Returning to the internet or social media after spending time without it is a fascinating experience. Iteratively leaving and returning has built up my understanding of - and resilience to - the negativity that pervades online spaces. More than just negativity, the overarching ideology, tone, temperament and attitude of social media simply doesn’t match up to the sentiment about reality shared by average people offline.
I consistently come to the conclusion that there is (mostly) no reason to engage with internet content and that social media is a classic “crabs-in-a-bucket” bubble. Still, I take a peek again and again, maybe out of morbid curiosity, maybe out of hope that the ideological, emotional or social landscape of the internet will change. But it doesn’t.
Here are just a few problematic and provably false ideas propagated by the internet:
- The opinions posted online reflect average real-world sentiment.
- All angles of an argument are reflected on the internet.
- The world is doomed and hopelessly falling apart. Nobody is happy and everything sucks.
- The younger generation is universally brain-rotted, hopeless and can’t focus at all.
- Content creators and routine internet posters are average people.
Consider [1]: “Real-world sentiment” is the average person’s opinion on any given issue. This includes young, old, country, city, geographical differences and more - but most importantly, it includes two polar opposite types of people: 1) those who do not post on the internet, and 2) those who are over-engaged on the internet, colloquially termed “chronically online”. Someone from the first group may not care about posting or reacting about a certain issue, whereas the second group would be over-active in pushing their opinion. So naturally an echo chamber arises online, whereas out in 3D space, there is still a massive chunk of people whose opinion has not changed.
Keep in mind that when I write “someone from the first group may not care about posting or reacting about a certain issue”, I don’t mean that they don’t care about the issue itself, I mean that they are not convinced in a purpose to argue the issue on an online stage. This brings me to [2]. Just because the internet’s reach is vast doesn’t mean that everyone’s views are on it. For example, there is plenty of information in physical books that has yet to make it to the internet. Also, certain angles of arguments are not available online because the holders of those viewpoints have no reason to debate people online about their views. They are secure in them and supported by their peers, as opposed to the insecurity that follows the chronically online person; this insecurity itself foments a desire to continue posting and trying to convince others of their opinion. People who are confident in their opinions may see no need to post in the abyss of social media.
There is a lot more to explain about [2]. Consider seeing a controversial post online. A controversial post has to go through a number of barriers: 1) someone has to care enough to post it, knowing it’ll be negatively received, downvoted, and ridiculed, 2) the people who agree with it have to care enough to click on the post itself and scroll through the comments, knowing that their true opinion probably won’t be present, and 3) the people who agree with it have to care enough about the digital medium to take online writing and argumentation as seriously as the people who disagree with it. All these barriers make it hard to fight against the flood of “acceptable” opinions that will try to silence the controversial post.
These barriers, especially the last one, hamper the propagation of any post online that is against the grain. There is also something to be said about the fact that the internet moves so fast that anybody not used to its speed is at a disadvantage to voice their opinion quick enough to be seen. So the internet in some sense is self-restricted to (some level of) chronically online netizens. Nobody comes back to a Reddit post after a week. In order to be relevant, a response has to come in within, in many cases, only a few horus. This also helps form an echo chamber of personalities who were all ready to post immediately - their existence skews the pool of people replying. (This is less of a problem on the “old internet” forum boards with the clunky VBulletin style that simply lists posts chronologically instead of ordering them by number of likes or upvotes).
Consider that pool of people I just mentioned. Someone chronically online is bound to be angry, disappointed, and irritable, because they are not moving their body and are bored enough to be posting online multiple times a day. The effect of having this type of person shout their opinions into the abyss at a rate higher than happy or more well-adjusted people is that the whole internet has a negative slant and nihilist outlook on almost all issues [3]. I feel that I don’t have to explain this point too far. The country, economy, and world itself have been in freefall and on the brink of collapse, according to the internet, ever since I’ve read and interacted with it - over 15 years. Every single career path sucks, every city and town sucks to live in, every relationship is garbage, every country is greater than the one you were born in. People go to the internet to complain, and their complaints are compounded by chronically online people who want everyone to be as depressed as they are - the classic “crabs-in-a-bucket” effect.
This ties into [4]. There is no hate on the internet like the hate for the younger generation, who has access to better digital communication and entertainment than any other before it. People love to punch down, coming to their own conclusions about the entire generation from only a handful of posts online. The older generations see what they want to see, some without ever speaking to a younger person. Here’s an example: years ago when I posted on an RC forum asking for help setting up my controller. I assumed moving the stick “up” would make the plane fly “up”. This was not the case, and the older members of that forum immediately joked condescendingly about how I must play a lot of video games. Yet I had never played video games in my life. They simply wanted to blame my confusion on something they didn’t like, and put me into a box of youth brainwashed by video games. There is not much to explain here - this has been going on for hundreds of years, and arguably isn’t worth mentioning as part of an essay on the internet - this is a societal feature that the internet hasn’t changed. The internet has exacerbated the affect, however, since only a small minority of insane people from this or that generation can be referenced as proof that the entire generation is terrible. This applies to boomers too.
Here’s some reality: I work with Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha students on a regular basis who do Calculus, by hand, in 30min to 2hr chunks, right in front of me, not checking their phone or using AI to solve it. Sure, there is an argument to be made about reduction in attention spans (and some students do use AI to help them solve the problems, don’t get me wrong), and brainrot content online, but there will always be slackers and dumber people, just like it was when I was growing up, and when my dad was, and his dad, etc.
Here’s some more reality: My dad is a boomer and isn’t a terrible person. He volunteered to coach both baseball and basketball as my brother and I grew up - 10 years of unpaid after-work labor - he is not a political extremist, he reads books, he has hobbies, he doesn’t blame the younger generation for everything. He minds his own business and would be considered incredibly based by anyone who gets to know him. Everyone who is familiar with the offline world knows that the average boomer is not the devil like the internet would try to convince you they are. Bad apples exist everywhere at the same rate as good apples.
Remember that a post online is not necessarily made by the average person [5], since the average person doesn’t think to broadcast their daily activities or opinions on the internet, especially not in video form. As a reminder, I was a YouTuber and for many years I reviewed technology and remote controlled aircraft. This talking-to-a-camera activity largely existed in the vacuum of my parents basement and the field I flew at down the road. Once I was an adult and I had the freedom to be out of the house by myself, I never posted my real-world opinions or doings as much as I used to or as much as content creators do now. I rode a motorcycle up and down the East coast, moved to Alaska in a camper and drove across Canada, travelled Europe solo, and worked in the Fortune 500 without ever thinking “I should take a video in real-time of my life and explain it, so that people on the internet can watch me live my life.” No, like a normal person, I matured out of the hyper-social phase of pining for attention online; I took photos here and there and shared them with my family and friends as I moved through life. The act of performing for the camera is not natural, and content creators are not average people.
Yet, since there is so much content and a larger proportion of creators posting online compared to non-creators, it is easy to think that after watching a few dozen or so of them spout similar opinions, that must be the opinion of the majority of people - whether it is political or simply their outlook on life and what they spend their time posting about. This is an inherently misguided idea because there is a specific type of person in and of themselves who takes a video of themselves talking and posts it on the internet. That type of person is not reflective of the average person’s characteristics, viewpoints, and general personality. Yet, the opinions of that kind of person, and how they act in general, have an outsized influence on the internet, so people think that those characteristics are average. And yet again we end up in a feedback loop / echo-chamber. It’s also clear to see that people who start YouTube channels act like other YouTubers to fit the mold, which is not necessarily a bad thing - the formula works to gain subscribers - but emphasizes that there is a “type” of YouTuber, same as there is a “type” of Redditor, Twitter-poster, or online personality in general. This type exists outside the offline world, and in many cases the characteristics of any internet type would be considered rude, ridiculous, or obsessive in the offline realm.
All of this to say that the internet is not reflective of the characteristics of people who are more familiar with offline reality. The negativity, overarching ideology, tone, temperament and attitude of social media simply don’t match up to the sentiment about reality shared by average people offline. Different sides of arguments aren’t fairly represented, and the influence of people who believe that the digital medium is worthwhile to engage with in a continuous manner crushes anyone who attempts to engage who is more attuned to the offline world’s rules and customs.
Wrapping up with some final notes:
The internet is a childish place. Anyone with strong morals who wants others to be treated well and not made fun of has a hard time engaging with the internet. The entire place is rife with high school level drama, strong emotions running wild, name-calling, in-fighting and pathetic schoolyard behavior all around. The internet has a crabs-in-a-bucket effect for maturity too, not just success. Act mature on the internet and hold strong to your views, you may be ridiculed for being too adult. Few will match your energy; the internet struggles to handle any serious issues. People who have a more solid and secure worldview that hinges on the idea of serious people existing may struggle to engage with the internet because it’s so immature. Once again, this skews the pool of people engaging on the internet, further creating an echo chamber. I think we’ve gotten to the point where the internet influences culture more than culture is allowed to influence the internet.
As a final note, something the internet does very well is that it doesn’t let events exist in their own right. By the nature of boredom and political obsession, any event has to be shredded by obsessive analysis and overthinking. Deconstructing all happenings and connecting them to a broader web of politics and sociology is exhausting and arguably useless.
The greatest rite of passage in our world is engagement with the reality space itself; to face reality and be alright with all its effects is to succeed beyond anything that the digital realm can offer.
Best,
Daniel