The tyranny of anonymity (and the dead internet theory)

[avasopht]

We've all seen the comments section take a nosedive in the last 10 years thanks to troll farms and troll bots.

But it's got me wondering how much of our ideas of what other think is fabricated by these mass manipulations of our perceived status quo.



Think about it.

Think of all the people you know personally and how much the angry people in the comments section deviate from that?



I keep seeing the most ridiculous refutations of Neil DeGrasse Tyson that look like the works of a CPU starved GPT troll bot.

One attempted to refute his presentation on how to visualise what adding a dimension means and his explanation for why visualising 4 degrees and above is so mind bending and impossible for most to achieve, but they did so with a poorly formed formal description of dimensions that felt AI generated.

It's just not the sort of thing any competent mathematician who could make a proof would ever write.

When I speak to people in real life with opposing religious or political views, it's always easy to get along with them (and online too). But the anonymous strangers seem hell bent on disagreeing with everything.

What if we are the last bastion of human internet users?

Sidenote, check out neocities.

[PhillipOrdonez]

I think anonymity gives people the opportunity to show their true self without the self control required to partake in society when they're not anonymous so they seem a lot less confrontational in real life but rabid bloodthirsty monsters behind a keyboard

And a ton of bots nowadays yeah, sometimes i think it's only bots on every comment section. Which is good and bad. Good cause the internet will die. And bad, because the internet will die.

[dioxide]

Good video. Pretty much in line with what I think is happening and I hear is happening. We got used to the idea that the internet was a great place to share ideas and creations, but it's basically just about to be flooded with never ending grey goo without any purpose other than to distract you with endless mediocre or polemic content. People are posting less on socials for various reasons and they have responded by including a load of stuff that you don't have any interest in seeing in your feed, alienating people more. So yeah it feels like the internet had it's time but we have to wait for whatever the next opportunity that empowers normal people is. The internet will still be useful for maps and bus timetables, just not for sharing your music and exchanging opinions.

[bxbrkrz]

This forum will last another 500 years, since we and the art of bad jokesmithing died a long time ago, in a galax....