Other commenters have already articulated how internet subcultures are comparable to other historical examples social subcultures. I think the first order bit is to ask the question if being an internet person produces a imminent threat to human civilization. Personally I perceive physical decay in our well being, happiness, and an overall reduction in the quality of live. I often am reminded how people use to spend their time in the physical space and wonder if we just spent 5% of the time on the internet supporting our local communities we would have a objectively better human experience. It's not that I perceive the internet inherently bad. However, as a tool for psychological distraction, it is incredibly effective and often used against our personal best interests.
I don’t want to be an internet person
101–110 of 319 posts
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#102I don't want to be a Stanford art major who describes people they meet in passive-aggressive terms like, "clear skin and dead, vacant eyes".
That comment is not passive-aggression, the second part of the description is an overt denigration.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#103[deleted]
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#104"All my friends are online. Will people forget about me if I am not on the internet?" Yes. But they really weren't your friends to begin with, so it doesn't matter.
I see this a lot, but is it actually true? Friendships are built on a shared interest / shared activities, and frequent contact. When you stop using the communication medium your friends use, then you just added friction to reach you, which stops frequent contact. you slowly go from a friend to an old friend or a distant old friend. There is a reason that when you move, its a lot harder to keep up with your old neigh…
There's a difference between a real friend and someone you have some affinity with and currently happen to share a community of some sort. It's fairly common to meet a friend while attending a particular elementary school, going to a church, playing a sport, but when you finish school, stop going to that church, stop playing the sport, you remain friends. It's obviously common to lose touch with a bunch of people and never talk to them again, either. Those were not your true friends.
Which raises an interesting question. Is it possible at all to have a relationship that purely takes place on a web platform that will continue after you leave the platform?
"The" communication medium your friends use seemingly shouldn't matter. A person you only interact with when there is no friction involved isn't much of a friend.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#105The pattern here is not the internet but these people being severely autistic and so they are probably forced to thrive online where they aren't having to deal with eye contact or other social queues that they can't really process. Not even sure what this was meant to be, but it should probably be rewritten to "I don't want to be an autistic person" and it would have read the exact same way. Even down to the preferre…
I found the author's pointed lack of bothering to ask about pronouns when the subject of their investigation posts under different ly gendered pseudonyms; use of the words "normal people" and infiltrating a group only to neg them to be more problematic than anything. The subject of the article might be a real shitheel. But the author doesnt do us any favours by cloaking themselves in being a Voice of the Normal while…
Outside a college campus in California, nowhere else in the world do people ask for pronouns when they meet a person. It's not a normal human interaction.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#106I'm pretty sure this generalizes to everything. People who cultivate a persona in any sub-culture or domain seem to be a fish out of water when confronted in a different context. Take someone from the rave scene and plop them down in a microbrewery bar and everyone will gawk at the brightly colored fidgety person that has no idea what to order. Take a polished SV entrepreneur and deposit them in an Idaho roadhouse an…
> People who cultivate a persona in any sub-culture or domain seem to be a fish out of water when confronted in a different context.
It's possible to generalize too much:
1. The size of the different context and the extent to which someone feels like a fish out of water matters. It's one thing to say that someone might feel a bit out of place if they were suddenly dropped into an unfamiliar festival in another country. It's another to say that many people in a particular subculture are almost incapable of having normal human interactions in any offline context.
2. Sub-cultures aren't all equal, and it's possible for certain subcultures to encourage behavior that most people would consider anti-social or unhealthy.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> lack of bothering to ask about pronouns Because no body actually cares, no body will use your made up pronouns. > use of the words "normal people" and infiltrating a group only to neg them to be more problematic than anything. Isn't it obvious that the people in this group are clearly not normal?, they even admit themselves!
How are peoples' names less made up than their pronouns? It seems just as rude to refuse to use someone's preferred name as you would their preferred pronouns.
Outside of a small set of Twitter/Tumblr/TikTok bubbles (which overlap in userbase), pronouns are fixed: he/she/they (rarely they). Xe/Xir is not something average people will honor or use.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#108The pattern here is not the internet but these people being severely autistic and so they are probably forced to thrive online where they aren't having to deal with eye contact or other social queues that they can't really process. Not even sure what this was meant to be, but it should probably be rewritten to "I don't want to be an autistic person" and it would have read the exact same way. Even down to the preferre…
I found the author's pointed lack of bothering to ask about pronouns when the subject of their investigation posts under different ly gendered pseudonyms; use of the words "normal people" and infiltrating a group only to neg them to be more problematic than anything. The subject of the article might be a real shitheel. But the author doesnt do us any favours by cloaking themselves in being a Voice of the Normal while…
The only real way out is solitude.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#109A great way to test the difference between the online and offline world is to boast about something you accomplished in a family gathering, say thanksgiving.
"I scored 3 goals in last weekend's game".
That's wonderful! (nobody truly cares, but it's still recognized and celebrated.)
"I got 40 likes on my last tweet"
???
"Wait, it gets better: 20 people watched me play a game. Had to stay up until 4AM but still, worth it."
???
Truly, nobody gives a shit. It means so little that people will not even pretend to recognize it. It's more like a negative accomplishment that gets people worried that you have poor judgement in life.
Re: I don’t want to be an internet person
#110I don't really think this is a new or interesting phenomenon just because it involves the internet; since the first subculture existed, people have sought them out and/or molded them in order to be a big fish in an incredibly tiny pond. This guy doesn't represent "online" or "the internet" any more than Bob Smith, who rules the entire North Boise Yu-Gi-Oh community (all seven members of it) with an iron fist, represents the physical world and human interaction in it.
As other commenters have noted, the subject of the article is apparently also a terrible person and possibly a psychopath. Which again, runs true to type; he's found the largest possible community where he capable of being enough of a Big Deal to abuse people with impunity. Which, as it turns out, is pretty small and esoteric.