Has the Internet become toxic ?

[Steve]

@rubber_jonnie ok I didn't realise it was such an old term, but besides that I do think my thoughts around modern language being pushed towards extremes rather than 'in betweens/greys' is a fairly accurate observation. Even if I don't like it, doesn't make my observations incorrect.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie ok I didn't realise it was such an old term, but besides that I do think my thoughts around modern language being pushed towards extremes rather than 'in betweens/greys' is a fairly accurate observation. Even if I don't like it, doesn't make my observations incorrect.

And I don't necessarily disagree with you, there are a lot of things that have changed, and not all for the better.

[exxos]

I got my graphics guy to redo the donkey image and added in my version a better ending.

exxos.jpg (219.78 KiB) Viewed 1550 times

For those who don't like the ending, go back to step one and argue for the next 40 pages.

[derkom]

[troed]

Actually a huge part of the reason is nation state troll farms. And I'm not joking, we know this from investigations having been made into Facebook and Twitter users. Contrary to popular belief, these troll farms don't really push a single narrative ("Brexit!" or "Trump!") - they push division. E.g., that ultra-woke blue haired leftist yelling at people for not using pronouns might be (and in some cases we know this to be true) one of these trolls. These then set the tone that others (regular people) follow and find "normal".

Russia especially, but not exclusively, have used this tactic to "create cracks in society" in the West.

One of the most common comments from people with large a following who move from Twitter to Mastodon is ... "wow. People are so friendly." Comments aren't filled with hatred as soon as they post something. The reason for that is quite simple - we (I'm a moderator on a large instance) ban troll farms on sight. We have no advertisers to keep happy with "numer of accounts go up!" metrics etc.

[Cosmic Puppet]

Actually a huge part of the reason is nation state troll farms. And I'm not joking, we know this from investigations having been made into Facebook and Twitter users. Contrary to popular belief, these troll farms don't really push a single narrative ("Brexit!" or "Trump!") - they push division. E.g., that ultra-woke blue haired leftist yelling at people for not using pronouns might be (and in some cases we know this to be true) one of these trolls. These then set the tone that others (regular people) follow and find "normal".

Russia especially, but not exclusively, have used this tactic to "create cracks in society" in the West.

One of the most common comments from people with large a following who move from Twitter to Mastodon is ... "wow. People are so friendly." Comments aren't filled with hatred as soon as they post something. The reason for that is quite simple - we (I'm a moderator on a large instance) ban troll farms on sight. We have no advertisers to keep happy with "numer of accounts go up!" metrics etc.

After giving up Facebook and having real interactions with people I have come to realise that in the 'real' world people generally get along fine. The 'culture war' doesn't really exist. At least not in the way it appears online. I'm trying to careful how I think. When people become ists (cyclist, motorists...) they cease to become human. Left-wing, right-wing etc are used to dismiss people...

[troed]

After giving up Facebook and having real interactions with people I have come to realise that in the 'real' world people generally get along fine. The 'culture war' doesn't really exist. At least not in the way it appears online.

This just popped up in my feed, seems like relevant support:

Data scientists at Stanford recently found that 74% of the conflicts on Reddit were instigated by only 1% of the users. And worse than that, the researchers found that most of these online conflicts were not fought by those who started them. They were fought by the innocent bystanders that got sucked into them.

https://markmanson.net/most-people-are-good

[Cosmic Puppet]

After giving up Facebook and having real interactions with people I have come to realise that in the 'real' world people generally get along fine. The 'culture war' doesn't really exist. At least not in the way it appears online.

This just popped up in my feed, seems like relevant support:

Data scientists at Stanford recently found that 74% of the conflicts on Reddit were instigated by only 1% of the users. And worse than that, the researchers found that most of these online conflicts were not fought by those who started them. They were fought by the innocent bystanders that got sucked into them.

https://markmanson.net/most-people-are-good

Yeah, I agree with it. I guess also in the past focusing on the negative kept you alive from predators etc.

[exxos]

The thing is I work in the public sector and meet people all the time. Generally my customer base are very friendly and helpful people. It really is like being on a different planet compared to the Internet. So I can understand some perspectives here. A lot of the times it really makes my head hurt. Because I go from a very friendly environment in the real world to a toxic one online. In both respects there are still people.

However I also somewhat disagree with the "one bad apple spoils the barrel" analogy when I can literally see 50+ people on Facebook where every single one of them Is being sarcastic or insulting because somebody " lost their cat". I wish I had taken screenshots about this but it was just too irritating to keep. But this is basically what I see all the time why I avoid Facebook generally now. And indeed other "communities".

This subject has also popped up with my customers as well where they ask if I'm on Facebook and if people recommend me there etc. and they also agree that they got sick of people's attitudes on Facebook so rarely visit there any more either. So while there may be "one bad apple" unfortunately that one bad apple seems to be grouping together to spoil 100 barrels.

It brings you back to my first experiences on the Internet where I was on a usenet group and not really doing much of anything just messing about like everyone else did continuously on the group. I don't even remember what I said, it was something along the lines of a silly comment about what people thought about one guy dating to women that want salt to women dating to the guys. Something to that effect. One person took offence, and I defended myself what I said. And the whole thing blew up. I got called all names under the sun and this argument went on for endless hours for over two weeks.

This is where apparently one guy said he was a psychiatrist of sorts and said I really need to contact him. Which I did, and I even think I posted some of that conversation on here at some point. That guy was a total ass hole. Whether he was generally a psychiatrist or not... It may not be the right term but he was all those people who helped alcoholics. But even so that guy was a total dick.

I think in all this heated argument I think one person actually tried to defend me and try to convince other people that I was not trying to deliberately start anything, which I wasn't. However soon as I started replying again and agreeing with him, everyone flared up again. I lost much sleep over all that. And this is going back probably to around the late 1990's. I don't really see things have improved much since then personally.

This is why after years of dealing with this type of crap with people, I would just rather ban people or just not get involved because there really is no point.

I certainly don't regret my time on the Internet as such, because while I have not met a lot of people on he I do trust them as my friends. And I think I have come into contact with a lot of like-minded and friendly people. It just unfortunate that in my opinion this is a very small percentage of people.

I have also been a lot of drug-related crimes and such around our areas and surrounding towns. Generally teenagers and such. They were constantly smashing my van and other cars on the street for a long time. The police got involved with all that as well. I even went down the entire street one day asking people about what they thought about all this crap. Their responses were really quite bizarre.

But there was one old lady that was bedridden who a few months later at her house broken into by one of the local drug use and stole her medication she died not long after because of that. Of course this could be one person but it never is. There were several druggies around the area smashing up cars and really did not care. It was even in the news that they were literally walking in front of traffic screaming I want to die all the time.

I can understand people have problems or mental health problems I don't claim otherwise. But I am classing them as bad apples because of the sheer chaos they cause by themselves. And it never is just one person it is always multiple people.

Similar as I said before, the police are often no help either. There are couple of teenagers who constantly drive up and down the road on loud mopeds and people have been complaining about it for years and nothing is ever done about it.

Maybe the odd problem with the odd teenager, but it's never just one it is always people on motorbikes, people long cars crashing into shops, druggies wandering about, people getting stabbed or shot. That "one person" quickly adds up into a big problem.

So I guess it depends on people's perspectives. It may be one person out of 100 is a druggy, not exactly bad odds as it ? But then when there is another person who is stabbing people, are you classing that in the same 100 people or not ? either way, it turns into a total continuous nightmare of idiots in my opinion. I don't think it is really possible to put all this into any sort of statistics.I have not really thought about it in that respect.

So are people are generally good or generally bad ? Depends where you are at the time, whether it be in the real world or on the Internet.

I class people on this form as generally good people. But we have stricter policing in that respect. We have had a few bad apples yes and they are gone. People on Facebook, I do see its generally bad people and I just avoid pretty much every group these days. There are of course good people on there. But the idiots just drown them out to the point it is just not worth bothering any more.