"The Internet Isn't Real and You Are Mentally Ill"
#1
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.
#2
Voyeurism is something I've noticed myself. It seems to me the internet does transfer things from real life, as you say, though without modifcation to the wider culture their negative effects become even worse. Stalking and disgusting levels of privacy violation, both of public and private or random individuals, is going to continue to reach new depths, the latest being the technology now to fake the likeness of any person who has uploaded excessive data related to themselves to the internet. 

The refrain that the internet isn't real is one of those things that's true but destroyed by misuse and association. The internet is very much a potent unreality device in the hands of most people outside of our tiny circles, that is the general populace uses the internet to help insulate themselves from truth rather than to seek it out as we do. The implication that the internet doesn't matter is of course disastrously untrue and at this point it seems people unconsciously view it as the only thing that matters. Attempts to redirect to "going outside" are a way of coping with the extensive power and influence of the internet, it's not offered as worthwhile but a way of protesting against the internet resentfully. Most redpill stuff comes down to a reaction to the internet's unrealism to synthesize it with a new, physically existing state with some form of reality-compliant principle. Ironically the "touch grass" copers are the ones who are not reacting rationally to the net, as it produces utter confusion for them they simply swallow it whole due to the fact crazy groups conscious of and embracing this unreality can fashion the internet into a social shaming device that whips normies into doing what they want. The eright are the only people who are able to see the bigger picture and understsnd that the internet carries implications that demand vast restructuring of society but are also weary of a spiral into unrealistic behaviors that destroy fertility and QOL in the material world.
#3
Salo and men like him classic refrain of the internet isn't real always struck me as a little naive and now looking back strikes as just plain denial at winds shifting. The internet at minimum is the greatest communication revolution since the printing press and like any such revolution has upended social political and economic relations totally. It has not been complete however like the printing press many systems and ways of life remain mostly and partly intact our equivalent to Lordships(Nation states) for one having not gone away for one as was dreamed of for early promoters of the net. But one can clearly see in terms of changes entire forms of data collection and sharing teeter on death or have moved to the net to keep on life. Social and increasingly if not already political life in most wealthy nations and those who can get the tech in nations that are not is organized and dictated by the chat app. Just to name some of the many effects that will no doubt take lifetimes in man hours and clock cycles to untangle and understand. I believe the internet is not real is a viewpoint fading-increasingly replaced by a deep terror among out ruling intellectuals and statesmen under the terms "surveillance capitalism" "radicalism" "disinformation" "anti social actions" the internet has been deemed out of control and in need of clear regulation and management so its users can be reined in for the public good. I believe this fear will be one of the defining causes of our time-as the internet has too many real persons and items on it to escape a grasp for it.
[Image: 3RVIe13.gif]

“Power changes its appearance but not its reality.”― Bertrand De Jouvenel
#4
(03-07-2023, 06:28 PM)JF_ Wrote: Another point of discussion is e-dating, and relationships in general.

if it weren't for this point i'd contend that the internet has supplanted real life in terms of importance and immediacy. non-sexual relations are able to be formed and sustained just as well as in real life, especially as the most popular recreational activities are online video games, but forming relationships with the other sex still poses an intractable challenge. this is because male-female relations must *a priori* be based on attraction which stems from physical factors. this leads to a catch-22 where in order to organically form a relationship one must know what the girl looks like, but the only way to know what she looks like is to have her send you a photo privately (which requires an existing relationship) or for her photos to be publicly available (necessarily implying she is to be avoided). for the normalcattle there is no issue, because his standards so low that he does not need the former and does not mind the latter, but for anyone who respects himself trying to find a girl online is prohibitively inefficient and soul-crushing, so the internet remains an incomplete domain.
#5
I never participated on Salo, but Niccolo always rubbed me the wrong way. I remember listening to him on a podcast and finding him so faggy and performative. "Lol we r so autizztick n random on my supar cool forum teehee". It doesn't surprise me at all that he would try to engage in millenilol detachment from le crazee internet world.

Everything here is real for the same reason Hercules is real. The internet is REAL, and REALER than REAL LIFE.
#6
I hate Croats.

(03-07-2023, 08:32 PM)Datacop Wrote: Everything here is real for the same reason Hercules is real. The internet is REAL, and REALER than REAL LIFE.

2500: Scholars and monks in the tradition of Pageau write volumes detailing the metaphysical meaning of the Groyper, of the Amarnite Ankh, of Negev, of the Wendy's Robot pfp. Symbolists in control.
#7
(03-07-2023, 08:32 PM)Datacop Wrote: I never participated on Salo, but Niccolo always rubbed me the wrong way.

He was one of those web admins with the utmost contempt for the userbase, a most topical archetype on the internets. For a guy who claims internet is not real, e-dudes can easily fluster him to which he has no comeback other than the banhammer. It takes a clueless fag to claim the internet is not real yet he depends on Substack for living.
#8
(03-07-2023, 08:57 PM)JohnnyRomero Wrote: I hate Croats.
Why
#9
I love everyone here, Croat or not.
#10
(03-10-2023, 12:04 PM)Guest Wrote:
(03-07-2023, 08:57 PM)JohnnyRomero Wrote: I hate Croats.
Why

Not racist, just don't like 'em.

(I actually don't have much experience with Croats, but they seem alright. I remain skeptical in the face of them being balkanoids and having produced Soldo.)
#11
I will never concede to the point that "the Internet is not real" simply because if it "isn't" therefore shouldn't exist I would probably be not even half as based as I am now. The internet has saved millions of lives from the clutches of conformity and mediocrity. I have learnt so much from the internet. Thank you internet.
#12
The internet is real but it's pretty fake and gay tbh
#13
Amarna Forum is actually Facebook now
#14
For every redpilled sensitive young man there's a dozen troons and a dozen girls who started an onlyfans
#15
The internet is mentally ill and you aren't real.
#16
shut up faggot
#17
I have said many many times in spaces that "The Internet has become a lot more real but that Real Life has become a lot more Internet"...

as well as "How do we make things Kinetic? is the most important question for us"
#18
(03-13-2023, 01:07 AM)KV55 Wrote: As well as "How do we make things Kinetic? is the most important question for us"

“KV55Bro could you like in more detail explains what Kinetic means in this context? It sounds promising but for me it’s only a nebulous notion withouts it’s relation being properly describes and established. Thanks Bro.”
#19
The internet is as real as you make it. Many of the friendships and relationships I've made through it ultimately became offline friends. Other friendships that originally manifested offline eventually became online friendships as people moved and our lives diverged.

I don't understand the disdain against e-relationships, either. When I met worthwhile people, I had no qualms about spontaneously driving 20-30 hours across the country to crash with them for a week. Aside from that: before we lived together, my wife and I would spend the entire day on call in discord. We would fall asleep on call and wake up in the same call. Sometimes I would wake during the night, and just listen to her breathe against the phone. When I went to work, I would deafen myself yet stay on the call for the whole day. She never wanted to feel apart from me, nor I from her. If you take things seriously - you find a way.
#20
(03-13-2023, 01:51 AM)Zed Wrote: The internet is as real as you make it. Many of the friendships and relationships I've made through it ultimately became offline friends. Other friendships that originally manifested offline eventually became online friendships as people moved and our lives diverged.

I don't understand the disdain against e-relationships, either. When I met worthwhile people, I had no qualms about spontaneously driving 20-30 hours across the country to crash with them for a week. Aside from that: before we lived together, my "wife" and I would spend the entire day on call in discord. We would fall asleep on call and wake up in the same call. Sometimes I would wake during the night, and just listen to "her" breathe against the phone. When I went to work, I would deafen myself yet stay on the call for the whole day. "She" never wanted to feel apart from me, nor I from "her." If you take things seriously - you find a way.

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