03-07-2023, 06:28 PM
The title of this thread is an old post by Niccolo Salo, founder of "Salo Forum", which many of you are acquainted with. I intend to dissect this notion, so common among Millennials, but also younger people from what I've seen, that "the internet is not real life" and therefore its significance is incommensurable. I invite you to share your own criticisms of this assertion.
What makes the internet different from real life? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is anonymity and the immediate threat of physical violence. Stupid people can point this out with ease. The second point still holds weight for me, I can't think of a disagreement, but I think it betrays a barbaric perspective. The first point is something I am less confident about after prolonged internet usage. It is fairly easy for a moderately skilled individual to get extensive personal information about you, especially if you are a normal social media user. I suspect this is more true in the present day than ever before. This is something I will return to later on.
There are a few things that happen online which, when described in real life, tend to provoke a response equivalent to Niccolo's assertion. People say vitriolic things to you out of nowhere, insult you in a way they would never act in real life, make totally baseless accusations and get away with it. There are lots of awful webcomics summarizing this. Anonymity Makes People Assholes. This simply isn't that accurate. People also do this in real life and get away with it, especially if the target is generally disliked by a community. Scapegoating is an ancient practice. The people who push this argument seem to have a psychology formed around the belief in the essential goodness of the community, that people look out for one another, and that all extremists and hateful persons are but "a few bad apples". That's people like us, I suppose, who are numerous. When presenting this argument to them, I find they move the goalposts and switch to a bad faith tone. But this belief in the essential goodness of the community is something they seem to hold dear, a naive core that is more or less armored with irony. I don't claim to be free of comforting notions either.
Another point of discussion is e-dating, and relationships in general. I don't think I need to explain to you that some relationships in real life are as fake as online relationships, though there is the matter of shared resources. Some people live together for more than a decade, have children, yet never get married. There are certain risks that come with this for legal reasons. Perhaps as the internet becomes more and more influential on real life, this sort of arrangement will become more common with young people. Many "fake" things online already existed in what was virtually the same form offline beforehand.
There is the phenomenon of "ghosting". You are friends with so and so for a time, seem to be getting along with them, think you treat them well, and then you are "ghosted" by them. They just avoid you altogether, cut you off, and later you learn they have been mocking you to strangers. This happened to me in High School, a male friend group did this to me in entire, and when I tried to confront one of them we got into a fistfight. I was never given an explanation. It seems to have been related to a girl I was seeing at the time. The point is, this has also happened to me online more than once. Really, I could go on...the internet was made by people, it is not from another dimension.
The most significant difference for me is stalking, or voyeurism if you want. It is possible to stalk someone online with ease and to a degree that is impossible in real life. It would require the skill of a private eye, a federal official. Any old schmuck can do it, and in fact several of them may be doing it to the same person at once without being aware of the others, as if they were all living in the same house across the street from their object of interest and looking through the same windows with binoculars every day.
What makes the internet different from real life? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is anonymity and the immediate threat of physical violence. Stupid people can point this out with ease. The second point still holds weight for me, I can't think of a disagreement, but I think it betrays a barbaric perspective. The first point is something I am less confident about after prolonged internet usage. It is fairly easy for a moderately skilled individual to get extensive personal information about you, especially if you are a normal social media user. I suspect this is more true in the present day than ever before. This is something I will return to later on.
There are a few things that happen online which, when described in real life, tend to provoke a response equivalent to Niccolo's assertion. People say vitriolic things to you out of nowhere, insult you in a way they would never act in real life, make totally baseless accusations and get away with it. There are lots of awful webcomics summarizing this. Anonymity Makes People Assholes. This simply isn't that accurate. People also do this in real life and get away with it, especially if the target is generally disliked by a community. Scapegoating is an ancient practice. The people who push this argument seem to have a psychology formed around the belief in the essential goodness of the community, that people look out for one another, and that all extremists and hateful persons are but "a few bad apples". That's people like us, I suppose, who are numerous. When presenting this argument to them, I find they move the goalposts and switch to a bad faith tone. But this belief in the essential goodness of the community is something they seem to hold dear, a naive core that is more or less armored with irony. I don't claim to be free of comforting notions either.
Another point of discussion is e-dating, and relationships in general. I don't think I need to explain to you that some relationships in real life are as fake as online relationships, though there is the matter of shared resources. Some people live together for more than a decade, have children, yet never get married. There are certain risks that come with this for legal reasons. Perhaps as the internet becomes more and more influential on real life, this sort of arrangement will become more common with young people. Many "fake" things online already existed in what was virtually the same form offline beforehand.
There is the phenomenon of "ghosting". You are friends with so and so for a time, seem to be getting along with them, think you treat them well, and then you are "ghosted" by them. They just avoid you altogether, cut you off, and later you learn they have been mocking you to strangers. This happened to me in High School, a male friend group did this to me in entire, and when I tried to confront one of them we got into a fistfight. I was never given an explanation. It seems to have been related to a girl I was seeing at the time. The point is, this has also happened to me online more than once. Really, I could go on...the internet was made by people, it is not from another dimension.
The most significant difference for me is stalking, or voyeurism if you want. It is possible to stalk someone online with ease and to a degree that is impossible in real life. It would require the skill of a private eye, a federal official. Any old schmuck can do it, and in fact several of them may be doing it to the same person at once without being aware of the others, as if they were all living in the same house across the street from their object of interest and looking through the same windows with binoculars every day.