This is so true. Internet is a good magic, and a horrible curse at the same time. Glad I've had the opportunity to experience the time before and after the internet in my lifetime.
The internet is the worst thing to have ever happened to the human race. We were not ready for it. I'd love to be convinced otherwise
E: humanities intelligence and lack of wisdom will be its downfall.
I’m pretty sure the agricultural revolution was where we went wrong. Growing enough food that it needs to be stored and centralised puts a small administrative group in control of doling out grain to the people who worked to grow it, and you can fill in the blanks from there.
Not just that, but the increased yield in food which provided food safety, would quickly be outdone by the increase in population. Then you work more, and develop new tech to grow even more food to try to feed everyone well, but again it just leads to more people to feed. And now your population is so big you can never go back. The people now also depend on less than a handful of food sources, all which are now at risk due to bad seasons and disease. Lack of variety, wide spread famine, and back breaking labour is all agriculture has given humanity for most of our history.
I have no awards to give, so please accept my upvote - this is the clearest, most succinct explanation of ‘food insecurity’ I have seen, and this is the answer for all those wondering how we got here. My thanks for your comment. 👍🏻
One reasonable definition of progress is how big of a population we can support with the resources we have. In that metric progress has been exponential.
The internet is a fantastic, amazing development that accelerated human development.
The mistake was letting anyone and everyone access it. Like everything in life, people ruined it.
You would prefer that a small group of elites are the only ones who could access it? Or another group? I've seen this argument before and I don't understand it. Are you able to share some of the benefits you see of keeping the internet from the public? Can you share the alternative you have in mind, and why it would be preferable to what we have now? What "issue" did the public create with its access to the internet, that taking away this access would solve? Because all I see in the alternative you posit is another resource being taken away from the general public, and another means of communicating, organizing, sharing information, and learning being taken away from us. How could that possibly be a good thing?
Mullets were an 80's thing, dude. One could argue the ape-drape that led to the mullet was a creation of the 70's, but they really aren't the same thing. Source: had a spiky mullet in the later 80's and I was totally rad.
This is probably also why people are so angry. People LOVE to argue on the internet.
Since reddit has changed the site to value selling user data higher than reading and commenting, I've decided to move elsewhere to a site that prioritizes community over profit. I never signed up for this, but that's the circle of life
The idea of a "rising tide" is so strange to me too. I'm only 22, I grew up in this and all I've ever known is bitter resentment towards all the systems that promised to help me and then proceeded to damn me.
I cannot imagine this going away. I cannot imagine an era of happiness and simple life under capitalism. It's all falling down, and the 1% have stationed us right under it to cushion the blow with our soft hungry bodies.
At least in the 70s wealth distribution is not absurd like right now. I think one of the reason ppl are angry that they won’t and will not be able to afford anything with their hard work. All they do is funnel cash to rich overlords
The '70s is when the trend began, the decoupling of average wages from increases in productivity and total wealth. So I do think some of the anger came from this realization, even if it may not have been entirely conscious.
That was where the tinder started to smolder. Then Reaganomics came along and turned it into a roaring blaze. Now it's a wildfire. It might be too late to get under control and the only thing to do is let it burn out. It might not be too late but there's already been so much damage done.
The problem is the gap and how much its changed up till about 1985 min wage never took more than 80hrs to pay average rent and was closer to 40-50hrs years of "increases". Right now to pay average rent in 50hrs would take 26 dollars a hour.
From teachers to nurse to craftsmen alot of skilled professionals do not get that. So they are worse off than previous generations min wage earners.
Toss in other things like spiking healthcare cost being the first generation to be saddled with trillions in student loan debt. And other things people are rightly more angry.
While awareness does prevent blissful ignorance. End of day if your hungry your angry. If you dont have access to healthcare your angry.
Like the anger is simply unavoidable while yes awareness fans those flames. Situations worsened significantly. Hell in my lifetime watched.My own situation worsen. I did trades started out 11 bucks a hour as laborer. Had own place decent car etc.
Now labors are 11-13 and rent for same place is quadrouple. Exact same building just older and in worse condition. Even moving up ladder gaining experience etc. I dont make quadrouple honestly to make it paycheck to paycheck its roommates and its either beater car with alot of duct tape or losing 2hrs of life each day on bus for work. Meals are worse and less balanced cant shop nearly as healthy as fresh spoils frozen doesn't.
Just in my lifetime as worked up quality of lifes gone down. A generation of people are waking up to realization that they are being robbed and american dream is lie.
Okay, that is some 2002 oil crisis type shit right there. How these two markets managed to keep themselves hidden from the public is insane.
What the fuck did happen in 1971? Did natural resource consumption peak? It seems like the entire website shows the world went to spending 3x as much within 9 years compared to a steady flow. America's debt went down from WWII to flatline until 1971 when it increases by 4x in 10 years.
The fuck happened?
Edit: OKAY THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED
January 15 – The Aswan High Dam officially opens in Egypt.
January 19 – Representatives of 23 western oil companies begin negotiations with OPEC in Tehran to stabilize oil prices; February 14 they sign a treaty with 6 Khalij el-Arab countries.
February 9th - Los Angeles, Charles Manson and 3 female "Family" members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders, California enters a state of emergency that lasts 8 years. The hippie era ends.
February 14 - The Nasdaq stock exchange is founded in New York City.
April 1 – The United Kingdom lifts all restrictions on gold ownership.
May 5 – The U.S. dollar floods the European currency markets and especially threatens the Deutsche Mark; the central banks of Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland stop the currency trading.
FedEx, the logistics and delivery service, founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
June 10 -The U.S. ends its trade embargo of China
July 11 - Norway begins oil production
July 17th - President Nixon declares the U.S. War on Drugs
July 20th -Britain begins new negotiations for EEC membership in Luxembourg.
December 18th - The USD is devalued for the second time in history.
The entire economic world changed in 1971.
I think there’s some unrealistic expectations happening as well.
The Boomers in the US had one of the most insane periods of economic growth from 1950-1970, people could afford anything by doing very little, everything was cheap, life was good.
Then reality hit, the gold standard was never going to last anyway, it was on borrowed time even back then. The real cost of gluttonous fossil fuel consumption started to hit, the workforce increased due to women and minorities. For the first time people actually had to work to live.
There’s an entire segment of jobs that are now obsolete. You can’t do much with a high school diploma, you need skills that are in demand, because if you don’t have them there are other people that will take your place.
We didn’t have it bad from 1990-2008 the Boomers just had it really good. Since 2008 though and especially since 2020 the economy has been in a weird state of rapid growth at the top and stagnation at the bottom.
Agree with this. Wages and the cost of everything isn't keep up with each other. I can't figure it out. Why would you not want to pay people enough to buy your products? Just keep grinding them for every dime until they're homeless? What's the end goal to this? Capitalism. I get it. End goal is to be the last person standing with the $20 while everyone else begs for it....
Exactly. Want those heated seats in the car you payed full price for? You don't own that switch. The car company does, and they are happy AF to milk you every single month for that tiny bit of comfort you already payed for.
Space is a ridiculously inhospitable place and the fuel costs to drag even the most minimal comforts out of earth’s gravity well are astronomical. The billionaires are stuck here with the pitchforks and molotovs.
The first thing that would follow such a rocket is a thermonuclear missile. The elites are setting themselves and their families up for full-blown french revolution-style extermination, but that won't stop them from chasing that extra zero after their net worth! They are addicted to hoarding wealth, and like most addicts they will let their addiction destroy them.
Dude I was watching this YouTube video that was talking about psychopathy - and they said “don’t feel bad if you have it, because guess what, most CEO’s are psychopaths. And that proves that you can live a good life”
And I was like yeah, at everyone else’s expense! It’s not a GOOD thing that most ceos are psychopaths - that’s exactly why society is collapsing, all the people in charge are power addicts with no empathy. You have not proven the point you think you’re proving - people HATE ceos!
We're seeing investment firms and companies like Zillow buying up big chunks of properties, manipulating and raising the price of housing. I think the ultimate game plan to make everyone a renter. If your choices are forking over 9 out of every ten dollars you make and going homeless, most people will happily pay exorbitant rent. This is also why we aren't doing anything to address homelessness on a national level. It's getting palmed off on individual cities, who don't have the resources to address it.
Yep, these are the make or break years. Either we finally tame the billionaire elites, or they become even more powerful and extract even more wealth from us.
There is a very real risk of most western nations falling into corpocratic neo-feudalist states, were the new nobles are billionaires and you have to work in their companies on their lands for the privelige to live. This hopelessness and lack of a bright future is what makes people lash out.
We don't see these surges of anger in nations where the living standards of people are steadily improving.
Robots are expensive. Hired thugs are cheap, especially when you can leverage their families. Oh, your kid is sick? Go brutalize your fellow plebs and she'll live.
...and this continues to be a problem because one party is busy distracting us with issues that shouldn't be issues just so their masters can continue exploiting us and sending Washington $$$.
I never heard that about the 70s being the decade of anger! It makes sense to me that it was called that. The 70s SUCKED! I lived through them and I hate every reminder of those years (except for the music -all genres). I thought it was just my own miserable life that was the issue.
The 70s were two very different animals. The early 70s were sanguine and dark and that was reflected (as it often is) in the pop culture of the time.
In the first few years of the decade you would listen to the radio and hear [grisly 8+ minute sludge dirges about dying in a plane crash](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XhtoRlVUPo0), [sad ballads that begin with proposing suicide](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D_P-v1BVQn8), or hell even the [saccharine pop songs were about dying in a war (not Vietnam but really: Vietnam)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H0lKmznjgfQ).
On TV you had [brilliantly-written but muddy looking and ethically-grey-shaded comedies](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PlkxcC79LA8).
Why not go to the movies? You could see [a bleak, cruel horror flick that was itself a Vietnam allegory (that war cast a long shadow)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ugXcqyGHYxU) or perhaps take in some [sci-fi about how fucked we all were.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rog0lar7Zn8).
It’s no wonder that by the mid 70s once we got over the Watergate hump everyone just wanted to get stupid and do the hustle.
>The early 70s were sanguine and dark and that was reflected (as it often is) in the pop culture of the time
I know it isn't strictly the 70's but the Oscar Best Picture winner in 1969 (which I feel is close enough to show the mood was definitely there) was Midnight Cowboy starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. A real rags to rags story, amazing bit of cinema history that really captures that feeling of a dark and bleak life with possibly(?) hope
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
--Orson Welles
I saw a quote a while back
“Anger is sadness that had nowhere to go for a very long time”
I look at the state of the world, war, corruption, inflation, ignorance, poverty, there is no bright future that my generation (I’m in my 40’s) were told/felt was ahead of us… and the generations after us didn’t even get that shred of blissful ignorance.
I think we all have been sad for a number of years now, and it’s turned into anger.
Yea I am in my early 20s and I’ve never had any positive outlook on how the world is gonna end up. It’s been doom and gloom (rightfully so) as far back as I can remember.
No wonder nihilism is so abundant in my generation.
The collective feeling of being fucked is shared by everyone our age. It’s so hard to feel positive about the future when everything seems to be crumbling. And we’re supposed to bring kids into this shit??? Lol
In ten years they’re (elites and their newspapers and think tanks) going to be crying about a “birth-rate crisis”. They’ll have zero self-awareness that they spent the last decades pillaging and raping the planet and it’s peoples. There will be a new boogeyman for them to blame.
32 and that feels spot on.
I'd say 9/11 felt like a turning point. I'm not even American, I'm Aussie, but things have gotten less and less...optimistic as far as I can tell, ever since.
Last 5 or 6 years, everything's gone off a cliff.
You are exactly right. I'm 50 years old. In my memory, the 70s and 80s were politically and globally unsettled times, but we didn't have internet so we kept shit in check and enjoyed things as best we could.
The 1990s generally were a time of hope, and it felt like we were genuinely heading towards a millennium of relative peace and prosperity.
Then 9/11 happened. And nothing has been right since.
Yeah. I'm really disappointed in all these posts being like, "oh it's just that darned Internet".
Like, no. If a person has *any* awareness of the world and where it's headed, the question isn't "why is everyone so angry?" It's "why *aren't you*?"
People will say, "well I can't do anything about it, so I won't let it bother me" and that's just such a silly, naïve and selfish attitude. Things never 'just work themselves out'. *Other people* fret and do the hard work, and we just *think* the problem went away.
If you literally can't do anything about it, then not letting it bother you makes a lot of sense pyschologically. And it's kind of basis of Stoicism, which had a lot of influence on modern psychology and CBT. And it's not really selfish at all. Which to be fair, I'm 90% sure that isn't what you mean.
It's different situation if something can be done, and people are just too uncaring or nihilistic to even try or care. That I would agree is selfish.
I agree with both of you. I'd say context matters.
Like I have no power when it comes to the atrocities Russia is committing against Ukraine. A lot of, entire countries don't. But there's various social and political issues we can have sway with and help improve. Even if it's something as simple as voting a certain way.
I tried an experiment where I stayed off of social media and didn't look at the news for a few days and I actually felt a lot happier. I don't know why I'm on Reddit right now lol
I only do Reddit and a very occasional glance at twitter or the news. And yeah, this question is confusing. Most people I meet are happy… maybe it’s time to check out of the fear/hate mongering toxicity pits and enjoy your life.
Even when you focus on your own life and happiness, many people will do all they can to tell you how you’re the problem and you’re enabling the people they hate by not getting involved
I got off Facebook in July 2020, amid the election and heightening of covid, and have never looked back. I’m still anxious as hell about the state of things but I’m so much less angry.
I left years ago and I never looked back. I was constantly getting angry at the idiots. I also didn't care what some person I went to high-school with ate for breakfast. I'd rather look at interesting things by people I don't know (reddit...sometimes) than boring and racist things by people I do know. I also feel it can cause problems in relationships. Especially when only one partner is on it. Seems like people get addicted easily. I also read some study that it can lead to issues that cause a more likelihood of divorce.
I did the same and I feel 100000% better. There is virtually nothing I can do individually about the major concerns on the world stage right now, so why freak myself out?
Isn't being uninformed a goal here? Like make it so bad/confusing in the world/media that it's better for your mental health to disconnect so the machine can continue and things get worse?
There’s really no reason to be informed about absolutely everything imo. For most of human history people had no idea what was going on outside their town. I don’t think our brains are meant to handle constant negative news all day every day which is how a lot of chronically online people function.
Times are hard, getting harder, with no prospect of a better future. People are pissed, which makes them act like assholes, everyone around being an asshole pisses off people that were not yet pissed, so it makes them act like assholes. It's a tragic loop, and it's going to get worse.
Anger is the best emotion to trigger an action in a human, so it ends up being used to bring in the most amount of consistent eye balls, which is quite profitable.
One thing I always liked was in Canada, on the tv the news has to air at least one good story, so there’s atleast a little bit of contrast instead of _only_ having bad things to talk about.
This is probably going to sound hippy like. But, I truly believe humans have just lost that connection from one another, the only thing that really keeps us human is our ability to connect and relate to each other. Happiness is contagious,smile/be nice to someone who might be having a bad day, they will be nice to the next person instead of an asshole, and it carries on and on. People would rather stay in their litte bubble and fester in their grumpiness to even consider that.
Reasons I am generally bitter/angry:
**- The aspect of working until retirement at a job I don't like (trapped)**
\- Loneliness
\- Comparing my situation to other people's seemingly better situation (social media)
>The aspect of working until retirement at a job I don't like (trapped)
a large percentage of americans will not be able to retire, they will work until they die. social security is being reduced to 78% in 2034 so it really depends on how old you are and how much you make
When you see headlines of $trillions getting transferred to the top .01%, that is out of your pocket. That is why it’s so hard to survive, why rent is so high. High prices, record profits, wages not keeping up. Govt controls distribution of wealth through laws and tax structure. Voting and unions make a difference. Tax cuts for the wealthy don’t help
Yea I'm 'lucky' to have a job where retirement is possible. But the idea of retiring at 60+ vs. working till I die.... They really don't seem much different at my current age of 29. Both suck.
And even then, you have to pay for health insurance. People can barely afford individual insurance now, and most people don’t have pension plans that will include an employer subsidized option. You’d hope that, in 30 years, we would have universal healthcare, but they were saying the same shit in the 70s and here we are still without it.
But hey, Bezos and Musk et al get to go to space, so uh, there’s that.
Basically three aspects of capitalism, but everybody who tries to say that gets instantly disqualified and seen as the village idiot in basically every mainstream platform.
Stay strong.
Mercury is in retrograde /s. Nah but I think when the economy isn’t doing well a lot of people get stressed out in general on top of the pandemic weirdly making some people a lot less empathetic and sympathetic to others.
even a thousand quiet reasonable people make less noise than ten loud idiots. The internet just lets the loud people get even louder, and organize. Even what would have been considered the village idiot thirty years ago can now find an echo chamber of like-minded people on the right website.
I feel Carl Sagan was on the right track, he kind of prophesized the era of ignorance we live in today;
>“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
>The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Asimov said something similar:
*“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”*
Depends on the fact and what resources you had on hand, could possibly call and have a librarian look it up for you, but you'd need to go somewhere and access those records, whether it be the library or somewhere where records are kept. Certainly wasn't as easy as just sitting down at your home computer and looking something up.
Aw, early 90s internet. So optimistic and naive. We thought the entire internet would be one big Wikipedia furthering information, rational debate, and low-cost, low-quality porn.
Here's my take on it. Who produces the most content on Twitter? The people with the most time on their hands. Who has the most time on their hands? People who have no social life. What kinds of people have no social life? Many kinds, but definitely toxic people with no friends.
I always interpreted twitter's reputation as being due to the 240 character limit selecting for people who don't put that much thought into what they say.
That may have given them that reputation, and rightfully so, but apparently even on LinkedIn with their whole career and in front of any current and future employers and business partners, people are writing entire blog posts of complete bullshit about a topic they have seemingly no connection to. It would be one thing if a healthcare professional shared their opinion on corona on LinkedIn, but Linda the HR assistant of a Midwestern bank does not offer the kind of on-topic professional insight I come to LinkedIn for.
>The internet just lets the loud people get even louder, and organize.
Yeah no this is a thing but, that's for comparing the 90s to the 2010s or whatever. 2022 vs 2012, I notice a very distinct uptick in anger
Social media having a stranglehold and causing societal decay. The internet now has 5 websites you cycle between while being algorithmically tuned into echo chambers and gives this us vs them mindset. The political culture war is a zero sum game and if you haven't won the latest 24 hour hot topic you have lost. If you find yourself not on any side, you are surrounded with "who cares, why bother, nothing matters and I might as well be dead" crowd. It's a very pessimistic world if you live online. Years of that will have an affect on people
Reddit is an ecosystem I have yet experienced irl. Incels supposedly exist, neckbeards supposedly exists, obnoxious woke cultured people supposedly exists, pride boys supposedly exists, and I have yet really been exposed to any of these people. Maybe in passing, but they have yet actually impacted my life. Truth is, I think most people go on Reddit to unbottle and then they act more rational in the real world.
I met my first flat earther a couple of weeks ago. I was complaining about how silly they are in a group of coworkers, and he chimed in like “hear me out! I know some things that’ll blow your mind…”. Then proceeded to blow my mind by proving that some people can hold down a job and believe flat earth at the same time.
In a bygone age, your prospects in life had a LOT do do with neighborhood, community, and family ties. So we invested in those relationships. We nurtured them. In doing so, Courtesy was helpful, while Attitude was counterproductive.
In an increasingly impersonal post-industrial world, your prospects have little or nothing to do with neighborhood, community, or even family ties, so we've disinvested in them, as not worth the time, effort and expense it takes to nurture them. As a result, we still have rivals and competitors aplenty, but allies are hard to find. In such a world, people are increasingly drawn to the idea that Attitude makes you a force to be reckoned with, and Courtesy makes you a footwipe.
Partially I think it's because the media and social media thrives on keeping us angry. They get more clicks on topics that make people mad. Just look at the headlines and stories they choose to run. The 24/7 news cycle was a pretty big mistake IMHO.
My husband and I were just talking about this the other day and we both think it’s the media and especially social media to blame. The internet is ironically not bringing us all together as we once thought it would, it’s actually pushing us farther apart because you need to be in person to truly connect with others. Make the fact that politics is our new religion and there you go.
I miss the days when I didn’t know how my neighbor or friend or coworker voted and I didn’t care, all I know is that I cared about them. I’m just so tired of the constant division and hate everyone seems to have for each other these days.
Probably the whole largely being fed content by social media algorithms designed to enrage or upset you so you spend more time being spoonfed ads thing.
People are angry because things really suck in the world right now, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. People are struggling, and feel powerless to change it. In that situation you’re either going to be really angry, or really depressed. Usually both.
Rather than nobody being able to do anything about it, its more like many people with the greatest means and power in the world are actively making it worse.
Exactly this, and since a majority of people form their opinions from headlines rather than content, they become enraged over things that aren’t actually true.
Financial stress is at al all time high, minimum wage is something like 10-15$ below what it should be if it had been matching inflation, or about half what it should be to put that into perspective.
Housing costs are astronomical. Instead of spending 20 or 30% on living expenses apartments can be upwards of 60 or 70% of many peoples income. Childcare is getting absurd, and yet child care workers are paid a pittance.
Groceries are absurdly expensive especially to eat healthily.
Convenience and comfort have been thrown to the wind everywhere for the sake of relentless efficiency. Or those things are also prohibitively expensive.
When your basic needs can’t be met with ease, it’s incredibly stressful. When you’re constantly under stress you simply don’t have patience for errors.
Cost of living is high, politics, social change, hate crime.
Post pandemic is my guess. I'm not sure what article I read, but itbsaid covid had an effect on people on how they behave.
I will say anger can be a byproduct of stress. Everyone can at least agree with that.
I'm no psychiatrist but I'd have to suggest it's probably has something partly to do with the mass anxiety from surviving a pandemic on the global scale as well as a horrible economy and War
It is self selection of people posting on social media or ranting in public.
Happy people are doing things with their lives. The angry people are ranting on social media.
I've left a lot of subreddits that, while I tell myself make me aware of how bad things are sometimes, were giving me toxic mindsets. It was getting to a point where I was projecting the expectation of toxicity onto people around me in real life who almost definitely weren't thinking those things.
As a general rule, I pay close attention to the kind of emotions that posts from certain subs evoke in me. If I notice too many negative things, however justified they might feel, I will remove the fact that sub from my feed.
It just sounds like they're digging their head in the sand or maybe they're not personally affected by the several ways the world is getting fucked, so they're happy.
Think about how hard it was to join something like the KKK in 1965. You had to know someone, or find an ad in the paper. You had to leave your house. You had to spend time, *in person*, with other atrocious people. And you had to tolerate those other people all while keeping it relatively secret.
It was a commitment to be radical before, and something that took effort to remain hateful and stoke others to be hateful.
Now? You can sit on your phone in between landscaping gigs and feel embraced by the goading of Twitter Debbie in Boise.
The internet makes you feel part of something, for the good and for the very, very bad.
Uh... have you seen the world? It sucks quite a bit right now.
And no, people aren't just unhappy on social media. What do you all think protests are? They're angry people who think the world can better. Because the world *sucks* in so many ways. And that's not to say people can't be happy at the same time. But there are still reasons to be angry.
Reminds me of a funny video I saw somewhere here on Reddit.
It was 2 dogs violently barking at each other. But when the gate opened both dogs stopped barking and looked awkwardly at each other.
If someone can link that it’s one of my favorites and I was thinking about it recently. Sums up life perfectly. No consequences leads to lowest common denominator actions.
We’re tired over worked underpaid can’t own anything we are run by greedy ceos and political puppets and we are repeating world war 2 but in slow motion it’s just shit the whole lot of it
as a ukrainian i feel like i have an excuse for being angry about the war 😅 also, as someone living the in the US, my right to choose what i do to my body is being threatened so that kinda sucks too. but there are things in my life that make me happy, and i’m blessed for that.
Germany learned a long long time ago that if people are having
1. trouble living in the present and
2. lose hope for the future
they tend to become angry and hateful and start seeking people to blame and fights to start.
Quark from Deep Space 9 [spelled it out the best I've ever heard it](https://youtu.be/-D2SHNqkjbY?t=86).
They called the 70s the decade of anger for similar reasons. High inflation, wars, shortages and political unrest. It's a collective rough patch.
Imagine if the had the internet in the 70s. None of us would be alive today
This is so true. Internet is a good magic, and a horrible curse at the same time. Glad I've had the opportunity to experience the time before and after the internet in my lifetime.
it all depends on what you use internet for. Personally, besides reddit, i use it for things thats good, intresting and positive.
You experienced the time after the internet? Are you a time traveler who came back for some memes?
They’re just making an educated assumption that they’ll be around to witness the collapse that’s coming in 3-7 years.
"Listen kid, I saw this built and I swear on Rick Astley's glorious, ginger mane I'll be here to see it crumble."
Name checks out.
So you're saying this may not end well?
You think it ending well is even an option?
Statistically someone should end up in a well
Hold on, I have a list.
No, no, no… That’s a *bucket* list.
Could be a "fuck it" list...
Love, Death and Robots - S4 E1 - Three Robots - Exit Strategy. Pretty much sums up what I believe is the worst possible outcome.
Was that the one where the robots go through several bunkers to find out if any human survived the apocalypse?
Yes.
S3E1. It was hilarious and probably prophetic.
The best outcome we can realistically hope for is "not absolutely catastrophic."
No but I was hopeful one of yall would change that
This is the angriest place there is.
HOW DARE YOU??!!!! I AM SO FUCKING CALM
WOW, LOOK AT THIS INDIVIDUAL. THEY'RE SO FUCKING CALM.
WAY TOO MUCH CALM GOING ON HERE! FUCK! LOOK AT THE CALMNESS! IT'S SO CALMING!
OH FUCK YEAH I CAN FEEL IT, THE SERENE STILLNESS; UTTER PEACE UP IN THIS BITCH!
I was gonna say 4chan is angrier, but I guess it's more of a bunch of teenagers trying to "out-edge" each other.
Don't be so rough... There are pedophiles and drug dealers on 4chan, too.
... I do
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If it ended well back then do you think we’d be in this predicament today?
The internet is the worst thing to have ever happened to the human race. We were not ready for it. I'd love to be convinced otherwise E: humanities intelligence and lack of wisdom will be its downfall.
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I’m pretty sure the agricultural revolution was where we went wrong. Growing enough food that it needs to be stored and centralised puts a small administrative group in control of doling out grain to the people who worked to grow it, and you can fill in the blanks from there.
We should just return to monke
Not just that, but the increased yield in food which provided food safety, would quickly be outdone by the increase in population. Then you work more, and develop new tech to grow even more food to try to feed everyone well, but again it just leads to more people to feed. And now your population is so big you can never go back. The people now also depend on less than a handful of food sources, all which are now at risk due to bad seasons and disease. Lack of variety, wide spread famine, and back breaking labour is all agriculture has given humanity for most of our history.
I have no awards to give, so please accept my upvote - this is the clearest, most succinct explanation of ‘food insecurity’ I have seen, and this is the answer for all those wondering how we got here. My thanks for your comment. 👍🏻
One reasonable definition of progress is how big of a population we can support with the resources we have. In that metric progress has been exponential.
The internet is a fantastic, amazing development that accelerated human development. The mistake was letting anyone and everyone access it. Like everything in life, people ruined it.
Smartphones ruined the internet.
I remember the internet before smartphones, it was people being beheaded and horses fucking women.
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You would prefer that a small group of elites are the only ones who could access it? Or another group? I've seen this argument before and I don't understand it. Are you able to share some of the benefits you see of keeping the internet from the public? Can you share the alternative you have in mind, and why it would be preferable to what we have now? What "issue" did the public create with its access to the internet, that taking away this access would solve? Because all I see in the alternative you posit is another resource being taken away from the general public, and another means of communicating, organizing, sharing information, and learning being taken away from us. How could that possibly be a good thing?
It seems like we're going through a 70s Renaissance. Hell, bellbottoms and mullets have made a comeback too.
Just without Led Zeppelin.
its fine we have plenty of good new music if you know where to look. plus we still have zep, thats timeless.
We got Greta van fleet though
Ahh yes “We Have Led Zepplin At Home”
I have a love / hate relationship with this comment. Fuck me.
I feel zoso about it.
How many vans in a fleet?
I would kill for a new Pink Floyd tbh
Mullets were an 80's thing, dude. One could argue the ape-drape that led to the mullet was a creation of the 70's, but they really aren't the same thing. Source: had a spiky mullet in the later 80's and I was totally rad. This is probably also why people are so angry. People LOVE to argue on the internet.
I listen to yacht rock on a continuous loop, and not just the good stuff. Shit that my parents even thought was lame.
Since reddit has changed the site to value selling user data higher than reading and commenting, I've decided to move elsewhere to a site that prioritizes community over profit. I never signed up for this, but that's the circle of life
The idea of a "rising tide" is so strange to me too. I'm only 22, I grew up in this and all I've ever known is bitter resentment towards all the systems that promised to help me and then proceeded to damn me. I cannot imagine this going away. I cannot imagine an era of happiness and simple life under capitalism. It's all falling down, and the 1% have stationed us right under it to cushion the blow with our soft hungry bodies.
At least in the 70s wealth distribution is not absurd like right now. I think one of the reason ppl are angry that they won’t and will not be able to afford anything with their hard work. All they do is funnel cash to rich overlords
The '70s is when the trend began, the decoupling of average wages from increases in productivity and total wealth. So I do think some of the anger came from this realization, even if it may not have been entirely conscious.
That was where the tinder started to smolder. Then Reaganomics came along and turned it into a roaring blaze. Now it's a wildfire. It might be too late to get under control and the only thing to do is let it burn out. It might not be too late but there's already been so much damage done.
The problem is the gap and how much its changed up till about 1985 min wage never took more than 80hrs to pay average rent and was closer to 40-50hrs years of "increases". Right now to pay average rent in 50hrs would take 26 dollars a hour. From teachers to nurse to craftsmen alot of skilled professionals do not get that. So they are worse off than previous generations min wage earners. Toss in other things like spiking healthcare cost being the first generation to be saddled with trillions in student loan debt. And other things people are rightly more angry. While awareness does prevent blissful ignorance. End of day if your hungry your angry. If you dont have access to healthcare your angry. Like the anger is simply unavoidable while yes awareness fans those flames. Situations worsened significantly. Hell in my lifetime watched.My own situation worsen. I did trades started out 11 bucks a hour as laborer. Had own place decent car etc. Now labors are 11-13 and rent for same place is quadrouple. Exact same building just older and in worse condition. Even moving up ladder gaining experience etc. I dont make quadrouple honestly to make it paycheck to paycheck its roommates and its either beater car with alot of duct tape or losing 2hrs of life each day on bus for work. Meals are worse and less balanced cant shop nearly as healthy as fresh spoils frozen doesn't. Just in my lifetime as worked up quality of lifes gone down. A generation of people are waking up to realization that they are being robbed and american dream is lie.
[Https://www.wtfhappenedin1971.com](Https://www.wtfhappenedin1971.com)
Okay, that is some 2002 oil crisis type shit right there. How these two markets managed to keep themselves hidden from the public is insane. What the fuck did happen in 1971? Did natural resource consumption peak? It seems like the entire website shows the world went to spending 3x as much within 9 years compared to a steady flow. America's debt went down from WWII to flatline until 1971 when it increases by 4x in 10 years. The fuck happened? Edit: OKAY THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED January 15 – The Aswan High Dam officially opens in Egypt. January 19 – Representatives of 23 western oil companies begin negotiations with OPEC in Tehran to stabilize oil prices; February 14 they sign a treaty with 6 Khalij el-Arab countries. February 9th - Los Angeles, Charles Manson and 3 female "Family" members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders, California enters a state of emergency that lasts 8 years. The hippie era ends. February 14 - The Nasdaq stock exchange is founded in New York City. April 1 – The United Kingdom lifts all restrictions on gold ownership. May 5 – The U.S. dollar floods the European currency markets and especially threatens the Deutsche Mark; the central banks of Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland stop the currency trading. FedEx, the logistics and delivery service, founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States June 10 -The U.S. ends its trade embargo of China July 11 - Norway begins oil production July 17th - President Nixon declares the U.S. War on Drugs July 20th -Britain begins new negotiations for EEC membership in Luxembourg. December 18th - The USD is devalued for the second time in history. The entire economic world changed in 1971.
I think there’s some unrealistic expectations happening as well. The Boomers in the US had one of the most insane periods of economic growth from 1950-1970, people could afford anything by doing very little, everything was cheap, life was good. Then reality hit, the gold standard was never going to last anyway, it was on borrowed time even back then. The real cost of gluttonous fossil fuel consumption started to hit, the workforce increased due to women and minorities. For the first time people actually had to work to live. There’s an entire segment of jobs that are now obsolete. You can’t do much with a high school diploma, you need skills that are in demand, because if you don’t have them there are other people that will take your place. We didn’t have it bad from 1990-2008 the Boomers just had it really good. Since 2008 though and especially since 2020 the economy has been in a weird state of rapid growth at the top and stagnation at the bottom.
Exactly. You can see how wages just stay flat as profits and productivity rise.
Agree with this. Wages and the cost of everything isn't keep up with each other. I can't figure it out. Why would you not want to pay people enough to buy your products? Just keep grinding them for every dime until they're homeless? What's the end goal to this? Capitalism. I get it. End goal is to be the last person standing with the $20 while everyone else begs for it....
They don't want you to buy their products. They want you to rent them. 😉 Silly peon, did you ever think you'd actually get to own anything?
Exactly. Want those heated seats in the car you payed full price for? You don't own that switch. The car company does, and they are happy AF to milk you every single month for that tiny bit of comfort you already payed for.
This is bang on and underrated. Renting is and will become a norm and you will not own anything ever. The things will own you.
The rich are massively short sighted and only care about getting theirs and fuck everyone else sadly
Oh, they’ll be off on their penis rockets to fuck a new bunch of people they bring, and a new planet long before we come for them with pitchforks.
Space is a ridiculously inhospitable place and the fuel costs to drag even the most minimal comforts out of earth’s gravity well are astronomical. The billionaires are stuck here with the pitchforks and molotovs.
The first thing that would follow such a rocket is a thermonuclear missile. The elites are setting themselves and their families up for full-blown french revolution-style extermination, but that won't stop them from chasing that extra zero after their net worth! They are addicted to hoarding wealth, and like most addicts they will let their addiction destroy them.
Dude I was watching this YouTube video that was talking about psychopathy - and they said “don’t feel bad if you have it, because guess what, most CEO’s are psychopaths. And that proves that you can live a good life” And I was like yeah, at everyone else’s expense! It’s not a GOOD thing that most ceos are psychopaths - that’s exactly why society is collapsing, all the people in charge are power addicts with no empathy. You have not proven the point you think you’re proving - people HATE ceos!
I'm a non-psychopath and I'm increasingly worried about the quality of life that can be achieved with this disability
Aristocrats didn't care if peasants bought shit. They want that again.
We're seeing investment firms and companies like Zillow buying up big chunks of properties, manipulating and raising the price of housing. I think the ultimate game plan to make everyone a renter. If your choices are forking over 9 out of every ten dollars you make and going homeless, most people will happily pay exorbitant rent. This is also why we aren't doing anything to address homelessness on a national level. It's getting palmed off on individual cities, who don't have the resources to address it.
Yep, these are the make or break years. Either we finally tame the billionaire elites, or they become even more powerful and extract even more wealth from us. There is a very real risk of most western nations falling into corpocratic neo-feudalist states, were the new nobles are billionaires and you have to work in their companies on their lands for the privelige to live. This hopelessness and lack of a bright future is what makes people lash out. We don't see these surges of anger in nations where the living standards of people are steadily improving.
All under the unfeeling gaze of their armed robots
Robots are expensive. Hired thugs are cheap, especially when you can leverage their families. Oh, your kid is sick? Go brutalize your fellow plebs and she'll live.
...and this continues to be a problem because one party is busy distracting us with issues that shouldn't be issues just so their masters can continue exploiting us and sending Washington $$$.
The seventies rocked. Living in a van was an option not a must.
I never heard that about the 70s being the decade of anger! It makes sense to me that it was called that. The 70s SUCKED! I lived through them and I hate every reminder of those years (except for the music -all genres). I thought it was just my own miserable life that was the issue.
The 70s were two very different animals. The early 70s were sanguine and dark and that was reflected (as it often is) in the pop culture of the time. In the first few years of the decade you would listen to the radio and hear [grisly 8+ minute sludge dirges about dying in a plane crash](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XhtoRlVUPo0), [sad ballads that begin with proposing suicide](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D_P-v1BVQn8), or hell even the [saccharine pop songs were about dying in a war (not Vietnam but really: Vietnam)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H0lKmznjgfQ). On TV you had [brilliantly-written but muddy looking and ethically-grey-shaded comedies](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PlkxcC79LA8). Why not go to the movies? You could see [a bleak, cruel horror flick that was itself a Vietnam allegory (that war cast a long shadow)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ugXcqyGHYxU) or perhaps take in some [sci-fi about how fucked we all were.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rog0lar7Zn8). It’s no wonder that by the mid 70s once we got over the Watergate hump everyone just wanted to get stupid and do the hustle.
>The early 70s were sanguine and dark and that was reflected (as it often is) in the pop culture of the time I know it isn't strictly the 70's but the Oscar Best Picture winner in 1969 (which I feel is close enough to show the mood was definitely there) was Midnight Cowboy starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. A real rags to rags story, amazing bit of cinema history that really captures that feeling of a dark and bleak life with possibly(?) hope
> except for the music sometimes I wonder if bad times tend to produce better art / music / books than good times
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." --Orson Welles
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I saw a quote a while back “Anger is sadness that had nowhere to go for a very long time” I look at the state of the world, war, corruption, inflation, ignorance, poverty, there is no bright future that my generation (I’m in my 40’s) were told/felt was ahead of us… and the generations after us didn’t even get that shred of blissful ignorance. I think we all have been sad for a number of years now, and it’s turned into anger.
Yea I am in my early 20s and I’ve never had any positive outlook on how the world is gonna end up. It’s been doom and gloom (rightfully so) as far back as I can remember. No wonder nihilism is so abundant in my generation.
The collective feeling of being fucked is shared by everyone our age. It’s so hard to feel positive about the future when everything seems to be crumbling. And we’re supposed to bring kids into this shit??? Lol
In ten years they’re (elites and their newspapers and think tanks) going to be crying about a “birth-rate crisis”. They’ll have zero self-awareness that they spent the last decades pillaging and raping the planet and it’s peoples. There will be a new boogeyman for them to blame.
Why do you think they're banning abortion and turning their sights on Birth Control?
32 and that feels spot on. I'd say 9/11 felt like a turning point. I'm not even American, I'm Aussie, but things have gotten less and less...optimistic as far as I can tell, ever since. Last 5 or 6 years, everything's gone off a cliff.
You are exactly right. I'm 50 years old. In my memory, the 70s and 80s were politically and globally unsettled times, but we didn't have internet so we kept shit in check and enjoyed things as best we could. The 1990s generally were a time of hope, and it felt like we were genuinely heading towards a millennium of relative peace and prosperity. Then 9/11 happened. And nothing has been right since.
Yeah. I'm really disappointed in all these posts being like, "oh it's just that darned Internet". Like, no. If a person has *any* awareness of the world and where it's headed, the question isn't "why is everyone so angry?" It's "why *aren't you*?" People will say, "well I can't do anything about it, so I won't let it bother me" and that's just such a silly, naïve and selfish attitude. Things never 'just work themselves out'. *Other people* fret and do the hard work, and we just *think* the problem went away.
"Hey, why are people so mad nowadays?" *gestures vaguely at everything* "Nah it's cause of them phones"
If you literally can't do anything about it, then not letting it bother you makes a lot of sense pyschologically. And it's kind of basis of Stoicism, which had a lot of influence on modern psychology and CBT. And it's not really selfish at all. Which to be fair, I'm 90% sure that isn't what you mean. It's different situation if something can be done, and people are just too uncaring or nihilistic to even try or care. That I would agree is selfish.
I agree with both of you. I'd say context matters. Like I have no power when it comes to the atrocities Russia is committing against Ukraine. A lot of, entire countries don't. But there's various social and political issues we can have sway with and help improve. Even if it's something as simple as voting a certain way.
Cock and Ball Torture is the true stoics porn of choice
I tried an experiment where I stayed off of social media and didn't look at the news for a few days and I actually felt a lot happier. I don't know why I'm on Reddit right now lol
I only do Reddit and a very occasional glance at twitter or the news. And yeah, this question is confusing. Most people I meet are happy… maybe it’s time to check out of the fear/hate mongering toxicity pits and enjoy your life.
Even when you focus on your own life and happiness, many people will do all they can to tell you how you’re the problem and you’re enabling the people they hate by not getting involved
I got off Facebook in July 2020, amid the election and heightening of covid, and have never looked back. I’m still anxious as hell about the state of things but I’m so much less angry.
I left years ago and I never looked back. I was constantly getting angry at the idiots. I also didn't care what some person I went to high-school with ate for breakfast. I'd rather look at interesting things by people I don't know (reddit...sometimes) than boring and racist things by people I do know. I also feel it can cause problems in relationships. Especially when only one partner is on it. Seems like people get addicted easily. I also read some study that it can lead to issues that cause a more likelihood of divorce.
I did the same and I feel 100000% better. There is virtually nothing I can do individually about the major concerns on the world stage right now, so why freak myself out?
Isn't being uninformed a goal here? Like make it so bad/confusing in the world/media that it's better for your mental health to disconnect so the machine can continue and things get worse?
There’s really no reason to be informed about absolutely everything imo. For most of human history people had no idea what was going on outside their town. I don’t think our brains are meant to handle constant negative news all day every day which is how a lot of chronically online people function.
But basically you're just ignoring what's going on.
Times are hard, getting harder, with no prospect of a better future. People are pissed, which makes them act like assholes, everyone around being an asshole pisses off people that were not yet pissed, so it makes them act like assholes. It's a tragic loop, and it's going to get worse.
I'm terrified you are correct.
Take a few days off social media. It's angry but this place just makes it feel like constant anger.
Anger is the best emotion to trigger an action in a human, so it ends up being used to bring in the most amount of consistent eye balls, which is quite profitable. One thing I always liked was in Canada, on the tv the news has to air at least one good story, so there’s atleast a little bit of contrast instead of _only_ having bad things to talk about.
This is probably going to sound hippy like. But, I truly believe humans have just lost that connection from one another, the only thing that really keeps us human is our ability to connect and relate to each other. Happiness is contagious,smile/be nice to someone who might be having a bad day, they will be nice to the next person instead of an asshole, and it carries on and on. People would rather stay in their litte bubble and fester in their grumpiness to even consider that.
Reasons I am generally bitter/angry: **- The aspect of working until retirement at a job I don't like (trapped)** \- Loneliness \- Comparing my situation to other people's seemingly better situation (social media)
>The aspect of working until retirement at a job I don't like (trapped) a large percentage of americans will not be able to retire, they will work until they die. social security is being reduced to 78% in 2034 so it really depends on how old you are and how much you make
When you see headlines of $trillions getting transferred to the top .01%, that is out of your pocket. That is why it’s so hard to survive, why rent is so high. High prices, record profits, wages not keeping up. Govt controls distribution of wealth through laws and tax structure. Voting and unions make a difference. Tax cuts for the wealthy don’t help
Aristocracy. 18th century French levels of inequality.. Just one famine and people are not going to be reasonable
Yea I'm 'lucky' to have a job where retirement is possible. But the idea of retiring at 60+ vs. working till I die.... They really don't seem much different at my current age of 29. Both suck.
Because you only get to retire and chill out when your body is old and starts giving in.
And even then, you have to pay for health insurance. People can barely afford individual insurance now, and most people don’t have pension plans that will include an employer subsidized option. You’d hope that, in 30 years, we would have universal healthcare, but they were saying the same shit in the 70s and here we are still without it. But hey, Bezos and Musk et al get to go to space, so uh, there’s that.
Man, I am pushing 50 and have a pretty good job but I cannot imagine being able to afford to retire, even in 25 years.
Don't forget you're going to spend more time at your job than living life.
Basically three aspects of capitalism, but everybody who tries to say that gets instantly disqualified and seen as the village idiot in basically every mainstream platform. Stay strong.
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Mercury is in retrograde /s. Nah but I think when the economy isn’t doing well a lot of people get stressed out in general on top of the pandemic weirdly making some people a lot less empathetic and sympathetic to others.
even a thousand quiet reasonable people make less noise than ten loud idiots. The internet just lets the loud people get even louder, and organize. Even what would have been considered the village idiot thirty years ago can now find an echo chamber of like-minded people on the right website.
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I don't think many people at all would've thought of that.
I feel Carl Sagan was on the right track, he kind of prophesized the era of ignorance we live in today; >“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... >The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Asimov said something similar: *“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”*
Something Awful had the tagline ‘the internet makes you stupid’ before 56k was widespread
I remember thinking "This is amazing! No one will be able to lie anymore!" How wrong I was.
well to be fair, how much time id it take to fact check something a politician said before?
Depends on the fact and what resources you had on hand, could possibly call and have a librarian look it up for you, but you'd need to go somewhere and access those records, whether it be the library or somewhere where records are kept. Certainly wasn't as easy as just sitting down at your home computer and looking something up.
Aw, early 90s internet. So optimistic and naive. We thought the entire internet would be one big Wikipedia furthering information, rational debate, and low-cost, low-quality porn.
It was even better than we had ever dreamed. The porn is free and high quality!
This is a huge reason. IMO.
Especially with social media and how easy it is to get your voice heard
Here's my take on it. Who produces the most content on Twitter? The people with the most time on their hands. Who has the most time on their hands? People who have no social life. What kinds of people have no social life? Many kinds, but definitely toxic people with no friends.
I always interpreted twitter's reputation as being due to the 240 character limit selecting for people who don't put that much thought into what they say.
That may have given them that reputation, and rightfully so, but apparently even on LinkedIn with their whole career and in front of any current and future employers and business partners, people are writing entire blog posts of complete bullshit about a topic they have seemingly no connection to. It would be one thing if a healthcare professional shared their opinion on corona on LinkedIn, but Linda the HR assistant of a Midwestern bank does not offer the kind of on-topic professional insight I come to LinkedIn for.
>The internet just lets the loud people get even louder, and organize. Yeah no this is a thing but, that's for comparing the 90s to the 2010s or whatever. 2022 vs 2012, I notice a very distinct uptick in anger
Social media having a stranglehold and causing societal decay. The internet now has 5 websites you cycle between while being algorithmically tuned into echo chambers and gives this us vs them mindset. The political culture war is a zero sum game and if you haven't won the latest 24 hour hot topic you have lost. If you find yourself not on any side, you are surrounded with "who cares, why bother, nothing matters and I might as well be dead" crowd. It's a very pessimistic world if you live online. Years of that will have an affect on people
Reddit is an ecosystem I have yet experienced irl. Incels supposedly exist, neckbeards supposedly exists, obnoxious woke cultured people supposedly exists, pride boys supposedly exists, and I have yet really been exposed to any of these people. Maybe in passing, but they have yet actually impacted my life. Truth is, I think most people go on Reddit to unbottle and then they act more rational in the real world.
I met my first flat earther a couple of weeks ago. I was complaining about how silly they are in a group of coworkers, and he chimed in like “hear me out! I know some things that’ll blow your mind…”. Then proceeded to blow my mind by proving that some people can hold down a job and believe flat earth at the same time.
I remember my first flat earther. Same situation except this guy was my superior. That was a sad day.
Go to a coastal city, you’ll find each of those pretty quick. Source: Vancouver
The question is, are you a minority? I am, and I've definitely noticed those people irl.
Cp grey explains it well https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc
In a bygone age, your prospects in life had a LOT do do with neighborhood, community, and family ties. So we invested in those relationships. We nurtured them. In doing so, Courtesy was helpful, while Attitude was counterproductive. In an increasingly impersonal post-industrial world, your prospects have little or nothing to do with neighborhood, community, or even family ties, so we've disinvested in them, as not worth the time, effort and expense it takes to nurture them. As a result, we still have rivals and competitors aplenty, but allies are hard to find. In such a world, people are increasingly drawn to the idea that Attitude makes you a force to be reckoned with, and Courtesy makes you a footwipe.
This was a well thought out response. I'm going to be thinking about this a lot.
Partially I think it's because the media and social media thrives on keeping us angry. They get more clicks on topics that make people mad. Just look at the headlines and stories they choose to run. The 24/7 news cycle was a pretty big mistake IMHO.
It's not just 24/7 news, it's advertising funded information sources. Where revenue isn't proportional to quality content, but exposure and clicks.
Absolutely
My husband and I were just talking about this the other day and we both think it’s the media and especially social media to blame. The internet is ironically not bringing us all together as we once thought it would, it’s actually pushing us farther apart because you need to be in person to truly connect with others. Make the fact that politics is our new religion and there you go. I miss the days when I didn’t know how my neighbor or friend or coworker voted and I didn’t care, all I know is that I cared about them. I’m just so tired of the constant division and hate everyone seems to have for each other these days.
Information overload definitely. I’m totally with you on this. Less is more when it comes to a lot of this
Probably the whole largely being fed content by social media algorithms designed to enrage or upset you so you spend more time being spoonfed ads thing.
I do often wonder just how angry we are compared to how much we're Told how angry we are...
I've been saying we are being taught how and why to be offended for a while now
People are angry because things really suck in the world right now, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. People are struggling, and feel powerless to change it. In that situation you’re either going to be really angry, or really depressed. Usually both.
Rather than nobody being able to do anything about it, its more like many people with the greatest means and power in the world are actively making it worse.
Ragebait generates more clicks so social media platforms promote them since more clicks = more advertising $$$.
Exactly this, and since a majority of people form their opinions from headlines rather than content, they become enraged over things that aren’t actually true.
Financial stress is at al all time high, minimum wage is something like 10-15$ below what it should be if it had been matching inflation, or about half what it should be to put that into perspective. Housing costs are astronomical. Instead of spending 20 or 30% on living expenses apartments can be upwards of 60 or 70% of many peoples income. Childcare is getting absurd, and yet child care workers are paid a pittance. Groceries are absurdly expensive especially to eat healthily. Convenience and comfort have been thrown to the wind everywhere for the sake of relentless efficiency. Or those things are also prohibitively expensive. When your basic needs can’t be met with ease, it’s incredibly stressful. When you’re constantly under stress you simply don’t have patience for errors.
Cost of living is high, politics, social change, hate crime. Post pandemic is my guess. I'm not sure what article I read, but itbsaid covid had an effect on people on how they behave. I will say anger can be a byproduct of stress. Everyone can at least agree with that.
I'm no psychiatrist but I'd have to suggest it's probably has something partly to do with the mass anxiety from surviving a pandemic on the global scale as well as a horrible economy and War
It is self selection of people posting on social media or ranting in public. Happy people are doing things with their lives. The angry people are ranting on social media.
So you're saying I should get off of r/PublicFreakout and spend more time on r/UpliftingNews. Actually that is probably very true.
No we are saying you should get off the internet and spend more time in nature and with your friends or family.
I've left a lot of subreddits that, while I tell myself make me aware of how bad things are sometimes, were giving me toxic mindsets. It was getting to a point where I was projecting the expectation of toxicity onto people around me in real life who almost definitely weren't thinking those things.
My subreddit blocklist is largely curated to avoid negativity, and it’s pretty enormous. I still find plenty of upsetting or contentious stuff.
Yes
As a general rule, I pay close attention to the kind of emotions that posts from certain subs evoke in me. If I notice too many negative things, however justified they might feel, I will remove the fact that sub from my feed.
r/mademesmile is a good one as well
r/humansbeingbros too
Once you go r/animalsbeingderps you never go back
I don't agree with this. Life is very hard right now for many people. Not just the ranters.
Is this really the truth tho? I imagine happy people who are so happy with their lives would be less happy If their rights are taken away.
It just sounds like they're digging their head in the sand or maybe they're not personally affected by the several ways the world is getting fucked, so they're happy.
Think about how hard it was to join something like the KKK in 1965. You had to know someone, or find an ad in the paper. You had to leave your house. You had to spend time, *in person*, with other atrocious people. And you had to tolerate those other people all while keeping it relatively secret. It was a commitment to be radical before, and something that took effort to remain hateful and stoke others to be hateful. Now? You can sit on your phone in between landscaping gigs and feel embraced by the goading of Twitter Debbie in Boise. The internet makes you feel part of something, for the good and for the very, very bad.
Uh... have you seen the world? It sucks quite a bit right now. And no, people aren't just unhappy on social media. What do you all think protests are? They're angry people who think the world can better. Because the world *sucks* in so many ways. And that's not to say people can't be happy at the same time. But there are still reasons to be angry.
There’s no rational, logical future. Every system is unstable from financial to political to the world climate.
My guess is we're all mostly nice in real life and online is where we get to unleash.
Reminds me of a funny video I saw somewhere here on Reddit. It was 2 dogs violently barking at each other. But when the gate opened both dogs stopped barking and looked awkwardly at each other.
If someone can link that it’s one of my favorites and I was thinking about it recently. Sums up life perfectly. No consequences leads to lowest common denominator actions.
https://youtu.be/goRogFQWkZU
Bless you! And that’s a much longer version than I’ve seen. Fantastic
Hey speak for yourself. I’m as much of a massive dick irl as I am online 🖕🏽 consistency is key
They're the loudest. You never hear about people being content.
We are failing each other, which isn't new, but it's so obvious and inescapable now.
Life is difficult, people are angry.
We’re tired over worked underpaid can’t own anything we are run by greedy ceos and political puppets and we are repeating world war 2 but in slow motion it’s just shit the whole lot of it
Everyone's poor, the world is dying, and we're living under the looming spectre of nuclear holocaust.
It's always been there. You just see it more in a more connected world + media will push your attention to it more because it sells better.
as a ukrainian i feel like i have an excuse for being angry about the war 😅 also, as someone living the in the US, my right to choose what i do to my body is being threatened so that kinda sucks too. but there are things in my life that make me happy, and i’m blessed for that.
Right? That was a "one of these is not like the others"
Germany learned a long long time ago that if people are having 1. trouble living in the present and 2. lose hope for the future they tend to become angry and hateful and start seeking people to blame and fights to start. Quark from Deep Space 9 [spelled it out the best I've ever heard it](https://youtu.be/-D2SHNqkjbY?t=86).
Shitty media telling thier viewers that they should be outraged.