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

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

#361

Post by jhbadger »

silverfox17 wrote: post #341
busterarm wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the guy telling everyone they're using heroin wrong and the fact that it destroys their life is their problem. No, guy. The concensus is growing around social media being really fucking toxic.

Just don't follow toxic sources, that's all he's advocating. If someone's sharing memes from a crazy political page, either block that page or remove the friend. People say social media like Facebook is toxic for the most part because they only deal with toxic people.

The problem is that many of these "toxic people" are one's relatives that you can't just easily cut out of your life. Before social media, when they started on a racist rant or something you could get them to change the topic to sports or something, but these days they get encouragement in their extreme views from lots of other people they would have never met in real life.

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

#363

Post by tclancy »

silverfox17 wrote: post #341
busterarm wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the guy telling everyone they're using heroin wrong and the fact that it destroys their life is their problem. No, guy. The concensus is growing around social media being really fucking toxic.

Just don't follow toxic sources, that's all he's advocating. If someone's sharing memes from a crazy political page, either block that page or remove the friend. People say social media like Facebook is toxic for the most part because they only deal with toxic people.

It doesn't work that way. I pruned both Twitter and Facebook intentionally in the way you suggest and it became pretty clear (or maybe it's my biases) that both run on outrage. Facebook would insist on bringing arguments to the top of my feed as best it could. As an example, I am friends with a regional sportswriter on FB and he had a post asking something sports/ politics related. It generated about 50 responses, so FB condenses that into 2-3 replies and then offers to let you click to see more. Amazingly, the part it decided to call out was the one argument in the 50 comment thread. Controversy and upset are what drives engagement in social media.

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

#364

Post by samlevine »

lmm wrote: post #216
dhosek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Unfortunately, the people that I care about mostly want to talk about what they're outraged about.

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

#365

Post by ghaff »

after_care wrote: post #307
ghaff wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I watch 1 hour of Netflix a month I spend just as much money as if I were to watch 400 hours of Netflix. The cost of VCR rental scaled linearly with the amount of content, and the friction of renting was a significantly larger barrier than auto-play next episode.

Clearly the friction is much lower today. I'm certainly not arguing that Netflix is effectively just the same thing as VCR rentals. But, as someone who watched TV not only pre-VCR but pre-cable, being able to go from having to watch whatever was being broadcast right this minute to be able to time-shift/rent/buy was certainly a much bigger change for me than on-demand streaming is. Especially if Netflix' DVD rental business weren't being allowed to decay, I'd be pretty happy just watching movies that way and maybe go back to timeshifting with a TiVo.

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

#366

Post by coldcode »

nonameiguess wrote: post #3

My dad doesn't use the Internet. Not on principle or anything, but he grew up without it, has friends but meets them in person or talks on the phone, same as he has for the past 40 years. He's retired now, but never needed it working as a skilled tradesman with a county job. In retirement, he still builds stuff, but physical stuff. No need for Internet. My ex-wife's mom also didn't use the Internet, but she was a sch…

My mom grew up in Nazi Germany and never went to college. Yet for the last decade of her life she used email and web every day (iMac and then Mac mini) to explore the world (and sometimes actually go there). She didn't need the internet at all, but embraced it anyway. Age is not an obstacle to new things, but attitude is. My uncle and aunt had multiple devices for their entire 80-90 decade of life, until he passed away and she developed too many health issues.

Yet my cousin(s) in a small town in Germany rarely use email or internet at all (which I think is not unusual there) as everything they need is available locally.

I've spent my whole adult life using computers and writing software - I still routinely help people in younger generations explaining things that baffle them. People still have a limited understanding of how the internet works.

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

#367

Post by caturopath »

lmm wrote: post #216
dhosek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

> Did you try just... Not getting outraged?

Yes, they did it by leaving Facebook and Twitter.

That seems like the most obvious strategy for effecting this change.

I don't really understand the line of thinking that somehow you have to will yourself into things rather than changing your environment. I think it misses how predictable peoples' reactions to things really are.

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

#368

Post by caturopath »

ricardobayes wrote: post #257
lmm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It's impossible to avoid even in groups, because for each fb post the algorithm chooses the top 2-3 comments to show. And it will be ones which have the most interaction (replies, emojis). And the ones who outrage will have the most interaction thus will be shown.

FWIW, I use https://socialfixer.com/ to hide politics and COVID posts.

There's not much facebook left over, but oh well.

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

#369

Post by snerbles »

agumonkey wrote: post #353
busterarm wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These apps are still _by design_ trying to capture the maximum amount of your attention. That deserves every ounce of hostility that we can muster. And then some. They are parasites. It doesn't matter if you "made it work for you".

Please don't be crazy. I don't like the current web either but it's important to be objective and calm.

The poster may be impassioned, but characterizing a hot take as "crazy" looks like a bad faith argument.

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

#370

Post by mud_dauber »

silverfox17 wrote: post #341
busterarm wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the guy telling everyone they're using heroin wrong and the fact that it destroys their life is their problem. No, guy. The concensus is growing around social media being really fucking toxic.

Just don't follow toxic sources, that's all he's advocating. If someone's sharing memes from a crazy political page, either block that page or remove the friend. People say social media like Facebook is toxic for the most part because they only deal with toxic people.

Agreed. My FB & TW timelines are 95% non-toxic b/c I muted those people out of my life. The same with news feeds.

It's sufficiently tranquil that my wife now asks to read my feeds. It just took some filter cycles to get there.

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