> ten years ago Steve 'Asshole' Jobs played a hilarious prank on all the digitally-illiterate 20th century luddites by pick-pocketing their ol' trust, reliable telephones and replaced them with computers instead. Tee-hee! Let's see if they notice the difference! And then he promptly died.
> The result, we see today, is a stratified understanding of "the internet".
> One level consists of everyone who really knows what the internet is. The internet's early adopters were a bunch of nerdy white males out of touch with society, guilty as charged. Annoying athiests and such. The thing is that this group (which I count myself among) knows how communities online function because they've been part of them for decades. They've lived the lifecycle of growth and collapse of forums (platforms) again and again. They see how technology brings people together, but not the people in their immediate life. Rather, safely brings anonymous groups of people who hide behind pseudonyms and avatars together through common interest and lively discussion and debate. [...] They see the new digital medium for what it is: connections between individual users spread across many different forums and platforms which are ever-changing, rising and falling. friends/strangers/communities first, platforms/sites second.
> Another level, the social media level, is what Fruit Juice Jobs foisted onto the unsuspecting public who now think they understand current technology and the state of the art of digital communications. Of course, they don't. They are sold a bill of goods and put all their identities into profiles which are used to sell them shit. And of course now they are vulnerable to a) people who spend hours arguing on the internet and tearing stranger's ideas apart (me right now) and b) actual trolls who love exploiting psychological vulnurabilites to make their victims squirm and squee and cry and through tantrums for the sake of drama (4chan, etc.). This decade-young group has no experience in what the internet actually and take no personal responsibility for their own online safety. For instance, they assume or act like a) Twitter will be around forever and b)Twitter can just block the bad guys and create a peaceful, harmonious online community. They cede all personal responsibility to a corporate hiearchy, like they were customers in a fast-food joint demanding to speak to a manager or some shit. They see and use the old medium in the new one, as McLuhan would say. Like how every town they visit has the same half-dozen franchises, their internet consists of the same top-5 "apps" and Google. Platforms and friends first, strangers/communities second.