Do you think people would open their eyes and become more neighborly? Would it free people to actually talk to their friends, go to actual events in person? Or is everyone already entrenched too far?
And yes its ironic im posting this online. However I like to think of how the world would react if we could disable the internet for a few months. Besides the chaos of banking and airlines, I think it would be a net positive on humanity.
Until then, ill go back to being mostly disconnected on weekends. Its great.
We were, least I feel so, on like the sweet spot of the internet in the 2000s. That balance where, it wasn’t entirely encapsulating yet and there was room for more real time off from it.
Since then, things are too entrenched to where, if we took the internet away now, people would probably feel too disconnected. Too disconnected to the point of utter depression and withdrawn into themselves. People are too damn glued to their Facebooks, Twitters and TikToks to give a damn.
Religion will become popular again and people still start falling for nonsense like ghosts and superstitions. People born after the 80s don’t really remember just how batshit crazy people went for misinformation before we had the internet.
We need a new internet without corporate bullshit and some integrity in terms of knowledge. But seeing what happened to the current one, I don’t think that will be possible until we kill capitalism.
Maybe, depends on the people. Some neighbours might love to get back together like how they used to, others might start fighting again.
Personally i’d just quit on living. I highly doubt i’d find the same community where i currently am, i’m not going back to feeling completely alone and just faking my life again.
I believe that the perfect internet is 1999 but with Wikipedia.
That’s it.
All tech: 1999 and before. Flip phones. MP3 players. DVD. Etc.
It was perfect and corporations did not suck our souls out through our assholes.
No. Alcohol usage would go up in that scenario though.
The internet is probably much older than you believe … by several decades … so your question does not exactly fit with your worries.
It would probably take a while but yes, I do think people would become less isolated.
People use social media as a substitute for social interaction, it is not. Even texting is not good enough most of the time.
I disagree that it would be as clear that people would become less isolated. I do agree that people would adapt to life without Internet; we were there once before, we can be there again. However, this dismisses the good the internet has done and neglects to account for the reasons it has turned out the way it has.
I think people would fall into tribalism offline as much as they do online. Maybe it would be regional and physical community based, and they would have more social interaction -in person-, but they would still fall into little insular pockets of one form or another. The cure is a variety of interactions with people of different mindsets, whether that is online or offline. But we, as people, don’t like that. We like the comfy communities where we can form an echochamber together.
no, people hated each other before the internet…even moreso than they do now. believe it or not, media giants has an easier time bubbling people pre-internet
I’m on the internet because I can actually find others who share my intereste and have something to talk about. If the internet died, I’d be even lonlier.
Same
I can see that, however there’s the flip side that a lot of people are more lonely because of the internet and getting sucked into extreme viewpoints. If you didnt have the internet, there wold be poster boards for groups etc to join. If youre not in a city, that would obviously be tougher.
That sounds like a nightmare.
When I was in college, there was some Internet, but nobody lived on it like we do now. There were also a variety of clubs at college. I think I might have shown up for one club gathering and noped the fuck out.
The Internet doesn’t keep us in. We built the Internet because we never wanted to leave.
The Internet doesn’t keep us in. We built the Internet because we never wanted to leave.
fediverse users tend to be more conscious about their internet usage, but I don’t think this applies to the more popular social media sites that are built upon attention economy
The internet is how I found groups for my most niche interests. I already know that some of my favorite games do not have any kind of local scene near me, but at least I can still play online. Some of these games I have to travel out to tournaments to play in-person once or twice a year, and I know those events wouldn’t exist without first building up an online community to organize from.
What is ‘the internet’ to you? I think this term means different things to different people. I imagine to people born in the latest generations the internet is social media and productivity corpo sites. To them the internet is youtube, tiktok, twitter, reddit, their bank, and whatever slop services they subscribe to magically beamed into pocket computer through technomagical nerd shit like “5g” and processed through “microprocessors” and other stuff they’ dont care to really understand because its all abstracted away.
I was born early enough for the internet to be nothing more than two computers barely powerful enough to run a GUI calling eachother up through telephone wires to share goofy web 1.0 blogspam. I remember when low res images were the norm and when pre-google youtube was just coming into being. When AOL and Myspace and Newgrounds/flash games. I remember being a kid and loving computers because I never knew what new cool website was on the horizon to discover and play with. I remember that people used things like newsgroups and pre-craigslist to meet up for transactions.
This is the internet, to me. At least what it once was and what it can be again. People using the digital landscape to freely express themselves with their own hardware. To come together to share in hobbies and interest and passions.
We could have that again if we all bought into a standardized radio based mesh network that could host personal sites while acting as a routing node.
But I don’t know if the general public will ever be pushed to partake in this network. They would have to be squeezed very hard to try alternatives to the common way of things.
I should say, destroy web 3.0, ha. But I was only looking at the negatives of internet which to me are social media, corporate takeover, and cheapening of human creativity.
The internet is helpful for finding community and support, especially for LGBT+ people, people with mental health issues, or neurodivergent people. I for one am very glad that the internet is very much up and that the legislators have not succeeded in fully censoring it.
Yes.
I grew up in the 70’s where you’d run naked out of the shower to take a phone call, because that might be your only opportunity to be invited to a social occasion or event that day/week. Nobody ever turned down an invite to lunch, cards night, bingo, pot luck, watching vacation slides, etc, etc, etc. That was the chance to see the world, connect with people and hear what was going on.
I grew up when you’d read the same shampoo bottle 10 times every time you took a shit, hoping you’d find some new detail you once missed.
I grew up when reading every single word of the newspaper, literally from cover-to-cover was a normal thing, for want of better options.
So I feel if people were forced back into the system of non-instant communication, it would automatically make humans come back together. We are social creatures, and The Internet & SM is an ersatz version of socializing, but if it were gone people would have to find it in real life again.
I grew up when you’d read the same shampoo bottle 10 times every time you took a shit, hoping you’d find some new detail you once missed.
Tell me your family didn’t have a subscription to National Geographic without telling me your family didn’t have a subscription to National Geographic.
We had that, but there’s only so many times you can jerk off to the same pair of African titties
You know, I’d judge you, but I’ve been a horny teenager without internet access as well.
It beats JO to the bra/panties section in the Sears catalog
People like to say this shit but then this happens
No people wont just revert back.
That was a truly weird case. You only heard about it because it was weird.
We could just get rid of Internet 2.0 - that’s when the tech broligarchs took over the beautiful original internet and make it into a bunch of surveillance capitalist walled gardens with psyop addictive algorithms that turned people into ad-consumption cash cows.
Leaving the infrastructure in place for useful, non society-destroying uses would avoid throwing the baby out with the filthy bathwater.
I’m pretty sure we’d have a lot of blood on our hands. The internet does in fact facilitate medical appointments, records, and makes drugs and supplies more accessible.
why are they booing you? you’re right!
That’s rough. Don’t wanna go outside, lots of armed masked men outside.
(Am a foreign-born non-white American)
Probably just have to to get a bunch of DVDs and actually get a DVD player that works since the old one is filled with dust and broken. (Or is it a “BluRay” these days?)
I’m probably gonna have to get ham radios, without the internet, there would be a lot more traffic, so I’d probably have to get comfortable using my voice. Probably get a shortwave radio so I get get foreign broadcasts. TV also needs to be replaced.
I’d have to get like actual encyclopedias.
Honestly, it’d be a pain. No piracy is gonna make things cost too much. I doubt Libraries would even have them since they’d all be loaned out.
TLDR: It’d suck, very fucking much.
