How discouraging would it be (intentionally) if every time an AI had access to your attention, it was trying to make you angry. This would probably cause a lot of people to disengage, a lot to get angry, and a few able to live without being affected by the laser guided anger and manipulation

It moved from an outpost for computer nerds in the early 1990s, to a middle-class product in the 2000s, then everybody got access in the 2010s with the spread of the smartphone.

The demographics of the internet look nothing like they did when it was created.

Cast aside the syntax and semantics of religion for financially engineered beliefs; buy low, sell high or you'll be "left behind!"

Small step forward from "believe in my take on Christianity or your soul will be eternally damned!"

Mirror neurons fostering same flock building via corps people used to build via scripture.

Just more lazy people who want zero responsibility to themselves and everyone else to have responsibility for them.

I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously.

I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access - 20+ years ago. Like putting an alcoholic to work behind a bar and thinking he’d restrain himself.

It seems to have worsened in recent years. I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner.

Can't blame Internet. People which were scammed "offline" are now scammed online.

You need to be in some kind of camp, even for something so minor as skincare brand or fanfiction.

I think that it was fine until the internet started to influence the real life way too much. You used to be able to log out and gain distance to the bullshit on the web.

Now the bullshit has permeated into the mainstream and you need very drastic measures and personality to reject it.

You will lose some people for this but there are still some older folks that can talk about anything and will never get offended. Never conform but also don't become a contrarian for the sake of it.

The modern life is an art how to stay weird in a world that wants to squash you into some kind of label. How to stay genuine

It starts during simple social interactions in real life. You make a joke about alcohol, now you feel the pressure of the crowd to become 'the funny drunk'. Squash it as soon as possible now you are a teetotaler. Now tell them joke about drugs. Make it all too confusing at all so they lose any idea about what to make of you. Obfuscation. Now you are free in the purest sense. There is no template for you aside from the one you craft or discover for yourself.

I even went further and made myself genderless so that these norms cannot easily qualify me into anything really. There is 50% chance if someone calls me a woman or a man.

Sometimes I support the feminism. Sometimes I give myself to patriarchy and observe how that feels.

Maybe I made it all up and nothing I wrote is genuine.

We should strive to be stranger or at least do not treat it as something bad but as a virtue. Of course do not try hard but just explore the weird and see where it takes you.

It is really hard not to succumb to this. It requires active effort and sometimes even a willful ignorance. "turn a blind eye" is the idiom here. Monty Python's "Always look on the bright side of life" kind of thing.

Mr Rogers said it: look for the helpers. They may be few, but they are there. Find them and focus on them.

with no empirical reference, truth becomes a matter of popularity or the loudest argument.

with no space, everybody lives next door to a thousand assholes.

I know they got my number. I've had to delete every social media site I used to be engaged in (I suppose except this one) for the sake of my mental health.

If it’s unlocked, they may do some further scams from what’s available on the device, but either way, within days, your phone is somewhere in Asia, disassembled, and sold for scrap and parts.

I get a lot of value from the internet. I fell for some traps (instagram, facebook with very little value but lots of wasted energy) that I mostly got rid of.

But I have many products I am very happy about, that I got to know through other people on the internet.

(Heck of a karakoe number if you can pull it off.)

Forget the internet, you can't get your home repaired, your car worked on, an appliance purchased, shop for food, or do anything else without wading through a corrupt morass of that mixes woo, subcultures, grift, and subscriptions. Maybe it's the hospital that wants to charge a $25 a day fee to make the hospital room TV grant access to basic cable channels instead of nothing. Maybe it's the elementary school district that mandates every physical interaction between students is called in to the police - like little Jenny shoved Johnny who skinned his knee because he teased her, call the cops, it's policy. Or the way that every customer service interaction is routed through endless AIs because it's cheaper than solving a problem. Or how it seems like nobody will do right by anyone else until lawyers get involved. Cut taxes year after year, while everything decays, we fail the younger generations, and everyone thinks you fake it till you make it because it's all zero sum... It's how America heads straight to banana republic, and it might be too late to turn.

AI is replacing Crypto on the topic in some sense.

By Little Tech Bros i mean developers with lots of technical skills, but who haven't been lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time. They keep evangelizing thinking lightning will hit them the next time. It won't. More likely, a layoff notice. Because Big Tech Bro figured out how to grab all the money from your excess productivity.

About 2/3 in, the sentences got choppier and shorter, and you could tell some context rot was setting in.