The damage done by social media

I remember a time when the internet was new. A golden age when the exchange of information was at your fingertips. Sure, sending a picture took a minute and a small video of low resolution took 20 minutes (28k modem baby), but that monkey smelling his finger was worth the wait.
The internet was supposed to make people smarter and has done the exact opposite.
Things were going great. Conspiracies were shared. News was spread. Emails replaced the fax machine…
Then everything changed..

Social media was born.
The dead beat dad or red headed step child of the internet reared it’s ugly head.
Slowly it went from keeping in contact with family and friends to a nightmare of lies and miss information.
Has anyone else received a missing child report on Facebook that was three years old? I know I have.
How about a story on a politician that you know didn’t happen?
It’s almost impossible to even comment on a post without someone taking everything out of context and judging you over one single line of dialogue.

All of these social media platforms have become a toxic mess.
All of the filters we had with social interactions are gone because the consequences are gone.
There is no longer the risk of a backhand when flapping your lips at someone.

Every form of social media has chipped away at society leaving us with several generations of people with social anxieties, a huge entitlement complex and the inability to pair bond with another individual.
The political and racial divide in the World is also a direct result of social media.

ATS is not exempt from this phenomenon either but I will say it’s about the only place I can still find a friendly conversation with a person of differing opinions without name calling or insults. Most of the time…..😂

I know it’s easy to say, just stop using social media.
But that doesn’t make it any easier dealing with the damage of those that have been and still are being effected.
Is there an answer?
I’m not even sure there’s a question..
All I know for sure is that society has been damaged.

Maybe I should have put this in the rant forum but I don’t feel “ranty”

He is the monkey video for those who doubt it’s greatness..

a reply to: Bluntone22

You’re 100% right.

I ditched social media over a decade ago. All of it.

Why?

It’s gross. I’ve logged on to twitter a few times just to see what a few individuals said and I realized it’s seriously aggressive and a waste.

Here’s the problem I face by virtue of ignoring social media - everyone else uses it and is impacted by it. It’s like a entire fictional world taking place inside the world. The masses are are hostile, self-absorbed, and more because every ding dong has a microphone to spout off all the ignorant vitriol they want. That behavior then impacts them in daily life - it becomes who they are.

So whether you engage with social media or not, you still have to deal with the impact of it - which is largely not positive.

ATS replaced deny ignorance with politics and lies.

Lies with no evidence just accusations.

Hundreds of thousand dying from the vaccine? Really? Teachers are all pedophiles and grooming kids? Really? Tons of voter fraud? Really?

No evidence of it, just say it and most people here will believe it. That's the problem.

a reply to: Bluntone22

originally posted by: VulcanWerks
a reply to: Bluntone22



It’s gross. I’ve logged on to twitter a few times just to see what a few individuals said and I realized it’s seriously aggressive and a waste.

Here’s the problem I face by virtue of ignoring social media - everyone else uses it and is impacted by it. It’s like a entire fictional world taking place inside the world. The masses are are hostile, self-absorbed, and more because every ding dong has a microphone to spout off all the ignorant vitriol they want. That behavior then impacts them in daily life - it becomes who they are.

So whether you engage with social media or not, you still have to deal with the impact of it - which is largely not positive.

I guess you don't think ATS is social media. All the things you described fits in perfectly here as well and your post could have been a twitter extract. Does the irony escape you?

ding dong with a microphone indeed...

originally posted by: MiddleInsite
ATS replaced deny ignorance with politics and lies.

Lies with no evidence just accusations.

Hundreds of thousand dying from the vaccine? Really? Teachers are all pedophiles and grooming kids? Really? Tons of voter fraud? Really?

No evidence of it, just say it and most people here will believe it. That's the problem.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Lol, you just did exactly what you said, “say it and most believe it”.

#1 you’re still calling it a vaccine. It doesn’t protect you from getting it, and it doesn’t stop the spread of it.

#2 Teachers aren’t trying to groom kids. Those in power are pushing the material through that says they must teach it.

edit on 24-4-2022 by TexasTruth because: Quotes screwed up.

edit on 24-4-2022 by TexasTruth because: (no reason given)

edit on 24-4-2022 by TexasTruth because: (no reason given)

Lol. I have butchered the above post somehow with the quotes and reply’s getting moved around. And somehow it added this extra reply.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Social Media? We have a history of creating new things and in awhile we start picking them apart, tossing them away, for new and better ones....thus is Progress.

I think with all we have these days...without even thinking about fantastic futures ahead...we are beginning as well to look back on the last 100 years or so and think " What the H have we done?"

And again we change. And follow the newest "trending" items to link us to everyone in and off-world!

I do believe Social Media x the number of them, co-linked, webs, up and downloaded in someone'se CLOUD as well....I now believe we are....Social Media.

I think social media actually goes even further than what has been posted here.

Social media has encouraged, nurtured and even promoted some of the most depraved corners of our society. People who would have hidden their lurid thoughts, feared of being found out in much more local community settings; suddenly can find hidden groups of like minded individuals who make them feel more normalised, almost part of their own community.

I have no doubt that many elements of our increasing daily life such as terrorism, hate crimes, even more serious offences such as "offences against children" (sorry - I hate using the p-word - the Internet has even twisted the context and normalised it in language) have become more depraved because social media allows like minded individuals their voice and hidden communities to satisfy them. Even back in the middle of the last decade, MSM were openly talking about Facebook being used to swap images of children.

The problem is then that people feel because they are part of the world's social media, that they can "heal the world, make it a better place." Hate crime outrage leads to movements and groups in support of those marginalised, and suddenly it becomes a movement to destroy the enemy. The BLM movement is to me, a prime example of how social media turned an incident that quite rightly provoked sections of society, suddenly became a movement forcing organisations around the world to apologise for things that happened before any of us or our parents were even thought of.

Like for crying out loud, the Bank of England had to apologise for 18th and 19th Century directors being involved in the slave trade, despite the fact there was no evidence the bank itself was. That is like me apologising to Germany for my long dead relatives fighting them in the war. I am just waiting for the history books to erase all record of World War 2 because someone got offended that their child was taught about the Holocaust.

Sorry, this has turned into a long meandering rant.

TL;DR: Social media is slowly destroying society

originally posted by: MiddleInsite
ATS replaced deny ignorance with politics and lies.

Lies with no evidence just accusations.

Really? You mean, kind-of like what you just did with respect to ATS?

Except... there is far more evidence of a whole, whole lot of problems with the jabs (yes, including deaths), a woke education system run by a bunch of retard woke marxist CRT spewing zealots, and yes, even for massive elections fraud (not voter fraud, massive fraud engaged in by a few elections officials and co-conspirators), than there is for your false claim about ATS.

One thing about it, you now know how very many true jerks there are in society.

and knee jerk reactions.....

a reply to: ketsuko

originally posted by: ketsuko
One thing about it, you now know how very many true jerks there are in society.

I think it talks more about the person and his group of peers than anything else. Of course the more interconnected the world is the more people realize how many rotten jerks there are out there. But just cut them out of your circle of friends, if you have them in that circle to begin with.

Social media is like anything else out there. It can be used for good or for bad, to keep in touch and build up, or to tear down and bully.

The problem with social media is when you let too many people into your circle of trusted friends. When it comes to social media more is not better. The reverse is true. A close few trusted friends is all you need.

For some it is probably for the best if they never used social media, and it can and does cause great harm to society, but it isn't because of the medium itself, rather it is the abuse and the lack of basic commonsense standards the users apply while using it.

It’s not just social media.....

The entire internet has become a cesspool. Social media is a big part of it, but honestly all this technology has made people apathetic, rude, self centered and intellectually lazy. Not to mention incapable of having a conversation where they don’t constantly talk about themselves.

ATS is actually a good example. I’ve been visiting here off and on since 2000. I had a pretty amazing ufo experience, and back in those days there was not an abundance of data on the subject. Many of the members here were very polite, rational, and presented their viewpoints as a matter of fact that anyone was welcome to disagree with and present evidence contrary to whatever theory or viewpoint was being discussed, whether it was aliens, ufos, Bigfoot, dogman, pyramids, Atlantis, whatever. I felt like I had a lot of big brothers guiding me to go down some of these rabbit holes and learn for myself what was really going on with this crazy world.

That all started changing around the mid 2000’s. I noticed then that people started responding much more aggressively to any kind of criticism. Click bait thread titles and overly emotional posts started becoming more and more the norm. Everything..... and I mean everything became political. Threads became devoid of any solid information and became more and more opinionated with little substance.

I still hang around here from time to time obviously, but the threads are mainly just news articles now with the posters cheering for the red team or the blue team.

Gosh I miss the good ol days. I feel old all of a sudden.

a reply to: Bluntone22

To be honest?

We've always been assholes, gossips, bullies.

It was just that no one ever saw it before.

^^^^^^ I agree with smelly.

a reply to: DBCowboy

No one ever saw it because everyone was speaking in person. Now anonymity has allowed the real jerks to come forward. Who are you really? Let's give you Twat and see ...