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Being Raised by the Internet

jimmyhmiller.github.io

151–160 of 331 posts

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#151

I grew up in a rural part of the United States. First got online in 1996 when I was 8 years old. The best thing that the Internet gave me was a way to talk to strangers from around the world and make friends with people who I would have never had a chance to interact with in person. In my 20s, it lead to real life friendships with people I had met online, which is really cool. I have used Couch Surfing to make friend…

I also grew up in a rural town, in Norway. I think internet made me more of a "world citizen", empathic to all kinds of people, than I would have been without. A small town can be quite unwelcome to those not like us. But I wonder if some of that is lost now to those being "raised on the internet"? That things are too big. There were small forums, behave, as you know the avatars of everyone and they become your frien…

> things are too big

Yes. Leaving a small town IRL to visit a more appropriate small digital town where people share interests but might be from anywhere was exactly what everyone I knew on early internet bbs/irc/mud was doing, basically. Presumably if you were in a larger city, you could already find people IRL with your interests somehow, even if the interests were obscure. Identity was anonymous but persistent and it was still a small town, so you couldn’t just be an ass all the time or you’d be ostracized.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep your identity small. https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html (Not saying I agree or disagree with the essay but it seemed topical)

I think the central takeaway of this essay is dead wrong, you should aim for the exact opposite. The fewer labels or identities you have yourself, the more strongly you hold on to them and the more fragile your personality. If the only thing you identify yourself by is your job and that gets taken away from you in a downturn, never to return, what's left? A lot of people who are in that situation and don't have other…

>> The fewer labels or identities you have yourself, the more strongly you hold on to them and the more fragile your personality.

Conversely, being beholden and holding onto identities that have no bearing on your success or direction in life which you believe does in fact determine those things seems equally dangerous, no?

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about behavior. What motivates that behavior isn't relevant. A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled. Whether that undue desire is motivated by curiosity, prurience, arrogance, pity, or simple fascination - and I have seen all of these, sometimes in combination - has no bearing on the effect of the question on the one so asked. The vice inheres in the aski…

> A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled. Jesus, is this really what you meant? I can't imagine how barren my life would be if I restricted my interactions with others to only include things to which I was "entitled."

It's not an "all the time" thing, but an aspect of how human relationships work. Like everything else there, it's contextual. In the context of public conversations and professional relationships, it's reasonable to consider there exists a threshold of intimacy beyond which further inquiry is improper.

That shouldn't be a tremendously controversial statement, I hope. If there's a variation on it here, it is only that "improper", again as with anything in human relationships, is contextual and not always obvious, but that there can exist subtexts in a conversation which indicate when it verges thereupon.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red flags galore. You should divorce immediately. Not the asshole. I do fear, in the long term, what happens to those chat logs? Surely they will be used for training later on, and being anonymous doesn't always work out. Will the viewer be more AI bots? Human employees? Law enforcement? A dump on 4chan?

One of the things that bit me is one of those anti-system videos where they tell you not to speak to police or whatever. Turns out it's better just to say "hi officer, yes officer, no officer" than spending the night in jail for absolutely no reason other than "the internet taught me how to react to police answering questions." A more harmless example is when I read that the best way to clean cooking oil spills was t…

I fear you missed something in the don't talk to cops speech.

https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=fhqbLEK3jypnK-k0

Human nature may be to help. It is always a risk to talk to officers. If you are being obstinate, prepare for someone with an authority complex to sit on you. Be also ready for that same person to sit on you for no reason and twist anything you say into a problem. Just don't give them ammo against you.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#155

https://xkcd.com/1311/ "The twenty-first century baby is destined to be rocked and cradled by electricty, warmed and coddled by electricity, perhaps fathered and mothered by electricity. Probably the only thing he will left to do unaidad will be to make love." Mrs. John Lane, The fortnightly 1905

[deleted]

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#156
I was booting Linux while sleeping in a car, and in and out of motels, eating from food banks, with drug addicted parents, as a teenager. There was something to "the internet" back in the day as a way to cope when faced with that sort of situation. The author is not alone. We were blessed to have a computer through it all.

I hope "kids these days" have the same opportunity with their phones.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#157
post #143

The author seems about a decade younger than me and "raised" isn't the word I would use for myself, but I doubt I would have made it if not for the friends I made and the things I learned that way. The thing about pulling yourself up out of a bad situation is that you learn to be usually very deliberate in how you talk about it and what you talk about. People who've never really known anything but stability in their…

I'm not sure what could be going unsaid here. The schizophrenic dad, absent mother, limited and erratic money for food, no adults to do the shopping and cooking, and mentions of programming blogs and escaping poverty all paint a clear picture. It's an open account and I don't feel the need to pry or ask questions about the exact conditions of the household, which were presumably not good, but I don't see anything vag…

You're doing all I could ask.

Early in the history of the thread it looked like there would be a turn toward the sort of "Why didn't he just...?" questions that often tend to arise. They're not more useful in this context than any other, and it was that waste of effort on points uselessly missed that I sought to deter.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#158

I’m glad this author had an endearing experience. I can’t say that I did. I’d blame “being raised on the internet” as a consistent contributor to a lot of negatives in my life. Certainly, I picked up a lot of the rage from people in the IRC circles I ran with, and like a parrot exhibited it in my personal life. Beyond that, the general degradation of IRL social skills. I can say my life took a significant upturn once…

very soon you will notice that a chunk of the people you encounter have a weirdly serene cadence and way of speaking. people who are raised by AI companions will definitely have a particular way of speaking and even thinking.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#159
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australian who has spent time living in the US: yes, the difference is still true today between how waiters at an Australian restaurant and servers at a US restaurant interact with customers. Waiters wait. If you need anything you make eye contact and they come over. Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc. I've always thought it was due to tipping. Serve…

> Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc. The median American in any restaurant with chairs not bolted to the floor can be assumed to operate on roughly the level of a marginally clever, but ill-parented and intemperate, four- or five-year-old child. Even nice places have to deal with this, because neither the child nor the American recognizes any such d…

I'll take even the worst, unkempt dining experience at a deep south waffle house over the treatment that europoor Parisians give to those who don't speak perfect french at even high end restaurants in the heart of Paris. Also, foie gras, traditional veal, and many other European delicacies are disgusting (ethically).

Coincidental, even the ghettos of Baltimore/Detroit likely have a higher GDP per capita than most of continental Europe, and this is validated by the increasingly hilarious US-euro monetary exchange rate.

I'm comforted by seeing lots of snapbacks and "SUPREME" printed on clothes by the five-year-old minded Americans around me, because the alternative is hollier-than-thou European mentality of 1. requiring money to use public bathrooms, 2. not giving water by default at many restaurants (and being too poor for ice when asked for it), and 3. spitting in the food of/protesting the existence of the expats/tourists/immigrants who bankroll your entire nations existence in the first place.

Reap what you sow. Watching the UK get flung deeper and deeper into its recession as a result of one of the most hilariously stupid and preventable economic self-pwns ever (brexit) is especially delicious to watch. Reminds me why we threw off our tyrannical monarchists in the first place.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#160
its interesting that martin scorsese and chris rock both claim that they were essentially raised by television sets. i would say that i was co-parented by a television at least. i would say that it contributed to a blunted, unrealistic understanding of the real world and human relationships. my world view now is that children shouldnt watch television or movies and that they should be immersed in real human relationships. especially those disney movies that have really dramatic, tear jerker scenes. i think that is way too much stimulation for children and that their heart strings should only be tugged by things that are real. those powerful emotions play a role in human development and you shouldnt mess around with that too much.
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