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Posted on 9/25/25 at 8:40 am to ezride25
quote:
True or False: The World Was Better Before the Internet.
I was thinking "True," but when I asked ChapGPT it told me "despite it's faults the internet has launched a golden age of information and empowered people everywhere. And if you ask such a stupid question again, we will cut off your internet and until you come back and beg for forgiveness."
Posted on 9/25/25 at 8:40 am to ezride25
We weren’t meant to have our bandwidth completely occupied by information constantly flying at our faces
Posted on 9/25/25 at 8:42 am to ezride25
quote:
This shite has completely brainwashed an entire generation and has irrevocably warped what was previously our reality.
Yeah, let's keep depending on the MSM for information.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 8:42 am to ezride25
I think early 2000s internet and tech was the correct balance.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 8:42 am to ezride25
True
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:01 am to Midtiger farm
quote:
imagine covid happening with no internet
Ask yourself whether it could have happened at all in the first place without the internet. How could we have known that we were 2 weeks behind Italy?
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:03 am to ezride25
The internet is fine. The problem is everyone has the internet in their pocket and has access to it at all times
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:06 am to tide06
quote:
Let’s talk about the impact of the controlled propaganda environment we lived in prior to the internet era to put the two in contrast.
The US was driven to war how many times by false or manipulated stories?
-Spanish American War “remember the Maine!”
-WW1 “Lusitania”, “Zimmerman telegram”
-Vietnam “Gulf of Tonkin”
-Iraq 9/11 “weapons of mass destruction”
With the internet available to challenge those narratives do any of those wars happen? I say likely not just as online pushback changed potential involvement in Ukraine and recently Iran.
In that list right there, you included the Iraq war, which most decidedly took place after the internet. I don't think internet pushback means anything to world leaders. I think that is unfortunately a very naive view of how the world works, and what kind of influence we have. An actual physical uprising of the people is the only thing that has historically changed the course of events, other than divine intervention, obviously.
quote:
Then go into economics and politics:
-William Jennings Bryan: crushed by the east coast interests in the media for pushing early populism and an alternative economic approach
-Fed: Wilson never gets away with ushering in the Fed with full awareness via the internet of what they were doing
-JFK: the cia basically tried to start WW3 to take back Cuba, then killed JFK for stopping them and installed a puppet. Never happens if people in Des Moines, Iowa can hear what’s going on from someone other than Walter Conkrite and the mockingbird media
I can go on and on, but in effect most of our non existential wars (WW2 and Civil War excluded) are avoided or minimized and generations of Americans are better off economically and politically if the current level of internet era scrutiny is applied to past events.
This is entirely speculation, with no basis to believe it is true. How many policies are put into place today that are destructive, despite what people on the internet say? I think we've avoided getting troops mixed up in Uktaine because we have a president with some common sense. Not sure what the internet has to do with it. You also mentioned Iran. We sent bombers to Iran which took out their nuclear sites. This effectively ended that war. Again, what does the internet have to do with it?
Meanwhile, we have actually been able to witness, in real time, the change in our culture as people have become more and more distanced from one another, as they have become more and more self obsessed with the internet, and living out these fantasy lives through social media, hiding behind screens and saying the most vile things imaginable.
quote:
As to our current level of discourse or discord, I don’t think that’s a pure reflection of just a divided population.
I think we are being set to odds with each other by global interests for their own benefit in what amounts to a domestic color revolution to avoid the rise of populism as the globalists were about to consolidate power.
I think there is a lot we think we know, that we probably have no idea about, when it comes to all of the dramatic world domination talk, and globalism. I do know that the media wants to divide us, but when you opened this message talking about controlled propaganda prior to the internet, I think the propaganda is far more controlled post internet. Who owns the vast majority of the internet? And do those people not censor what is allowed on the internet? Are we not bombarded with disinformation at every turn? Sure, we can find some conservative voices, if we know where to look, because the algorithms are far more likely to point people toward left leaning commentary.
Back when all we had were a few news stations, it wasn't in our faces constantly, whereas now dangerous rhetoric is flying from every direction.
quote:
Maybe some here agree and some won’t with that take, but from my perspective the online polarity is manufactured to a large degree so I simply don’t agree with blaming the internet for that any more than I would blaming a bus for being driven through a crowd or a gun for being used in a crime.
You can blame whoever you want. No one is absolved in wrongdoing. But the internet is an inherent breeding ground for what we see today, in my opinion. Because of the very nature of what it is, and how many things you can do to manipulate things, and how basically impossible it is to regulate. People get lost in these rabbit holes, going so deep that they lose their connection with reality.
This post was edited on 9/25/25 at 9:16 am
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:31 am to ezride25
It is a drug.
Useful in some cases but 100% addicting.
It's killing us in many ways while we enjoy the spiral.
Useful in some cases but 100% addicting.
It's killing us in many ways while we enjoy the spiral.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:31 am to Metaloctopus
quote:
In that list right there, you included the Iraq war, which most decidedly took place after the internet.
The modern online exchange of ideas was absolutely not in place in 2001.
Podcasts? no
Alternate news? no
It was AOL instant messenger and yahoo news with a few people on radio like Rush with a voice.
quote:
I don't think internet pushback means anything to world leaders.
Oh? Then why are they banning free speech from Germany to California?
Control of narratives absolutely means something to them or they wouldn't bother with the mockingbird media apparatus that they invest tens of billions in from BBC News to Jimmy Kimmel. Their own actions and spending would be unnecessary if your suggestion were true.
quote:
An actual physical uprising of the people is the only thing that has historically changed the course of events, other than divine intervention, obviously.
The election of Trump twice has already changed things in the short term as it upended the supreme court balance and prevented things like the ministry of truth that Biden tried to usher in. Zero force was required.
quote:
This is entirely speculation, with no basis to believe it is true.
Of course its speculation, it is so by definition because the internet hadn't been invented. It doesn't mean it isn't plausible or probable.
quote:
I think we've avoided getting troops mixed up in Uktaine because we have a president with some common sense. Not sure what the internet has to do with it.
Have you missed the interviews with the president and his advisors where they've talked about the deluge of pushback they've gotten over Epstein and Iran? Its absolutely framed their thinking and actions per their own words.
quote:
I think the propaganda is far more controlled post internet.
How can you support this objectively? There's zero data to support that.
Joe Rogan helped tip the election to Trump. Is he controlled propaganda?
How about Tucker getting fired from Fox for pissing off big pharma and now having a bigger audience online to push on views that aren't supported by the MSM, DNC or RNC? They've lost the control of messaging which is exactly why they are so desperate to pass legislation in globalist strongholds like CA and the EU to prevent open discourse from taking place.
quote:
Are we not bombarded with disinformation at every turn?
This again is the consequence of "free will" when it comes to online discourse. We each have to try to piece together a cohesive worldview based on video and facts because no one source can or should be trusted to be presenting just "facts" without spin or agenda.
You can have propaganda to make the world a clean and black and white place where you lose the ability to discern for yourself or you can live in the world of grey where the data is confusing, people have agendas and you have to decide for yourself. Israel vs Palestine is the perfect example of this. Im extremely wary of anyone who tries to paint good vs evil in that mess because what I see is evil being justified by other evil rather than anyone actually coming out of that with clean hands and souls.
quote:
But the internet is an inherent breeding ground what we see today, in my opinion.
You're blaming tools for the actions of their holder. I just fundamentally don't agree.
Blame the humans using things for their behavior, not the butter knife the brits take away because the millions of immigrants they imported like to stab each other with them because they don't want to work or assimilate.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:47 am to Giantkiller
quote:
It was better before x and Facebook algorithms.
That’s a big part of it, but it’s not like we couldn’t see early signs of the problems with ICQ and AIM
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:53 am to SportTiger1
quote:
Less propaganda distribution
Agree with you aside from this. Less propaganda by volume maybe. But almost all of their news was propaganda. So by percentages of news consumed that was propaganda, it was actually more.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 9:59 am to ezride25
True.
But the tech was always going to get here. We just don't handle it thoughtfully.
But the tech was always going to get here. We just don't handle it thoughtfully.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 10:05 am to ezride25
True...and the people who have been affected by it the most are children and young people.
Increases in depression and suicide. Decreases in attention span, sleep time and physical activity.
It' s literally making or kids crazy.
And for all people, the internet has provided a cozy, safe environment for whatever strange, violent or anti-social thoights that you may have.
And so many young men would rather consume porn than have to go out and relate to young women.
Increases in depression and suicide. Decreases in attention span, sleep time and physical activity.
It' s literally making or kids crazy.
And for all people, the internet has provided a cozy, safe environment for whatever strange, violent or anti-social thoights that you may have.
And so many young men would rather consume porn than have to go out and relate to young women.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 10:06 am to ezride25
No question, the internet was Pandora's Box.
That said, our world of relative sanity first began devolving dramatically after the proliferation of Disco and acceptance of Glam Rock and its androgyny.
That said, our world of relative sanity first began devolving dramatically after the proliferation of Disco and acceptance of Glam Rock and its androgyny.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 10:15 am to ezride25
quote:
True or False: The World Was Better Before the Internet.
It was better before the Internet and cellular phones.
I'm GenX and have seen the before and after, firsthand. I feel qualified as such, to provide this opinion based on personal experience.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 10:22 am to ezride25
It's not as simple as that. Everything has good and bad elements.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 10:31 am to TigerAxeOK
world was better before TV if you want to go back even farther. People at some point got lazy and rather than developing their own view of the world through experiences, turn on the TV or logged online and saw that someone had already done that for them.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 11:08 am to Privateer 2007
quote:
but no smart phones.
Hell, the world was better off before the 1953 invention of the rotary dail. Without having to go through the operator, housewives could then spend all day gossiping with other housewives instead of cooking, cleaning and gardening. They only started working 15 minutes before the husband came home and wiping sweat off their brow said: 'I can't keep up with all this work. We need to hire a maid!'
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