The internet compresses culture from analog beginnings to symbolic interchange, whether voice image or text. Of course culture is worse, the internet renders it maladaptive in every dimension possible with only a few exceptions.
Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
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Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#32I've observed a trend, both across my own life, and also seems to pattern match elsewhere. It's the idea that the dearer something is, the more carefully it's used, or inversely the cheaper something is the more we waste it. I've noticed it in the sense of money, "environmentalism" (green washed products get consumed more, despite using less being the better response), computing resources, publishing/printing books etc.
I am noticing that the internet makes discourse/arguments essentially "free" and seem to mostly contain garbage takes.
I also am wondering about this same trend with human lives as we break 8B and folks seem to be flippant even with lives.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the world was smaller, it was harder for people to get together with their common interests. There wasn't anyone around the coffee pot or water cooler who I could talk to about the shows or music I liked. Thankfully, nowadays I can find people from all around the world who listen and watch the same things as me. The net effect is...Such a relief.
When the world was smaller, it was harder for people to get together with their common interests. There wasn't anyone around the coffee pot or water cooler who I could talk to about the shows or music I liked. That was a feature, not a bug. You broadened your knowledge, and did the same for the people you talked with. Compulsive navel-gazing is not healthy, individually, or for society.
This would be the case if the people who liked the most poopular things ever tried things outside of that, and there was a shared swapping of preferences, and openness on all sides.
But there never is. If you like things that are niche then you don't get a "Oh, that's not something I've heard of, tell me about it!" - and I agree that the world would be a better place if you did.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#34If this article resonates with you in even the smallest way, I urge you to read Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". I am currently re-reading this book and am amazed by the apparent accuracy of his analysis, which is that the mediums in which we communicate or express information (print vs. TV vs. TikTok) have a massively understated role in the quality and type…
Yes! There are related works: The Medium is the Message and the television program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFwVCHkL-JU "A medium is not something neutral. It does something to people." and The Society of the Spectacle. When I reread this, I was alarmed at how applicable it is today. Problems: We don't really have any remedy. We can see if we look, but what to do?
> The Society of the Spectacle. When I reread this, I was alarmed at how applicable it is today.
i read this too young and it set me up for a lifetime of hopeless depression. highly recommended. i just started 'simulacra and simulation' and the development on the ideas covered in 'spectacle' is even less optimistic.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#35Yes. Considering you cannot even say write/speak things without vindictive people using various methods like down voting or abusive language to stifle conversation and discussion and that has metastasized into things like "moderator" censorship and evil like shadow banning, hiding conversations ... not from being said, but controlling what adult humans are allowed to see ... all of which are directly and inherently treasonous for Americans to engage in due to their responsibility to uphold and defend the Constitution and the universal human right to free speech; then yes, it seems clear the internet, as the replacement of the public square AND books/newspapers, etc, as well as simply just universal freedom of expression and communication has made not just culture, but humanity worse off.
The "positivity ration" claims it takes 3:1 good things to overcome a bad thing. I would argue though that the nature of the evil that the internet facilitates is not just many bad things, but they also taint all the other things. We are in effect moving into a dynamic that is related to the pre-printing press era, when the ruling class had total control over information and the dissemination of it.
If you interrogate that aspect of history, you will clearly see the thread of that impulse throughout especially European history, even after the advent of the printing press. It was the same before the internet when things like state radio/TV stations and rules controlled what could be said and how. The internet briefly breached that containment from about '90 to '10s, until the speech control and tone policing or even the constant change and shift of language to dominate people.
It is naive, childish, and underdeveloped to simply take all the positives of the internet and ignore that there are many turds floating in that punch bowl.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#36When the world was smaller, it was easier for people to get together and find common interests. I'll never forget gathering around the coffee pot or water cooler with friends at work. "Did you see Seinfeld or Friends last night?" There's nothing like this any more. Nobody listens or watches to the same things. The net effect is...I'm tired. Just so tired.
Exactly: there's still great culture being created, somewhere out there; it's just unable to find its audience amongst the noise.
Exactly. And the noise, in all forms, has been exponentially increasing. In every medium there is “good” - even in like the “TikTok and its clones” category… but it competes with idiotic rage bait and engagement bait like the “life hacks” that intentionally make no sense, uncreative political BS, advertisements for only fans models, and of course, AI-generated everything that masquerades as content but is actually devoid of meaning or usefulness.
I blame the ad-supported model for everything.
Ad-supported is what made the Internet’s adolescence, in the early 00s, so impactful, because it paid the bills, or at least promised a path to profitability to VCs who paid the bills.
But once the adtech got good enough and everything went mobile, ad revenue became the ultimate bad incentive driver for everyone. Nobody at NBC in 1950 could dream of getting viewers to spend 8 hours a day watching TV, but that kind of watch time is 100% possible today and the TikToks, IG and YouTubes of the world won’t rest unless average watch time reaches 24.00 hours per day.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#37When the world was smaller, it was easier for people to get together and find common interests. I'll never forget gathering around the coffee pot or water cooler with friends at work. "Did you see Seinfeld or Friends last night?" There's nothing like this any more. Nobody listens or watches to the same things. The net effect is...I'm tired. Just so tired.
I think what you're describing is that we used to have more common experiences. When Seinfeld was on, there were far fewer video options, and very few high quality ones. Just like how before there were hundreds of thousands of radio stations, most were "full service," so you were exposed to things you didn't necessarily like or want (farm news, blues, morning chat shows). But you were aware that they existed and shar…
> Today, very often people silo themselves into a single genre, or even subgenre, of music, and anything else is "other" and bad.
I heard many people who grew up before 2000 say their children, grandchildren, students, or so listened to more varied music than they did at the same ages. I heard none say the opposite.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#38> The 20th century, apparently, was the last time we had great art, literature, or music. this is totally absurd. I'm in middle age and the golden era of music for me is the late aughts, mostly bedroom recordings that never would have seen the light of day in the age of MTV. I might agree with the thesis of the piece overall but it's hard to continue after such an obviously asinine statement
That first paragraph also seemed a bit over-the-top to me, but keep in mind it's immediately followed by:
> That’s the argument, at least, of W. David Marx...
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#39Culture isn't getting worse, it's getting further and further towards what the masses want. Throughout history very few people got a voice about what culture was created or offered. In the 1700s, the culture that was created targeted the people who could pay for it: the aristocracy and the very richest of wealthy merchants (people who could afford to be patrons). Culture targeted them. In the early 1900s, the people…
This is a really insightful observation. I hadn’t looked at it through this lens before.
Re: Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
The internet is making everyone feel like what most of us nerds used to feel like. Good riddance, I’d say
As another nerd who grew up on the rural side of my country, the internet was a huge blessing and once we first got our first modem in our house I finally got to experience how it felt to talk to people who cared about the same things as me. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
> I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
not even an in-person community of people with similar interests?