Looking back it was innocent exploration, but if I did what I did then today, I might get put on some watchlist.
And today I can barely watch an arm breaking contest without cringing.
Anyone else remember orsm, b0g? They rarely get mentioned among the greater sites, but that's where I spent most of my time before 4chan.
I rest my case.
Edit/Add: I asked Claude to find that episode as I explained part of the storyline and is now asking me to seek help. Early Internet would now, definitely, be totally banned.
Edit2: Is this new, or am I stumbling on something new? I cannot reply to my replier below. I’m sure @stavros hasn’t blocked me. But, yes, we will always call him Roy. That is the only way we remember him.
Hacker News hides the reply link on deeply nested replies for a little while to try and prevent flamewars. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#hidden... says you can work around this by clicking on the comment's timestamp.
Of course, this "third party" knows better, right.
How do we know this? All I've seen so far is anecdata. As my own anecdata, an ex of mine felt she had been traumatized by watching horror movies at a very young age. Many years later she still had flashbacks.
That said, to say they do not influence you in any way is to deny all of advertising, if not the basic reality that the stimuli to which we are exposed in life are the primary thing that shape us beyond our genetics.
Do they make you more likely to feel detachment at the thought of horrors being inflicted upon others, does that influence your career path or political leanings?
The number of times I've seen a commercial for pizza or taco bell or seen a food mentioned on a tv show or movie and thought "hmm that sounds good right now, i'm gonna order that" is way more than 0.
To be clear, I'm against any censorship of violent video games, movies, art, etc.
You can of course argue that school shooters and Stephen Miller would do what they do without all the media (social or not) they've consumed.
That said, what are we, after all, other than some sort of combination of our genetics and environment?
It's hard to argue that there isn't some sort of link between the mention of taco bell and me immediately doordashing it, which makes it hard to reconcile the two positions.
But lots of people seeing lots of horrible things, if it doesn't traumatize them, can desensitize them. There are plenty of freedoms that also cause harm. That doesn't mean the freedoms should be taken away, but it means that the "third party" is often correct. Society in a free country calls its own balls and strikes.
Some things should be hard to access. Accessing some things should also be taken as a red flag that you are not OK. The rest of the people around you have a right to their security as much as, or more than, you have a right to your freedom to view illicit information. And I say this as a person who would absolutely revolt against any system that based that decision on fiat, religion, or unfounded hysteria. We all personally have a right to do anything we want that doesn't hurt anyone else. But if the "third party" you're talking about are your neighbors, and if they have decided that you are a threat to them, then talk with them.
Who should be protected from it, and by who is a different thing. I strongly against blanket restrictions, but one for sure they are easier. And they definitely protect people who wouldn’t get this protection in other scenarios, because for example their parents are shit. Another viewpoint is that probably this is the least important thing for people who wouldn’t get this protection otherwise, so maybe it doesn’t matter at that point. One for sure, there should be a better argument to restrict access than the currently provided ones.
Some people just arent squeamish I suppose.
Can't speak to the others.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10009492/ - slaughterhouse workers
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12174799/ - healthcare workers
My friend was too into this stuff. He was also a "goth" and a Marilyn Manson fan. Anyway, this culminated in his senior year art project in which he built a full-sized glass coffin with a realistic rotting corpse inside it.
My friend turned out to be one of the most successful commercial artists of our generation, has a wonderful family, great kids, and absolutely is not a psychopath. We had some bloody steaks and martinis recently, his father had passed away and I brought up the fact that he was always obsessed with death. He said something really funny. He said, "I always got that reaction from people, but now I realize it's not that they didn't get what I was saying, about us all dying and being made of guts and meat. They totally got it. They just thought it was obnoxious and didn't want to be reminded of it." To which I said, congratulations, you joined the human race.
“Rotten was a key you turned that locked a door behind you.”
People can be vicious animals rather easily, once 'the others' are dehumanized its not worse than behavior towards animals in slaughterhouse. it doesnt take much, look at various conflicts around the world, look at how drug cartels in south/central america behave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsala_of_Wala_in_the_Nsongo_Di...
People often remember the gore, but what I remember more was the texture of the early web: sparse HTML, no engagement optimization, no algorithmic feed, no “creator economy.” You had to intentionally go looking for things. That changed the psychology completely.
Today’s internet is arguably more manipulative, even if it’s less graphic.
Ahh … bastions of refined taste …
"What mattered wasn’t so much the image itself but how it moved. Its value lay in its circulation: whom you could shock, how fast the chat room would combust, how far something would travel before it came back to you like a bad penny."
also, for what it's worth: i did not have access to the early internet. strict parents & computer only available in 'the computer room' where my dad's desk was, so he was always right there. as a consequence, i can't 'handle' movies with graphic sexual assault scenes or similar. i like that about myself tho.
herodoturtle•1h ago
The internet needs more of this.