/32/ - Psychopolitics

>>3022

To keep this thread on topic pls disregard the last line of that post ty, just got excited is all :)

I think it depends on the person and the problem.

Take reddit for example, the vast majority of informatory posts are designed to give the readers the illusion of value in the same exact way clickbait titles do. Lately even their diy section has been plagued by covert ads. If this is happening there you can be sure that pretty much every mainstream social, and information outlet does this to a far greater degree.

And that is for practical problems, if we take into account human relationship problems, it completely destroys any way you have to solve them.

On the other hand using the internet while having critical thinking skills, and taking care to avoid certain practices, can yield tremendous results.

Problem is, how is someone going to get these skills in a world where family and the education system are completely destroyed while there is a continuous stream of distractions as >>3022 says. Add to that information overload and I think that the Internet in the shape that it is now is not really helpful for the average person. But that doesn't mean that it is not helpful for society as a whole or that it cannot change in a direction that is not so damaging to its users.

Lately I have found myself having conversations with people where I am one hundred percent sure that they are just repeating a comment section. This is in no way new, had the same thing when TV was all the rage but was quite unnerving.

>>3022

>Now /32/, how do we combat this attack on awareness?

I bought a laptop with an internet kill switch and I bought many many textpads and pencils/erasers. I also bought pens.

Instead of simply viewing ("consuming" -- a misnomer, since the content doesn't disappear) content, when I get back from work, I kill my internet past some hour and I only use the pad to write down my thoughts.

>>3022

there was a period some years back in which all whom I posed that question to would respond "cat pictures" or "porn"

>>3021

Before the internet what did people do to solve problems? First they consulted their own wellspring of knowledge and wisdom, their elders. After that you would consult someone in the know, a technical expert or something, depending on what your problem was. Either in person or in book form.

If all those were no help you'd attempt to solve the problem yourself using your own faculties and without the benefit of previous experiences. Whether or not you were successful you would still be contributing to the wellspring of your community's knowledge, and your own of course.

The internet cuts across all those things. Like as already been mentioned, the internet is full of clickbait shit and distractions and also bad advice. Everybody has an opinion and they can express it without peer review from your elders or experts. Whatever is in your head can become free on the web. It can lead to confusion or worse.

But I wouldn't be put off the internet totally. This anon >>3028 gets it right:

>On the other hand using the internet while having critical thinking skills, and taking care to avoid certain practices, can yield tremendous results.

>>3022

>Now /32/, how do we combat this attack on awareness?

Build monasteries.

>>3036

>The internet cuts across all those things.

I have been thinking that this is the main reason people are so bad at socializing and being functioning members of society these days. In the past you had to learn to understand others, care for them, have dignity, integrity, know respect, have basic debate skills and courage if you wanted to get anywhere in life, be that a job or even finding a mate.

Now everyone can use extremely tight filters and find others exactly like him, both in what they are and in what they lack.

This is where I think the Internet ties is with the identity wars. In order to have an a self you need to interact with people different than you. Without a self you end up a narcissist in a never ending chase to find things you identify with.

But, I think that in the long term, the effect the Internet has, even on its current state, on society can be beneficial. Since it can introduce a new way to divide society into tiers, not by money, but by knowledge.

It’s known that extroverts are more common. But more than that, I think people in this society are super extroverted. Evidence of this: people’s tendency to fill any alone time with distractions…either using their phones or social media to have some sort of social contact, or wasting time with mindless entertainment.

The main takeaway is that people nowadays basically have no alone time and therefore spend no time thinking. I think the availability of distractions like phones and internet are cultivating this super-extroversion. When was the last time you sat alone and just thought/meditated? Even people on the introvert end of the spectrum don’t do this—introverts today is synonymous with internet-autists on the chans. That’s not introversion at all, since introversion means “facing inwards”, and they aren’t facing inwards. Before the internet and all that, people basically had no choice but to be alone without any distractions. Now, there are people being born and growing up in this world.

Anyway, I don’t have to explain why a population of people who don’t spend any time thinking is bad. We probably all agree that thinking is good.

>>3037

>Now everyone can use extremely tight filters and find others exactly like him, both in what they are and in what they lack.

I don't think those "tight filters" are relevant. You're right that the internet connected people to others like them and allows for niche groups to form, but those niche groups never leave the internet. I myself am a furfag, but I've never met another internet furfag in real life, and it's not a part of my off-internet life. . Most important socializing is independent of the internet.

>>3039

>I don't think those "tight filters" are relevant.

You are right, it has nothing to do with filters and there sure are online communities that can help one move forward. But there is also tinder, facebook, instagram.

I don't think that socializing is independent from the Internet, although it should be.

>>3039

He's right though in the sense that people don't leave their Facebook comfort zones online. People spend years feeding at these troughs, indeed some people have been born into it and raised there. It encourages hyper conformity. And when you add in the social aspect like finding a mate online it really does just encourage narcissism. You're not interacting with real people. It's just you and your desires interacting with the pixels on your screen.

I'll add some more thoughts on this, mainly relating to how the Internet affects irl group formation.

a) By off loading such a big part of our intelligence to the net there lies the danger of being unable to function as members of smaller groups in the same way people have more and more difficulty to survive off the grid.

b)The way the net handles cross group relationships: by creating safespaces so as to combat the net's inherent hate machine. This kind of alienation can carry on irl the more people rely on sanitized social media to form their opinions.

c)narcissim, as an anon put it, there are more photographers and attention whores than people actually interested in a group's activities.

Also I have been toying with the idea of parts of the Internet functioning as a behavioral sink. I searched a bit and found the following

> Freedman suggested a different conclusion, though. Moral decay resulted “not from density, but from excessive social interaction,” Ramsden explained. “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.” Striking the right balance between privacy and community, Freedman argued, would reduce social pathology. It was the unwanted unavoidable social interaction that drove even fairly social creatures mad, he believed. Culture and upbringing also play key roles in adapting to environment, others suggested.

>Further studies of space design seemed to prove this. One such study compared students living in two different styles of college dormitory— corridor versus a suite style. Those in the corridor perceived the environment as crowded and exhibited increased stress levels. Those in the suite style, where the dormitory was partitioned into a series of separate communal areas, fared better, even though the level of density was similar, Ramsden said. “By comparing the two, [researchers] were able to provide evidence both of pathology and its amelioration through more effective design.

If social interaction is what results in a behavioral sink, can the Internet be exactly that?

By the way, everything I have written above applies to a specific use of the Internet. One can gain very much so as he follows certain practices.

>>3038

>nowadays [people] basically have no alone time and therefore spend no time thinking.

It is as if everyone is watching Big Brother 24/7

>>3039

>but those niche groups never leave the internet.

Some of those niche groups never leave the Internet, some do. But even those that don't, affect reality by affecting the people using them.

And some groups, niche or not, substitute real structures.

Tinder substituting mating process

Uber substituting state regulations of transportation

Fb - socializing

Wikipedia - parts of the intellectual structures

etc.

The above have the potential to provide value but also very negative results.

As long as Internet groups functioned mainly with text these problems were less pronounced, part of the reason was, less people were using it back then. But once rating systems, recommendations algorithms and social media became commonplace things really started going bad. That, along with the influx of masses accessing the net through smartphones.

Local traditional structures had no way to compete with the results those systems gave to the specific niche they were designed for in much the same way that traditional architecture had no way to compete with the functionality of Bauhaus. But some things were lost during that conversion.

Yes, I keep googling how to make cheese sauce even after having made it lots of times.

Also I must lack ingenuity because I use for stuff like stopping a bike wheel squeaking.

If you attempt to solve the problem without first using the internet but then consult it afterwards, then maybe you can keep your edge AND get the best technique.

didn't mean to sage.