Do you think people would open their eyes and become more neighborly? Would it free people to actually talk to their friends, go to actual events in person? Or is everyone already entrenched too far?
And yes its ironic im posting this online. However I like to think of how the world would react if we could disable the internet for a few months. Besides the chaos of banking and airlines, I think it would be a net positive on humanity.
Until then, ill go back to being mostly disconnected on weekends. Its great.
The internet is helpful for finding community and support, especially for LGBT+ people, people with mental health issues, or neurodivergent people. I for one am very glad that the internet is very much up and that the legislators have not succeeded in fully censoring it.
That’s rough. Don’t wanna go outside, lots of armed masked men outside.
(Am a foreign-born non-white American)
Probably just have to to get a bunch of DVDs and actually get a DVD player that works since the old one is filled with dust and broken. (Or is it a “BluRay” these days?)
I’m probably gonna have to get ham radios, without the internet, there would be a lot more traffic, so I’d probably have to get comfortable using my voice. Probably get a shortwave radio so I get get foreign broadcasts. TV also needs to be replaced.
I’d have to get like actual encyclopedias.
Honestly, it’d be a pain. No piracy is gonna make things cost too much. I doubt Libraries would even have them since they’d all be loaned out.
TLDR: It’d suck, very fucking much.
I’m pretty sure we’d have a lot of blood on our hands. The internet does in fact facilitate medical appointments, records, and makes drugs and supplies more accessible.
why are they booing you? you’re right!
Honestly, I don’t really believe people are fundamentally much different now than they were before the internet, I think people are just aware of negative events from a wider area now and that things that previously would have gotten blamed on something else get blamed on the internet instead.
Yes.
I grew up in the 70’s where you’d run naked out of the shower to take a phone call, because that might be your only opportunity to be invited to a social occasion or event that day/week. Nobody ever turned down an invite to lunch, cards night, bingo, pot luck, watching vacation slides, etc, etc, etc. That was the chance to see the world, connect with people and hear what was going on.
I grew up when you’d read the same shampoo bottle 10 times every time you took a shit, hoping you’d find some new detail you once missed.
I grew up when reading every single word of the newspaper, literally from cover-to-cover was a normal thing, for want of better options.
So I feel if people were forced back into the system of non-instant communication, it would automatically make humans come back together. We are social creatures, and The Internet & SM is an ersatz version of socializing, but if it were gone people would have to find it in real life again.
I grew up when you’d read the same shampoo bottle 10 times every time you took a shit, hoping you’d find some new detail you once missed.
Tell me your family didn’t have a subscription to National Geographic without telling me your family didn’t have a subscription to National Geographic.
We had that, but there’s only so many times you can jerk off to the same pair of African titties
You know, I’d judge you, but I’ve been a horny teenager without internet access as well.
It beats JO to the bra/panties section in the Sears catalog
No. We are all online for lack of better alternatives, which wouldn’t magically appear
We could just get rid of Internet 2.0 - that’s when the tech broligarchs took over the beautiful original internet and make it into a bunch of surveillance capitalist walled gardens with psyop addictive algorithms that turned people into ad-consumption cash cows.
Leaving the infrastructure in place for useful, non society-destroying uses would avoid throwing the baby out with the filthy bathwater.
I believe that the perfect internet is 1999 but with Wikipedia.
That’s it.
All tech: 1999 and before. Flip phones. MP3 players. DVD. Etc.
It was perfect and corporations did not suck our souls out through our assholes.
100% agree, the Matrix was right.
And it wasn’t a coincidence.
I think this would work because people weren’t bigoted until the internet came about
I hope you’re being sarcastic.
I had hoped that was obvious…
My opinions reflect yours in your comment. The internet allows us to learn about and connect with people we may not see around us in our neighborhoods and I think that in of itself is instrumental in breaking down bigotry.
Cheeky
Idk my neighbors are pretty openly racist and so are 90% of the people in my uni. Internet has few cool people at least.
It would probably take a while but yes, I do think people would become less isolated.
People use social media as a substitute for social interaction, it is not. Even texting is not good enough most of the time.
I disagree that it would be as clear that people would become less isolated. I do agree that people would adapt to life without Internet; we were there once before, we can be there again. However, this dismisses the good the internet has done and neglects to account for the reasons it has turned out the way it has.
I think people would fall into tribalism offline as much as they do online. Maybe it would be regional and physical community based, and they would have more social interaction -in person-, but they would still fall into little insular pockets of one form or another. The cure is a variety of interactions with people of different mindsets, whether that is online or offline. But we, as people, don’t like that. We like the comfy communities where we can form an echochamber together.
There was a power outage in the Modwest in 2003 or so. It lasted a few days.
Businesses were mostly closed down, so everyone basically had a few days off. There was a life to the community that I had never experienced. People with generators were visiting old friends, running their fridges for a few hours at a time, and the parks were full. People were generally friendly and helpful to each other. Then after a few days, the power came back on and life went back to normal.
If we destroyed the internet, I wouldn’t expect the same thing to happen. Businesses would readjust, and life would find a new normal (perhaps looking a little more like the 90s). But I doubt it would change much with how neighborly people are.
What seems to trigger that sense of community is a shared experience, especially hardships. So if things keep going downhill, a silver lining will probably be a renaissance of community.
no, people hated each other before the internet…even moreso than they do now. believe it or not, media giants has an easier time bubbling people pre-internet
I live in a neighborhood where everyone has a smartphone. We still go out and spend time in person, have community events, know our neighbors.
It’s not the Internet’s fault. In most cases, it’s lack of density, lack of parkspace, and lack of public transit. Suburbification, if you will. People don’t go outside unless there’s pleasant outdoor spaces to go to. People can’t get to know their neighbors on the house-car-office pipeline, you need sidewalks and pubtrans and mixed zoning for that. You need front stoops and block clubs and people who have lived there for more than a couple years.
I can’t talk about younger generations, I’m well into my 50s, but I know they do a lot of things online. Heck, they even date online which to me seems as odd as wanting to eat an… air sandwich (so odd that I’m half expecting some app to popup offering them to have virtual sex too… for a monthly fee, obviously). But even like that there are still a lot of people (of all ages) that prefer IRL/physical/analog to online/digital to a subscription-based lifestyle. They’re just… less visible online (and they seldom complain about it online either) ;)
The thing with the Internet is that it creates this self-validation bubble, and I mean not just for political discussions where people expect to never have to listen to anything/anyone not agreeing with them, I mean it as a space itself, the Internet is good at downplaying alternatives to itself as a place to be and do things… Things like meeting people IRL, doing offline activities and hobbies. Who decided we needed to use a phone to watch a movie or to read a book or an app to meet someone we find attractive?
To me, all of that should have been one of the things education needed to talk more about to kids. If it ever tried, it obviously utterly failed. The real question being then: who decided we should stop doing all of those things our species have been doing for… ever. And why? And the answer may be as simple and obvious as: ourselves. It is us that did this to ourselves, it’s our own laziness and maybe our own fear, and our own stupidity.
Until then, ill go back to being mostly disconnected on weekends. Its great.
I don’t have dedicated offline days, but i do have a lot of offline time so allow me to congratulate you nonetheless on that decision and wish you had an even better WE than usual when you will read my comment. Because, you’re 100% right:
Its great.
And not just on WE ;)
