The internet is certainly fast. It's extremely efficient sometimes. It has absolutely died up communication and made international communication easier. But honestly I don't think there's much new on the internet. I'm kind of sick of people talking about problems with the internet. About how harassment of women is the internet's fault when Marilyn vos Savant got bags of hate mail for explaining a maths problem correctly or describing with worried undertones about how twitch streamers cultivate faux friendly relationships with their audience by engaging in the same way with them that radio DJs have done for their audience for decades. I don't have the energy to make a longer rant but the internet is not actuality fucking magic. It's a communication medium that's being used for the same shit that every other medium was being used for before it.

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hollyhoppet wrote on February 26, 2018 at 8:16 PM

I mean on one hand you're right, but without the internet i probably wouldn't have had the support network i did when coming out and transitioning so there's that

voxpoplar OP wrote on February 26, 2018 at 8:40 PM

This is entirely fair and I perhaps overstated my position in my frustration. The internet is special in how connected it has been able to make a lot of the world (or at least the wester, english-speaking world) and does allow people to find each other and information that they would never have been able to otherwise.

This is just a rant born from frustration over overly alarmist thinkpieces and articles praising "the internet" for things that have been around long before it through other media.

hollyhoppet wrote on February 26, 2018 at 9:23 PM

are millenials declaring the internet to be doomed!?!?!?

toasthaste wrote on February 27, 2018 at 1:28 AM

A difference in degree, not a difference in kind, maybe

musou wrote on February 26, 2018 at 5:15 PM (edited on February 26, 2018 at 5:16 PM)

i think the web had the potential to be special, but failed to actualize that potential. its early userbase failed to prevent its commercial exploitation by capitalists, which is exactly why the majority of the internet is now a recapitulation of pre-existing commercial formats.