"Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering."
- Marshall McLuhan.

“Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.”
~~Abraham Lincoln

I can stop whenever I want.

Please just one upmod/karma.

This is why i control my dopamine with ketamine and marijuana.

Yeah - it kinda does seem that it started out nobly as a free alternative to paying Classmates.com to get in touch with all your old friends, and has snowballed into a smoldering, devolving mess, of identity politics and instant gratification.

I don't get too bugged by it though - I have always had a pretty good "ignore this shithead" filter, and there is always the kill-block file.

A group I joined as a place to commiserate with others who don't like the hot summer months here despite a lot of the town going "but it RAINS most of the year. ENJOY it this is WONDERFUL!" has, now that winter's rolled around, been taken over by people being actively hostile whenever the sun's out even if it's 40 degrees.

On Thursday, the FCC is expected to approve the plan to scrap the Obama-era consumer protections that prohibit internet service providers from discriminating against, or favoring, certain websites. Under the proposal, the FCC would get rid of the conduct rules governing broadband companies and cede authority over the industry to the FTC.

FCC, FTC announce partnership to police internet after net neutrality repeal

Yup. I've mostly withdrawn from even the limited Pavlovian online interaction I used to do. (How is it that my karma ranking has stayed #10 for the last few months of nearly zero posting/commenting activity?)

The thing so many of the commenters on Gizmodo seem to miss is the difference between the way TV feeds you shit and the way social media gives you direct, frequent, unpredictable feedback in patterns optimized to rewire your brain. It's insanely powerful and generally well below the threshold of awareness. It really is levels of magnitude more influential than old-school linear consumption of tv programming and advertising. Add the ever increasing tendency to segregate into self-reinforcing peer groups and our hardwired confirmation biases, and you've got a recipe for serious social fragmentation.

I'm seriously wondering if as a species, we may revert back to more of a city-state based society, not just socially but physical proximity wise, as well, due to changes in our communication abilities. There's one county in Alabama that voted 83% for Moore. Not surprisingly, the are overwhelmingly Southern Baptists/Methodist, and they are less that 0.5% African American. And it's not just Alabama. Look at the county level voting records in any state over the last few decades and you can see how we are segregating and fragmenting our society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_County,_Alabama

Interesting times.