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7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

pewresearch.org

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Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#271

Post by ghaff »

daniellarusso wrote: post #136
gfxgirl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is different. It's as different as books+magazines vs the internet. TV on the internet (ie, video) has basically an infinite supply. I couldn't binge 70hrs of Game of Thrones followed by 70 hours of Breaking Bad before "TV on the internet" nor could I watch an endless number of documentaries and tutorials on youtube.

Growing up, my friend’s parents literally had 100s of VHS tapes, of many TV series and movies they had dubbed. There was always something to watch. Of course, you had to physically be at their house.

Or you could go down to the local video store and rent something (or, for that matter, go to a movie theater). I'd probably argue that pre-VCR was more different from post-VCR than time-shifting/rental era was different from today's streaming.

As with many things, the friction and need to plan is less today but the VCR freed you from the network schedule to a significant degree.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#272

Post by ipaddr »

bradlys wrote: post #108
ipaddr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the internet bbs boards existed. Calling a board was a different experience. Playing games on computers didn't require an internet connection. Often you traded disks. Having no internet opens up the possibilities the computer can do. You start exploring and using more of it.

As someone who dealt with not having internet on a computer before, I’d say it’s pretty limiting these days. You can do stuff but only if you know how to do stuff to begin with. And the software preloaded on some OSes isn’t exactly enough to keep you entertained for eternity. If you don’t know how to do things then not having internet is pretty limiting. After all, most software out there doesn’t come with robust doc…

Only expensive software came with instruction manuals (embedded instructions weren't a thing) but when they did they were leather bound. You really had to figure things out yourself.

Let's say you had a c64. You have no software installed so you have to type in a program or possible load one from a disk. Completely different mindset.

Fast forward years and you have lan doom parties. Everyone goes to a store and plays on a hardwired network.

The internet is great.. there is life outside of it if it disappeared.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#273

Post by drdeadringer »

justapassenger wrote: post #90
random5634 wrote: post #76

I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive. Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports. So you'd come back to th…

Part of what you’re describing can be attributed to lack of internet. But other part is just being an outsider that doesn’t really care that much (and I mean that in totally non offensive way - it’s just a benefit of being an outsider). Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news, newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller scale,…

> Outrage existed long before internet

I recall the film 'Network' with its "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" thread.

Among other messages.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#274

Post by LoLFactor »

It's funny how so many people came here to complain about the state of the internet... on the internet. Maybe it's just me and I don't get it, but if you don't want to be on the internet anymore, just yank the ethernet cable out of your computer and cancel your plan. One less bill to pay, right?

Coming here to complain and not seeing the ridiculousness in it makes me think some of the people in this thread need to take a long look at themselves and ponder if they might, in fact, be part of a certain cohort that actually makes the internet a worse place to be.

Just my two cents. Feel free to downvote.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#276

Post by protomyth »

hehetrthrthrjn wrote: post #66

Roughly speaking: it's the old, the poor, the uneducated, and the rural. That's not terribly surprising.

I'm betting a lot of rural folks have better internet than those in Silicon Valley. Given I live and work among the poor, rural, and forgotten and the internet (Facebook, Netflix) is being used all the time, I doubt the geography aspect.

I do want to see this studies raw questions/ data gathering.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#277

Post by dbetteridge »

LightG wrote: post #231
alnorth wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that whoever you follow (whether they're friends, family or just interesting people) they ARE following the outrage parts. And of course there's the "trending" sidebars, and ads and other stuff that gets injected into your timeline without you asking for it. So things bleed in no matter how careful you are. The platforms are designed to drag you in and outrage you. Trying to avoid that is a constant ba…

Exactly this. My current move is to delete Facebook completely (well, deleted that years ago). I just didn't find as much value there as elsewhere on the internet. And the psychological cost wasn't worth the little value there was there. So, complete deletion. Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no one. I have a separate list of profiles I find interesting. I have to physically go to that list and click…

I use

twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]

In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#278

Post by dbetteridge »

tome wrote: post #236
alnorth wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that whoever you follow (whether they're friends, family or just interesting people) they ARE following the outrage parts. And of course there's the "trending" sidebars, and ads and other stuff that gets injected into your timeline without you asking for it. So things bleed in no matter how careful you are. The platforms are designed to drag you in and outrage you. Trying to avoid that is a constant ba…

This doesn't address all the issues you raise, but my hack to deal with the Twitter sidebar is to set it to a language and region I don't understand. 1. Click "Show more" at the bottom of "What's happening" 2. Click the "settings cog" at the top of the page 3. Uncheck "Show content in this location" 4. Click "Explore locations" and choose a location whose language you can't read and you know nothing about. And to avo…

I use

twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]

In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#279

Post by re-actor »

LoLFactor wrote: post #274

It's funny how so many people came here to complain about the state of the internet... on the internet. Maybe it's just me and I don't get it, but if you don't want to be on the internet anymore, just yank the ethernet cable out of your computer and cancel your plan. One less bill to pay, right? Coming here to complain and not seeing the ridiculousness in it makes me think some of the people in this thread need to ta…

For most people here, getting rid of the internet would also mean changing careers to one of the few remaining things you can do professionally without using the internet.

"You criticize thing yet you also use it, how curious" is such a banal take it's literally a meme.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#280

Post by CivBase »

LoLFactor wrote: post #274

It's funny how so many people came here to complain about the state of the internet... on the internet. Maybe it's just me and I don't get it, but if you don't want to be on the internet anymore, just yank the ethernet cable out of your computer and cancel your plan. One less bill to pay, right? Coming here to complain and not seeing the ridiculousness in it makes me think some of the people in this thread need to ta…

I assume the complaints about "the internet" are mostly referring to the parts of the web people interact with most frequently, which would definitely not include HN comments. facebook.com alone probably serves more page requests in an hour than ycombinator.com does in a year.
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