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Being Raised by the Internet

jimmyhmiller.github.io

71–80 of 331 posts

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#71

We are going to see a lot of children (and adults) raised by chatbots. Asking them for advice, confiding in them where real people don't seem safe, etc. Through the looking glass! Still, definitely better than asking Reddit for relationship advice

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?

not just training; they'll be used for background checks and targeted assassinations

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#72

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 friends in a way. But on reddit, everyone is just faceless, I will never chat with the same person there again. So no sense of community, don't learn to feel empathy for others in the same way.

I also wonder how my choice of games affected this. Playing WoW, you had to behave, get friends, join a guild, and spent time with those. I got friends I've visited in other countries, and learned much about life elsewhere through this. But my irl friends playing FPS shooting games on xbox live? Mostly swearing and trash talk, never to see the players again after getting a new random pairing.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't imagine these kind of initiatives not to exist on the other side of the ocean. From all i read here, i must assume so though.

There is nothing remotely similar. Have you noticed it's only in our cities you seem to really hear about the homeless poor? It isn't the corollary of overall population distribution that it might intuitively look like.

I just read following are available throughout the entire USA so I guess there is some hope?

Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline. This hotline provides 24/7 support for children and adults concerned about child abuse.

National Runaway Safeline (1-800-RUNAWAY)

Boys Town National Hotline (1-800-448-3000).

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with this black and white thinking you won’t find any trends or patterns anywhere in real life. To rephrase the question, who was influential on the internet? What biases and ideals were on the internet due to those selection effects. For example, the internet was very secular and perhaps nihilistic. Where does that come from.

It is a remarkable reading of my comment, in which I identify where black-and-white thinking has led your analysis into error, that can mistake that criticism for the error it describes. It really isn't a simple question you're asking, is the problem. If I thought it needed less than a book to answer, why would I be about to recommend books?

I think the response was an uncharitable reading of my comment. Obviously you get 10 people together and you have all kinds of demographics even in the same neighborhood. The question is about which of many are dominant, or which are simply missing. I didn’t think that needed to be said.

> It really isn't a simple question you're asking,

I agree. I apologize for miscommunication and if you have any books to share please do.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#76

[flagged]

I sometimes wonder how much of a difference being raised on PC-s vs phones or tablets is there.

I am young enough that when I grew up phones started to become mainstream, and anecdotally people that started using PC-s before phones developed greater interest in technology later on.

In a way computers allow you to break stuff and learn how to fix it. Phones put you in a sandbox with a hose of internet content.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#77

Of course nothing on the internet is new, it just assumes a default culture and philosophy which is less prominent in real life. It would be interesting to pin early internet to a particular demographic. Is it 90s stem graduate students primarily in the US? Middle class engineers?

I would instead say, as many have, that the entire wonder of the young Internet was that it couldn't be tied to just one demographic.

We have to differentiate between the "young Internet" that existed before Eternal September and the internet that existed afterwards, which is just "young" relative to most current users.

The former was definitely an elite monoculture composed of primarily young, white, nerdy American college students and faculty. It would be correct to say internet culture, for better or worse, comprised the common interests and affectations of that culture.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#78

Of course nothing on the internet is new, it just assumes a default culture and philosophy which is less prominent in real life. It would be interesting to pin early internet to a particular demographic. Is it 90s stem graduate students primarily in the US? Middle class engineers?

The earlier you go, the easier it is to pinpoint a single demographic (although not sure what's the point in doing that). But from '95 on, I'd say it's pretty misleading to point that to US or middle class engineers. Even in 95, it was already available to non-ranked university students in peripheric countries, and not just for those studying at engineering faculties. Although most web content at that time was related to porn (90%) and jokes (9%) and some other content (1% - probably stem and engineering?), but I don't know exactly in what philosophy that content is considered prominent and default. From 2000, it was accessible and even not too expensive for most middle class households by landline. From that time on, it was more about which demographic is not yet present... I think you had to wait e.g., another 10-12 years for mobile-first minors and for the idle retired people.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with different life experiences should just be quietly written off due to the faulty assumptions they might make out of ignorance. > If you feel you've noticed an odd ellipticality in accounts like these, the vague sense of something going unsaid, it's this. If that's all you've noticed, better not to pry. In what context? Work acquaintances chatting over coffee at the office? Parasocial public discussions on…

You give the impression here of having taken something I said quite personally. I hope I may be forgiven for not yet really understanding what or why. Likewise, my responses may be somewhat less on point for the distraction. The account under discussion is attributed public speech on the Internet. In other contexts, other conventions apply. There are about as many such contexts as there are kinds of relationships bet…

The bit I quoted seemed to be saying that curiosity and wanting to understand things are bad.

Maybe that can be off topic and so out of place at work, but in online arguments prompted by something intentionally made public?

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't even unreasonable as a cultural norm, although it is that those who most firmly enforce it also cherish silly habits like saying "bring your whole self to work." The expectation of not oversharing needs to be met by a commitment of not over- asking, but I suppose that's really too much to expect in an age so degraded that all the obligations across lines of social class are understood to run in only one di…

I once heard, in a different century, that the "modal restaurant script" differed between the US and the UK in that in the former, the waitstaff asks the diners a bunch of (to a cultural outsider) overly prying questions, while in the latter, the diners ask them of the waitstaff. Still true? Never was?

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. Servers need to be active and show they're being attentive in order to get tips.

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