saying is that it is a zone for opinions, which may or may not be true (counterfactual may not be the best word choice here, but it is close enough), and is not to be held to the same standard as wikipedia, whose copy you are using in what I read as a flippant remark.
I don't have data for you, just my perceptions and opinions. There are too many structural problems with the way political data is collected in this country (starting with the wording on questions in political surveys, and ending far beyond redistricting shenanigans). Given how deceptive and manipulative most election campaigns are, and how third parties are disproportionately disadvantaged financially, I don't think that looking at the proportion of left/right seats in congress is a good proxy for political polarization.
What I do see as a proxy is the behavior of those around me, and then trying to extrapolate that to reflect a larger population. I live in one of many pockets of conservativism in a very liberal state, and I am judging on the tone and tenor of political conversations and how freely friendly, amicable political debate flows among social groups in a fairly politically diverse area. Again, this is highly subjective for many different reasons, and I can say that I used to travel around a lot and have rubbed shoulders with many different social groups and castes in this society, and so I feel that I am at least somewhat qualified to extrapolate here.
And that observation is that political discussion is getting narrower, more pointed, and more focused on nationally-popular memes/issues. 12 years ago I sat in a meeting of one of the local tea-party chapters, and it was mostly older folks rabblerousing over local stuff. There wasn't much in the way of conspiracy theories, there wasn't a whole bunch of liberal shit-talking, just a bunch of people bitching about this-or-that with the local schooldistrict. When they happened to pick on my own high school, I knew that much of what they were saying was factually false, and I was able to state to the crowd why, and that was that. (There was some grumbling but the conversation turned elsewhere.) There were both left- and right-leaning folks in my friend group, and there was a quiet understanding to not get into political debates, and people weren't on-edge about it so if something was said, it didn't blow up.
We didn't have too many local crazies flying massive American flags on their trucks, with their cheap shots at trolling regular folks -- but now we do; there are places I can go where I can see them on a regular and predictable basis.
Nowadays I stay out of political shit, people are way too toxic, obsessive, and focusing on the same dozen or so things that everyone else is talking about. What would this tea party meeting have looked like today?
I have a different social group now; one that I like far more but we are very left-leaning, and increasingly (and troublingly) so. There is a much higher proportion of "polsplaining" (like mansplaining, but politicos talking down to people that offend them), many more suggestions that people self-evaluate (and insinuations that they are bad for towing a particular line), and hot political buzzwords are on people's tongues (and used as scapegoats) far more often than I can recall. I find myself hesitating to argue some points as I don't really want to die on any of these hills.
When the Roe v Wade decision dropped I broke my rule and attended a local rally, as I was pissed (much like everyone else). But at that rally someone got up on the podium and actively denounced people that not only just opposed abortion or womens health issues, but also anyone that opposed Black Lives Matter, anyone that opposed reparations, anyone that opposed ACAB; they kept calling for a unified front to address all of these issues as one.
I don't recall overhearing anyone complaining about feeling unable to speak up, but in the last...
Makes me think it might be similar to the "I don't watch TV" or "movies" or "sports" crowds. Just any pervasive cultural activity in which some don't participate but still carry on.
I remember before I deleted my FB account (I've since created a new one), my buddy said to me that I'd be ok, just that I might be strongly disconnected from culture—not necessarily to tell me to not do it, but to be aware of the potential ramifications.
> The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines.
4chan has always been the undercurrent of digital culture. It's just way closer to the surface now. And contrary to popular belief, the entirety of 4chan isn't some den of degenerates and racists. People end up focusing on /b/ and /pol/, when the entire reason they were created was to quarantine that sort of discussion from infecting the rest of the boards. /fit/, /sci/, /mu/ etc are about as toxic as any subreddit.
Maybe not mass culture, per say, as that may have happened elsewhere. Maybe it was the conversation with friends, events, new lingo, reactions, updates, etc.—more focused on maybe a more local, group culture than a higher level US or global culture.
I have no Facebook, Instagram, Snap, or any similar accounts. In casual converstation, I sometimes notice meme references or slang that I don't know, but that's about it. Not a big problem or loss IMO.
The importance of Internet memes is overblown by the always-online crowd. They are cultural phenomena, but not knowing them doesn’t confer disadvantages.
I should have written “exclusively planned/conversed”. As in you simply will not know about outings or get togethers, and so you simply will not see them.
I think this was the bigger issue for me: missing out on what my friends were doing. It was a pain (and still is) to make accommodations for the one or two people who aren't on a platform, just as it would annoy me to remember to include the one person on Zoom when I'd be in an in-person meeting with 15 people. Switching modalities can add just enough friction to mean the one not on the platform misses out.
Perhaps some wanted that, maybe even I did—conflicted in wanting freedom from it and also fearing the loss of it.
Not only gone, I’ve heard internet and/or local imageboard slang from people who surely never visited the source of it. It feels strange to conceal your own subculture from those who speak it freely.
That’s true for many words, but also sometimes you meet someone who talks like Reddit comments or in memes and it comes across really strange to me. It doesn’t sound like how people generally talk to each other in real life otherwise, at least in my experience.
I believe that thwe strangeness there comes in the syntax and conversation flow - or lack thereof. I've met people who speak with the cadence of a comment section in real life, if that makes sense.
In short - I think it's not what's said, as much as how it's said.
I heard someone loudly exclaim L O L at tech conference one time in real life and it just made me want to kick their ass. I had a low opinion of that person immediately.
HN is the last bastion of free speech and intelligent conversation. Sorry to hear if you dislike people who want to defend that right adamantly, but myself and most other HNers who embrace the free speech, conservative model would politely, but firmly, show you the door.
> myself and most other HNers who embrace the free speech, conservative model would politely, but firmly, show you the door.
No one is entitled to 100% free speech protection on a moderated platform one joins by choice. If you're concerned about saying what you want without the risk of being banned, consider hosting your own forum where you have all the control. Only then you will be free.
I think I remember reading a Reddit post once about a girl whose boyfriend would say things in real life like "can we get some f's in the chat boys". Things that were clearly very niche and would either be completely unintelligible to the audience or at best sound out of place. I think it's a matter of reading the room.
If you went to some public place with a fairly representative sample of the population, like a supermarket or something, and asked 100 people about that phrase, how many do you think would know provenance of it?
It's from a Call of Duty video game. The game had a scene where you were at a characters funeral, and a prompt came up saying "Press F to Pay Respects". This was widely criticized and mocked by players, and it spread from there to be used to either legitimately convey respect or to sarcastically mock something.
In one of the call of duty games, you attend a funeral and when you reach the casket, an onscreen prompt asks you to press F to pay your respects. This took on a life of its own, and now on Reddit threads you’ll see people saying press f to pay respects when someone was figuratively killed.
Wow, okay, and they claimed it's not an obscure reference, but you have to have played a certain level in a certain game AND been on a certain forum to know what it means? Maybe obscure doesn't mean what I think it means.
It's a popular meme so you don't have to have played the game or even really be much of a gamer. You'd have come across it at some point hanging out on social media.
1. how many people don’t “hang out” in social media culture, and only circulate on there with family and peers using everyday idioms and emoji/abbreviation; if they use social media at all,
2. how many different, disjoint online cultures there are. Many things widely circulated on reddit and adjacent communities may never surface on some FB mom’s group
People maintain much more different lives from each other than you seem to assume, even among those that who are “terminally online” or that “hang out on social media”
I was just pointing out that knowledge of the meme wasn't as obscure as having actually played the game, which would be a much more limited audience than even just reddit users.
As with most idioms, most of the people who reference it have no clue what the origin of the expression is. Knowing the etymology of something is not a requirement for understanding what it means.
My regular friend group who uses that phrase have all read the play, some even who have performed it. I'm sure I'm not alone, but then again, I have the intuition to find people with similar life experiences and religion.
>Wow, okay, and they claimed it's not an obscure reference, but you have to have played a certain level in a certain game AND been on a certain forum to know what it means?
You just had to have played that game, and the game isn't obscure. Call of Duty is one of the largest franchises on earth and I would consider it akin to something like a Marvel movie in popularity. If someone referenced a meme from a marvel movie, I wouldn't describe it as obscure.
I've played a Call of Duty game and watched several Marvel movies, and no one is claiming either is obscure. What I am saying is that just because you hang out in forums where this is a common phrase does not mean it has exposure to the wider world. It is unknown to 99% of the world, by definition obscure.
I would argue that there is a 100:1 ratio of people who know know what the reference means vs. having actually played the game. Maybe even closer to 1,000:1. Kinda like how lots of people know the “World Series” is a baseball tournament, but most people have never watched it.
Every day that goes by, the out group of internet slang and memes grows smaller. I don't really know if I'd consider this a good thing or a bad thing so much as just, a thing. But there's a lot of joking amongst younger internet folk about how they'll probably be talking internet slang in retirement homes in a few decades. It's a funny visual, perhaps because of the weird perception that we always think we will be like today's older people as we grow older for some reason.
Those Reddit threads make for good entertainment today, however fake they probably usually are. But for better or worse, some day, I suspect it's going to flip around.
20 years ago, my mother heard me use the word "hack" in a casual context and panicked, assuming on the basis of the word alone that I meant criminal activity.
2 years ago, I was walking through Target and an advertisement came across the store loudspeakers touting "Mom hacks." Nerd culture has spread.
Where I am, the F meme has pretty much become part of regular conversation, just like "lol". Granted, I exist in urbanized techie gen z spaces so ymmv.
During the piratebay trial, one of the founders got a question about if he had met someone IRL. He replied with that they don't use that expression but AFK (away from keyboard) instead. Becuase IRL (in real life) suggests that internet is not real life, but it is.
What we do online effects our every day life even when we are offline.
When you are running the Pirate Bay the internet is real life, and it also is when you have a business, but when you are on an MMORPG or Twitter it is real life to a much lesser degree. How can we distinguish between them? Well, the majority of relationships made on MMORPGs or Twitter go nowhere outside the platform, and the things that people discuss on them also tend to not involve anything that will still be there when the person logs off. That creates a pocket universe (with a few exceptions, I think some people have met their spouses on MMORPGs) unrelated to the real one. Operating Pirate Bay, or even talking about Linux kernel drivers on IRC, doesn't meet that criteria of being separate from real life.
plenty of "real life" places also fail this test though. most work/school relationships don't "go anywhere" outside of that bubble. what fraction of people you hung out with in school or ate lunch with at previous jobs do you still actually talk to? how much of the code you wrote still runs in production?
Hopefully the money you make at work bleeds out into real life. :-) Also, I think a lot of people stay in touch with their college friends.
Besides that, the recognition that your school or office is a bubble universe in certain ways sounds like an important one. You sound like you're attempting to refute the idea but I think you're making a good point. Someone who implicitly thought their highschool was the whole universe would be in bad shape when they graduated.
I live in a French speaking place and I wager vast majority knows these terms (am millennial) and a lot even use them here and there, in their English forms. Tho of course not all and there are "deeper" slangs that are more for people online enough to share some web culture.
IMO, Internet slang is accurate as it transcends geography while there is some locality to slangs and vernacular.
I disagree, the difference is still there. It’s gotten a bit smaller, but it’s still there. Some people who are perpetually online on forums will say things like “that’s based” in real life, but out of a diverse group of 100 people how many do you think would understand and say things like that? I’d wager a lot of people may have heard before but probably don’t understand what it means. There’s also lots of localized real life slang that people on forums won’t get. You still might hear it on Instagram or places like that, but there is no ubiquity there. I don’t think it’s changed significantly beyond exposure with more people being on TikTok/Instagram/YouTube and similar networks.
>I take slight issue with this one. To me, there is no difference between “internet slang” and just “slang”. The internet is ubiquitous and the language we use online and offline is largely the same now.
Some yes, otherwise you'd be surprised... In many circles and communities it's not the same at all - and even developments the 'social media'-inmates take for well known, are not a thing discussed at all...
It's like the "silent majority" of working programmers, who don't give a duck about HN, Rust, the latest trends in web and backend, and so on...
Beautifully written with a lot of thought provoking paragraphs. I am a web developer who is working from home, also I make music in my free time and play online games. I relate highly to what was written but I don't see a way out unfortunately, at least not without shifting careers which is something I am not planning to do in the meantime.
The author mentioning “based” and “cringe” reminded me that meme culture ages poorly while endlessly recycling the same tropes/jokes. Eight years ago the dichotomy was “dank”-“normie”, and Impact was used with way less meta-irony.
I have struggled with Internet addiction, and still do, for a long time, and so far the only thing that has helped to dramatically reduce usage time was the Firefox/Chrome extension News Feed Eradicator [1]. I didn't realize to what degree news feeds were attention black holes until I installed it. I still go often on social media, but thanks to this extension these visits now last a few seconds, to check messages and some specific people I check regularly. I highly recommend it.
So would you categorize it as "news" addiction rather than internet addiction? I put quotes around news because today's news isn't really news, just over dramatization of current events, IMO.
I select "not interested/don't recommend channel" on all "news" type stuff on YouTube, and it's a much better experience. I learn more about all kinda stuff that I'm interested in. It took a few weeks for it all to filter out, but YouTube has a bunch of interesting stuff that's not news/current events related.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 218 ms ] threadIt seems if I ever call out a loved one, whether my brother or wife or friend, for being on their phone too much, they immediately get defensive and argue they were just doing some one task. Even if this was initiated after them being zoned out for an hour or longer. And I've done the same when reading something super interesting and getting lost in time.
Honestly, it doesn't seem much different than how addicts act in an intervention. We need to realize that this is an addiction, label and treat it appropriately.
My wife finally relented when our kid asked me to do something while I was working because 'mom is too busy with Facebook again.' I think that really hurt her feelings, even if she never admitted as much.
That sent shivers down my spine, wow.
Zuck, Zynga, all of them can be launched into deep space for all I care.
[0]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-44224319
I’m super happy though as the kids stayed with me :)
When we watch movies, it's me watching it and her scrolling. When we're in the car listening to music, it's just me listening to music and her scrolling. I'm starting to struggle initiating conversations because she's simply not paying attention. Whenever we're out, half her time is spent through the lense of her phone so she can take photos for her story.
She refuses to admit its a problem, disregards any argument I put forward about how it's disrupting her life, and when I really sit down with her and tell her how it makes me feels, she attacks me about the time I spend at my laptop (which I track meticulously and know its at most an hour outside of work, so she is simply using it as a defense).
I've dated girls with drug addictions before, and it was easier than this because they at least admitted it was a problem. I feel like I can't even initiate the first step with her. It's crushing, because besides this issue, she's pretty much perfect.
Might be unethical or it might help her to get away from it?
Perhaps talk to a therapist about how to approach it?
He's in his late 70's and a year ago bought himself an iPhone. He now spends ~4 hours a day reading a tabloid newspaper app, which has endless content. His attention span has fallen noticeably and he can't keep up with conversations that happen in the same room while he's "scrolling".
When I visit he's on his phone, and we go out for a walk (in the beautiful countryside around us) he stops and disengages when his app sends him the latest notification about what's happened on "love island", or some other nonsense. When I leave he's on his phone.
I tried to talk to him about it, and about how it's particularly effecting my mother, who I can see is lonely and lost a person she could talk to, important at their time of life. He just gets defensive and angry, which leads no-where.
Will he spend the most of the rest of his life looking at a screen?
Edit: wording of final sentence.
We don't talk much, not because we fight but because he's always too busy with his phone when I visit him :(
I'm not in the tabloid market segment, and perhaps I had the insight to self-diagnose? Did dewclin Senior do much before the iPhone arrived?
Perspective: I remember that Uncle Dave spent most of his (long) retirement watching sport on the telly back in the 1970s/80s. Any chance of sparking an outside interest?
And even more, I wonder if it can be cured. I think it ties into how socially isolated men are, especially old men. Once you retire and your work social network is gone, their only social ties are online. They need to identify with a community, and I guess there is something appealing to being in a conspiracy in-group. It's just impossible to pull them out, because you have to replace that group with something else. And there's just nothing there for them.
Unfortunately this is not an age thing. Youngsters just have the tendency to embrace different manias (e.g. woke movement).
Conspiratorial thinking for the hard left is nothing close to what it is like for the alt-right. They are basically not similar at all. The alt-right is about Q, saying Trump lost a rigged election, or thinking moderates are grooming children and molesting kids. What is the equivalence with the hard left?
The black and white thinking is also super simplistic. How do moderates not have black and white thinking in comparison to the extremes? IE a moderate would say don’t vote or spend time on any one but the two main party candidates in the US. In other countries, they’d say focus on who has a proper chance of being elected. Black and white thinking and self fulfilling.
> The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.
Or maybe I know they aren’t equal because they aren’t. Perhaps it says more about you and only you, that you jump to such an assumption and conclusion without knowing me.
I think Asians are considered privileged (so almost as bad as whites), and there was something wrong with Israel, too.
> saying Trump lost a rigged election
Some people on the left said similar things when Trump won the 2016 election.
Why would the left be the ones that put Asians on a pedestal? Fox, and alt right places put Asians in America on a pedestal enough already. It’s a regular thing when shitting on black people or brown migrants need to be kicked down by the [hard] right. I’d be curious of even minimal widespread hard left caring of Asians in a specific way.
Also, “almost as bad as whites”? Are you saying the hard left finds white people to be [really] bad? That’s something I specifically called out as an incorrect thing. It is a random talking point that to stir things up. I wish people wouldn’t take bullshit peddled seriously. Knowledge of hard left principles and people would show this is wrong.
Finally, some people everywhere of any kind are always saying something. A small portion of hard left people saying X is rigged is not comparable to the significant chunk of the moderate and extreme right doing the same.
———
I hope I have been able to keep the record straight that the extreme left isn’t the same as the extreme right and most assumptions or accusations of what the hard left is, have not and are not correct.
That said, I am a happily married old fart so it's only natural to not get some aspects of modern life.
It’s easier with hard drugs cause society, government, and even business mostly agrees it’s likely bad for you (except alcohol, that one still gets a free pass).
For me, I still try to remind her to be in the moment. She’ll ask to watch a show or movie and within 5 minutes her brain has pulled up her phone to read Reddit. I pause the show and then I’ll ask, “do you want to stop watching?”
She’ll reluctantly put her phone away (sometimes I have to wait a whole minute for her to actually put it down) and then I’ll resume the show on the TV.
The addiction is very very real and their diminishing attention span shows in their behaviour in other ways as well.
The Power of Habit (the book) helped me identify my bad habits the moment they triggered.
Also, what's fascinating is that addictions seem to bundle together. If I get off the sauce, start working out, etc, it becomes immediately easier to ignore the phone, social media, and other reflexive behavior, like snacking for no reason.
One way I think about it: Marvin Minsky long ago wrote a book called Society of Mind, looking at human cognition as a series of semi-independent non-conscious agents. If I feel bad long enough, there's a collection of feel-better-in-the-short-term agents that work well together: mindless snacking, doomscrolling, playing video games, binge watching, overeating etc. Basically anything that helps me avoid being present in feeling bad. Even if in the long term they make me feel worse.
But there's a competing set of agents, the ones that mean regular exercise and eating healthily and good sleep and low stress levels. That set not only works well when I'm feeling good, but they're what helps keep me feeling good in the long term.
Either set can achieve a stable equilibrium, but the two sets aren't really compatible.
Not sure if that makes any sense, but that's one way I think about it.
I don't see anywhere where contempt is shown, in fact quite the opposite. The post is written in a very empathetic way in my opinion, and I think displays a good level of insight into, and understanding of, the attractiveness of things that can do harm.
I'd challenge you to entertain the idea that this post has some good advice, and follow some of it. I have no data, but I expect you'll be happier as a result.
> I'd challenge you to entertain the idea that this post has some good advice, and follow some of it. I have no data, but I expect you'll be happier as a result.
Personally, I don't fit any of the implied criteria for "terminal onlineness," so your challenge isn't possible. You don't merely lack data, you lack a valid reason for assuming this advice applies to me or any other person whose habits you know nothing about. I recommend you entertain the idea that neither righteousness in your conviction nor confidence in your words transform your assumptions and personal experiences into broadly applicable maxims.
Even if this advice addresses problems you, personally, struggle with, that's not necessarily true for everybody. I know brilliant, happy, well-adjusted people, like my wife, who engage in behavior this author deems undesirable. It's just not that cut and dried. Perhaps the author's conclusions suffer from sampling bias? Regardless, I will still skip the rest of their blog entries.
In contrast, I'd be interested in reading something on the same topic that was presented in a subjective way, where the author isn't hiding their personal relationship to the topic. For example, "I was terminally online and here's why and how I changed". Or "my friend was terminally online and I like that they stopped". Or even "here's why I am frustrated dealing with terminally online people".
But for me, the pseudo-expert advice from somebody with no obvious expertise and no claim of it leaves me cold. I don't understand why I should care what they think, or why I should trust them.
I think I've forgotten how I lived without a constant stream of information. I'm seriously tempted to get a dumb phone to remove temptation to browse when I have a few minutes to spare.
The stupid thing is for all my reading, I don't feel any wiser or even knowledgeable. At the same time I think I'm less able to engage in normal conversation.
I hide recommended content, unsubscribe from everything, unfollow everything, and generally have a "don't call me, I'll call you" approach to information.
I went as far as removing pagination buttons on websites I tend to browse too much.
I also use Pocket to save more interesting articles. Combined with a "things I don't understand" to-do list, I spend more time reading about practical things instead of just browsing. I don't regret that sort of reading.
I don’t have a firebox, but I suppose it kept the recycling man in business.
Never to walk down the street looking at my phone. Eyes on the road. If I need to look at my phone, I stop somewhere out of the way of foot traffic.
All notifications are silent except calls or text messages from specific people. Calls from people I don't know and text messages get only a slow blinking light. Social media get no notifications.
When I am with someone or a group in person, phone goes away.
If I wouldn't allow someone to interrupt a conversation, the phone doesn't either. I won't answer it if someone is talking to me, especially something important. When there's a pause in the conversation, I'll ask politely to check to see who called.
Finally, and this might be the biggest, I am constantly listening to audiobooks and podcasts. It scratches that itch of needing constant stimulation, but I can still be aware of everything around me.
> The stupid thing is for all my reading, I don't feel any wiser or even knowledgeable. At the same time I think I'm less able to engage in normal conversation.
100% if I spent all the time I spend online reading actual books, I'd be much better off.
Up until few month ago my phone did not even have data plan. I ordered it now but purely for business needs. I use my phone strictly for phone calls and as GPS (I have offline maps). I use another phone to control gizmos like drone. For everything else I use PC and since I spend enough time doing various physical activities I consider my life balanced.
Also, having a library card at your local library gets you books to read, both physical books and eBooks through the Libby book reading app.
Anyway, congratulations on recognizing the problem: you are ahead of the game compared to most of my friends in real life and family.
On the other hand, understanding that you are addicted, and why, are the first steps towards individuals feeling empowered to quit. Which, in many, if not almost all, cases - they absolutely are able to do. And it certainly improves their odds if they have a network of supportive friends, family, and the like.
For someone who isn't an addict, taking a non judgemental and understanding approach to get the addict to ask him or herself those questions or set themselves on the path to recovery may be a way to meaningfully help them. But it can only really work if they're already open and receptive to that. And that depends, to a great extent, on what your relationship is with them and how much they trust you.
The whole experience was a wake-up call, not just in terms of being arrested but being without a computer or any way to get online for a couple of weeks.
It really made me realize how 'addicted' I was to the internet, and going cold turkey was horrible, time slowed down and I was sure I was missing out on everything.
But I read so much more and all the days seemed longer (time dragged so much) and then when I finally got back online I hadn't missed sh*t.
You're reading all the time on the internet, it's literally the foundational enabling skill of it.
I find it very weird when people say the benefit of being offline is they "read more".
That said, I have some low quality conversations with friends in real life also. However that is a different dynamic because conversation does not have to perfect and periods of silence while, for example, hiking with friends is also good.
I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but our civilization is changing: more automation, less work required from a large fraction of the population. We need to get “being a human” in this new world right. Going on a Cal Newport style digital diet is just a part of a strategy for life.
(Your assessment is an unfair and inaccurate overgeneralization. One can use the internet to read books, blogs, articles, courses, etc, but of course you know this.)
The experience is not the same as sitting down and reading a 300 page book cover to cover which is also the product of an author sitting down and spending months or even years writing it. Of course that experience is definitely possible on the Internet - ebooks/PDF. But someone "reading" social media is not the same as really reading.
Reading online doesn't feel like reading. Most offline material is long form and has a clear purpose, otherwise it wouldn't continue existing. When you read it you are more likely to come away fulfilled, with new thoughts and ideas to process. You can't usually say the same coming away from most social network type interactions on the internet - You might have satiated your FOMO temporarily, but otherwise will likely feel empty. Obviously it's not all like that, there exists long form content on the web, but that's not really what we are talking about.
Food is, of course, a quintessential necessity, and someone who overeats or has an eating disorder needs to come to terms with temperance, moderation, and balance of lifestyle, rather than quit eating altogether.
15 years ago, it was realistic to hang up the modem, unplug the computer, get face out of screen, and get some fresh air for long stretches of time. But my reality today is that I use a device online to manage my household and do ordinary, everyday tasks, including working for my employer is 100% online. Implicit in this article is the fact that the Internet is no longer something to be avoided or removed from our lives; the article simply suggests that we can use it differently, improving our attitudes and our approach.
So rather than a "kick the habit" strategy, we typically need to devise time-management techniques and ways to form better habits around good, productive use of our devices, while balancing that with actual needs to unplug and take a walk in the fresh air.
That may mean that I don't obsessively check bank balances and twiddle my bill payments 3 times a day, 7 days a week. And it means that I'm not allowing every email and SMS to distract me from a task. And perhaps channels about home meal preparation and gentleman's grooming should be dominating my YouTube suggestions, above SNL and Avril Lavigne tracks.
I also need to cope with being triggered. If I have an anxiety attack or fit of rage over someone who's Wrong on the Internet, I am guaranteed to suffer insomnia and all the rest. And so we need the skillsets to short-circuit and defuse those situations, and sometimes the situation is avoidable and sometimes we need to find a way to push through it without losing our heads.
This blogger offers 15 pragmatic, common-sense strategies for coping. And it can get better. Do not believe that you can escape the Internet by avoiding it, nor can you escape real life by going online. Develop good hygiene, good habits, be productive, and learn to cope when things inevitably get difficult.
Being stuck in a "compulsion loop" online is not healthy for your mind. It doesn't matter if it is Twitter, TikTok or even Hacker News. What I'm seeing online now and those around me. Online behaviours that take the form of addictions are not healthy and should not be a part of a healthy persons lifestyle. And I wish that it would become a trend.
Maybe the fear of such "falling off the wagon" is part of what keeps us on the internet. We don't want to lose the world's thread of conversation, because in the end one way or another it will affect us anyway. It's like not coming to the forum where future laws are decided.
Besides that, I agree completely. Twitter is a sort of highly competitive petri dish in which only the most infectious viruses can survive, with "viruses" being 160 character pieces of text. These messages do not need to be true or actually informative to survive and spread.
My Twitter feed is a collection of funniest, most deranged takes on any subject. People IRL have no chance to compete, no one can outdo the best two seconds of 800 people.
Same with HN. Conversations like these are rarely happening offline.
And then there are communities I sunk into. Private forums I have been a member of for nearly a decade. I know the in-jokes, we follow the stories of more interesting (chaotic) posters, there's even some real emotional investment.
All of that reachable fully asynchronously. Went to the gym alone? Read between the sets. Waiting for something? It's right there on your phone. Sadly, also, someone being boring... well, better stuff is in your pocket.
May I suggest that you might be looking in the wrong places offline?
HN-style discussions are a staple of lunchtime banter at any number of tech firms. Likewise you can find similar discussions at any number of universities, or on the tech conference circuit. Not to mention your local nerd-leaning special-interest communities (be it tabletop, D&D, hacker space, BDSM, etc).
The internet makes it really easy to find a community of folks who share similar interests, all without leaving your house. But unless you live in the middle of nowhere, one can generally find such a community IRL
The place that did that was a bad work environment; shockingly enough the "working" lunches weren't the worst habit they had either.
I think one mistake of perspective we have, when terminally-online and evaluating the alternative, is looking for other sources of passive constant stimulation as a substitute for social media feeds. Not bombarding your senses is part of the point. Daydreaming and thinking doesn't have to be boring, even just enjoying a moment of quiet.
Saying that, I think most people lack social validation in everyday life and try to satisfy it virtually. Having interesting conversation is separate from that, but also a consideration. We seem to be disappointed by our offline social lives but don't do a whole lot to rectify. That would require change (scary) and effort.
- 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep" by Jonathan Crary
being stuck with your thoughts, past regrets and future worries.
There’s some spare bandwidth for habitually chatting, but not much.
Mental health. Cardiovascular health. Health of interpersonal relationships. Work life balance.
I sincerely think we are at an equivalent situation as the tobacco industry in the 1970s. The decisions we make now will affect the lives of generations to come.
Cal Newport's site has a Ledger of Harms [1] at the Center for Humane Technology, and I wrote what I hope is an accessible and lightly challenging overview of the problem of technology overuse in Digital Vegan [2].
[1] https://ledger.humanetech.com/?ref=witsio
[2] https://digitalvegan.net
Sorry, I'm not following. Could you elaborate on the connection between Cal Newport and the site you linked to?
It’s been a few weeks since I had to put it down for another book, but here is my main takeaway (so far) - it’s all true, but in my opinion it comes across with very strong views and some extreme options as something to hand non-technical friends. It’s also relatively expensive to obtain in the US.
But thank you for your contribution to the discussion on this topic. I think you’re probably closer to where we should end up, but I don’t see a path to get there.
Certain communities on Facebook are quite interesting but my main feed is filled with so much viral junk that I end up scrolling through crap for hours a week.. Once I start, it consumes me for a while. Kind of sad really, I would rather spend time doing other relaxing things offline instead.
Just came back from a 2 hour walk outside with my son through our local park and farm, usually I'd of checked Facebook at least twice, I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more without “having to check” this or that.
I miss the simple days of just having forums and IM.
> have you ever used/applied "internet slang" (cringe, based, cuck, chad) in/to real-life situations?
I take slight issue with this one. To me, there is no difference between “internet slang” and just “slang”. The internet is ubiquitous and the language we use online and offline is largely the same now.
Didn’t always be this way. I still remember the first time I heard a friend say “epic fail” in really life circa 2005 or so, and it was like some sort of glass wall had been broken between our real lives and our internet lives. But that wall is long gone, and I think that’s probably okay.
How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought?
How many times have I witnessed adherents dismissing moderates or centrists? Accusing them of helping the "enemy"? What about people who think for themselves and have concluded something out of the mainstream? Throwing in some other unrelated political cause and accusing anyone who doesn't agree to be wrong?
It's disgusting, and those communities should be ashamed of themselves
I'm assuming, of course, that GP is a decent person and independent thinker, as those types tend to get railroaded in this glorious new dawn of political groupthink
[citation needed]
I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to get away from oppression. And when those people got to the US, quite a lot of them were eager to become the oppressors. Looks at the predominance of blue laws across the US. Look at who got tarred and feathered. Who got lynched. Who dealt with segregation and Jim Crow. Look at the Red Scare, the socially narrow dominance of mass media, or how eager and how violent the forces of conformity were in the 1950s.
I think today people are generally freer that at any point. But two big things have changed. One, the rise of the internet means the one-way, conformist channels of mass media have given way to everybody talking to everybody. And two, cultural power is no longer concentrated in a narrow slice of society, such that people previously unheard are now having some things to say.
I get why some people see that as "political groupthink". When you're in a dominant group, you're not used to getting challenged. But personally, I find it bracing, causing me to rethink a lot of things I took as givens because that's what the people around me believed. The death of old paradigms is always uncomfortable, but personally I'd much rather live in this era of ferment than in one where everybody believes the same comfortable old certainties.
I think its wonderful that so many oppressed groups are given opportunities at the podium, but the problem is that many of these oppressed groups are oppressed for good reason (like white supremacists), and there needs to be some sort of filter that keeps them sidelined. Unfortunately I don't see how to achieve that without some sort of orthodoxy, and right now the people that are trying to write that are fucking crazy.
The parts that were my opinions ("I think", "I see", etc) were clearly cited to me. But a fair bit of what I wrote was pointers to things people can look up. If there's something apparently factual that you're having trouble looking up, let me know and I'm glad to give you a pointer. Because I'm happy to give citations when people ask for them.
The reason I put a "citation needed" in was that was phrased as an objective claim, not a personal opinion. An objective claim I believe to be false. (And which I'll note that the author didn't give any further data on despite me asking.)
Now, we have... this: an endless cacophony of unqualified and undeserving voices spouting off whatever they want, for every purpose other than advancing productive debate. Where all get to be heard regardless of merit, yet original ideas suppressed because of pedantry (like "citation needed") and not having the backing of the melange of different social issues and media idols that we suffer under today. I don't think the political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism, and for this I blame Twitter and social media.
I don't understand how you think such flowery, subjective language constitutes an objective statement of reality; all of my input into this matter is pretty clearly stated as opinion and observations outlined serve to reinforce it.
Besides, sitting there banging out "Citation Needed" like this was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual as a comment board. You can save the nitpicking for r/AskHistorians, where the rules clearly require it.
Depends on when you grew up, but assuming the 1985 is your birth year, then political polarization has been asymmetrically increasing since well before you were born. Take a look at the DW-NOMINATE data for the US House: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/
This asymmetric polarization mirrors doctrinal polarization among white US evangelicals, who have, for example, gone from having a plurality of views on abortion to treating it as an absolute doctrinal litmus test: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-bib...
I can believe that for you personally 9/11 felt unifying, but that wasn't the case for a lot of people. Not just including the Sikhs and Muslims lynched, of course, or all the people who saw that and got nervous. But also the notable percentage of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, which Bush began beating the drums for just months after 9/11.
I also believe that you perceived American culture as more unified then. But based on what? Twitter didn't launch until 2006, and didn't really take off until 2010. If a bunch of people were upset about something, how would you have known? Especially if they were in some group that didn't get a lot of mass media attention, you wouldn't have. It's not that edgy comedians were any less awful then. It's that the people they were being shitty about generally didn't get the chance to express their feelings on it. I think the problem you're seeing is not differing views, but people with those different views finally getting their say.
> political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism
Oh? Why don't you break that down for me with some examples. Go through the major harms of the Red Scare era and then some examples of people similarly harmed today. I think that's wrong, but I'm happy to learn something.
> was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual
I don't think you quite understand what counterfactual means, but I think take your point. Your notion seems to be that this is a fact-free zone, and that it's shockingly rude to ask if their claims have any basis in fact. I obviously think that's ridiculous. If you want to go entirely unchallenged, maybe get a talk radio show or something. But as long as I've been here, asking for evidence has been a popular activity.
I don't have data for you, just my perceptions and opinions. There are too many structural problems with the way political data is collected in this country (starting with the wording on questions in political surveys, and ending far beyond redistricting shenanigans). Given how deceptive and manipulative most election campaigns are, and how third parties are disproportionately disadvantaged financially, I don't think that looking at the proportion of left/right seats in congress is a good proxy for political polarization.
What I do see as a proxy is the behavior of those around me, and then trying to extrapolate that to reflect a larger population. I live in one of many pockets of conservativism in a very liberal state, and I am judging on the tone and tenor of political conversations and how freely friendly, amicable political debate flows among social groups in a fairly politically diverse area. Again, this is highly subjective for many different reasons, and I can say that I used to travel around a lot and have rubbed shoulders with many different social groups and castes in this society, and so I feel that I am at least somewhat qualified to extrapolate here.
And that observation is that political discussion is getting narrower, more pointed, and more focused on nationally-popular memes/issues. 12 years ago I sat in a meeting of one of the local tea-party chapters, and it was mostly older folks rabblerousing over local stuff. There wasn't much in the way of conspiracy theories, there wasn't a whole bunch of liberal shit-talking, just a bunch of people bitching about this-or-that with the local schooldistrict. When they happened to pick on my own high school, I knew that much of what they were saying was factually false, and I was able to state to the crowd why, and that was that. (There was some grumbling but the conversation turned elsewhere.) There were both left- and right-leaning folks in my friend group, and there was a quiet understanding to not get into political debates, and people weren't on-edge about it so if something was said, it didn't blow up.
We didn't have too many local crazies flying massive American flags on their trucks, with their cheap shots at trolling regular folks -- but now we do; there are places I can go where I can see them on a regular and predictable basis.
Nowadays I stay out of political shit, people are way too toxic, obsessive, and focusing on the same dozen or so things that everyone else is talking about. What would this tea party meeting have looked like today?
I have a different social group now; one that I like far more but we are very left-leaning, and increasingly (and troublingly) so. There is a much higher proportion of "polsplaining" (like mansplaining, but politicos talking down to people that offend them), many more suggestions that people self-evaluate (and insinuations that they are bad for towing a particular line), and hot political buzzwords are on people's tongues (and used as scapegoats) far more often than I can recall. I find myself hesitating to argue some points as I don't really want to die on any of these hills.
When the Roe v Wade decision dropped I broke my rule and attended a local rally, as I was pissed (much like everyone else). But at that rally someone got up on the podium and actively denounced people that not only just opposed abortion or womens health issues, but also anyone that opposed Black Lives Matter, anyone that opposed reparations, anyone that opposed ACAB; they kept calling for a unified front to address all of these issues as one.
I don't recall overhearing anyone complaining about feeling unable to speak up, but in the last...
I remember before I deleted my FB account (I've since created a new one), my buddy said to me that I'd be ok, just that I might be strongly disconnected from culture—not necessarily to tell me to not do it, but to be aware of the potential ramifications.
You have to question what "culture" are you missing on.
I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department.
guy above you might have deleted his fb account in the early 2000s. right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan.
The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines.
/pol/ is 4chan, 4chan is /pol/
4chan has always been the undercurrent of digital culture. It's just way closer to the surface now. And contrary to popular belief, the entirety of 4chan isn't some den of degenerates and racists. People end up focusing on /b/ and /pol/, when the entire reason they were created was to quarantine that sort of discussion from infecting the rest of the boards. /fit/, /sci/, /mu/ etc are about as toxic as any subreddit.
2)/pol/ overruns and sets the tone for the rest of the boards on 4chan IME. That's why I personally stopped reading there.
It would be a loss if your cohort planned/converse using those methods of communication, and you valued doing things with that cohort.
Perhaps some wanted that, maybe even I did—conflicted in wanting freedom from it and also fearing the loss of it.
In short - I think it's not what's said, as much as how it's said.
No one is entitled to 100% free speech protection on a moderated platform one joins by choice. If you're concerned about saying what you want without the risk of being banned, consider hosting your own forum where you have all the control. Only then you will be free.
1. how many people don’t “hang out” in social media culture, and only circulate on there with family and peers using everyday idioms and emoji/abbreviation; if they use social media at all,
2. how many different, disjoint online cultures there are. Many things widely circulated on reddit and adjacent communities may never surface on some FB mom’s group
People maintain much more different lives from each other than you seem to assume, even among those that who are “terminally online” or that “hang out on social media”
I'm sure there are plenty of people who have used the "press F" meme without knowing the original context too.
You just had to have played that game, and the game isn't obscure. Call of Duty is one of the largest franchises on earth and I would consider it akin to something like a Marvel movie in popularity. If someone referenced a meme from a marvel movie, I wouldn't describe it as obscure.
Those Reddit threads make for good entertainment today, however fake they probably usually are. But for better or worse, some day, I suspect it's going to flip around.
2 years ago, I was walking through Target and an advertisement came across the store loudspeakers touting "Mom hacks." Nerd culture has spread.
I would posit that the Instagram "mom hack" "lifehack" crowd don't associate the word with computer programming or pwning boxen.
What we do online effects our every day life even when we are offline.
I thought that was very sane thinking
Besides that, the recognition that your school or office is a bubble universe in certain ways sounds like an important one. You sound like you're attempting to refute the idea but I think you're making a good point. Someone who implicitly thought their highschool was the whole universe would be in bad shape when they graduated.
IMO, Internet slang is accurate as it transcends geography while there is some locality to slangs and vernacular.
Some yes, otherwise you'd be surprised... In many circles and communities it's not the same at all - and even developments the 'social media'-inmates take for well known, are not a thing discussed at all...
It's like the "silent majority" of working programmers, who don't give a duck about HN, Rust, the latest trends in web and backend, and so on...
1 https://web.archive.org/web/20190327161227/http://www.lolcat...
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/news-feed-era...
I select "not interested/don't recommend channel" on all "news" type stuff on YouTube, and it's a much better experience. I learn more about all kinda stuff that I'm interested in. It took a few weeks for it all to filter out, but YouTube has a bunch of interesting stuff that's not news/current events related.