Finding "The Internet" Toxic and Depressing? Consider Leaving Your Walled Garden



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Author	Finding "The Internet" Toxic and Depressing? Consider Leaving Your Walled Garden (Read 7008 times)
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	on: January 05, 2023, 17:51 Cheapskate wrote another interesting article about the individual, personal WWW vs. the modern commercialized one, about friendly helpful communities vs. toxic walled gardens. Quote from: Cheapskate From my point of view, the Internet as a whole is a magical place filled with great information and interesting people. I grew up in the 1970's before the Internet existed, so I can compare life before the Internet to life after. Believe me, I am very happy to have the Internet. This point of view causes me to question why so many people are now so critical of the Internet. Sure, I recognize it has become worse in general as crass commercial enterprises have done their best to destroy it for all of us. I share the anger of many about that. I also realize that not so nice places exist on the Internet, just like not so nice places exist in the real world. But, if you want a fun exciting vacation, do you go to the arm pit of the world? So, why are hundreds of millions of people spending their free time in the arm pit of the Internet? ... Full thing: http://cheapskatesguide.org (retro browser compatible) He essentially pleas for people to leave the toxic walled gardens like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord & others and join smaller, friendlier and more unregulated places. I always wonder why people don't. And don't want to see why this is important. Is it really the "fear of missing out" as some psychologists constitute? Usually the reason given sounds like an excuse "I would leave, but my kids / parents / employer ..." etc. instead of actively looking for alternatives. My New Year 2023 plea is to get rid of the last remnant of Big IT that I use: Gmail. I've dropped out of Facebook, Twitter and others before. Gmail will be hard, as I have a backlog of 15 years of e-mails in there but then I think that's really just an excuse I use. I can migrate the stuff if I want and I will do. Moving over to posteo, which is a privacy respecting e-mail service. It's 1 euro / month, but they will respect my privacy and they're a small dedicated company with a good track record. Anyone else with a simliar "new year resolution" to drop out of walled gardens?
Last Edit: January 05, 2023, 18:05 by Bolkonskij
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #1 on: January 06, 2023, 00:31 Goodness, I wish I could just ditch Gmail! When I do use some social media for practicality sake, I will like a company to get their freebie on Twitter and Facebook and WhatsApp keeps my calls completely free abroad. And with Gmail, I have the extra bennie that I can make and get US-to-US calls and text for free from anywhere I travel to outside the US, which is where they have me hooked, and like you, I've used them for so long. That and it also has my Chromebook locked to it.. man, they really have me pinned down! I think I can start smaller, but they really know their demographics.. or maybe I can do like a pal of mine does; he has a dummy account with whatever info for such uses, you know?

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #2 on: January 06, 2023, 00:49 I only have two social media accounts - both of which I keep only to combat boredom - and intentionally refuse to sign on to any others. No Discord, Instagram or [whatever] for this old geezer. I listened to people in Twitter chatrooms revealing how their entire life (professional & private) revolves around half a dozen (anti-)social networks and nothing scares these netizens more than the thought of (accidentally) provoking a shit storm. Being dependent on social media platforms exposes you to reputational blackmail by any group, gang or individual with a cause. No matter what that (un)holy cause might be. I personally do not regard Facebook, Twitter & Co. as socially beneficial to the Internet Universe. But who cares what I think?

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #3 on: January 06, 2023, 12:51 I joined Facebook and twitter after they got going. It was pretty clear after about a week that there was nothing there that interested me and I just never went back. An old axiom attributable to someone I forget is; "Never join a group that wants you as a member." Basically it is solid advice. gmail address. dotMac started during the OS 9 days. It has been a solid service, morphing into MobileMe and iCloud. Gmail has always been my throw away account. Places that will not let you do anything without an account get an account created with a gmail address. I check it once a week and throw out anything I find there. Overall I am very good at getting rid of clutter. Even my dotMac account has fewer than 10 messages older than a couple days. I was at a family gathering not long after joining Facebook, when my sister-in-law complained that I had not responded to her friend request. I responded, by saying, "You are not my friend you are an inlay, and besides we do not even like each other, so why would we want to be friends." The only point there being that I know how to create a big social flap and I prefer to create them face to face. I have often wondered why such things became popular, I just do not see them as offering any pleasing enjoyable sustainable social interactions.

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #4 on: January 06, 2023, 13:02 Trigger warning: This post is not politically correct! (neither is its author) Humans are social animals but Western ideology demands we see ourselves as solitary individuals who are masters of our fate by sheer will alone. That creates an inherent contradiction, as "we" have spent most of our energy during the past few hundred years trying to escape the bonds of family, religion and culture. And now that we succeeded we find the place around us to be uncomfortably empty. Facebook, Twitter and Co. are successful for the same reason that causes dating platforms to overflow with women desperately trying to find the Mr. Perfect at 50+ who evaded them for the last three decades of their social life. Because we all know its wrinkled skin that makes lovers truly attractive. People collect friends on Facebook because that's the only place where you can score them that easily. And they refuse to differentiate between the analog and the digital version, because then they'd have to acknowledge how lonely they really are.

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #5 on: January 06, 2023, 14:58 Facebook & others are more than just food pics and collecting friends (though I absolutely share your concerns!). As more and more people migrated to those walled gardens, they took their hobbies with them. So there's some hobbyist groups with actually good people and interesting content but flawed structure (try to finding a post from 2 years ago ... good luck) and severe limitations like character limitation for text. Quote from: wove I was at a family gathering not long after joining Facebook, when my sister-in-law complained that I had not responded to her friend request. I responded, by saying, "You are not my friend you are an inlay, and besides we do not even like each other, so why would we want to be friends." Not sure what you have for breakfast every morning, wove, but pretty convinced it's not a diplomate :-D Quote from: wove I have often wondered why such things became popular, I just do not see them as offering any pleasing enjoyable sustainable social interactions. I don't know for sure either. I think at one point it was like "everyone and their neighbours is on there, I need to join up too". At least I saw that with my family & friends. Quote from: 68040 Humans are social animals but Western ideology demands we see ourselves as solitary individuals who are masters of our fate by sheer will alone. You might be on to something with this one. Western civilization with its individualism requires you to "prove yourself" throughout your life to get affirmation by your peers. This is even more prevalent in the extremely extroverted American culture, so maybe no surprise Facebook was invented by an American. It satisfies the desire to present yourself as that someone you want to be seen. Posing as the powerful business manager, the successful programmer, the good loving mother, the fitness guru, the sexy beach babe, whatever.
Last Edit: January 07, 2023, 08:20 by Bolkonskij
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #6 on: January 06, 2023, 18:50 LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the like are also places to market yourself professionally without posting a resume on job sites for corporate recruiters. It's a way for professional talent to showcase themselves. In this aspect, you become more attractive and set yourself apart from the lackluster pool of resumes available for sale online filled with a lot of unemployed and otherwise more desperate folks who are actively looking to ditch their current gig. Companies also post information on conferences, seminars and again, making space for fertile ground for access to talent that companies may want to recruit, as well as to promote their brand and get noticed by VCs to invest in or even entreat a corporate buy out. So aside the friends and fam side of things, there's a lot of business-focus in most if not all of these platforms.

68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #7 on: January 06, 2023, 19:01 Quote from: Bolkonskij It satisfies the desire to present yourself as that someone you want to be seen. Posing as the powerful business manager, the successful programmer, the good loving mother, the fitness guru, the sexy beach babe, whatever. The hallmark of a true business genius is his understanding of human nature. Bill Gates knew back in day when home computing and Atari consoles were all the rave that it would require the street creds of a behemoth like IBM to upgrade the computer from a kid's toy and a geek obsession to a business tool nobody wanted to be without anymore. That is why he designed Windoze the way he did: Not as a shining peacock but a simple minded work horse. And when Steve Jobs decided to put the "I" in everything Mac he had honed in on the spirit of generation X with the accuracy of a heat seeking missile. The post-baby boomers were the first generation that experienced single parent households or both parents working as the new normal of a society that had freed itself from traditional gender roles. Along with that went a "liberation" of children who no longer felt obliged to care for their elders at all cost. Thus the phenomenon of the solitary individual was born. The Young Urban Professional or Yuppie - with himself as the center of a 1 star universe. The "Sex in the City" generation would have been a more accurate name for them. Social interaction was no longer a means to forge bonds that had to last a lifetime, but only a crutch to combat the post-office boredom of a reality that forced you to define your sense of self by the stuff you could accumulate. You slaved countless hours to be able to afford things that you wouldn't need to feel good if you had an extended "old style" network of friends and familly to hang out with. How many of us would still know the names of our neighbors, if not for the name plate next to the ringer? Millions of years of evolution could not prepare the human mind for life in a concrete jungle, where you rub shoulders with untold hundreds each day in the subway or on the train. Yet your invitation list for Christmas grows shorter with each passing year. Being lonely amidst millions of strangers is the worst kind of solitude for a creature in desperate need of social confirmation. And here cometh Facebook, Twitter, Discord & Co. to the rescue. All of a sudden we have "Friends" again, online parties with plenty of participants, can feel loved, welcomed and appreciated. Its a Digiverse as fleeting as any SimCity run, but it has to do because we got nothing else left to comfort our aching souls. The Covid lockdowns only accelerated the trend to social alienation in the analogue world. A side effect I strongly suspect was welcomed by certain circles.
Last Edit: January 08, 2023, 01:22 by 68040
Neal_SE30 256 MB Posts: 401 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #8 on: January 08, 2023, 00:02 I like many of you joined the web at the beginning, what a wonderful thing it was (be it very slow) and still can be. But like you mention the big social media giants kind of took over. I’m a rarity I dropped social media 7-8 years ago. No bookface, twitter, instagram. Instead search out great places like here instead. My friends know to text of call me. It works. I do have discord though for warpath game i play and for hotline so i can chat with you guys

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