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Thraeg t1_j6kcmih wrote

Credit where it's due for this "original" showerthought:

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Frequently cited by Cory Doctorow, where I encountered it.

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ReaperEngine t1_j6kjqyc wrote

Yeah there's something very ironic about this being repeated on the subreddit, when the quote itself had made the rounds on each of the aforementioned sites.

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kounterfett t1_j6klv5f wrote

They literally talked about this on TWIT this weekend. I bet dollars to donuts OP had this shower thought while listening to them talk about this quote and the irony that they are just regurgitating here something they heard somewhere else is totally lost on them

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RedOrchestra137 t1_j6kukeg wrote

could also just be multiple people coming to the same conclusion independently, cause it's not such a leftfield thought i think. it's just the truth if you observe stuff honestly. i've thought about this as well, just never had the urge to make a post about it. same goes for a lot of stuff, people aren't that original most of the time

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santasbigolhelper t1_j6kyq45 wrote

Exactly. Like why would people even want to claim credit for this extremely obvious trivial bullshit?

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RedOrchestra137 t1_j6l04dp wrote

Because everything anyone says nowadays has a name above it, along with a number that is supposed to indicate the quality of the thing being said, or more like the amount of people who have read and agreed with the thing. That makes it seem like that thought is then somehow intellectual property of the person, while most of the time it's too trivial to have any sort of copyright law surrounding the thing. Yet people still want to enforce ownership, because it makes them feel good, and like it's them that contributed something to the public discourse and no one else. Ego and the need for social validation, which is something you can apply to almost every situation on social media that makes you question why someone said something. I must say I'm feeling kinda correct here, this may get validated and produce good feels for my primate brain

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slicerprime t1_j6l6fe3 wrote

You've actually defined - intentionally or not - what's left of the little bit on the internet once you've filtered out the five giant site orgy:

Trivial Bullshit

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SomePaddy t1_j6kuyu3 wrote

You could have shared this as a screenshot...

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rhymes_with_chicken t1_j6k5opn wrote

If all you do is social media, ya. I only do Reddit, socially (too often, admittedly).

Aside from that it is the largest source of global information that has ever existed in the history of mankind. If you want, you can shut that other shit down and use it the way it was intended.

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SKS_but_Who t1_j6k9kqq wrote

So much THIS!!! Social media is in fact a choice…and actually is NOT social…like at all.

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Jedlord t1_j6kkr35 wrote

Wdym social media isn't social

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SKS_but_Who t1_j6kl015 wrote

It’s the opposite of social. Everyone is alone in front of a screen.

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Jedlord t1_j6kmix3 wrote

You're still communicating and being social with people, just not physically in person, that doesn't make it not social.

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Berry_Juice1 t1_j6l5dys wrote

sure it's social, but it's also very anti-social, which is what people probably mean here

it's kind of nit-picking to say "you're technically socializing" when the point that it's driving people apart is valid, but you are technically right so have a cookie lol

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Jedlord t1_j6lneki wrote

You're just connecting with people via another way and I'd say it's not driving people apart, it's actually bringing some people together, for example you're meeting people online across the world you never would've been able to meet in person, that's definitely bringing people together.

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Berry_Juice1 t1_j6lqi53 wrote

no, im just having dumb reddit arguments, you dont know me

but ya you aren't wrong

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SKS_but_Who t1_j6koj6i wrote

It’s actually the avoidance of socialization. Life involves being around other people.

It’s normalized in modern society, so people view it as social, but it truly is not a social experience. The only way it would be is if you use it to compliment an in person meeting, like…use facebook to invite a group to a party.

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Jedlord t1_j6kpp3z wrote

It's definitely still social interaction, you're communicating with other people, that's social.

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mtnbikingvampwitch t1_j6kz0u4 wrote

I guess we can rephrase and say that online social interaction will never give you the same cognitive and health benefits as an in-person social interaction does. Both social interaction, but one stunts your ability to communicate in person.

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The-Hyruler t1_j6l3sms wrote

What part about online social interaction stunts your ability to communicate in person? No offense but this just screams armchair psychology expert to me.

It's a common trope that people spending a lot of time online are social "losers". But what people seem to not realize is that it's the other way around.

People who are socially atypical have an easier time socializing online than in person. It's not socializing online that makes someone socially atypical.

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mtnbikingvampwitch t1_j6lm9pl wrote

Agree to disagree. Not exposing yourself to social interaction and human touch (basic needs for humans) causes long term social and mental difficulties

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The-Hyruler t1_j6ln8gq wrote

Sure but no one said anything about long term lack of exposure.

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mtnbikingvampwitch t1_j6lvvwr wrote

That's the only way it can be taken. Social skills .. are skills you develop over time of being social. If your only social interaction is online, your social skills in real life will be more difficult.

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The-Hyruler t1_j6lwa0n wrote

Of course, and if your only cooking experience is with a microwave you're not going to be good at cooking.

But we're not talking about someone who only does one thing. Online socializing is still a type of socializing and it's definitely more healthy than no socializing at all.

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wut3va t1_j6l5nc1 wrote

It's minimally social. A few lines of text is no substitute for sharing the five senses with other human beings. In person, you can dance, drink, kiss, laugh, eat, talk, etc. Body language, tone, touch, even smell, are all forms of nonverbal communication that enriches the human experience in ways that you can't even describe if you don't experience it for yourself. Social media is being social, but distilled to its absolute weakest form.

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Jedlord t1_j6laekv wrote

So your social interactions aren't true social interactions if you're blind and deaf?

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wut3va t1_j6lduyu wrote

I have both a blind friend and a deaf aunt. You have to get creative sometimes to make those relationships work for everyone, but anyone who thinks their experience isn't diminished is fooling themselves. A person who is both blind and deaf is going to have very limited opportunities to make connections with people. It would be worse if we could only see each other online.

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Jedlord t1_j6ln7mu wrote

That's fair yeah, there are some drawbacks to online interaction but it doesn't make it not social or any less at all, it's just different tbh, and for some people it's easier to interact online and so for them it's better than in person. And yeah my original point was just that social media IS social.

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Jedlord t1_j6lallf wrote

Also social media isn't just a few lines of text you can voice and video call, and stuff you can do online together will only get more advanced overtime

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wut3va t1_j6le6sy wrote

Using social media, even video, to maintain relationships is like playing piano with mittens on. You can sorta make it work, but in person is so much richer. Like anything else, humans are capable of getting by with less if they have to.

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cbf1232 t1_j6km739 wrote

Sorry, I gotta disagree. Maybe what you say is true if you limit it to "social media" instead of "The internet".

"The Internet" is so much more than just social media.

There are tons of websites dedicated to specific hobbies that have active communities. There are thousands of open-source and commercial software projects distributed online. Computer gaming, videoconferencing, online banking, niche online shopping stores that are way better than Amazon/Walmart/etc., remote access to computers for work, large-scale data transfer, a dozen or more streaming video services, online board gaming by subscription, the list goes on and on...

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BirdjaminFranklin t1_j6kyff4 wrote

How are you supposed to find those random sites?

BTW, I miss webrings.

The internet was a lot more interesting when you had to create your communities.

It's not unlike what occurred to WoW.

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piepants2001 t1_j6l3pzf wrote

It doesn't help that search engines are garbage nowadays.

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Hanako_Seishin t1_j6l6lnq wrote

Or maybe they got so good we've forgotten the second page of Google exists

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ProbablyABore t1_j6kn0bk wrote

Yeah, I had to take a double take. I visit more than 10 individual websites every day.

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WhiskyAtNoon t1_j6l1rhi wrote

Xvideos, xhamster, xnxx, hub, blacked, motherless, youjizz, red tube, pornzog and Linkedin

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Glitchsbrew t1_j6kywqo wrote

Maybe OP forgot what porn is. Pretty sure it makes up about 69% of the internet.

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dandroid126 t1_j6l3ij6 wrote

The internet is really really great.

^(For porn)

I got a fast connection so I didn't have to wait.

^(For porn)

There's always some new site.

^(For porn)

I browse all day and night.

^(For porn)

It's like I'm surfing at the speed of light.

#Foooooor poooooorn!

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k0n3h34d4457 t1_j6l2j8t wrote

i think this shower thought would be more accurately stated as “the average person’s perception of the internet has boiled down to essentially 5 sites all sharing screenshots of each other”, which is certainly the case.

it makes sense because it’s easier for people to look at things online when they’re presented in centralized feeds with relatively simple to setup accounts. it kinda goes against how the internet was intended to be used though unfortunately and doesn’t allow for much in the way of user freedom.

hopefully enough people will hop onto activitypub-based platforms like mastodon in the near future.

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princhester t1_j6l4hst wrote

I know you weren't aiming for a complete list but an important set of websites you haven't mentioned are the mainstream and other media websites that generate much of the content that then goes around and around on social media.

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ThenaJuno t1_j6jov7h wrote

What are the 5?

I want to know if I am one of the unwashed masses.

Edit: Now what I want to know is - what is the best way to use the internet? (also posting as a stand alone question.)

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yeahwellokay t1_j6jpuv7 wrote

My guess:

Reddit

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

TikTok

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ThenaJuno t1_j6jq75e wrote

Of those, I only use Reddit.

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ComeBackToDigg t1_j6jwheo wrote

To be fair, a LOT of the screenshots on reddit from other sites (like twitter) are completely fake. They were never screenshotted from other sites, they are just completely fabricated text from AI karmabots.

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chrisco571 t1_j6jyh1g wrote

That's the point, you use one but get screen shots or shares of the "top" content in all others lol

I would add YouTube

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mage-rouge t1_j6jyulw wrote

Yeah, you use reddit to aggregate the best/worst posts from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikToc.

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lumberjake1 t1_j6kbhw8 wrote

YouTube should be on there

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raisearuckus t1_j6keflk wrote

And Amazon

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Ravore t1_j6kq8rh wrote

How many screenshots of Amazon conversations have you seen?

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iamthelonelybarnacle t1_j6kxvdd wrote

Ngl I've seen videos on YouTube of people laughing at weird Amazon reviews and questions/answers

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raisearuckus t1_j6krcgz wrote

What does screenshots have to do with anything?

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Ravore t1_j6krih2 wrote

The literal point of the shower thought is the screenshots and sharing them.

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anembor t1_j6kwc1l wrote

And what is this fuss about reading I heard about?!

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fatamSC2 t1_j6kh3oe wrote

Isn't reddit way smaller than the other 4?

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thetomahawk42 t1_j6kjv3d wrote

Google.

Amazon

Wikipedia

Imgur

Something beginning with P

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msnmck t1_j6kuomu wrote

>Something beginning with P

It's been a while since I've visited Pinterest. ^(/s😏)

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mrigendranath t1_j6kf6ep wrote

I think Tumblr should be on this list.... I frequently come across them on Facebook

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26514 t1_j6kuz0e wrote

Wikipedia

Amazon

Google

Tumblr

To name a few more.

If your definition is exclusively anglo-speaking social media then yes but the internet is way bigger than that.

Baidu, for example, is China's answer to Google and has almost 200 million daily users.

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Emergency_Paperclip t1_j6ko2zr wrote

The best way to use the internet is to use it to get information from quality sources.

Online articles with no sources from dime a dozen websites are not quality sources.

Oh and just a quick pro tip. If you are looking for information about when a show or movie comes out, any article that has the words "release date" in the title do not have the release date in the article. At best they will be making a poorly educated guess.

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mayormcskeeze t1_j6jylgy wrote

It really is a shame how completely useless the internet has become.

In just a few years "googling" something has gone from a sure fire way to find valuable information to a complete waste of time because everything has been choked out by garbage pages probably written by AI.

Edit: getting a lot of pushback on this comment. Obviously I was being hyperbolic calling the internet "useless." Its obviously useful and there amazing things happening on/with it.

So let me expand on what I meant in a less sarcastic way. While there is awesome stuff from personal communication to science breakthroughs to amazing open source projects that provide a wealth of utility and information, for many of us our basic day-to-day experience with the internet has gotten shittier and shittier.

Yes, you can pop over to r/internetisbeautiful and see some mindblowing applications, but wanna find a recipe? Fuck you it's all garbage. Email? Endless spam and bullshit. Social media? "Influencers" shoving products at you. YouTube? Dominated by the gutter trash that pushes the algorithm. Retail? Good luck finding something decent in the cesspool of fake shit that is Amazon. Customer service? Complete scam.

Do any of these obstacles ruin the underlying application? No. You can eventually sift through the crap and get to the recipe. You eventually sift through the crap and find the bedsheets you want. You can eventually sift through the crap and find your real emails.

But for those of us who grew up pre-internet and experienced a short period before all of thr ads, the data theft, the spam, the scams, the crap, and ENDLESS oppressive monetization, this version of the internet feels very disappointing.

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Bierculles t1_j6k6nnk wrote

Or google just trying to push products, Google search has been incredibly bad for a few years now.

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fuck_all_you_people t1_j6k7mcj wrote

Fake sites created by other companies to fake rank best products and game the algorithm by putting their products first. Google should penalize people that game the spiders by making fake ratings websites and websites that explain basic shit and then refer [company x]

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RedOrchestra137 t1_j6kvmq9 wrote

it's probably partly a consequence of the internet becoming more accessible over the years, so you'll have a larger share of idiots ruining stuff for others. like all these services trying to make setting up your own brand as easy as possible, and i'm just thinking please no we don't need more of these obnoxious assholes shoving their mediocre lifestyle in everyone's faces.

i think if you can set up decent scum filters that get rid of the sludge and slime, you can be left with a pretty clear and pure bit of online content, but it becomes harder to do as people just keep pouring bucket loads of garbage into the pond

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draculamilktoast t1_j6kddw6 wrote

> It really is a shame how completely useless the internet has become.

Yeah you can only use it for entertainment, employment, education, socializing, communication, research, file transfer, commerce, distributed supercomputing, telepresence and controlling teapots. Completely useless. What we really need is a series of pneumatic tubes! The tubes could contain actual cats, none of this digital nonsense that doesn't even exist.

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Dwarfdeaths t1_j6kuybu wrote

Lol I've semi-seriously thought about a system of (pneumatic? electromagnetic?) tubes to take on the increasingly large role of home delivery services. Instead of trucks and cars with humans manually delivering small packages, food, etc., we could just create a standardized tube system. Anything below a certain size can be shipped via tube, and only the big stuff requires an over-the-road solution. Then the only questions are how big should the envelope be and how much would it cost to install?

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draculamilktoast t1_j6m7e55 wrote

A drone flying a package home to you doesn't require expensive infrastructure and can theoretically carry a package of any size. The real advantage to a tube system might be in speed and maybe requiring less energy per delivery but plumbers are not rich for no reason.

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Dwarfdeaths t1_j6mh5th wrote

I'd think plumbing is way more complicated than a package system. Plumbing deals with a variety of pipe sizes, terminal devices, hydrodynamics, chemistry, etc. all meticulously integrated into your building. A package system just has to get a single type of object to the general vicinity of your building, and that object won't deposit limescale or grease over time. I think a better analogy is internet infrastructure.

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suffaluffapussycat t1_j6kkoo3 wrote

But we use the internet to watch movies, listen to music, do banking, communicate with people, check the weather, read books, map trips, buy stuff, sell stuff, trade stocks, look up information, book travel, track fitness, etc. etc. right?

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khamelean t1_j6kh8mm wrote

The greatest repository of human knowledge ever known is “useless”…

Ok. You are definitely doing something wrong…

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FrostedJakes t1_j6krcxq wrote

Depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for legitimate information regarding things that have been researched and studied, Google Scholar is a great option.

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quick_dudley t1_j6l4ksq wrote

IMO a lot of the problems with social media in one way or another stem from each platform being run for profit by a particular organisation. During that big Facebook outage I got into this p2p social network called Scuttlebutt and it has a completely different set of problems.

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AgoraiosBum t1_j6l4xtr wrote

Gotta disagree on recipes; I find plenty of good recipes on line including some sites that I now trust significantly.

But often the best thing to do is look up 3 recipes for the same dish, see what they have in common, what is different, and choose what you want to do with that info, based on the flavors you like.

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Goldbatt1 t1_j6kp2r8 wrote

I feel like this is where the ai comes and helps us out a little bit more. The ai would help to sparse the information quickly to find good sources within the organized mess that is the internet.

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Eggplantosaur t1_j6ks519 wrote

>It really is a shame how completely useless the internet has become.

Get over yourself. The internet is a fantastic resource

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fuck_all_you_people t1_j6jrkx6 wrote

It inherited capitalisms blueprint once capitalism became heavily invested in it.

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LegitimateAsk7824 t1_j6kfnl4 wrote

People build a dam to make a reservoir so that a community has the water they need, then capitalists buy it from them and start raising the prices and letting the water grow toxic through lack of maintenance.

Social media started as a way for people to connect and enjoy being connected. It was damned from the moment the capitalists saw money in it. If you create something valuable, whether it's art or a social media site, you'd have to fight tooth and nail to avoid it becoming utterly disfigured and corrupted.

This is their process in everything. Max profit at any cost to the wellbeing of people. Profit before life, before love, before humanity. Capitalism as a system encourages them to do it, teaches them that as long as it's "just business", it doesn't matter what you do. Profit first, and fuck everyone and everything else. And they're not even happy! Rich assholes are miserable, but profit comes even before their own peace.

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fuck_all_you_people t1_j6kma6a wrote

"If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat, while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what the heck was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes"

-Nathalie Robin Justice Gravel

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EXandRR t1_j6l2xd1 wrote

That moneky would also be ripped to pieces by the other monkeys.

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Dwarfdeaths t1_j6ktuop wrote

I think the problem most capitalist countries are struggling with is the failure to distinguish capital from land. Capital - that is, wealth reinvested to improve the productivity of future work- deserves returns. Instead of enjoying your wealth, you gave it up for a time to be more productive.

Rent seeking - that is, the withholding of land from those who need it to live and work - is pure parasitism. No one created land, they just found it and claimed it. (Similarly, old capital that was made by someone who is no longer alive is indistinguishable from land.)

Henry George proposed a solution known as the land value tax. It effectively rents all land out, and distributes that rent uniformly among citizens. While the owner can still choose how to use their land, the economic value of that land is owned by everyone.

Capitalism in its pure form, i.e. privatized rewards for private investment, is probably fine. But land is not capital and we can't continue to treat it like it is.

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khamelean t1_j6kguvl wrote

Wow…just wow. You just classified the greatest repository of all of human knowledge ever known as “and not much else”.

There is more to the internet than just social media. Yikes.

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sunflower_jim t1_j6kth0m wrote

I think for the vast majority this sentiment holds true. Just look at your phone time app to see it’s true.

It’s the same sentiment as a library. Vast wealth of knowledge but most people are there to read comics or use the PCs to game online. I’d wager some very good and important books have only been touched by the library staff for decades. Yet if somebody said “libraries are basically pointless these days” I’d have to agree, yet your comment would hold true there as well.

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khamelean t1_j6kwy4k wrote

But the reason “libraries are basically pointless these days” is because most of what is available at the library is also available on the internet.

For your point to hold, you would have to say that libraries were basically pointless 60 years ago.

Not to mention that the “repository of knowledge” thing is only one other part of the internet.

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sunflower_jim t1_j6l2enx wrote

My point is the majority of people don’t see the value you see. To the majority this post is true. Not sure what the hell you thought my point was.

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ShitHouses t1_j6jxbdl wrote

If you're seeing a screenshot of a social media post on reddit, theres a pretty high chance its posted by a bot.

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area_man_has_opinion t1_j6k2ccr wrote

Business people always find ways to monetize everything. Once things get monetized they are less useful and less fun. (If they are useful to the consumer (or fun), costs go up until they aren't.)

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Jonxor t1_j6kx7fm wrote

Somebody please get this person some interesting things to do on the internet.

Like did you know there used to be a server called “towel.blinkenlights” with some other domain where if you connect using the “telnet” protocol, it plays a little movie someone made with ascii art? There are a ton of awesome places on the internet like that, but they are hard to find. Who else has some classic stuff?

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bobbejaans t1_j6jv4dj wrote

The surprising thing to me is that even with the sheer number of people using these platforms, there are relatively few interesting things happening. The number of crossposts and reposts compared to original content is dismal.

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hemetnehp t1_j6k1db9 wrote

You are just stuck in the main stream.... Stop being a drone xD

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Dr_Edge_ATX t1_j6kgsh1 wrote

It is wild trying to explain what the internet "used to be" to younger people. Like just how there seriously were no ads on the majority of sites you'd stumble upon and just the idea that not all sites were about making money.

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Redtex t1_j6kk98r wrote

I love that the internet, aka the worldwide web, has been segregated for the most part into Continental zones. Monetize and segregated, not really what started out to be.

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numbersev t1_j6kr5d9 wrote

It was originally decentralized and gradually became centralized out of necessity. For example we as in humanity don't need 5 different Facebooks, YouTube's or Reddits. We all just use the same one and that's where it strength kicks back as well.

Web 3.0 is said to promote innovative concepts that decentralize power again, but I don't know how it would change the internet as we use it.

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quick_dudley t1_j6l4x4y wrote

I'm skeptical of Web 3.0 in terms of the specifics involved in that term but absolutely agree that decentralising the web again would be a good thing.

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sunflower_jim t1_j6ksu69 wrote

I miss the flash days. The days of stumbleupon and the days when Google seemed to actually work.

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starlightchaser60 t1_j6ktq6c wrote

The world gets something with infinite untapped potential. Then, the world ruins it by being extremely greedy and selfish. Then, after a few years, what could have made human life insanely better is now mostly toxic, with a few good things strewn in here and there.

Multiply this by every potential Earth shattering invention.

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WanttobeWannabe t1_j6kuxvw wrote

On the one hand, yeah, fair point. On the other, that is total fucking nonsense.

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Showerthoughts_Mod t1_j6jn46m wrote

This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.

Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"

(For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)

Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.

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m4l490n t1_j6jp70h wrote

I think that the internet has degenerated from an awesome place to connect and share information and knowledge to a shitty for-profit pool of information-polluted-by-advertisement place.

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polytopey t1_j6kqpdk wrote

5 giants sites, all owned by the same capitals.

Capitalism innovates then monopolizes.

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26514 t1_j6kuoc7 wrote

5 sites of the English speaking world.

Baidu has like 200 million daily users.

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exiestjw t1_j6l0tx2 wrote

I develop ecommerce and data software.

I'm pushing 50, so as a boy I remember mechanical cash registers and watched them become more and more electronic.

For me the internet is a cash register, or a component of a cash register, and I add features to it.

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lbo4lyfe t1_j6l3tm4 wrote

in this form it is also stolen content but not a screenshot..mission accomplished?

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Spatularo t1_j6l5758 wrote

I think about this every day. I miss early Internet and all the random sites I would visit daily.

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Red4pex t1_j6jzfhh wrote

Casually ignoring the billions of people using the internet in Asia

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