They actually evil. It’s that simple. We’re brought up to think humans have innate morals that ultimately prevail. Some just don’t have it. The current president has shone a light on this. Unfortunately right and wrong has to be taught.
I got whiplash from that comment.
The era of Pax Americana is over. There is a global realignment underway. The future is more uncertain than any of us have known in our lifetime.
For a while there was an idea that globalization would elevate the world. This post war era was the first part of our lives. It turns out America and Europe decided it isn’t acceptable when the world actually started having it good. So now we have to burn it all down and enter a phase of heightened global conflict. We’ll kill each other until we’re tired of that. Then maybe there will be another period of relative peace. Seems to be the nature of humanity.
Most of the “boomer” discussion is veiled ageism and ignorance. The younger generations are setting themselves up to be “boomers” themselves. Inevitably they will be old. They’re already willfully ignorant. They take joy in it even. Not on a good track there.
There’s a facet of internet culture that revolves around ridicule. I’m not sure but I think it stems from the streamer world. It’s like a modern form of celebrity gossip (read: harassment) that got commoditized into social media. So it’s not just gossiping about celebrities like in the past era of media.
Harassment used to be driven by publishers. In this era of social media anyone and everyone is a content publisher. People trawl the internet for things they think can be made spectacle. Right down to a random internet comment 100 replies deep in a thread. If for whatever reason they think this person is to be made a fool of then they proceed to reply with such belligerence.
They engage as if they are an outside observer. As if they’ve an audience like it’s Jerry Springer or something. As if they are the only human being. They don’t see others as human. Everyone else are caged animals for them taunt. To throw objects at through the cage bars or to tap on the glass. They think they are the main character.
I think there’s some psychological effect where their parasocial relationship with their favorite streamers and the herd of loyal viewers gives them a false sense of power based on the crowd effect or something. They can’t see it from the perspective that they are a lone poster being deranged.
I think the vote/like/share model gives them a false sense of power. When they see the uplikes number go up, they think they have a herd of supporters behind them. A simple little number on a screen emboldens them.
Nobody seems to see anything out of the ordinary with this. Such is the nature of this era of internet and the hostility. It’s normalized. They don’t know of any way of being.
You’re not a streamer with a herd of followers. You’re just a sole internet user. You have no crowd behind you. It’s like you think you do. It’s bizarre. From observers outside your perspective, you’re like an unstable person wandering the city streets. Pedestrians avoid you. They don’t want to aggravate you. You’re seen as someone possibly having a mental break. Or is it drugs or some kind of substance abuse.
On the internet now it’s unavoidable. These crazies are out here. They’re aggravated. They jump down anyones throat. On much of social media it’s the only way they know how to be. Just belligerence against belligerence all the time. Nobody talks like a normal human being. It’s like they’re derealized. Dissociated.
A basic fact that internet has no moderators anymore. They’re moderators in name only. The definition of the word is lost. To “moderate”. To preside over a discussion. Nobody does this anymore. The crazies are allowed to run amok. There’s some hints of actual moderation on Lemmy instances. The extremists have been grinding away at wearing this down though. In general this kind of thing is completely absent on social media anymore.
The only time I see it anymore comes from people from the older eras of internet. Those to came about in the modern internet have no concept of civility.
I don’t know how tech (il)literate people are anymore but a basic laptop with portable drives containing media. Portable drives with single folders containing movies, audioooks, music. Compile a few playlist files. Make sure a reasonable player like VLC is the default.
Seems kind of hard to mess up if you can get the nurses to play a list of media once in a while. It’s a simple as a few clicks.
“Everybody out there that’s watching, everybody that’s watching this world? This world is bullshit. You shouldn’t model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we’re wearing and what we’re saying and everything.” - Fiona Apple.
Same with randomly getting accused of being a pedo in public. This is not a thing that’s happened nor have a ever been afraid of. Are all those guys projecting something. Must be.
Probably the same person.
People don’t like being forced to engage with belligerent reactionaries.
I dislike it too. I’m not surprised at all. I’m not the brightest but the one thing I’ll lay claim to is having seen this train wreck the whole way. Our generations were raised to be hyper-individualist neoliberals. It’s everyone for themselves and we’re all worse off for it. We’re crabs in a bucket.
I didn’t have those words to conceptualize it as a kid but I saw it in the way we’ve been pit against each other since the beginning. It’s an unsustainable model. I’m not surprised the state of the world, especially the economy today.
What I don’t get is if everyone is so smart then why am I the only one that seems to be seeing it. Operative word being “seems”. I know a lot of other people see it too. As evidenced by whole posts like this.
But as a collective. We’re supposed to be the most educated and most open minded generations ever (in terms of breadth of knowledge, not political leaning). Yet we seem to be regressing to worse off states of being than ever. What the hell is even that about?
No, I don’t buy into blaming the “boomers”. They voted for what they wanted collectively. Collectively. Everyone accuses them of being selfish. If anything our generations are just as selfish. I personally think we’re more.
I don’t buy into blaming the top 0.01% either. They are a product of our collective obsession with money and materialism. I do blame much of the top two-digit percentages. I really don’t care if you’re a multi-milionaire or soon to be worlds first trillionaire. You’re all running the same race. Just with different scores. A butterfly flapping its wings could have just as well re-arranged those musical chairs to put anyone at the top.
The younger generations have the voting power now. But there’s always excuses designed to dodge the truth. Whatever we’re upset with about the world today is our own responsibility now. The truth is it sucks because too many of us are making it suck.