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>I blame the Internet for another reason: we're spending so much time online no one has time for face-to-face communication, either with friends or strangers.

by imbnwa 4y ago

>I blame the Internet for another reason: we're spending so much time online no one has time for face-to-face communication, either with friends or strangers. That said, meat space interactions are filled with implicit hierarchies, activates power posturing that only manifests online with specific triggers, social and xenophobic anxieties, etc. Just for example, as long as I type in a certain register, you wouldn't be able to premise your response on a set of learned and intuitive behaviors, which not only frees both of us from ourselves in a certain sense, but the conversation as well. In real life, people implicitly respond to the fact that they're talking to a physically unable person, a Black person, a Trans person, a cis woman, a person they're attracted to, an ESL speaker, etc, and this changes the course of things. Not to suggest you're advocating for abolition and severe restriction, I take it you're advocating for finding some balance or other. But maybe just to attenuate that search, there's something of value to exclusively online discoursing that is enabling of things that're more difficult to access than in real-life. Obviously the downsides here are trolls/committal toxic behavior.

jimbokun 4y ago
All of that is true, and it’s STILL crucial to have a lot of in person socializing. That is the painfully learned lesson of the mobile phone and social media. It has led to a catastrophic increase in mental health issues, especially for young people.
sph 4y ago
> In real life, people implicitly respond to the fact that they're talking to a physically unable person, a Black person, a Trans person, a cis woman, a person they're attracted to, an ESL speaker, etc, and this changes the course of things. This doesn't change things, this is how it's supposed to work and how we have evolved to thrive with. I understand that some marginalised groups find it freeing to discuss with someone without having to show their physical presence, but let me stress that that is a change, and a huge one, on how we evolved to communicate and socialise. There is a non-zero number of terrible people online abusing members of these groups that would be able to feel empathy if they could see that the person in they're talking to is Black, queer or disabled. In fact, I reckon that number of people that would be "nicer" in real life is much larger than you'd expect.

by imbnwa 4y ago

jimbokun 4y ago

All of that is true, and it’s STILL crucial to have a lot of in person socializing. That is the painfully learned lesson of the mobile phone and social media. It has led to a catastrophic increase in mental health issues, especially for young people.

sph 4y ago

> In real life, people implicitly respond to the fact that they're talking to a physically unable person, a Black person, a Trans person, a cis woman, a person they're attracted to, an ESL speaker, etc, and this changes the course of things. This doesn't change things, this is how it's supposed to work and how we have evolved to thrive with. I understand that some marginalised groups find it freeing to discuss with someone without having to show their physical presence, but let me stress that that is a change, and a huge one, on how we evolved to communicate and socialise. There is a non-zero number of terrible people online abusing members of these groups that would be able to feel empathy if they could see that the person in they're talking to is Black, queer or disabled. In fact, I reckon that number of people that would be "nicer" in real life is much larger than you'd expect.