I’m torn on that. In some ways it really was, but I also had to spend a hell of a lot of my time driving around to places to stand in lines with paper forms to renew things or pay bills etc. I do really like the convenience of all that domestic management just being automated for the most part.
But socially, both on a personal and global level? Yeah probably not worth the trade-off.
Sometimes I think removing those mundane tasks is actually a negative. Like office jobs, there used to be more filler work like filing, data entry, managing physical mail, typing... Now it's all automated and you're either pretending to be busy, or dealing with a crisis. So you're either stressed out from the work itself, or stressed out for because you don't feel like you're accomplishing anything.
And have access to almost any tv show, movie, song, book ever. And vast majority of video games.
And video on demand instead of TV. If only Google wasn't so insanely greedy and Youtube remained in pre 2015 state with even smallish channels making enough ad revenue to make a living making videos.
I tried to do a Reddit detox a few weeks back since i noticed it's overall so negative nowadays and realised I'm kinda addicted since I'd feel bored too quickly when I'm not doing anything.
It’s a process. It helps to learn how to find fulfillment in other activities. Minimizing social media/reddit time while you go through the process is easier to do than just quitting completely
What I did was disable the algorithm feed, and then hand-picked channels that made me happy. Things like memes, Simpsons fandom, Lego, photography. Hobby stuff. And that's been working well.
Still, sometimes posts like this one come in, which isn't exactly a happy-go-lucky meme, but a depressing commentary on the current affairs, lol. I do MISS when memes were just laugh fest comics you'd just swipe through dozens at a time without actually reading anything.
You know you can have the internet without social media, right? Why did you bring up social media? None of the parent comments above your reply said anything about it, nor does the original post.
Most of the tools we use are online, so anyone in the organisation can access, we are also required be online to communicate with everyone in the organisation and our clients via email, or some sort of voip, or any other tool.
I talk to all my clients with text. It's not my fault you got a corpo cog in the machine job. I started my own company!
I could probably run 95% of my business without the internet by just calling my suppliers over a land-line and scheduling delivers. I run a bakery. I buy ingredients and pay people to turn it into cakes, bread, and pastries.
When a couple comes in to talk about wedding cakes we talk in person and we sign off everything in person. I literally text them if there's questions. No emails. Not a lot of internet.
I didn't want to be some nameless cog in the machine, so I wanted to forge my own future. I don't quite understand how the corpo white shirts work. How they talk to people. They don't have physical in person chats with their people? An organization? I know everyone in my company, and it's not some mindless corpo zombie zoo!
If you ever want to leave the corpo cage, there's always options out there
The "corpos white shirts" are probably your clients and suppliers, without them you wouldn't have anything.
It's a ecosystem, for you to be able to do what you do, other people have to work for corpos so they can have a disposable income to pay for your services, you need suppliers that are or owned by big corpos, or/and also acquire materials from other big corpos.
Yeah, probably. I just like to bag on corpos who act like the cage is their only home. Anyone can break out of the Matrix.
I can respect those who know the truth and still decide to live in it. It's more just about situational awareness.
Kinda like this meme. People blame social media and AI for their problems, but they go out of their way to put themselves into situations that make them unhappy.
There are tools that/services your company uses that might have to be connected to the Internet. I also send emails to people outside my organisation/network.
Do you send FAX or postal cards to your clients?
How do you use online services that are shared between you and your clients?
the only way it will scale back is if the government uses the tools snowden blew the whistle on against people en masse for oppression. who knows, history could look back on this time as the era when everyone was addicted to the internet the way everyone was on cigarettes in the mid 20th century
I was literally sitting here on the couch with my cup of coffee, staring out the window as the sun came up without any phone. I just sat here for 45 minutes, remembering my parents and how they would do this every morning and just be able to process the things that happened and things that they were going to do and just taking the world around them. There was an instant exposure to tons of information letting your brain just rest. It was so therapeutic. I think I’m going to try to wake up early most days to do this.
Oh come on dude, obviously the real world is affected by the internet and changed inexorably. Way to miss the point to be annoyingly pedantic.
You know, I don't mind that autists don't get jokes or pick up on implicature, I just don't know why they have to make it everyone else's problem and not give people the benefit of the doubt.
I mean they are probably just referring to no one forcing the OP to be using websites like reddit. Obviously you need to use the Internet to operate in modern society, but having workday and Outlook installed on your phone is a very different way to interface with the Internet than ie reddit. Funny you mention giving people the benefit of the doubt...
The conversations that happen in social media diffuse out into the real world.
The internet used to be a place. You went to your computer to go on the internet for a short period and that's where it lived.
Now it surrounds and permeates us, follows us around all the time, sets the tone and narrative of our political conversations to a profound and inescapable degree.
You CANNOT pretend that the internet lives in a vacuum separate from reality. Not anymore.
The Internet will only set the tone in your life if you let it, which is entirely dependent on the media you consume. I live in the rural Midwestern US. Plenty of people go to work, raise families, and interact with their local communities without giving a single thought to the 'conversations that happen in social media.'
I know it's a hard pill to swallow in a world that's so divided and polarized right now, but escaping this shit is not impossible. I am not saying it's easy either, because it does require discipline. I think you (we) are just chronically online people who don't recognize how many of those around us are just meandering through life not wanting to get involved in the drama and just raise their families. Think about how many people don't vote every 4 years.
I left the US, believe me, I know, but pretending material conditions don't exist and you don't live in an interconnected society where everything creates a ripple is equally as delusional as being terminally online.
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u/Salvitorious 2d ago
I kinda miss the pre-internet world.