Internet attitude/get off my lawn
 

Maybe this belongs more in the philosophy thread or something, but I thought I'd throw this out there.

I don't know how immersed in internet culture/sub-culture/sub-sub-cultures folks here are, but I was wondering if anybody ever starts feeling a little sick of it. Memes, repetition, cool wars, video games for 18 hours a day, trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls, racism is funny, gay is an epithet, things that aren't gay are EPIC WINS and everything is FOR THE LULZ and put on your cool face and communicate everything with bad spelling in 140 character status updates or captioned pictures thrown around again and again and again...

Where does it stop? At what point do we actually start losing our humanity, capacity for deep thought and expression of individual personality and creativity?

Some of it is fun, but when does the nihilistic fun end and the real part begin? I wonder if the technology is moving too fast for the culture sometimes, leaving us in some sort of perpetual state of confused social flux of anonymity and dickheadery. What's happening to the youth, and what's happening to the adults? I'm not really sure, but my head sort of hurts.

anybody have any thoughts on what it all means and where it's all headed?

Ted Talks.

The antidote.

The internet is serious business.

This is the type of thing that adolescents and teenagers do in real life, too. It's not the internet making them this way, the internet just makes it easier for you to be exposed to way too much of it. Not to say that adults are immune to this type of behavior, I have certainly participated in a meme or two in my day, but sometimes adults indulge in childish moments in real life too. The internet is just a reflection of who's on it. The trick as you enter your "get off my lawn!" stage here is to make sure you don't start avoiding the internet, as you are tempted to do. Hunker down in one of the adult enclaves (here, for example,) and don't let the kids take any more ground.

Nah, flame 'em, tell 'em off, and be sure to give 'em your real name and address so they know you're genuine. :lol:

Backtrace them and call the cyber police so that consequences will never be the same.

Had to be done :cool:

Thanks for being honest. Occasionally, I hear this outside of the internet, not so much online.

This was my first reaction to internet forums, so you are not alone. I suppose many people probably feel this way but are too chicken-shit to say it, or do anything about it, except ignore what we don't like?

I immerse myself in the Internet culture. Not a day goes by when I don't get a complete belly-laugh out of it. I am fascinated by how this society has generated so much "stuff" out of what seems to be thin air.

You can limit yourself to bits of it; I think of the Cellar as only using a segment of Internet culture as we share various wacky items. We are anti-txt speak here because we're like more... smart, and stuff. It's easy to go deeper when you need to and I can't think of an away-from-keyboard event where not being familiar with net culture has been a negative for somebody.

As far as internet culture goes, the other day I was thinking about how small the internet can become if we get stuck in routine.

Days like today, I find myself getting lost in the randomness of it. It is ultimately large and fun.

Mostly it is about your psychological mind-frame and what you are looking for I guess.

My favorite places are the blog-spot cooking blogs. I am not such a creative cook and I find lots of great ideas there. The Cellar is the go-to place. The home base. There is a little bit of everything here. lol. The Rollings Stone's 'Shattered' comes to mind. Home should be where you can be all that. :)

The internet is a wonderful resource for me. I use if for everything. Its my encyclopedia, my dictionary, my atlas, my phone book, my mailbox, my recipe book, my shopping cart, my newspaper, my stress-releaser, and so on and so on.

It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

Well, on one hand, there's a place for everything. Internets is not entirely srs bsns; it's a big, big place with room for everybody and then some.

I get that, and I have fun out there, too, as well as using it for serious things. I can program in a few languages, I've built database-driven web services, I've spent countless hours reading and researching things for school and pleasure, I've journalled and blogged for probably fifteen years digitally in some form or another. I've made a lot of dick jokes and trolled some folks pretty hard, too. I'm no stranger to this place is what I'm saying.

I'm not planning on avoiding the net nor do I suspect I'm in danger of becoming some sort of neo-luddite; neither do I think it's a case of "just not getting that rap music kids like these days". I'm trying to get a vantage point that's beyond that timeless fear that the young will ruin everything if they aren't just like the old. For what it's worth, I think there's probably an element in that perspective that can help that keep sort of "fuddy-duddy"ism at bay - without sacrificing maturity.

There's some crazy and funny and wildly creative stuff out there. But there's also an awful lot of noise, an awful awful lot of crowd noise.

I worry that, in all the noise, something essential will be missed. the art of meaningful communication. We can't connect with every single soul out there, it's true; and we're not going to get along with 100% of the people 100% of the time, or anything like that. We're cruel and callous and funny and all sorts of other things, good and bad. There are times when a truthful and soulful response is appropriate and times when it doesn't matter so much and "LOL DONGS" will suffice.

It's not so much that I'm interested in "doing anything about it" or stopping anybody from doing the things they do, whether I agree with their actions or not - I'm just wondering about the effects that it has on our individual minds, and on our cultures as a whole. "Culture" itself is becoming difficult for me to define, too: do I mean "digital" culture or "real world" culture? Where are the lines, exactly?
Would you put on a goofy face at someone who is upset in the grocery store(or wherever) and say or shout "YOU MAD?" to them? Would you give a dollar and a nod to a street performer playing guitar? Would you give a dollar to the developer of a piece of freeware that you use regularly? Where are those lines and why have they formed there?

I wonder about social context, too and losing reference to "the real world". People say things here that they wouldn't *dream* of saying to someone in person. Racism, sexism and just plain offensive stuff. Some of it? Funny as hell, and carrying an inherent message, often laden with an irony and/or dark humor that's pointing out some hypocrisy in culture or society. Then it gets repeated, and repeated again and again - it does the forum/blog circuit and takes on a memetic life of its own, completely free of context - and that's where the damage potentially starts. Particularly when there is a very strong youth culture there, absorbing every word. How are we affecting ourselves, either positively and negatively, with this sort of accelerated memetic evolutionary process?

I'm waiting for the direct cortical shunt