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Does the internet make people crazy?

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dragonrider

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Are there more people into crazy conspiracy theories today than before, or does it only seem that way? Things like "flat earth"? Have internet filterbubbles been fanning the flames of paranoia, or have these people always been there and is it that the internet just made them more visible?

And what if more people start believing stupid shit? Or will the internet eventually de-evolve into a place where only the realy stupid people get their info, like TV?
 
Mexico, 2 man lynched to death because of some rumours spread trough whatsapp.
These channels become a judge at times because of the viral effects :x
 
My hypothesis is that the number of crazy people has always been more or less the same, it's just that internet gives these people voice, so you hear them more often (specially if you're looking into the wrong places).

It's like that one occasional crazy guy in the bus or metro that starts yelling and becomes the center of attention, even if there are other 30 people, you "ignore" them unconsciously and only pay attention to what is outside the norm, and you'll only remember that crazy guy from your ride home.


If the crazies are bothering you, work on improving your filters, :)
 
endlessness said:
My hypothesis is that the number of crazy people has always been more or less the same, it's just that internet gives these people voice, so you hear them more often (specially if you're looking into the wrong places).

It's like that one occasional crazy guy in the bus or metro that starts yelling and becomes the center of attention, even if there are other 30 people, you "ignore" them unconsciously and only pay attention to what is outside the norm, and you'll only remember that crazy guy from your ride home.


If the crazies are bothering you, work on improving your filters, :)
Click to expand...

I was going to say similar, good post :thumb_up:
 
I second that it gives them a voice and that they tend to be more outspoken than most people are.

However it also plays a role in conditioning people to accept bogus information, you will never believe what this celebrity milf found in her backyard when she lost 10 lbs from listening to this secret that your doctor doesn't want you to know about!


There are likely other aspects as well. It is being used as a tool of social control and manipulation the way organized religion and television and party politics have been.
It's just another brick in the wall.
 
I see people in boxes going further in boxes, in the materialised meta empire. And those people look in the vague like they're out there, a broken diamond sucked in the candy light, an ecosystem of a world where we can control everything, where their madness is circled back in a positive loop of delusion. It's a beautiful mirror that tells the truth about stuff and will show you your loved one or bring them back from the dead.

It's not about the content, what you may write, it's about the form. The form is a billion writing, a framework , vast as the ocean, the writing is a beautiful sand castle by the beach. It can be beautiful, even transcend the moving sands of time, but eventually it's only letters, and the real spark is inside you but maybe it's even more beautiful when it's licking the clouds and cuddling the grass. Because those are alives. And not a world you have control over.

Do we have to go this way? I have no fucking clue. It seems really crazy and unecessary but that also makes it really cools and funky. Who doesn't want some crazy in his life? Vote crazy.

ps: and it's addictive af, vote addictive.
 
endlessness said:
...If the crazies are bothering you, work on improving your filters, :)
Click to expand...
I might come to that point later. Or not, as now I'm a bit in a no-filter strategy.

And yes maybe I'd better kept the (exercise) social media enhanced confrontational human aspects out of general sight. It's all raffling feathers unnecessary and so on, and I agree with that. I would do that for the piece of people's minds, but these people eagerly watch Black Mirror on TV in the evening for relaxation? :|
 
The interesting thing is that the social media platform isn't necessarily giving the crazy guy on the train a louder voice. It's a unique situation in which you, Bob, Mary, and crazy Bill are all sitting in the same traincar (Twittergrambook) but you are the only one who hears Bill raving about how the earth is flat because 3 years ago you clicked like on a repost of a Neil deGrasse Tyson share and the algorithm has determined that there is at 14.7% chance you'll get emotional enough to make a comment and an 83.2% chance that it'll keep your attention for at least 12 more seconds.

Meanwhile in Bob's echochamber he's getting advertisements for tools and motor oil because Bob likes a lot of car posts, and over in Mary's echochamber she's not just clicking like on, but making sure to reshare all those "share for Jesus" posts her that churchgroup members keep passing around like a fat kush blunt.

However, for those already predisposed to this kind of thing, this echochamber effect creates a strong feedback loop allowing the nuttiness to proliferate incredibly quickly.

I'd have to agree it's probably not making us (much) crazier than we were already, but it sure has got us hooked. Now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to scrawling my feed as it's been nearly 4 minutes since I've had a dopamine drip.
 
If you want to be a flat earther, all you need for validation is to google "flat earth".

"Oooh, 1,040,000,000 results. And searching "round earth" only has 960,000,000 results. Clearly, there must be some truth in flat earth theory."

Most people are not well versed in identifying logical fallacies, so will believe what the herd believes. There was a time when round earthers were a minority, and would be seen as crazy by the masses.

The internet is a powerful tool for communication and miscommunication.

However, there are a few aspects of the internet that i think IS driving people crazy. One of them is the selfie sickness. Humans have always been vain, but only in recent times has our vanity reached new heights, to the point that millions of people around the world can ogle the same persons body. In this day and age, an instagram model can temporarily alleviate her insecurities by getting random people to "like" and compliment her photos. Most, if not all, of these people do not know this model on a personal level, and are really just expressing their lust, jealousy or admiration. Humans are not built for this sort of attention, and grossly inflates one with fake self-worth. Even normal people who aren't models take an excessive amount of selfies. All i can think when i see people do this is "What, have your friends already forgotten what you look like?". The argument i hear from selfheads is "i need to capture the memories". And my response is "What, has your brain lost the ability to remember?". In my mind, if you're gonna forget a certain moment, then it wasn't worth remembering.
 
The internet makes people more knowledgeable, more intelligent, more powerful and more able.

It doesn't make people crazy, but only reveals pre-existing craziness. And to reveal is to enlighten and empower.

I think the best thing about the internet is that it forces people to grow up.

Before the internet, there were very few sources of information, because the entry level was high (it takes a lot of money to start a TV station or a newspaper). As a result, the information out there was non-anonymous, signed, vouched and accountable for by real names and money; it tended to be authority-approved and therefore didn't need verifying by the end consumer. This encouraged lack of critical thinking, laziness and idiocy. People could be children forever.

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish information and make it available to anyone in the world. This encourages verifying your information, developing your own judgment. It is a superior situation and the single greatest achievement in the evolution of our species. Finally we have a reason to use our brains. This will allow us to really stand out from the other primates one day.

I'm grateful for fake news and conspiracy theories. They're like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and gave way to mammals, which eventually led to the appearance of the Homo sapiens.

Before the internet, it wasn't easy to see who was an idiot. Nowadays you hear someone talk about a flat Earth and it leaves no question. Thank you Internet. I wish you growth and more power.

When I saw the Facebook billboards "Fake news is not our friend", it made me very angry :x Facebook has done a lot of good work for the evolution of humanity by being a breeding ground of fake news, and now this? Wanting to nanny people who were already showing signs of growing up? Why?

Fake news is arguably mankind's best friend.
 
Something that gives us so much potential (the internet) is prone to have draw backs somehow. I see your point Jugabe, let the truth and the lies be both on the table, in the light, then we have to grow-up to make the right choices.

Maybe we lost track of "craziness"? There was a time it was integral part of society.
The only one who was allowed to offend the king was the crazy jester.
Odd persons became oracles.
Native Americans knew how to integrate the crazy person in their society and respecting it for what it is.
More recently, craziness is not allowed to show openly/live any more, it has gotten a pejorative sick-label. Imho it's to be expected that craziness takes refuge in the hungry social channels.
 
God, the flat earther controversy is surely the most ridiculous thing I've seen.

People believing the Earth is flat being proven by people who've never seen this round Earth, and never will if through a flat translucid glass or a flat picture on a flat screen, mocking one another.

And it's funny because it doesn't matter if the earth is round or not. It doesn't really affect us. You don't need to know about it. It's too far out of your range of perception.

People are still absorded by the myth of space but all we saw with man going on the moon is the trace of his shoe and someone seperated from the world in every way. Only surviving through the tools he made up. And that's the myth that guides the life of people on earth, it's a level of self persuasion that has gone to the most extremes, and the most delusional imo - but it does make the inception all the more efficient.

If you care to give it a twisty name, here: "The Myth of the Out of Body Experience". And out of body means dead, maybe this strange transhumanist desire that is gracing us lately could be corelatd to the extreme suicidal pulse of our species? Another irony for an ideology promoted by people fearing death at its most?

And instead of looking up there for the stars and situate ourselves, we look down to our wrist, the chains on it, or our phones, directing our look toward this artificial belly button. We ain't looking at the other anymore if only through a window. We have gone through having a supremely subjective view of reality, where the symbolic nature of our conscioucness is always represented out there, to a dry up version where we fail to correlate the different degrees of the human experience and reality. People get worked up about the "reality" of it all when the problem is that we live outside of the phenomological realm and our mind is not as alive as it was when it was always touching nature, our subjectivity isn't sublimed anymore.

We live in a world where man hman has gone crazy of controling his surrounding and each other, how can no one never question the scientific methodology which is all about control being only another aspect of its demantiae? That technology, even at its most rudimentary, tells us this one thing: "I wasn't born with all I needed, I need more". Maybe it's time considering that tools created for control will increase suffering exponentially?

Look at those words which never fade after I've said them. We all want to live on forever but it's a denial of the nature of this world.
 
A society that puts baby right back up into artificial environment after their birth and entertain this illusion that going into boxes will teach them something, will never lead to maturity. Maturity is going outside and living with the other living beings on this earth, it's being touched by the wind and bitten by the cold even when it's too much.

This all grown up and serious attitude we dress up in is a fallacy, we just can't withstand the world anymore. You know, it's so beautiful and a love so powerful, and her tears have swallowed us already so many times and we're so sensitive so we're afraid.

But yes, it is nice to have a little paradise (emphasis on this word) where the body won't get hurt or touched. It's called bad parenting.
 
imo, Internet and especially electronics are taking too much of humans lifetime, directly or indirectly. No consequences are expected through adulthood (or even childhood nowadays, when every kid has tablet or such); yet, when you `grow` up, you've seen everything (through social networks), and yet nothing (regarding yourself).
 
I also think the internet is a great invention. Endlessness is probably right.

It's maybe a bit like murphy's law: think of a realy stupid idea, and there will be a group of people somewhere, dedicating basically their whole life to it. The one thing i've actually learned from watching jerry springer.

And now they can find eachother on facebook.
 
dragonrider said:
And now they can find eachother on facebook.
Click to expand...

I think this is key. I agree that the proliferation of information - in quantity and quality never evidenced in history - creates the false impression that there are more problems and conspiracies and wars and human conflicts than ever before. But something else is going on. Everyone is familiar with the idea of the 'echo chamber' as a self contained and intrinsic entity, but there is also and extrinsic element to it.

Consider a pedophile in a small town 30 yrs ago. He likely felt rather isolated and very much of an aberration, a sexual anomaly with an affliction that must be, at best, internalized and suppressed or, at worst, played out covertly at the expense of children. Now, in our glorious double edged sword of world-wide technological communication, the same lone pedophile can find entire, sympathetic communities and, I would argue, is emboldened by the very sense of community he finds there into believing that pedophilia is a perfectly natural, defensible and even admirable sexual disposition. This is what has given rise to groups like Man/boy love (NAMBLA in North America) who seek to legitimize pedophilia on the platform of a misunderstood sexual preference that they have likened to homosexuality and bisexuality, comparing their plight to the plight of the previously much persecuted gay and lesbian community who are finally being given freedoms and liberties and recognition.

The same kind of phenomena is rife across the net, from conspiracy theories to dangerous pseudoscientific movements and the dissemination of terror and extremist ideologies.

JBArk
 
For me, reading books - especially classic novels - really feels like an amazing breath of fresh air nowadays. The difficulty for me is getting away from the internet long enough to sit down somewhere else, and read.
 
If the internet allows one person to learn something of value while a thousand others get sucked into conspiracy theories or some other mental masturbation, it's still doing a great service to humanity, because it's those who put it into good use that matter. Advances in science, technology, medicine etc. are made by the most skilled, clever, intelligent; those least so have no impact, whether positive or negative.

The internet beats printed books by orders of magnitude, by being indexed and quickly searchable.
 
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