determine why you're "terminally online" to accomplish the tasks detailed further in the list, you have to do some soul-searching. this starts with acknowle...
- determine why you're "terminally online"
to accomplish the tasks detailed further in the list, you have to do some soul-searching. this starts with acknowledging and accepting that you're terminally online, and determining why this is. understanding yourself will help you come up with a plan of action that best suits your needs. here's some questions to start you off:
- what do you feel like you gain by scrolling through your feed?
- do you follow only your friends, or others as well? do you follow people you admire or celebrities? what do you feel like you gain by following them? is this a reflection of something you want? for example, do you follow an influencer with cool makeup and a nice wardrobe because you dream of a similar makeup/wardrobe for yourself?
- have you ever thought of how to format an in-person situation into a post of some sort, or approached an in-person situation with the intention of taking pictures/videos for a post? have you ever used/applied "internet slang" (cringe, based, cuck, chad) in/to real-life situations? how often do you do this? why do you do this?
- what is your life philosophy? what do you believe in? do the communities you browse online reflect this in some way? did you learn about these from people online?
- do you keep up with arguments/"discourse" on social media? what do you feel like you accomplish when you keep up with them? do these accomplishments affect anyone/anything other than yourself? how/why?
- has something being present on social media (a frequently talked about movie, author, or political viewpoint, for example) ever made you come to the conclusion that it is just as present in "real life"? is this actually true?
- do you feel like you use the internet to better the world in some way? what affects does this way have that are not only on the internet?
- have you ever responded to serious statements - both in person and online - with contradictory irony? why did you do this? was this influenced by behavior you've seen online in any way?
- have you ever accused anyone else of being 'terminally online', or seen these behaviors in someone else? do you share any similarities to them?
don't be ashamed if you can identify with some of the problems posed in these questions. nowadays, and especially since the pandemic, most of us are "terminally online" in some form unless we live alone on a mountain with no reception. your recognizing this already puts you ahead of most other people - a willingness to be honest with yourself shows a strength of character which will make improvement all the more feasible.
it's hard to find someone who's "terminally online" who doesn't have a strong political or social bias of some sort. i'm not here to knock on you for having views, but know that the stronger you feel about something, the more susceptible to misinformation you are. everyone is aware of the existence of "fake news" on the internet, but when we see something that touches our sensibilities and appears to confirm our biases, we're more likely to react to it immediately than to examine it. misinformation online covers a much broader scope than many misinformation awareness campaigns make it seem it encompasses.
fear of missing out only exists if you're aware that there's something you're missing out on. with the internet being a series of splintered subgroups, concepts of "cool" and "cringe" are averages of what many people are exposed to, meaning that everyone has their own subjective interpretation of them. these are all perpetuated through irony-fueled elitism. this does not bar you from doing your own thing as long as you don't allow yourself to be defined by a fear of being "cringe".
trends and memes only serve to signal online "in-groups", and anyone can join these with enough browsing. (streamer jerma985 enjoys "zoomer humor" despite being far out of its expected age bracket.) if you're afraid of "missing out", know that the pressure of not missing out is worse - there will always be something you are amiss about, and chasing these trends will not improve your life other than giving you boosted confidence for as long as that thing you didn't miss out on is trendy. when the consistent recycling of trends accelerates the ecological collapse of the planet, condemns workers to poor conditions like never before, and results in blatant mis/disinformation and rudeness, is your FOMO really worth it? why bother slaving over knowing what thing is trendy right now when it'll stop being trendy two months later? the only thing you're risking is the scorn of some person you don't know.
instead of focusing on not missing out, focus on you. replace the hypothetical audience in your head with an audience of yourself. what do you like? what are you interested in? what are your goals? these questions can't be figured out in a day, but you won't figure them out any faster by trying to adhere to someone else's standards.
- accept yourself as you are
the internet is good at mixing, remixing, and melding interest - mostly politics with hobbies. while all aspects of life can be political in some way, too much focus on "serious stuff" can exhaust you, especially when done in an environment with word limits. modern social media especially is good at instilling the impression that everyone has to know everything and have an opinion on everything constantly, while looking good at that. having a little fun won't turn you into a simpleton, i promise - every esteemed thinker has publicly spoken at some length about their favorite painting or movie.
as someone who is seeking to become less "terminally online", you have to make peace with the fact that you will not know everything, least of all from a quick wikipedia skim and two threads. and that's okay. moreover, the "serious and learned intellectual with a correct take on everything" is just a myth, as are the imagined lives of every social media user who looks like they're having a better life than you. it's better to be honest with yourself where you're at than put up an illusion of something you're not for clout. if you'd really like to know about something, nowhere better to start than by reading a book about it. try to give yourself breaks where you're due and remember that everyone starts somewhere. we're all individuals and we can't be perfect images stuffed into recognizable, representative boxes, no matter how great the pressure or appeal may seem.
irony, post-irony, meta-irony, and whatever-irony are the lingua franca of the terminally online. it can be useful in satire and pointing out contradiction, but when you have post limits, word limits, tl;drs, and accusations of cringiness to contend with, irony can turn into a shrugging off of worthwhile conversation and attempts to learn more. nowadays, "irony" is often used defensively, backing up case-by-case assertions that extreme behaviors aren't serious, angry shouting matches aren't a huge problem, death threats are just a joke, cruel jokes are only the result of a society that doesn't know better, and angry raves are only accusations of befuddled attackers.
chances are, if you're "terminally online", you've used irony defensively in some way. ask yourself - why do you do this? is it that you...
- feel the need to cloak your true thoughts because you're afraid of what others may say about them? is this something you're embarrassed about saying in earnest?
- can't fully elaborate on the topic at hand?
- find the person you're talking to to not be worthy of your full attention? why is this?
- want to fit in with others who you've seen exhibit similar behavior?
- are afraid that an appearance of being "too serious" about something will brand you as 'cringe' or - ironically - 'terminally online'? if you're aware that what you're talking about isn't that serious, why are you talking about it?
there are many more reasons why someone may use irony like this that i haven't listed. examine what irony does for you, how it affects your mental state, and whether it impedes you in any way. work to rectify this by either saying what you really mean or not saying anything at all. open and honest communication will get you what you want in this world, rather than hiding behind secret languages and phrases. don't feel shame for being honest with yourself - even if it goes against what's "based".
now that we've gotten all the introspection out of the way, time to get to the action.
if you find it hard to ditch tiktok, instagram, twitter, or some other similar site, going "cold turkey" will be even harder. try to gradually reduce your usage - go on a specific amount of times per day, for a specific amount of hours/minutes per day, or only for specific purposes. gradually reduce them until you're down to your desired amount. don't give yourself allowances or "cheat days" - this isn't a diet.
- find other ways to contact people
if you use social media primarily to talk to people, email, messaging app, text, or another, less intrusive social sites may be alternatives for keeping in contact with people you'd otherwise miss. message your social media friends and ask if you can contact them on your mode of choice. if you enjoy the feeling of talking to others in general and don't have any particular friends in mind, joining some sort of in-person group (meetup.com is a good start) may help. if you're looking for something more online, see point 9 - joining new sites can introduce you to more people.
- expand your definition of the internet
google isn't the only search engine. twitter isn't the only microblogging site. tiktok and youtube aren't the only video-sharing platforms. the internet has gotten more "centralized" and corporate over the past ten years, but that doesn't mean that the "old net" is dead. chances are, there's three alternatives to every one of your favorite sites. try looking up some link directories to start - this one, this one, this one, and this one are some good places to start. this is a good listing of some more privacy-aware alternatives to popular sites. (not all of them are good/i don't endorse all of them though - brave is horrible, for one.)
- find a site that isn't pushing arguments
online communities with large userbases and widespread reputations can foster pernicious behaviors and attitudes within their userbases. this is only further propelled when the sites harness content aggregation, pushing posts specifically to make you angry, guaranteeing that you will post more and stay on longer. this is what gets people stuck in the online fishbowl of meaningless arguments.
if you still want some form of social media, bearblog is a good start. spacehey, neocities, fediverse sites, and insanejournal are some others. even though they're proprietary, pinterest and tumblr can also be good alternatives. if you're used to imageboards, sushigirl.us is a nice one. forums in general are great. check to see if the sites or a group on the sites has a message group you can join. there's plenty more to choose from, i'll put a link of lists here if i can find one.
if you use social media to find out what's going on in the world, well...there's always sites specifically made to give news. trust me, filter bubbles don't give you as wide a breadth of perspectives as you may think. i promise that the mainstream news sites aren't the only ones, either. do some digging and you'll find one that's geared to your interests.
at that, remember that constantly chasing news in ways similar to how it's presented through social media can take a toll on you.
an rss - really simple syndication - feed is a tool that allows you to stay up to date with your favorite sites and accounts without having to remember the urls of all the sites you wanna visit or scroll endlessly through things you don't wanna see. here's a guide on how to use rss. a free and sturdy rss service/app that i recommend is fraidyc.at. be warned that some sites like twitter and instagram don't support rss, but fraidyc.at will do its best to grab them for you.
if you use social media to be a part of the change you want to see in the world, chances are that you can't do much through the internet that isn't related to donation, which may not be an option for you. "slacktivism" too has been getting a lot of (deserved) flack, and the general mood of those who speak of politics online seems to either be resignation or focus on online-only issues, both of which provide a bleak picture of current events.
instead, try finding ways to help in your local community! do some research, find an organization that's aligned with your interests, join, and help out. you'll be doing a lot more for the world than anyone's posts ever will. the internet can be an important tool in organizing, but popular sites often couple "politics" with "content", meaning that they can become a passtime that someone feels fully satisfied in through browsing alone. browsing alone doesn't accomplish goals - real-life action does.
i don't mean this derisively, i promise. if you use social media to kill time, try putting that time into something else - maybe something you've always wanted to do. always wanted to cook? look up a recipe and start. how about drawing? look up some tutorials (i recommend drawabox and ctrl+paint if you're an absolute beginner) and get a pen. program? there's more than enough free tutorials and trials for you to begin with. have a certain book that's been on your to-read list forever? get it from the library and start reading. we all start somewhere, and wanting to be less "terminally online" is as good a reason as any to begin.
this one's for artists and other people who need to have some sort of presence on social media for career purposes specifically - try not to get suckered into some "artist community" or other on your site. while the prospect of a "community" may be appealing, a community that's based in places where honest, open, and lengthy communication is limited is no real community at all. not to mention that followers add elitism and pressure, and algorithms are unlikely to pick you up unless your art is "palatable" and "marketable". if you're an artist and really want a social media community, you have plenty of other options - try something like inkblot. you can even try making your own portfolio site, use neocities and look up css and html tutorials :)
the general consensus lot of these popular sites these days seems to be acknowledge things like tracking and content aggregation while wanting to not pay it any mind. continued users of these sites put on a face of pseudo self-awareness at their continued use of a site they claim to hate while flinging unintentionally self-deprecating accusations to those concluded to be engaging in overly serious use. at the end of the day, this mindset is one of begrudging acceptance of the circumstances. "this website is so bad, but we're still on it, because this is where everything is, and there's nothing we can really do about it."
but this attitude, as widespread as it may seem, is merely self-imposed. other options exist, but people on there are unaware of them as they are unaware of the fact that the sites they call home are keeping them on to show more ads and make more money. why resign yourself to hopelessness? if you believe that you can change and that people aren't as horrible as social media makes them out to be, your life will improve in strides.
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One thing I've noticed about 'terminal online' is that people vastly underestimate how much it affects them. Myself included.
It seems if I ever call out a loved one, whether my brother or wife or friend, for being on their phone too much, they immediately get defensive and argue they were just doing some one task. Even if this was initiated after them being zoned out for an hour or longer. And I've done the same when reading something super interesting and getting lost in time.
Honestly, it doesn't seem much different than how addicts act in an intervention. We need to realize that this is an addiction, label and treat it appropriately.
My wife finally relented when our kid asked me to do something while I was working because 'mom is too busy with Facebook again.' I think that really hurt her feelings, even if she never admitted as much.
My ex wife is an ex wife because she zoned out into Facebook constantly and stopped doing anything with the family. Then she went bananas and ran away with someone who ironically she split up with because he was always on Facebook. It can go pretty bad.
I’m super happy though as the kids stayed with me :)
I'm struggling with this currently. My partner spends 3+ hours a day scrolling Instagram (I know, I checked it in her Apple phone metrics).
When we watch movies, it's me watching it and her scrolling. When we're in the car listening to music, it's just me listening to music and her scrolling. I'm starting to struggle initiating conversations because she's simply not paying attention. Whenever we're out, half her time is spent through the lense of her phone so she can take photos for her story.
She refuses to admit its a problem, disregards any argument I put forward about how it's disrupting her life, and when I really sit down with her and tell her how it makes me feels, she attacks me about the time I spend at my laptop (which I track meticulously and know its at most an hour outside of work, so she is simply using it as a defense).
I've dated girls with drug addictions before, and it was easier than this because they at least admitted it was a problem. I feel like I can't even initiate the first step with her. It's crushing, because besides this issue, she's pretty much perfect.
I'm sorry to read this, I also have a similar same situation with my father.
He's in his late 70's and a year ago bought himself an iPhone. He now spends ~4 hours a day reading a tabloid newspaper app, which has endless content. His attention span has fallen noticeably and he can't keep up with conversations that happen in the same room while he's "scrolling".
When I visit he's on his phone, and we go out for a walk (in the beautiful countryside around us) he stops and disengages when his app sends him the latest notification about what's happened on "love island", or some other nonsense. When I leave he's on his phone.
I tried to talk to him about it, and about how it's particularly effecting my mother, who I can see is lonely and lost a person she could talk to, important at their time of life. He just gets defensive and angry, which leads no-where.
Will he spend the most of the rest of his life looking at a screen?
Edit: wording of final sentence.
By polishdude20 2022-08-0718:341 reply Similar with my father but he's got a dumb phone and browses on his laptop. When we have conversations with family he seems to always tune out after a few minutes and goes on the computer. His whole world view has been flipped upside down by conspiracy and hoax content. We've talked to him about not mentioning that stuff while we're over but it seems to be affecting his happiness nonetheless.
By 1270018080 2022-08-0719:322 reply Mine too. It seems like every old father has fallen into the right wing conspiracy cesspool that has warped their mind. An entire generation lost. I really wonder what makes them so susceptible to that content. Internet illiteracy? Old age? It's just who they are? In other words, they want the conspiracies to be true, they want a reason to hate Fauci, Greta Thunberg etc.?
And even more, I wonder if it can be cured. I think it ties into how socially isolated men are, especially old men. Once you retire and your work social network is gone, their only social ties are online. They need to identify with a community, and I guess there is something appealing to being in a conspiracy in-group. It's just impossible to pull them out, because you have to replace that group with something else. And there's just nothing there for them.
By polishdude20 2022-08-081:09 Maybe a life of manual labor, always feeling like you can't get ahead in life. Then a group of people tell you it's because of some simple reason that you need to get angry about. Obviously it's something that you can't actually do anything about. So it makes you feel worse and makes you feel like you're at least doing something when you consume the content and spread it to others.
By galfarragem 2022-08-089:031 reply > It seems like every old father has fallen into the right wing conspiracy cesspool that has warped their mind.
Unfortunately this is not an age thing. Youngsters just have the tendency to embrace different manias (e.g. woke movement).
By skinnymuch 2022-08-0811:141 reply Left and right politics aren’t equal. Just because they are on opposite sides.
But the extreme ends do have similar features (hatred of certain ethic/racial groups, black and white thinking, desire to destroy the existing political order instead of reform it, conspiratorial thinking, etc.). The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.
By skinnymuch 2022-08-0816:381 reply Why would the extreme left have hatred of certain ethnic/racial groups? Which ones would that even be? I hope this isn’t some the left hates white people thing. Bigotry of superficial things doesn’t make sense for what the hard left is about.
Conspiratorial thinking for the hard left is nothing close to what it is like for the alt-right. They are basically not similar at all. The alt-right is about Q, saying Trump lost a rigged election, or thinking moderates are grooming children and molesting kids. What is the equivalence with the hard left?
The black and white thinking is also super simplistic. How do moderates not have black and white thinking in comparison to the extremes? IE a moderate would say don’t vote or spend time on any one but the two main party candidates in the US. In other countries, they’d say focus on who has a proper chance of being elected. Black and white thinking and self fulfilling.
> The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.
Or maybe I know they aren’t equal because they aren’t. Perhaps it says more about you and only you, that you jump to such an assumption and conclusion without knowing me.
By Viliam1234 2022-08-0823:161 reply > Why would the extreme left have hatred of certain ethnic/racial groups? Which ones would that even be? I hope this isn’t some the left hates white people thing.
I think Asians are considered privileged (so almost as bad as whites), and there was something wrong with Israel, too.
> saying Trump lost a rigged election
Some people on the left said similar things when Trump won the 2016 election.
By skinnymuch 2022-08-100:02 Something wrong with Israel isn’t racism or bigotry.
Why would the left be the ones that put Asians on a pedestal? Fox, and alt right places put Asians in America on a pedestal enough already. It’s a regular thing when shitting on black people or brown migrants need to be kicked down by the [hard] right. I’d be curious of even minimal widespread hard left caring of Asians in a specific way.
Also, “almost as bad as whites”? Are you saying the hard left finds white people to be [really] bad? That’s something I specifically called out as an incorrect thing. It is a random talking point that to stir things up. I wish people wouldn’t take bullshit peddled seriously. Knowledge of hard left principles and people would show this is wrong.
Finally, some people everywhere of any kind are always saying something. A small portion of hard left people saying X is rigged is not comparable to the significant chunk of the moderate and extreme right doing the same.
———
I hope I have been able to keep the record straight that the extreme left isn’t the same as the extreme right and most assumptions or accusations of what the hard left is, have not and are not correct.
Ah sounds like my father. He’s currently going through Musk is Jesus’ second coming and covid is a hoax phase.
By WalterSear 2022-08-0718:23 My father thinks Putin is just waiting for the right time to strike and set everything right in the world.
We don't talk much, not because we fight but because he's always too busy with his phone when I visit him :(
By 2b3a51 2022-08-0718:03 Well, I'm 10 years younger than dewclin Senior and I recently switched to a Nokia dumb phone for the summer and I have been keeping a record of screen time and what I was actually doing on the laptop. Using a paper page a day diary.
I'm not in the tabloid market segment, and perhaps I had the insight to self-diagnose? Did dewclin Senior do much before the iPhone arrived?
Perspective: I remember that Uncle Dave spent most of his (long) retirement watching sport on the telly back in the 1970s/80s. Any chance of sparking an outside interest?
By softfalcon 2022-08-0717:18 I have a similar issue with my wife. The reason you can’t initiate the first step is because they are in denial that it’s a problematic addiction. Everything is telling them that social media is “sort of okay” even though the studies abound proving it’s a nefarious addiction.
It’s easier with hard drugs cause society, government, and even business mostly agrees it’s likely bad for you (except alcohol, that one still gets a free pass).
For me, I still try to remind her to be in the moment. She’ll ask to watch a show or movie and within 5 minutes her brain has pulled up her phone to read Reddit. I pause the show and then I’ll ask, “do you want to stop watching?”
She’ll reluctantly put her phone away (sometimes I have to wait a whole minute for her to actually put it down) and then I’ll resume the show on the TV.
The addiction is very very real and their diminishing attention span shows in their behaviour in other ways as well.
By iasay 2022-08-0711:58 Honestly looking back at my situation which paralleled yours, life’s not worth suffering through. Took 7 years to sort it out here which was a big chunk of my life. If you’re not happy, get out of the situation that makes you unhappy as soon as you can. The regrets hurt more than the relationship problems did.
By SoftTalker 2022-08-0715:41 If you don't have kids with her, move on. She's made clear what her priorities are, or she needs the wakeup call that a failed relationship will bring.
By slothtrop 2022-08-0714:06 Unfortunately you can't change a person. You can offer them an ultimatum, then whichever way it goes, so much the better.
Sounds horrible. How did you even start dating a person like that? She must be really something special but I just can't wrap my head around it because in my experience only exceptionally dull and dumb people are like that.
That said, I am a happily married old fart so it's only natural to not get some aspects of modern life.
By prawn 2022-08-0714:04 This can be especially difficult for people who work online and particularly in social media where responding quickly to comments can be part of the role/expectation/defensive response.
By slim 2022-08-0716:03 maybe she's not perfect. maybe you just don't know her well enough because she's not there most of the time and you don't have projects you both really care about
By Feritioyyyyy 2022-08-0711:431 reply Have you ever thought of making Instagram 'sliw' sometimes?
Might be unethical or it might help her to get away from it?
Perhaps talk to a therapist about how to approach it?
By BbzzbB 2022-08-0717:13 sliw?
By workingon 2022-08-0713:23
Having done a fair share of substance abuse, I can tell you that screen and social media addiction is exactly like any other addiction. The brain mechanics behind it are the same. "Just another hit and then I am done".
The Power of Habit (the book) helped me identify my bad habits the moment they triggered.
Also, what's fascinating is that addictions seem to bundle together. If I get off the sauce, start working out, etc, it becomes immediately easier to ignore the phone, social media, and other reflexive behavior, like snacking for no reason.
By wpietri 2022-08-0718:20 I totally feel you on the bundling.
One way I think about it: Marvin Minsky long ago wrote a book called Society of Mind, looking at human cognition as a series of semi-independent non-conscious agents. If I feel bad long enough, there's a collection of feel-better-in-the-short-term agents that work well together: mindless snacking, doomscrolling, playing video games, binge watching, overeating etc. Basically anything that helps me avoid being present in feeling bad. Even if in the long term they make me feel worse.
But there's a competing set of agents, the ones that mean regular exercise and eating healthily and good sleep and low stress levels. That set not only works well when I'm feeling good, but they're what helps keep me feeling good in the long term.
Either set can achieve a stable equilibrium, but the two sets aren't really compatible.
Not sure if that makes any sense, but that's one way I think about it.
By applobabab 2022-08-078:542 reply >mom is too busy with Facebook again
That sent shivers down my spine, wow.
By soulofmischief 2022-08-0714:36 My mom's been lost to Facebook and gambling apps for years. At some point in the last couple years I told her I didn't love her anymore because being around her is only negative and her screen addiction has put my life in danger on the road my entire life, and caused her to completely skip out on providing for her children.
Zuck, Zynga, all of them can be launched into deep space for all I care.
By bishopsmother 2022-08-0717:221 reply Unfortunately it's not unusual: "I wish mum's phone was never invented"[0]
It’s so sad, I wonder if we’ll ever learn the full impact on kids from their parents’ phone addictions. I recently took my daughter to a playground and watched in horror another young couple there. Their 5 year old was nearly crying for them to pay attention and play with her, but there were mom and dad: hunched over their phones, doing that zoned-out zombie stumble-walk that people do when they are addict-scrolling. Really heartbreaking.
By soulofmischief 2022-08-081:42 A lot of educators have voiced concerns that kids in the last few years have displayed extreme regression in social skills. I don't think these two things aren't related.
A lot of good questions to ask yourself here. But,
> have you ever used/applied "internet slang" (cringe, based, cuck, chad) in/to real-life situations?
I take slight issue with this one. To me, there is no difference between “internet slang” and just “slang”. The internet is ubiquitous and the language we use online and offline is largely the same now.
Didn’t always be this way. I still remember the first time I heard a friend say “epic fail” in really life circa 2005 or so, and it was like some sort of glass wall had been broken between our real lives and our internet lives. But that wall is long gone, and I think that’s probably okay.
There are actually a huge chunk of the population that just isn't very online, and genuinely don't know these terms. (Even many young people.) It was a real eye opener to meet some 'terminally offline' people and realize you can actually just escape and things are fine without being here constantly.
By jimkleiber 2022-08-0713:573 reply Makes me think it might be similar to the "I don't watch TV" or "movies" or "sports" crowds. Just any pervasive cultural activity in which some don't participate but still carry on.
I remember before I deleted my FB account (I've since created a new one), my buddy said to me that I'd be ok, just that I might be strongly disconnected from culture—not necessarily to tell me to not do it, but to be aware of the potential ramifications.
Agreed partially.
You have to question what "culture" are you missing on.
I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department.
By jimkleiber 2022-08-0817:33 Maybe not mass culture, per say, as that may have happened elsewhere. Maybe it was the conversation with friends, events, new lingo, reactions, updates, etc.—more focused on maybe a more local, group culture than a higher level US or global culture.
By agileAlligator 2022-08-0717:302 reply > I'm still on Facebook and let me tell you, you're not missing much in the culture department.
guy above you might have deleted his fb account in the early 2000s. right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan.
> right now, the culture isn't at fb, it's at places like reddit and 4chan
The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines.
/pol/ is 4chan, 4chan is /pol/
By agileAlligator 2022-08-0812:391 reply > The fact that people in 2022 describe 4chan as having any kind of effect on our culture should send shivers down our collective spines.
4chan has always been the undercurrent of digital culture. It's just way closer to the surface now. And contrary to popular belief, the entirety of 4chan isn't some den of degenerates and racists. People end up focusing on /b/ and /pol/, when the entire reason they were created was to quarantine that sort of discussion from infecting the rest of the boards. /fit/, /sci/, /mu/ etc are about as toxic as any subreddit.
By rnd0 2022-08-0819:37 1)That's still pretty toxic.
2)/pol/ overruns and sets the tone for the rest of the boards on 4chan IME. That's why I personally stopped reading there.
By jimkleiber 2022-08-0817:31 Early to mid 2010s, I think, and yes, I think it was more of a cultural current in some ways then.
By SoftTalker 2022-08-0715:382 reply I have no Facebook, Instagram, Snap, or any similar accounts. In casual converstation, I sometimes notice meme references or slang that I don't know, but that's about it. Not a big problem or loss IMO.
By mattgreenrocks 2022-08-0716:30 The importance of Internet memes is overblown by the always-online crowd. They are cultural phenomena, but not knowing them doesn’t confer disadvantages.
By lotsofpulp 2022-08-0717:212 reply > In casual converstation, I sometimes notice meme references or slang that I don't know, but that's about it. Not a big problem or loss IMO.
It would be a loss if your cohort planned/converse using those methods of communication, and you valued doing things with that cohort.
By jimkleiber 2022-08-0817:36 I think this was the bigger issue for me: missing out on what my friends were doing. It was a pain (and still is) to make accommodations for the one or two people who aren't on a platform, just as it would annoy me to remember to include the one person on Zoom when I'd be in an in-person meeting with 15 people. Switching modalities can add just enough friction to mean the one not on the platform misses out.
Perhaps some wanted that, maybe even I did—conflicted in wanting freedom from it and also fearing the loss of it.
By SoftTalker 2022-08-0719:521 reply It's not nearly that severe. In cases where I don't understand some reference, it's often clear by context. If not, I say "what does that mean?"
By lotsofpulp 2022-08-0719:57 I should have written “exclusively planned/conversed”. As in you simply will not know about outings or get togethers, and so you simply will not see them.
I can be online constantly and escape whatever the flavour of the month is. The only time it bites me in the ass is when I get banned for not being up to date on whatever everyone good and decent has to agree with to be good and decent.
If you are getting banned regularly from online communities you might want to reconsider why that is happening
Yeah, online communities reflexively "other" anyone who does not agree with their increasingly robust (aka fascist) political dogma, given that that sort of thing seems to be inescapably creeping into everything
How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought?
How many times have I witnessed adherents dismissing moderates or centrists? Accusing them of helping the "enemy"? What about people who think for themselves and have concluded something out of the mainstream? Throwing in some other unrelated political cause and accusing anyone who doesn't agree to be wrong?
It's disgusting, and those communities should be ashamed of themselves
I'm assuming, of course, that GP is a decent person and independent thinker, as those types tend to get railroaded in this glorious new dawn of political groupthink
> glorious new dawn of political groupthink
[citation needed]
I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to get away from oppression. And when those people got to the US, quite a lot of them were eager to become the oppressors. Looks at the predominance of blue laws across the US. Look at who got tarred and feathered. Who got lynched. Who dealt with segregation and Jim Crow. Look at the Red Scare, the socially narrow dominance of mass media, or how eager and how violent the forces of conformity were in the 1950s.
I think today people are generally freer that at any point. But two big things have changed. One, the rise of the internet means the one-way, conformist channels of mass media have given way to everybody talking to everybody. And two, cultural power is no longer concentrated in a narrow slice of society, such that people previously unheard are now having some things to say.
I get why some people see that as "political groupthink". When you're in a dominant group, you're not used to getting challenged. But personally, I find it bracing, causing me to rethink a lot of things I took as givens because that's what the people around me believed. The death of old paradigms is always uncomfortable, but personally I'd much rather live in this era of ferment than in one where everybody believes the same comfortable old certainties.
I think you are meaningfully contributing to the conversation, but you don’t get to drop a “[citation needed]” and then proceed to state your un-cited opinions.
I do in fact get to do that.
The parts that were my opinions ("I think", "I see", etc) were clearly cited to me. But a fair bit of what I wrote was pointers to things people can look up. If there's something apparently factual that you're having trouble looking up, let me know and I'm glad to give you a pointer. Because I'm happy to give citations when people ask for them.
The reason I put a "citation needed" in was that was phrased as an objective claim, not a personal opinion. An objective claim I believe to be false. (And which I'll note that the author didn't give any further data on despite me asking.)
Growing up I do not remember political associations to be so strong in folks. Twenty years ago, when 9/11 hit, we put aside our differences in a remarkable display of national unity. (Granted, not all good came out of this; a number of racial groups saw a ton of negative attention at the time. But even with that, the climate felt like one of unity, at least for me.) Comedians like Trey Parker/Matt Stone, Dave Chapelle, even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would regularly poke the bear on a wide range of social issues without constantly sparking nationwide outrages.
Now, we have... this: an endless cacophony of unqualified and undeserving voices spouting off whatever they want, for every purpose other than advancing productive debate. Where all get to be heard regardless of merit, yet original ideas suppressed because of pedantry (like "citation needed") and not having the backing of the melange of different social issues and media idols that we suffer under today. I don't think the political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism, and for this I blame Twitter and social media.
I don't understand how you think such flowery, subjective language constitutes an objective statement of reality; all of my input into this matter is pretty clearly stated as opinion and observations outlined serve to reinforce it.
Besides, sitting there banging out "Citation Needed" like this was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual as a comment board. You can save the nitpicking for r/AskHistorians, where the rules clearly require it.
> Growing up I do not remember political associations to be so strong in folks.
Depends on when you grew up, but assuming the 1985 is your birth year, then political polarization has been asymmetrically increasing since well before you were born. Take a look at the DW-NOMINATE data for the US House: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/
This asymmetric polarization mirrors doctrinal polarization among white US evangelicals, who have, for example, gone from having a plurality of views on abortion to treating it as an absolute doctrinal litmus test: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-bib...
I can believe that for you personally 9/11 felt unifying, but that wasn't the case for a lot of people. Not just including the Sikhs and Muslims lynched, of course, or all the people who saw that and got nervous. But also the notable percentage of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, which Bush began beating the drums for just months after 9/11.
I also believe that you perceived American culture as more unified then. But based on what? Twitter didn't launch until 2006, and didn't really take off until 2010. If a bunch of people were upset about something, how would you have known? Especially if they were in some group that didn't get a lot of mass media attention, you wouldn't have. It's not that edgy comedians were any less awful then. It's that the people they were being shitty about generally didn't get the chance to express their feelings on it. I think the problem you're seeing is not differing views, but people with those different views finally getting their say.
> political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism
Oh? Why don't you break that down for me with some examples. Go through the major harms of the Red Scare era and then some examples of people similarly harmed today. I think that's wrong, but I'm happy to learn something.
> was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual
I don't think you quite understand what counterfactual means, but I think take your point. Your notion seems to be that this is a fact-free zone, and that it's shockingly rude to ask if their claims have any basis in fact. I obviously think that's ridiculous. If you want to go entirely unchallenged, maybe get a talk radio show or something. But as long as I've been here, asking for evidence has been a popular activity.
By tomc1985 2022-08-0723:33 No, I am not saying this is a fact-free zone. What I am saying is that it is a zone for opinions, which may or may not be true (counterfactual may not be the best word choice here, but it is close enough), and is not to be held to the same standard as wikipedia, whose copy you are using in what I read as a flippant remark.
I don't have data for you, just my perceptions and opinions. There are too many structural problems with the way political data is collected in this country (starting with the wording on questions in political surveys, and ending far beyond redistricting shenanigans). Given how deceptive and manipulative most election campaigns are, and how third parties are disproportionately disadvantaged financially, I don't think that looking at the proportion of left/right seats in congress is a good proxy for political polarization.
What I do see as a proxy is the behavior of those around me, and then trying to extrapolate that to reflect a larger population. I live in one of many pockets of conservativism in a very liberal state, and I am judging on the tone and tenor of political conversations and how freely friendly, amicable political debate flows among social groups in a fairly politically diverse area. Again, this is highly subjective for many different reasons, and I can say that I used to travel around a lot and have rubbed shoulders with many different social groups and castes in this society, and so I feel that I am at least somewhat qualified to extrapolate here.
And that observation is that political discussion is getting narrower, more pointed, and more focused on nationally-popular memes/issues. 12 years ago I sat in a meeting of one of the local tea-party chapters, and it was mostly older folks rabblerousing over local stuff. There wasn't much in the way of conspiracy theories, there wasn't a whole bunch of liberal shit-talking, just a bunch of people bitching about this-or-that with the local schooldistrict. When they happened to pick on my own high school, I knew that much of what they were saying was factually false, and I was able to state to the crowd why, and that was that. (There was some grumbling but the conversation turned elsewhere.) There were both left- and right-leaning folks in my friend group, and there was a quiet understanding to not get into political debates, and people weren't on-edge about it so if something was said, it didn't blow up.
We didn't have too many local crazies flying massive American flags on their trucks, with their cheap shots at trolling regular folks -- but now we do; there are places I can go where I can see them on a regular and predictable basis.
Nowadays I stay out of political shit, people are way too toxic, obsessive, and focusing on the same dozen or so things that everyone else is talking about. What would this tea party meeting have looked like today?
I have a different social group now; one that I like far more but we are very left-leaning, and increasingly (and troublingly) so. There is a much higher proportion of "polsplaining" (like mansplaining, but politicos talking down to people that offend them), many more suggestions that people self-evaluate (and insinuations that they are bad for towing a particular line), and hot political buzzwords are on people's tongues (and used as scapegoats) far more often than I can recall. I find myself hesitating to argue some points as I don't really want to die on any of these hills.
When the Roe v Wade decision dropped I broke my rule and attended a local rally, as I was pissed (much like everyone else). But at that rally someone got up on the podium and actively denounced people that not only just opposed abortion or womens health issues, but also anyone that opposed Black Lives Matter, anyone that opposed reparations, anyone that opposed ACAB; they kept calling for a unified front to address all of these issues as one.
I don't recall overhearing anyone complaining about feeling unable to speak up, but in the last year or two it has occurred multiple times at my usual haunts.
But once again this is all subjective experience of one person, albeit someone who tries to be at least somewhat perceptive and thoughtful about it. I have an axe to grind, so I am very quick to denounce certain cohorts -- hence my original comment here -- but again this is all subjective and nowhere have I explicitly asserted anything as fact. If you take the omission of certain wording as an attempt at factuality, you should consider that certain kinds of language training encourage writing in a way that minimizes some phrasing as a matter of style, and that it is very common in many places where people write professionally.
By tomc1985 2022-08-0718:20 The past as you see it here doesn't exist, by my own perception. There were a lot more extremeist groups in the shadows, but that contained them and isolated those that sought to join them. With so much of this extremeism out in the open, people are now seeing social reinforcement where before they would have seen chastisement, and I think this is a bad thing. We were much better as a country as the great melting pot, than we are now as the salad bowl.
I think its wonderful that so many oppressed groups are given opportunities at the podium, but the problem is that many of these oppressed groups are oppressed for good reason (like white supremacists), and there needs to be some sort of filter that keeps them sidelined. Unfortunately I don't see how to achieve that without some sort of orthodoxy, and right now the people that are trying to write that are fucking crazy.
During the piratebay trial, one of the founders got a question about if he had met someone IRL. He replied with that they don't use that expression but AFK (away from keyboard) instead. Becuase IRL (in real life) suggests that internet is not real life, but it is.
What we do online effects our every day life even when we are offline.
I thought that was very sane thinking
By coldtea 2022-08-0721:04 Perhaps that was the case for him, because he was already in the situation discussed by the author.
By whatshisface 2022-08-0717:361 reply When you are running the Pirate Bay the internet is real life, and it also is when you have a business, but when you are on an MMORPG or Twitter it is real life to a much lesser degree. How can we distinguish between them? Well, the majority of relationships made on MMORPGs or Twitter go nowhere outside the platform, and the things that people discuss on them also tend to not involve anything that will still be there when the person logs off. That creates a pocket universe (with a few exceptions, I think some people have met their spouses on MMORPGs) unrelated to the real one. Operating Pirate Bay, or even talking about Linux kernel drivers on IRC, doesn't meet that criteria of being separate from real life.
plenty of "real life" places also fail this test though. most work/school relationships don't "go anywhere" outside of that bubble. what fraction of people you hung out with in school or ate lunch with at previous jobs do you still actually talk to? how much of the code you wrote still runs in production?
By whatshisface 2022-08-0719:20 Hopefully the money you make at work bleeds out into real life. :-) Also, I think a lot of people stay in touch with their college friends.
Besides that, the recognition that your school or office is a bubble universe in certain ways sounds like an important one. You sound like you're attempting to refute the idea but I think you're making a good point. Someone who implicitly thought their highschool was the whole universe would be in bad shape when they graduated.
By bootlooped 2022-08-0714:134 reply I think I remember reading a Reddit post once about a girl whose boyfriend would say things in real life like "can we get some f's in the chat boys". Things that were clearly very niche and would either be completely unintelligible to the audience or at best sound out of place. I think it's a matter of reading the room.
Every day that goes by, the out group of internet slang and memes grows smaller. I don't really know if I'd consider this a good thing or a bad thing so much as just, a thing. But there's a lot of joking amongst younger internet folk about how they'll probably be talking internet slang in retirement homes in a few decades. It's a funny visual, perhaps because of the weird perception that we always think we will be like today's older people as we grow older for some reason.
Those Reddit threads make for good entertainment today, however fake they probably usually are. But for better or worse, some day, I suspect it's going to flip around.
By jjoonathan 2022-08-0715:361 reply 20 years ago, my mother heard me use the word "hack" in a casual context and panicked, assuming on the basis of the word alone that I meant criminal activity.
2 years ago, I was walking through Target and an advertisement came across the store loudspeakers touting "Mom hacks." Nerd culture has spread.
By samatman 2022-08-0719:01 This shows that nerd language has spread.
I would posit that the Instagram "mom hack" "lifehack" crowd don't associate the word with computer programming or pwning boxen.
By Tijdreiziger 2022-08-0714:173 reply “F’s in the chat” doesn’t strike me as a particularly obscure meme.
By bootlooped 2022-08-0715:151 reply If you went to some public place with a fairly representative sample of the population, like a supermarket or something, and asked 100 people about that phrase, how many do you think would know provenance of it?
By SoftTalker 2022-08-0715:331 reply Never heard it before. After a couple of seconds of pondering, I assumed it meant "females" but I can see from other replies that is wrong.
By suby 2022-08-0717:11 It's from a Call of Duty video game. The game had a scene where you were at a characters funeral, and a prompt came up saying "Press F to Pay Respects". This was widely criticized and mocked by players, and it spread from there to be used to either legitimately convey respect or to sarcastically mock something.
By zach_garwood 2022-08-0715:182 reply Never heard it. What does it mean? Is it like a Slack shortcut?
In one of the call of duty games, you attend a funeral and when you reach the casket, an onscreen prompt asks you to press F to pay your respects. This took on a life of its own, and now on Reddit threads you’ll see people saying press f to pay respects when someone was figuratively killed.
By zach_garwood 2022-08-0715:356 reply Wow, okay, and they claimed it's not an obscure reference, but you have to have played a certain level in a certain game AND been on a certain forum to know what it means? Maybe obscure doesn't mean what I think it means.
It's a popular meme so you don't have to have played the game or even really be much of a gamer. You'd have come across it at some point hanging out on social media.
You may be surprised both by
1. how many people don’t “hang out” in social media culture, and only circulate on there with family and peers using everyday idioms and emoji/abbreviation; if they use social media at all,
2. how many different, disjoint online cultures there are. Many things widely circulated on reddit and adjacent communities may never surface on some FB mom’s group
People maintain much more different lives from each other than you seem to assume, even among those that who are “terminally online” or that “hang out on social media”
By agileAlligator 2022-08-0717:33 It's pretty safe to assume that almost all of genz and gen alpha has come across the "F" meme at least once. Can't say about older folk.
By dotnet00 2022-08-0717:37 I was just pointing out that knowledge of the meme wasn't as obscure as having actually played the game, which would be a much more limited audience than even just reddit users.
By nemothekid 2022-08-0718:231 reply >Wow, okay, and they claimed it's not an obscure reference, but you have to have played a certain level in a certain game AND been on a certain forum to know what it means?
You just had to have played that game, and the game isn't obscure. Call of Duty is one of the largest franchises on earth and I would consider it akin to something like a Marvel movie in popularity. If someone referenced a meme from a marvel movie, I wouldn't describe it as obscure.
By zach_garwood 2022-08-0718:38 I've played a Call of Duty game and watched several Marvel movies, and no one is claiming either is obscure. What I am saying is that just because you hang out in forums where this is a common phrase does not mean it has exposure to the wider world. It is unknown to 99% of the world, by definition obscure.
By plorkyeran 2022-08-0716:33 As with most idioms, most of the people who reference it have no clue what the origin of the expression is. Knowing the etymology of something is not a requirement for understanding what it means.
By callalex 2022-08-0719:35 I would argue that there is a 100:1 ratio of people who know know what the reference means vs. having actually played the game. Maybe even closer to 1,000:1. Kinda like how lots of people know the “World Series” is a baseball tournament, but most people have never watched it.
"Break the ice" was coined by Shakespeare, but the vast majority of people who use the phrase probably didn't read that play.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who have used the "press F" meme without knowing the original context too.
By spoils19 2022-08-0723:54 My regular friend group who uses that phrase have all read the play, some even who have performed it. I'm sure I'm not alone, but then again, I have the intuition to find people with similar life experiences and religion.
By kzrdude 2022-08-0716:38 I've never played that game, but the F in the chat thing is popular on twitch. No wonder, since it's a huge (nonsensical) chat platform.
By mttjj 2022-08-0715:26
By collegeburner 2022-08-0718:06 i'd still consider it cringe bc it's an outdated meme that suggests somebody is probably a reddit user.
By agileAlligator 2022-08-0717:311 reply Where I am, the F meme has pretty much become part of regular conversation, just like "lol". Granted, I exist in urbanized techie gen z spaces so ymmv.
By GrabbinD33ze69 2022-08-0719:37
By cratermoon 2022-08-0714:28 idk my bff jill? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIUcRJX9-o
That’s true for many words, but also sometimes you meet someone who talks like Reddit comments or in memes and it comes across really strange to me. It doesn’t sound like how people generally talk to each other in real life otherwise, at least in my experience.
By Shared404 2022-08-0715:23 I believe that thwe strangeness there comes in the syntax and conversation flow - or lack thereof. I've met people who speak with the cadence of a comment section in real life, if that makes sense.
In short - I think it's not what's said, as much as how it's said.
By wruza 2022-08-0712:05 Not only gone, I’ve heard internet and/or local imageboard slang from people who surely never visited the source of it. It feels strange to conceal your own subculture from those who speak it freely.
By extheat 2022-08-0718:45 I disagree, the difference is still there. It’s gotten a bit smaller, but it’s still there. Some people who are perpetually online on forums will say things like “that’s based” in real life, but out of a diverse group of 100 people how many do you think would understand and say things like that? I’d wager a lot of people may have heard before but probably don’t understand what it means. There’s also lots of localized real life slang that people on forums won’t get. You still might hear it on Instagram or places like that, but there is no ubiquity there. I don’t think it’s changed significantly beyond exposure with more people being on TikTok/Instagram/YouTube and similar networks.
By gandutraveler 2022-08-0713:282 reply I know someone who laughs by saying LOL instead of actually laughing. So there is a difference between slang and internet slang.
By shreyshnaccount 2022-08-0714:11 yeah my 13 year old brother occasionally does that too
I heard someone loudly exclaim L O L at tech conference one time in real life and it just made me want to kick their ass. I had a low opinion of that person immediately.
By jacobmischka 2022-08-0715:151 reply Seems like they're not the most immature one in this situation.
What do you expect from a user who claims to be "fighting for my life in the comments almost daily" on HN? el-oh-el.
HN is the last bastion of free speech and intelligent conversation. Sorry to hear if you dislike people who want to defend that right adamantly, but myself and most other HNers who embrace the free speech, conservative model would politely, but firmly, show you the door.
By gaws 2022-08-0818:41 > myself and most other HNers who embrace the free speech, conservative model would politely, but firmly, show you the door.
No one is entitled to 100% free speech protection on a moderated platform one joins by choice. If you're concerned about saying what you want without the risk of being banned, consider hosting your own forum where you have all the control. Only then you will be free.
By coldtea 2022-08-0721:02 >I take slight issue with this one. To me, there is no difference between “internet slang” and just “slang”. The internet is ubiquitous and the language we use online and offline is largely the same now.
Some yes, otherwise you'd be surprised... In many circles and communities it's not the same at all - and even developments the 'social media'-inmates take for well known, are not a thing discussed at all...
It's like the "silent majority" of working programmers, who don't give a duck about HN, Rust, the latest trends in web and backend, and so on...
By BbzzbB 2022-08-0716:52 I live in a French speaking place and I wager vast majority knows these terms (am millennial) and a lot even use them here and there, in their English forms. Tho of course not all and there are "deeper" slangs that are more for people online enough to share some web culture.
IMO, Internet slang is accurate as it transcends geography while there is some locality to slangs and vernacular.
By night-rider 2022-08-0715:53 I regularly say 'n00b' in real-life, and 'pwned', pronouncing the 'p'
By innocentfelon4 2022-08-078:204 reply Recently I was arrested and had all my electronics seized by the police.
The whole experience was a wake-up call, not just in terms of being arrested but being without a computer or any way to get online for a couple of weeks.
It really made me realize how 'addicted' I was to the internet, and going cold turkey was horrible, time slowed down and I was sure I was missing out on everything.
But I read so much more and all the days seemed longer (time dragged so much) and then when I finally got back online I hadn't missed sh*t.
By eastbound 2022-08-0712:13 Did they give it back to you? How do you get information about a lawyer without computer or mobile phone???
By scaramanga 2022-08-0711:16 That actually sounds like heaven :)
> But I read so much more
You're reading all the time on the internet, it's literally the foundational enabling skill of it.
I find it very weird when people say the benefit of being offline is they "read more".
Online reading is all sizzle and no steak. It’s akin to making a meal out of condiments: Each individual element is tasty but the overall meal leaves you dissatisfied.
By mark_l_watson 2022-08-0714:27 In general I agree with you. As interesting as stuff on Twitter (I follow some very interesting people) and HN is, I use https://freedom.to to time-box my access. I don’t time-box my access at all for reading books.
That said, I have some low quality conversations with friends in real life also. However that is a different dynamic because conversation does not have to perfect and periods of silence while, for example, hiking with friends is also good.
I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but our civilization is changing: more automation, less work required from a large fraction of the population. We need to get “being a human” in this new world right. Going on a Cal Newport style digital diet is just a part of a strategy for life.
By sneak 2022-08-0718:07 Don’t tell Project Gutenberg, or Wikimedia, or Codecademy.
(Your assessment is an unfair and inaccurate overgeneralization. One can use the internet to read books, blogs, articles, courses, etc, but of course you know this.)
By tenebrisalietum 2022-08-0713:33 I really think much Internet content is more like cheap magazines/newspapers - small articles that can be read in under 5 minutes, ads and distractions peppered everywhere, and comment sections that are often large collections of short text. Social media is that experience on a higher scale.
The experience is not the same as sitting down and reading a 300 page book cover to cover which is also the product of an author sitting down and spending months or even years writing it. Of course that experience is definitely possible on the Internet - ebooks/PDF. But someone "reading" social media is not the same as really reading.
By tomxor 2022-08-0715:49 The "more" is implying something of substance.
Reading online doesn't feel like reading. Most offline material is long form and has a clear purpose, otherwise it wouldn't continue existing. When you read it you are more likely to come away fulfilled, with new thoughts and ideas to process. You can't usually say the same coming away from most social network type interactions on the internet - You might have satiated your FOMO temporarily, but otherwise will likely feel empty. Obviously it's not all like that, there exists long form content on the web, but that's not really what we are talking about.
