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I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive. Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I

I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive. Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports. So you'd come back to the states - and you'd have to catchup on everyone who had said terrible things.

saas_sam 6y ago
This sounds like paradise. Maybe Starlink isn't such a good idea after all.
- auiya 5y ago
  It's not the network that's the problem, it's what the web has turned into that's the problem.
ramraj07 6y ago
People always bring up how people in Fiji or the Carribean are so happy and not stressed, and I’m not sure what the message is. Of course if you just want to relax and not worry too much about what you want to accomplish in life then yeah go to some corner of the world and live happily? However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives; they want it to mean something in their own way. Of course the vast majority get lost in the rat race and forget what it is that made them choose to work their ass of to begin with, but it’s not because their ultimate goal (at least in the beginning) was to chill at the beach.
- random5634 6y ago
  I think instead of saying it's relaxed, I would describe it as very local? Folks work pretty hard in Caribbean, but when I was there (a fair while ago), I also worked dang hard. But you absolutely felt like you were in a bubble. You really could imagine that Israel and the Palestinians would have an intifada / war and no one would notice. You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no for many good reasons), you ate larger group meals, you spent a lot more time outside. I'm just spitballing some impressions. Some of this was efficiency, (group meals are more cost effective?) etc. There is also an attitude difference. There is a story (probably made up - please fill in correct details) that a group "conquered" one of the islands (maybe Saba?). They took over whatever building, raised whatever flag. And everyone just ignored them. They eventually left. One thing that's an adjustment is ignoring the rules if they are silly - no one thinks anything of it. And yes, in part because of corruption and rent seeking there are some silly rules so maybe you have to. Absolute downsides as well no question. But I wonder if the folks not on internet just don't care as much about what someone said to someone as the rest of us.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > There is a story (probably made up - please fill in correct details) that a group "conquered" one of the islands (maybe Saba?). They took over whatever building, raised whatever flag. And everyone just ignored them. They eventually left. I would guess it made up, because when people conquer stuff, they tend to have actual material goals and need. Starting from basic - their army needs to eat. The way you get that food is to take it from people who are there. They need wood and what not, if you are the armed one, you force local population to get it for you. When people used to run from incoming armies, it was not for fun. It was because the armed men tend not to ignore you. The miracle there is not island people ignoring incoming people. The miracle there is the supposed conquerors being content with raising flag, without trying to take actual benefit from it. I guess in some rare situations they would conquer thing for trolling/emotional purposes, but generally the goal is control and things.
    - varjag 6y ago
      Do you really think all wars are rational, resource-driven pursuits? How about Falklands, what Argentina planned to extract there? Steal the rocks and tax the 300 sheep? Or Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is enormously negative? All it takes is one moron with delusion of grandeur.
      - watwut 6y ago
        Wars are expensive, that is first thing. Second, soldiers need to eat right now and where do you think food used to come from? Army "living off the land" was a thing, because supplying them was difficult and who cares. The land armies passed through used to be pretty destroyed after. > Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is enormously negative? Russia does not see expansion of own territory as negative value. Also, Russians are very much making changes in Crimea.
        varjag 5y ago
        Unlike 'seeing', negative economic value is objective. Suffering sanctions for occupying a region that was traditionally heavily subsidised is negative value.
- sn41 6y ago
  You could try programming in the Caribbean. Nice beach shack, a couple of manuals and offline copy of stackoverflow perhaps.... I heard that Travis Kalanick coded the initial code base of Uber in Varkala beach in Kerala[1],[2]. [1] https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/guess-what-uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-did-the-last-time-he-was-in-india/articleshow/50631622.cms https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/guess-what-uber-ceo-tra... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    If you count New Orleans, Blockpad (https://blockpad.net https://blockpad.net) has certainly tried it. I had a friend though who was a PM for a summer thing for Data Science for Social Good in Chicago at some point for physicists transitioning to data scientists and she complained about how none of them took her seriously when she said she lived and worked there.
- lolinder 6y ago
  You miss the OP's point. They're talking about a specific aspect of culture in the Carribean, where they worked for a while, not about idyllic lifelong vacations. While there, they found that separation from the internet reduced the amount of outrage they felt. Unless you're suggesting that social media outrage is productive and helps people to accomplish something meaningful in their own way, you're not actually addressing the OP's comment, you're addressing an unrelated idea that you've heard in the past.
  - sammalloy 6y ago
    I think the OP is also indirectly touching upon the benefits of the slow movement, which has serious (and positive) implications for technology and how we use it. People in big cities and urban environments might find the transition to this kind of thinking jarring and difficult. I've found it takes on average about two years to adjust to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture)
    - tafox 6y ago
      I don't see life slowing down, maybe after some natural or man-made disaster wipes out half the population and most modern infrastructure, but until then, I only see things getting faster. HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being fast, literally by trading faster, not necessarily better, billions in profit are made. In other fields, first-movers often have a massive advantage, AWS for example. Just look at Europe, things are slow and rather relaxed here... and as a result they've missed out on about the last 3 generations of technology. I think many people won't be able to keep up, but the future of evolution is probably people who can sit still for days on end, just consuming information non-stop, with the ability to react very quickly as soon as the information signals opportunity for a reward. Some sort of really autistic apex predator stuff. Ironically, even though computers can do so many tasks faster and better than humans, one would think we could all relax and let the computers work, but instead the trend seems to be, that we constantly have to be even faster in the remaining fields where computers are not yet superior. The result of for-loops and automation hasn't been that humans no longer have to rush around doing mundane tasks, but rather that now we have to rush around writing for-loops and fixing all the bugs introduced by rushing... and so it continues...
- passivate 6y ago
  >However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives; they want it to mean something in their own way. Of course the vast majority get lost in the rat race and forget what it is that made them choose to work their ass of to begin with, but it’s not because their ultimate goal (at least in the beginning) was to chill at the beach. IMHO, if that person who was working their ass off was a genius and an outlier, then their contributions are a huge net benefit to society and we/society should reward and applaud them. However, most people are average or below average, so their contributions are extremely unlikely to move the needle. So from the point of view of the person chilling on the beach, yeah sure, do whatever makes you happy, but as far as real accomplishments go, its a wash between them and the non-genius hard-worker. Just my opinion! :) (Writing this as a non-genius average person)
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I think you’re letting your own pre-conceived notions color your interpretation of this comment. The person said nothing about not working as hard, not accomplishing as much, and only chilling on the beach. People in the Caribbean (and other beach/vacation destinations) work hard and accomplish plenty. Just because some people go to their country to relax doesn’t mean the entire country does nothing but relax.
- t8e56vd4ih 6y ago
  > then yeah go to some corner of the world and live happily? However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives if i just knew where that corner is ...
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I'd be surprised if anybody really wanted spending time hearing about useless horrible event after another alone in his flat.
justapassenger 6y ago
Part of what you’re describing can be attributed to lack of internet. But other part is just being an outsider that doesn’t really care that much (and I mean that in totally non offensive way - it’s just a benefit of being an outsider). Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news, newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller scale, true, but living without internet doesn’t create perfect world.
- dhosek 6y ago
  My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.
  - _delirium 6y ago
    I found I had to get rid of a decent portion of the news too, and news-adjacent comedy shows like Colbert. It's not enough to personally not read FB/Twitter, since they have gotten so integrated into mainstream media. Maybe 10 years ago you could just ignore social media, but by 2018 (when I started making an effort to avoid it), you could end up seeing thousands of tweets without ever using twitter yourself, if you just regularly watched TV news and/or current events comedy. Whole portions of these shows turned into literally putting a tweet on the screen and then talking about the tweet and responses to it. Especially Trump tweets and their replies, but not solely those.
    - marlor 6y ago
      Getting rid of “newstainment” and 24-hour news programs significantly improved the quality and breadth of the news I consume. By just reading a quality daily newspaper and a couple of newsmagazines, I’m better informed than when I was a news junkie with cable news on in the background and news websites refreshing on my phone. “Breaking news” is broken. Print media, especially weekly newsmagazines, have the luxury of time to actually think about their coverage and provide adequate research and follow-up. Conversely, space is limited, so if it’s not adding value, it gets chopped. Live news, on the other hand, needs to alternate between being first to report, then filling time until something else occurs, all while making whatever is occurring seem more important than it really is.
slg 6y ago
Life is certainly less stressful if you ignore all the terrible things... unless a terrible thing happens to you and everyone ignores you.
- sammalloy 6y ago
  In my opinion, it isn't about ignoring anything. It's about moderating our reaction to things such that "outrage" dissipates in the face of more reflective, sustained modes of thought. The 24/7 news cycle, which is often based on infotainment, doesn't allow time for contemplation of ideas, just emotions.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Otoh 99% (exaggeration for emphasis but not that far off if you think about it) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. You have virtually no impact on preventing or influencing the event and it has no impact on you whatsoever. War in Africa again? It’s sad to think about and outrageous how some scummy warlords terrorize the local population, but what’s the impact on your life? Tsunami in Asia? Terrible for all the death but no impact on your daily life. Corruption in Europe again? Revolting but... all these things just add to your overall unhappiness and stress but really have no bearing on your actual day to day life. So why even bother? Not too mention that nedia and news outlets can have a hidden agenda they’re pushing either because the entity that owns them wants to promote a particular view of the world or because they want people to look away from something else.
  - amelius 6y ago
    > 99% (...) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. Just like voting has almost zero effect. However, is not voting wise? In what direction would society move if nobody watched the news?
    - ornornor 6y ago
      That's assuming you can trust the news to be impartial and unbiased which they rarely are, because most media is owned by a few oligarchs or entities who have a specific agenda to push. As for voting, I find these tools that ask you questions and tell you which candidates/parties best match your beliefs to be enough to know how to cast my vote. Not that it really matters, as you've said but it still lets me do my civic duty without the years of stress and anxiety in-between elections and during the elected's mandate. I'll leave it up to other to get needlessly outraged by following the news.
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
My first thought was that 7% of the population are disenfranchised from News and services. But second thought makes me wonder how much of the 93% are just reading celebrity gossip and poor quality news on Twitter and Facebook or TikTok/Instagram reels of cute pets. If over 65 year olds count for half of the 7% (25% of 50Million), does poor rural internet and poverty count for a lot of the rest.
deepstack 6y ago
> Local social life was fantastic- I missed nothing about the internet. In general after decades of working with Internet and technology, I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet. Of course, it is nice to have Internet to have occasional communication with friends and family not in the surrounding area.
- nicbou 6y ago
  > I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet On the other hand, life becomes utterly miserable with a little internet. It's an all-or-nothing kind of deal.
  - hollerith 6y ago
    By "a little internet", do you mean a low-bandwidth connection, a connection that is often / usually unavailable when you want to use it, or something else?
    - nicbou 5y ago
      By that I mean shitty, unstable internet. It grinds my gears, yet I can't accept it and do something else. If the internet is entirely gone, I'll read a book or do something else.
  - deepstack 5y ago
    Not really. It is like an addiction, however after not being on the internet for sometime one become more appreciative of things around and local stuff. High recommend tech people try it if opportunity arises.
collyw 6y ago
I read the headline, and my first thought was "I wonder if they are happier for it?" thinking that they probably would be. I have spend a fair bit of my life in countries where I don't speak the language particularly well. I like the fact that the subtleties of advertising and the spin put on the news often go over my head, but I realise especially during the last year that I consume way to much junk information on the internet.
failwhaleshark 6y ago
I live in the States and don't participate in anti"social" media or dopamine-addiction with a phone glued in my hand, neck hunched over, and nearly get run-over absorbing distractions in the form of outrage, manufactured infotainment, or virtual, meaningless lives. Selfies still look to me like narcissistic loser mementos that someone can't find another person to take their picture because they're all so glued to their phones and socially-clueless to interact with anyone else.
robinj6 5y ago
Johannesburg, relatively speaking, is similar to this. People will use the Internet in business parks to do their jobs, but you don’t see people walking around staring at their phones. People use WhatsApp to curb high talk and text rates, but that is a lions share of what phones are used for. It feels very similar to 90s America technologically and it’s strangely relieving.
pradn 5y ago
I was walking around my neighborhood and saw that someone posted a printed sign making a snarky remark about the Matt Gaetz news. I could not believe someone would care enough about a random politician's demise. Please get off Twitter.
- minikites 5y ago
  You don't think it's important to participate in our democratic government? Why shouldn't we hold powerful people accountable for their actions?
  - pradn 5y ago
    It's one thing to voice your opinion online or through a protest or writing letters, and another to get a print shop to print your snarky comment and then post it on your window. Note that this was in response to litigation against him, not calling for his ouster. Politics are important, but this seems like a bit much.
- justapassenger 5y ago
  Not to get political, but Matt is anything but random. He’s one of the rising stars of his party. Without much actual track record of actually getting stuff done and direct power, but very popular among certain group of voters.
agumonkey 5y ago
I had a hunch that this was a reality.. so much of our modern life is wasted on utter nonsense .. we oughta cut the internet router figuratively and spend our time on fun or useful local things.
_fat_santa 5y ago
Echoing this. I visited Cuba when I was in college. While I was there the only way to access the internet is to buy an "internet time" card (costs like $2 and gives you 30min to 1hr online) and connect at a public hotspot. It was actually quite nice being forced to disconnect. It's almost funny how quickly you go from wanting to know what is going on in the world to not really caring anymore, when it's out of mind you don't really think about it.

saas_sam 6y ago

This sounds like paradise. Maybe Starlink isn't such a good idea after all.

auiya 5y ago
It's not the network that's the problem, it's what the web has turned into that's the problem.

ramraj07 6y ago

People always bring up how people in Fiji or the Carribean are so happy and not stressed, and I’m not sure what the message is. Of course if you just want to relax and not worry too much about what you want to accomplish in life then yeah go to some corner of the world and live happily? However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives; they want it to mean something in their own way. Of course the vast majority get lost in the rat race and forget what it is that made them choose to work their ass of to begin with, but it’s not because their ultimate goal (at least in the beginning) was to chill at the beach.

random5634 6y ago
I think instead of saying it's relaxed, I would describe it as very local? Folks work pretty hard in Caribbean, but when I was there (a fair while ago), I also worked dang hard. But you absolutely felt like you were in a bubble. You really could imagine that Israel and the Palestinians would have an intifada / war and no one would notice. You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no for many good reasons), you ate larger group meals, you spent a lot more time outside. I'm just spitballing some impressions. Some of this was efficiency, (group meals are more cost effective?) etc. There is also an attitude difference. There is a story (probably made up - please fill in correct details) that a group "conquered" one of the islands (maybe Saba?). They took over whatever building, raised whatever flag. And everyone just ignored them. They eventually left. One thing that's an adjustment is ignoring the rules if they are silly - no one thinks anything of it. And yes, in part because of corruption and rent seeking there are some silly rules so maybe you have to. Absolute downsides as well no question. But I wonder if the folks not on internet just don't care as much about what someone said to someone as the rest of us.
- watwut 6y ago
  > There is a story (probably made up - please fill in correct details) that a group "conquered" one of the islands (maybe Saba?). They took over whatever building, raised whatever flag. And everyone just ignored them. They eventually left. I would guess it made up, because when people conquer stuff, they tend to have actual material goals and need. Starting from basic - their army needs to eat. The way you get that food is to take it from people who are there. They need wood and what not, if you are the armed one, you force local population to get it for you. When people used to run from incoming armies, it was not for fun. It was because the armed men tend not to ignore you. The miracle there is not island people ignoring incoming people. The miracle there is the supposed conquerors being content with raising flag, without trying to take actual benefit from it. I guess in some rare situations they would conquer thing for trolling/emotional purposes, but generally the goal is control and things.
  - varjag 6y ago
    Do you really think all wars are rational, resource-driven pursuits? How about Falklands, what Argentina planned to extract there? Steal the rocks and tax the 300 sheep? Or Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is enormously negative? All it takes is one moron with delusion of grandeur.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Wars are expensive, that is first thing. Second, soldiers need to eat right now and where do you think food used to come from? Army "living off the land" was a thing, because supplying them was difficult and who cares. The land armies passed through used to be pretty destroyed after. > Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is enormously negative? Russia does not see expansion of own territory as negative value. Also, Russians are very much making changes in Crimea.
      - varjag 5y ago
        Unlike 'seeing', negative economic value is objective. Suffering sanctions for occupying a region that was traditionally heavily subsidised is negative value.
sn41 6y ago
You could try programming in the Caribbean. Nice beach shack, a couple of manuals and offline copy of stackoverflow perhaps.... I heard that Travis Kalanick coded the initial code base of Uber in Varkala beach in Kerala[1],[2]. [1] https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/guess-what-uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-did-the-last-time-he-was-in-india/articleshow/50631622.cms https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/guess-what-uber-ceo-tra... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  If you count New Orleans, Blockpad (https://blockpad.net https://blockpad.net) has certainly tried it. I had a friend though who was a PM for a summer thing for Data Science for Social Good in Chicago at some point for physicists transitioning to data scientists and she complained about how none of them took her seriously when she said she lived and worked there.
lolinder 6y ago
You miss the OP's point. They're talking about a specific aspect of culture in the Carribean, where they worked for a while, not about idyllic lifelong vacations. While there, they found that separation from the internet reduced the amount of outrage they felt. Unless you're suggesting that social media outrage is productive and helps people to accomplish something meaningful in their own way, you're not actually addressing the OP's comment, you're addressing an unrelated idea that you've heard in the past.
- sammalloy 6y ago
  I think the OP is also indirectly touching upon the benefits of the slow movement, which has serious (and positive) implications for technology and how we use it. People in big cities and urban environments might find the transition to this kind of thinking jarring and difficult. I've found it takes on average about two years to adjust to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture)
  - tafox 6y ago
    I don't see life slowing down, maybe after some natural or man-made disaster wipes out half the population and most modern infrastructure, but until then, I only see things getting faster. HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being fast, literally by trading faster, not necessarily better, billions in profit are made. In other fields, first-movers often have a massive advantage, AWS for example. Just look at Europe, things are slow and rather relaxed here... and as a result they've missed out on about the last 3 generations of technology. I think many people won't be able to keep up, but the future of evolution is probably people who can sit still for days on end, just consuming information non-stop, with the ability to react very quickly as soon as the information signals opportunity for a reward. Some sort of really autistic apex predator stuff. Ironically, even though computers can do so many tasks faster and better than humans, one would think we could all relax and let the computers work, but instead the trend seems to be, that we constantly have to be even faster in the remaining fields where computers are not yet superior. The result of for-loops and automation hasn't been that humans no longer have to rush around doing mundane tasks, but rather that now we have to rush around writing for-loops and fixing all the bugs introduced by rushing... and so it continues...
passivate 6y ago
>However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives; they want it to mean something in their own way. Of course the vast majority get lost in the rat race and forget what it is that made them choose to work their ass of to begin with, but it’s not because their ultimate goal (at least in the beginning) was to chill at the beach. IMHO, if that person who was working their ass off was a genius and an outlier, then their contributions are a huge net benefit to society and we/society should reward and applaud them. However, most people are average or below average, so their contributions are extremely unlikely to move the needle. So from the point of view of the person chilling on the beach, yeah sure, do whatever makes you happy, but as far as real accomplishments go, its a wash between them and the non-genius hard-worker. Just my opinion! :) (Writing this as a non-genius average person)
elliekelly 6y ago
I think you’re letting your own pre-conceived notions color your interpretation of this comment. The person said nothing about not working as hard, not accomplishing as much, and only chilling on the beach. People in the Caribbean (and other beach/vacation destinations) work hard and accomplish plenty. Just because some people go to their country to relax doesn’t mean the entire country does nothing but relax.
t8e56vd4ih 6y ago
> then yeah go to some corner of the world and live happily? However for a lot of people that’s not what they want out of their lives if i just knew where that corner is ...
agumonkey 5y ago
I'd be surprised if anybody really wanted spending time hearing about useless horrible event after another alone in his flat.

justapassenger 6y ago

Part of what you’re describing can be attributed to lack of internet. But other part is just being an outsider that doesn’t really care that much (and I mean that in totally non offensive way - it’s just a benefit of being an outsider). Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news, newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller scale, true, but living without internet doesn’t create perfect world.

dhosek 6y ago
My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.
- _delirium 6y ago
  I found I had to get rid of a decent portion of the news too, and news-adjacent comedy shows like Colbert. It's not enough to personally not read FB/Twitter, since they have gotten so integrated into mainstream media. Maybe 10 years ago you could just ignore social media, but by 2018 (when I started making an effort to avoid it), you could end up seeing thousands of tweets without ever using twitter yourself, if you just regularly watched TV news and/or current events comedy. Whole portions of these shows turned into literally putting a tweet on the screen and then talking about the tweet and responses to it. Especially Trump tweets and their replies, but not solely those.
  - marlor 6y ago
    Getting rid of “newstainment” and 24-hour news programs significantly improved the quality and breadth of the news I consume. By just reading a quality daily newspaper and a couple of newsmagazines, I’m better informed than when I was a news junkie with cable news on in the background and news websites refreshing on my phone. “Breaking news” is broken. Print media, especially weekly newsmagazines, have the luxury of time to actually think about their coverage and provide adequate research and follow-up. Conversely, space is limited, so if it’s not adding value, it gets chopped. Live news, on the other hand, needs to alternate between being first to report, then filling time until something else occurs, all while making whatever is occurring seem more important than it really is.

slg 6y ago

Life is certainly less stressful if you ignore all the terrible things... unless a terrible thing happens to you and everyone ignores you.

sammalloy 6y ago
In my opinion, it isn't about ignoring anything. It's about moderating our reaction to things such that "outrage" dissipates in the face of more reflective, sustained modes of thought. The 24/7 news cycle, which is often based on infotainment, doesn't allow time for contemplation of ideas, just emotions.
ornornor 6y ago
Otoh 99% (exaggeration for emphasis but not that far off if you think about it) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. You have virtually no impact on preventing or influencing the event and it has no impact on you whatsoever. War in Africa again? It’s sad to think about and outrageous how some scummy warlords terrorize the local population, but what’s the impact on your life? Tsunami in Asia? Terrible for all the death but no impact on your daily life. Corruption in Europe again? Revolting but... all these things just add to your overall unhappiness and stress but really have no bearing on your actual day to day life. So why even bother? Not too mention that nedia and news outlets can have a hidden agenda they’re pushing either because the entity that owns them wants to promote a particular view of the world or because they want people to look away from something else.
- amelius 6y ago
  > 99% (...) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. Just like voting has almost zero effect. However, is not voting wise? In what direction would society move if nobody watched the news?
  - ornornor 6y ago
    That's assuming you can trust the news to be impartial and unbiased which they rarely are, because most media is owned by a few oligarchs or entities who have a specific agenda to push. As for voting, I find these tools that ask you questions and tell you which candidates/parties best match your beliefs to be enough to know how to cast my vote. Not that it really matters, as you've said but it still lets me do my civic duty without the years of stress and anxiety in-between elections and during the elected's mandate. I'll leave it up to other to get needlessly outraged by following the news.

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

My first thought was that 7% of the population are disenfranchised from News and services. But second thought makes me wonder how much of the 93% are just reading celebrity gossip and poor quality news on Twitter and Facebook or TikTok/Instagram reels of cute pets. If over 65 year olds count for half of the 7% (25% of 50Million), does poor rural internet and poverty count for a lot of the rest.

deepstack 6y ago

> Local social life was fantastic- I missed nothing about the internet. In general after decades of working with Internet and technology, I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet. Of course, it is nice to have Internet to have occasional communication with friends and family not in the surrounding area.

nicbou 6y ago
> I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet On the other hand, life becomes utterly miserable with a little internet. It's an all-or-nothing kind of deal.
- hollerith 6y ago
  By "a little internet", do you mean a low-bandwidth connection, a connection that is often / usually unavailable when you want to use it, or something else?
  - nicbou 5y ago
    By that I mean shitty, unstable internet. It grinds my gears, yet I can't accept it and do something else. If the internet is entirely gone, I'll read a book or do something else.
- deepstack 5y ago
  Not really. It is like an addiction, however after not being on the internet for sometime one become more appreciative of things around and local stuff. High recommend tech people try it if opportunity arises.

collyw 6y ago

I read the headline, and my first thought was "I wonder if they are happier for it?" thinking that they probably would be. I have spend a fair bit of my life in countries where I don't speak the language particularly well. I like the fact that the subtleties of advertising and the spin put on the news often go over my head, but I realise especially during the last year that I consume way to much junk information on the internet.

failwhaleshark 6y ago

I live in the States and don't participate in anti"social" media or dopamine-addiction with a phone glued in my hand, neck hunched over, and nearly get run-over absorbing distractions in the form of outrage, manufactured infotainment, or virtual, meaningless lives. Selfies still look to me like narcissistic loser mementos that someone can't find another person to take their picture because they're all so glued to their phones and socially-clueless to interact with anyone else.

robinj6 5y ago

Johannesburg, relatively speaking, is similar to this. People will use the Internet in business parks to do their jobs, but you don’t see people walking around staring at their phones. People use WhatsApp to curb high talk and text rates, but that is a lions share of what phones are used for. It feels very similar to 90s America technologically and it’s strangely relieving.

pradn 5y ago

I was walking around my neighborhood and saw that someone posted a printed sign making a snarky remark about the Matt Gaetz news. I could not believe someone would care enough about a random politician's demise. Please get off Twitter.

minikites 5y ago
You don't think it's important to participate in our democratic government? Why shouldn't we hold powerful people accountable for their actions?
- pradn 5y ago
  It's one thing to voice your opinion online or through a protest or writing letters, and another to get a print shop to print your snarky comment and then post it on your window. Note that this was in response to litigation against him, not calling for his ouster. Politics are important, but this seems like a bit much.
justapassenger 5y ago
Not to get political, but Matt is anything but random. He’s one of the rising stars of his party. Without much actual track record of actually getting stuff done and direct power, but very popular among certain group of voters.

agumonkey 5y ago

I had a hunch that this was a reality.. so much of our modern life is wasted on utter nonsense .. we oughta cut the internet router figuratively and spend our time on fun or useful local things.

_fat_santa 5y ago

Echoing this. I visited Cuba when I was in college. While I was there the only way to access the internet is to buy an "internet time" card (costs like $2 and gives you 30min to 1hr online) and connect at a public hotspot. It was actually quite nice being forced to disconnect. It's almost funny how quickly you go from wanting to know what is going on in the world to not really caring anymore, when it's out of mind you don't really think about it.