Internet Nostalgia

Beliefs are tightly bound into identity, people can take a criticism of their beliefs extremely personally because in a lot of instances it is an attack on them (not intentionally of course). Look at religion for example, it plays a huge part in how people view themselves.

In most arguments though it's not black and white enough to be able to say it's right or it's wrong. In the context of a debate about the troubles for instance it's extremely nuanced and I didn't have the interest or the information to be able to debate honestly. I would effectively have been toying with his strongly held views just for my amusement, basically real world trolling. To me it was some stuff is read in an article, to him it was lived experience spanning back generations, and not good experience at that. Sometimes it's just not right to engage on a subject when you don't have the same stake in it as the opposing side. That's not to say the debate shouldn't happen, but in that circumstance I wasn't the right person to tackle the subject, even though I could have.

Leaving people in some delusional reality is doing them no favors, if someone cannot handle other ideas or criticism then tough. You can browse the internet and see a lot of people who are living in their own deluded reality, nobody really questions or insults their views properly, and all the passive people are in politically correct mode, not sure i am explaining this properly but i hope you get the basic idea, that's my only goal here.

I do not really ever debate or argue about anything these days, basically i've given up, all these people are dead to me, in real life i listen to such massive nonsense, its basically half tin-foil hat, and the other half is just complete ignorance about anything, with a dash of tin foil hat. I just nod my head at this point look to leave or change the subject

The only exception to this would be competitive gaming online, there i argue and debate all the time, so does everyone, it is the reason we are so good, question everything. On that specific topic i could discuss near endlessly, but apart from that i have nothing more to add i think.
 
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The good old days :D

One thing which has struck me reading this thread is just how fast the internet has evolved, its so true how internet dating literally was just a single blurry photo of someone and then chatting on IRC/yahoo or a chatroom, I met so many people that way. Sure, 9/10 of them were probably dudes messing with me but the mystery of not knowing so much was intriguing. Hell I even fooled one guy that i was an Olsen twin for months! You just couldn't do that now with facebook etc.

What was once a new "niche" technology which used to be reserved for modem geeks in their mums basement, has now become the popular trend where every duck faced social climber is busy updating their social media pages for a new like.

Forums seem to be the last refuge of the basement geeks, somewhere to hide from the masses on social media.

Used to love Yahoo Chat when I when I was a young teen. From about 9pm through into the early hours of morning chatting to US and Canadian girls (probably dudes - haha). But even back in the early-mid 90s I never felt the Internet was niche, most of my friends parents had it.
 
One thing that gets me and is slightly controversial is "cyber bullying". I just do not get it. I come from a world before the internet when growing up and having ZX81 onwards so it never used to exist.

I was actually bullied at school so I know what its like but to do it over a phone or PC what I do not understand is how some words on a screen can affect someone so badly. Just dont use it. Dont read it. When you are bullied physically its harder to ignore and maybe this is why I dont understand how people can be affected by it from just words on a screen. I ended my bullying by this one person by one day punching him in the face on the same day he decided to also pick on the tallest boy in the school who then pummeled him. Bullying stopped and at secondary school we ended up being friends. I guess it must cause people distress as it can drive people to alsorts of depression etc but I just do not get it.

This. Same thoughts similar experience.

Cyber bullying is nasty.
You used to just get pasted at school, now you go home and get verbal all evening too.

Yeah stay off the net, it's really not just that easy to sever the communication methods that everyone uses.

Give over. You simply click 'block.'
 
Yeah, it's easy to be logical as an adult ain't it. Not so much as a kid.

Seems like you solved it completely.

I mean go to any advice websites on cyber bullying and they are all just 2 words.

"block it" or "Dont read"
 
The girl who lives over the road from me was bullied at school. It's not easy to avoid online, in spite of what people may think. If victim and bully share friends, it gets pretty tricky to avoid.
 
I would have preferred the net remained a niche thing in the hands of the geeks. That way when it got too much you could just step back into real-life. Sadly we don't have that option any more.

The internet is all consuming now, to be a kid growing up with all this connectivity and the expectation of having an online presence is not something I would have wanted at all. Literally peoples lives will soon be documented in their entirety online from the day they're born til the day they die.
 
I would have preferred the net remained a niche thing in the hands of the geeks. That way when it got too much you could just step back into real-life. Sadly we don't have that option any more.

The internet is all consuming now, to be a kid growing up with all this connectivity and the expectation of having an online presence is not something I would have wanted at all. Literally peoples lives will soon be documented in their entirety online from the day they're born til the day they die.

Scary isn't it? How people would freely give up information about themselves and broadcast it on social media.

What's more scary is the people who do without even knowing it, the Barclays Bank ad spring to mind.
 
Yeah, it's easy to be logical as an adult ain't it. Not so much as a kid.

Seems like you solved it completely.

I mean go to any advice websites on cyber bullying and they are all just 2 words.

"block it" or "Dont read"

It's laughable that there are even articles out there with advice on how to deal with this nonsense.

Poor generation *********, please provide more cotton wool.
 
What was that website where you clicked through and waited for their camera to load to see if they were a hottie, or had their bits in their hands :D

RateMySick and RateMyPoo were the good times too
 
Was that chat roulette or something? There was hot or not as well.

I remember clicking through loads of users dircon "home" pages. There was a load of tosh but also some really interesting pages dedicated to peoples' hobbies.

Yahoo used to be verified by real people and you'd have to submit your site URLs to search engines. Seems crazy now! :)
 
Yeah I miss the old internet, as some other posters have mentioned - you used to feel part of 'something' or a community. Now it just seems a platform for prats to argue with each other or post nonsense.

Maybe we've got net neutrality all wrong, maybe there should be a two tiered internet to keep the riff raff out :p
 
Yeah I miss the old internet, as some other posters have mentioned - you used to feel part of 'something' or a community. Now it just seems a platform for prats to argue with each other or post nonsense.

Maybe we've got net neutrality all wrong, maybe there should be a two tiered internet to keep the riff raff out :p

Well you can then blame Zuckerberg as his plan is, he wants the whole world online.
 
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