The Internet - A 'My Cultural Life' Special

 The Case Against...

The Internet. I've been saying for a number of years that it will be the root cause of the downfall of society, probably humanity in general. It makes me wonder if those people - baby boomers specifically - who are often seen in the comments section of any webpage or social media platform calling for a return to simpler times, say, the 1970s, are really subconsciously asking for the internet to be shut down. I know, it's a stretch, but perhaps what they want is NOT to have the ability to share their beliefs with the rest of the world. Perhaps deep within the subconscious of the hateful there is a germ of decency desperately fighting to try to be more tolerant? Probably not, maybe once upon a time reasonable people may not have been so easily swayed by nonsense they see on-line, but not now. The internet is 'marketed' as both something utterly fantastic and fantastically dangerous and for many people it is as addictive as, say heroin, which I've been told is utterly fantastic and fantastically dangerous. 

I've been on various stages of the internet's social media evolution throughout the 35 years I've had access to it. AOL, Usenet, Yahoogroups, MySpace, Friends Reunited and then Facebook, Twitter and the places that are both social media and blatantly self-indulgent - Tumblr, DeviantArt, Instagram etc. However, if you go back to the beginning, a place like Usenet, which quickly became some kind of crazy, anarchistic, world within a world kind of place, also attracted people who once upon a time rarely voiced their opinions, disdain, anger, prejudices outside of their own houses, who now had a place where they could actually speak their twisted minds. The scary thing about Usenet, which is why they started to self-police the place, was the minority crazies weren't such a small percentage. In fact, there were a lot of likeminded arseholes and those now ancient feeling 'net neologisms such as Flame Wars, Trolls and Newbies were created to categorise things, to label them as a warning/excuse to other users. Usenet quickly became a haven for hatred, discrimination and prejudice. Basically, if you called someone a cunt and they called you a fucking cunt back there was no AI moderator deleting your comment and giving you a warning or suspending you [what do you mean there isn't really one of those now?].

I saw it in the mid 1990s, not just on Usenet, but AOL and then Yahoogroups - as long as you agreed to the flimsiest of rules you could create a forum that could talk theoretically about recruiting paedophiles to carry out suicide bombings in primary schools and the chances of you being discovered were slightly less than you waking up tomorrow with £1billion under your pillow. The thing is, this is no different now. On Facebook you can create private groups that literally only exist in Meta's databases and the chances of someone human ever looking at these with any intent is about the same chance as Usenet. You can't find these things in searches. Your best mate might belong to a Neo-Nazi Terrorist Cell and you wouldn't know it from his Facebook activity. I know people who are on Facebook all the time, but rarely are they on their own timeline; they're off in a group engaging in the same way as 21st Century Usenet clones Discord and Reddit are. The thing is Facebook Groups are much easier to control, especially if you want to keep things between a small group of trusted 'colleagues'. 

When certain people aren't utilising social media for their own nefarious purposes, they could be posting memes which are sowing the seeds of hate and mistrust. Stoking the fires of a population that has been inundated with bad news for the last 25 years. 9/11 was probably the era when the internet exploded with conspiracy theorists, web pages that 'challenged' our beliefs, and, of course, social media, which allowed a small group of powerful sociopaths the opportunity to make a lot of money and somehow stay above and beyond the reach of the law. How massive internet companies have managed to exist above the law is a great mystery and more importantly how they've managed to shape the way we think as a direct result? Because of the internet, we live in a world where people who care about other people or the planet are considered 'terrorist hippies' but people attacking police who are preventing them from lynching asylum seekers housed in an Essex hotel are just expressing their unhappiness. You might not need the internet to start a riot, but it helps swell the numbers. 9/11 created internet extremism, before that it was still just a growing cult, honing its skills for a time when more people were on line.

So far we know that the internet has encouraged and provided a space to breed malcontent through misinformation and it's only going to get worse. Capitalism has been on the rocks for some time; the pandemic was a godsend in many ways because the internet became even more important; it became the thing it always wanted to be - the world's primary source of information, news and entertainment. It gave capitalism a shot in the arm and this time the best way to keep the momentum going was to divide and conquer. What is the single most important/terrifying thing the internet has achieved over the last 35 years? Division and subdivision. Social media hasn't necessarily contributed to the individual's unpleasant beliefs, but it is a place that allows an individual to express those beliefs with little or no challenge to them, but many will agree with it. However, you might agree with a post about pensions and someone you know who is diametrically opposite you in their political beliefs also believes in it and sometimes a shared belief is all you need to make friends on the internet - which is a good thing. But you have divisions and if, at some point, you disagree with something that could easily be the end of that friendship. It happens with old friends as well, almost as often; age and experience change individuals - what was once liberal is easily swayed towards conservative. 

Often we see old friends lives being played out on Facebook (or not, as the case may be) and we forget that once upon a time we used to speak on the phone, or meet at the pub, or have some actual close contact with a person. Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat, TikTok or old fashioned SMS texting replaced the need to actually be in the presence of a person to talk to them about whatever you wanted to. Yes, loads of people still Facetime with people, but they're not in the pub or on holiday or just hanging, are they? If we're not divided politically we're divided physically. But even if we spend time with people, the phone is always prominent and it's usually going to be some message or notification about something going on somewhere else that distracts us. The internet has changed the way many of us communicate in general. It's probably why pubs are in decline, because you can have a beer at home and have five of your mates on your computer screen with you and basically have a virtual hang.

So, the Internet has created a place where people will hate each other because it's everyone else's fault they're so unhappy. It's also a really dangerous place to rely on for everything else. Forget social media and it's changing of our socio norms, the world of on-line criminality should put the fear of god into any one; whether you're a piece of racist vermin or a women-hating teenage virgin - the internet is not safe for you any more than it is for anyone else! We have entrusted banks to basically move our money from the closest branch to an on-line world where there are cyber attacks every day! I might be wrong here, but I don't recall there being a bank robbery every fucking day! I don't remember hackers being able to know everything about us by the number of Green Shield Stamps we accrued. There are Ransomware attacks that we never hear about because the victims have just paid the ransom because it's too risky not to.  

Let's not forget that the internet created Bitcoins and that's an absolute bizarre minefield in itself. I spent about an hour once trying to work out how cryptocurrencies work and I was just more confused after than I was going in. I didn't even understand half the 'terminology' so trying to comprehend how it works is just so concerning because I know stupid people who have 'invested' in it. The word 'scam' often enters my deeply paranoid brain when talking about bitcoin, but in reality scams are everywhere. The amount of spam I see daily - and I have more blockers on my computer than I have underpants - is phenomenal, so god knows what friends of mine with as much internet tech savvy as my dog are seeing? Some scams are just so obvious, but we live in a world where some people have so little to make them happy that they think that sharing a post about a motorhome being given away will, this time, be real. It's going to take a lot to change the way we depend on something that makes us so vulnerable. Our money simply isn't safe; our personal data isn't safe. Your children aren't safe. Tell me again what is actually good about the internet...

Yes, it is a wonderful resource. It's great as a retailer. As a source of entertainment. Storage capabilities and ease of use remove our dependence on physical computers and hard drives. The list of positives is long and totally useful. But allowing humans to interact with each other in a world that has been gradually getting much worse to live in is going to be the death of us. It won't do the death and destruction but it will 'televise' and propagate it. Everybody loves a funny meme; to be part of something 'woke' that has helped friends, local needs or charities is good. Being in an on-line community that has allowed you to make friends you would never have made is fantastic. The internet has been so unbelievably positive for me and many others, but it has also changed us. We are addicted to it and your children are either going to adapt and change it or they will be consumed by it. I think of the people who I will lose touch with if Facebook and other social media pages were switched off and, with the greatest respect to many of my on line friends, those I want to stay in touch with I have their phone numbers and I just love an actual chinwag with old friends. I don't do it enough - neither do you. We don't have times for the real world because we're consumed by a little screen that makes us unhappy. Maybe the world needs the thing that probably kickstarted this entire merry-go-round, maybe it needs its friends being reunited IRL.  

The internet really has become something we can't live with but can't live without. It is the monosodium glutamate of the soul. The Fear Of Missing Out [FOMO] has become the single most damaging aspect of a person's life - especially if their only outside contact is via a social media app. We can literally order a coffee via the net, as well as our food, our entertainment, our potential sex partners and future spouses. The only thing the internet can't give is a personal service - it can't serve you in a pub; it can't replicate the need for food and drink; it can't actually give you an orgasm, it just facilitates it. Everything is on-line. Your school reports, your health history, your buying habits, your peccadillos, your likes and dislikes. The internet is effectively a huge benign Big Brother with the capabilities of allowing someone with the right skills to ruin your life.   

The internet is a very bad thing when you weigh the pros against the cons. If you took away peoples ability to interact with each other it wouldn't be the same, but it would be safer and would prevent the spreading of hate and false information. If you could ensure the security of a person's life or finances it would be a fabulous tool and would help retailing rather than kill it off. The problem it is in the hands of sociopaths with a money-at-all-costs fixation and ultimately that screws all of us. The people who run the internet simply don't care about its users, if they did it wouldn't already be a disgusting and unsafe place. Maybe we need to switch it off to give future generations a chance?