Has the Internet become toxic ?

[philbo34]

All excellent points raised.
A friend of mine recommended I read the chimp paradox .. fantastic book and basically explains stupid people who feel the need to express there views and ignore facts even if they hit them in the face . The truck as has been mentioned not to drop to there level. In the end treat people how you want to be treated ...shame stupid can't do that

[exxos]

All excellent points raised.
A friend of mine recommended I read the chimp paradox .. fantastic book and basically explains stupid people who feel the need to express there views and ignore facts even if they hit them in the face . The truck as has been mentioned not to drop to there level. In the end treat people how you want to be treated ...shame stupid can't do that

Wasnt there some sort of biblical quote saying "do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. I think it is a very good and important phrase which people should take more notice of.

But yes. It is like how people measure volts and amps sometimes. They will take something like a battery, say a 9 volt pp3 type, they will put their meter on them some measure the amps on the battery which could may well be 1 amp. Then they will measure the open circuit voltage which may well be something like 10 volts. So they will times 10 X 1 = 10va. The problem is that the amps are being generated on the short circuit conditions across generally a current shunt in the meter which will drop the voltage to typically something like 0.1volts. the more amps you try and pull from a battery inherently the voltage will just go lower. The calculation they should be making is 10x 0.1 = 1va. Short circuit voltage would have to be measured at the same time as the current. But measuring the current in this way is just stupid anyway.

There was some priest in the middle of nowhere turning I think I want horsepower motor with a small 9 volt battery. He was claiming over unity because his device was putting out so much power the battery could not contain the charge and was getting very hot. I argue to the battery is getting hot because he is shorting out a very large motor on the thing. Who was claiming his device put out so much power and yet his video clearly shows him having to manually turn the motor to get it to even start spinning. Of course it was nothing short of a miracle but it worked at all. Such people don't even understand talk of motors or loading of systems and how they will need more input power.

It really does greatly sadden me that people are just so oblivious to facts. Of course the word stupid is not really the right term because they need to be really classified into people who don't know things and willing to learn,such people don't know things and they could be classified as stupid, versus people who are trying to learn who are just plain ignorant of basic facts and repeatedly make the same mistakes over and over again. And some people spend their whole lives doing research into something which has fundamental flaws from the very first experiment they did.

[philbo34]

Never argue with an idiot
They will drag you down to their level
And beat you with experience

[exxos]

Never argue with an idiot
They will drag you down to their level
And beat you with experience

:goodpost:

[rubber_jonnie]

Edit: I ask the AI about it also..

The name given to people who become obsessed with one particular event in life to the point they become abusive towards other people over it is "monomania." Monomania is a psychiatric term used to describe an excessive preoccupation or obsession with a single idea, subject, or emotion. When someone's monomania becomes so severe that it leads to abusive behavior towards others, it can be considered a form of mental illness or personality disorder. It's important for individuals who experience monomania or know someone who does to seek help from a mental health professional.

Yeah, sounds about right...

I'm finding that more and more people are just not nice, and I just don't want to be near people like that, and in the case of the 'wee patrol' as I shall now call them, I was caught off guard as they are probably in their 70s.

Probably little better to do than be rude to people, as I know there is somebody across the road from us who walks their dog on the same route and he'd stopped on the same corner so his dog could we and she was banging on the window at him.

I understand when people are not picking up dog poo, that's a disgusting thing to do, and folks who don't shouldn't be allowed to have a dog, but for a small wee in a public area. nope.

[Steve]

I'm a little pedantic and I really dislike all the ways words are being re-purposed today, like toxic for instance and other gen-z terms like gaslighting. Oh and another word, anxiety.

In the past, people used to just be 'worried' or 'nervous'. The word 'anxiety' was only used in medical terminology, but the average person who experiences the odd bout of nervousness or worried about something, wouldn't immediately jump to diagnose themselves with an anxiety disorder - but now even on the news, they will often use sentences like 'Did you feel anxious?' / 'There is a certain anxiety about the whole affair' etc etc. I don't mind the word being used in the right context, in a medical context, but I really dislike how it's become such a casually used word, so casual it actually reduces it's power/influence when actually used in the correct context.

Toxic used to be just for 'toxic waste' etc, but suddenly, words like 'negativity' 'anti-social behavior' etc have all been replaced by the word 'toxic'. Toxic really does put horrible images of decay and destruction into your mind, so it can blow things out of proportion. Is every workplace that has an annoying boss suddenly a 'toxic workplace?' or is it actually just a bit of a crappy place to work, does it truly need to be 'toxic'?

And gaslighting? We really need to take these physical words, like a gas explosion and apply them to peoples behavior? What was our old word we used to use for this kind of thing? Wasn't it just 'winding someone up' ?

It really really aggravates me, all this stuff. Maybe I'm just getting old. But Gen-Z seems to be taking away all the shades of grey in our language and replacing everything with EXTREME versions of the old words. Because everything is EXTREME? I dunno. Has anyone else thought about this or noticed this?

[exxos]

I think in part it goes back to the media these days inflating everything. These days people seem to want to be special and noticed and offended by everything. Hence the snowflake generation.

As for gaslighting, I never heard of it until recently. Winding someone up doesn't come close. It's a serious attack of mental abuse. More extreme yes, because things are that way. Go watch msmadlemons videos on the crap things which people do to her. As to what it might have been called years ago. No idea. Probably got classed as domestic abuse. But now the internet is here, it can happen remotely as well. So new clasfications are needed.

As for toxic, depends on your definition of what's toxic. I class my old job as toxic. We had the odd idiot, the odd brownnoser , 2 faced back stabber etc, then the area manager who just made the whole company a living hell. OTOH, I made a lot of friends, a lot of great people worked there. We helped and supported eachother. And yet it was a large company where most of the staff walked out and quit in the end. I almost walked out every single day of the last 2 years I was there. All this is nothing new.

Same as always. One person always seems to have the power to make 100s of people's lives hell. Now we have the internet which makes those problems even worse. In some respects the word toxic simply isn't enough.

[JezC]

Never argue with an idiot
They will drag you down to there level
And beat you with experience

Mark Twain?
:)

[derkom]

I'm a little pedantic and I really dislike all the ways words are being re-purposed today, like toxic for instance and other gen-z terms like gaslighting.

Do you also dislike other online language pedants? :lol:

Gaslighting as a psychological term way predates gen-z.

[rubber_jonnie]

And gaslighting? We really need to take these physical words, like a gas explosion and apply them to peoples behavior? What was our old word we used to use for this kind of thing? Wasn't it just 'winding someone up' ?

Gaslighting isn't as simple as "winding somebody up", it's about psychologically abusing somebody and causing them to doubt themselves so much they believe that other persons narrative.

It's based on the play 'Gas Light' from 1938 and subsequent films of the same name where the protagonist does various things to make the victim feel like they are going insane, including dimming/flickering of the gas lighting of the time.

Whilst the term didn't become popular in modern culture until relatively recently, it's something that goes back further than you perhaps realised, and is particularly nasty.

Winding somebody up is prank calling them, gaslighting is much more sinister and very much a problem today and in the past, you could even call it toxic behaviour since it is very nasty.

It's a case of evolution of language, and regardless of whether you like it or not, it's here to stay.