7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable

[numbuheightbitstar]

www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/misery.html

WARNING: Some vulgar language.

Yep, Michael Crichton was right: The internet is a serious detriment to the human race.

[Nella (Numbuh 310)]

Then get off it if it bothers you that much...?

[numbuheightbitstar]

Easily done. As it is, I spend less than three hours a day online.

[Nella (Numbuh 310)]

Well, good for you.

[lilsw]

I can kinda see what the article means in the ways of being able to do so much on the internet and how it makes it easier that you don't have to talk to anyone in person or on the phone.




Quote from article: "Among the people who did have somebody, the average number of people in their circle of trust was two. And that includes spouses and parents. Yes, this is new. The numbers are down a whole bunch since just 1985. The world is becoming a colder and lonelier place"


There's a bunch of good people in the world. But there are also a bunch of others who are self centered and don't care who they hurt. I've lost trust in some people who were like that.

[diala]

After skimming the article, the general gist I get is "Waaah, things were better in the past." I don't like it when people say it IRL, and I don't like it when people write a whole article about a period of time they feel is better than this one.

What I find the most odd is how they think they are no major annoyances on the internet. Pssh, that's a lie if I ever did see one. The internet is FULL of annoyances, perhaps just as much as RL.

And this just may be me talking, but if it weren't for the internet, I would have less friends than I do now.

[digigirl02]

I read the article, and they made some good points especially about losing touch with reality.(which in my case I find to be true.)

[lilsw]

It's hard for me to lose touch with reality. Man, do I enjoy it when I can .




Quote: "After skimming the article, the general gist I get is "Waaah, things were better in the past." I don't like it when people say it IRL, and I don't like it when people write a whole article about a period of time they feel is better than this one."



The article is pretty much explaining that people are losing contact with the outside world sometimes because of the convenience of what the internet, tech nology in general, has to offer. That part is pretty much a reality. I like the internet (Otherwise I wouldn't be on here ;D) to go on forums to write and t alk, play some games when I have time after a long day, so I'm not saying the internet is bad, but part of the article is true.

[musicgoround]

I think a lot of what this article has to say is true. Sure, the internet is a tool to help people avoid real life. However, if you don't want to use the 'net, it's really, really easy to avoid this thing altogether. Personally, I made all my friends in real life, except maybe one or two acquaintances on this forum. In fact, it's harder to make friends online than it is in real life, since you actually have to go out of your way to do so. Real life forces you to interact with people, at school, at work, on the street. Through many of these forced social situations, it's hard NOT to make friends.

As for the whole text message and email thing, it's easy to avoid that altogether and just pick up a phone. Sure, I like AIM a lot, but there's no substitute to a good phone call. Or, since a lot of my friends are Mac users, video chat is gaining popularity. Now there's some usage of the internet's bandwidth this article would have been proud of.

I shop online sometimes. But most of the time, unless I get a good deal on it on eBay or Amazon or something, I just drive to the store and pick it up. Nobody's forcing anybody to shop online. In fact, I know some people who avoid shopping online just because of the reasons stated in this article, that there's no "smiling face" to ring up your order or whatever.

I waste a decent amount of time online browsing Wikipedia and Youtube, or checking my LiveJournal friends' page, but I've avoided a lot of the asocial aspects of the internet this article describes. And I don't think my life's any better or worse than someone who's made a lot of their friends online, uses AIM and email exclusively, goes on forums a lot, and buys everything online.

[numbuheightbitstar]

diala said:

After skimming the article,

Skimming is always a bad thing and (no offense) it annoys me when people do it--invariably they come to some conclusion that isn't even based on the thing they're making a conclusion about.

Your interpretation of that article is an example: I fail to see how it could be interpreted as a rant about how the "good old days" were better. In fact the only time he even mentions the "old days," he actually admits they were worse. The article isn't about whether the "old days" were better, but rather about how people have increasingly more negative feelings due to the internet.

Skimming is never, ever a good idea. Thanks to skimming, I could write an article about how candy should only be eaten after a healthy meal, and a skimmer could read it and come off thinking I want to ban M&Ms. I've seen flame wars started over a misunderstanding that happened just because someone skimmed. So please, don't skim.

Now, to the folks who mentioned that there are still annoyances on the internet: I thought about that, but really, the annoyances we face on the internet aren't very major at all. Probably the most annoying thing I've ever dealt with is forum trolls... and you can just ignore those people most of the time. In fact, back at the DBZOA, there was one guy who used to enter every topic I was involved with just so he could flame me. In real life, this guy would've been annoying, but on the DBZOA all I had to do was view his profile and click a button that said "Ignore this user." [At one time I wished the KND Forum had a similar feature, but we don't seem to get that many losers anymore].

The sheer ability to "tune things out" is itself a bad thing in many ways, but I think that's already covered in the article so, even though it's one thing I've always had strong feelings about, I won't go into it.

[valerie]

"It turns out humans are social animals after all. And that ability to suffer fools, to tolerate annoyance, that's literally the one single thing that makes you a human being, that allows you to function in a world populated by other people who aren't you. Otherwise, you turn into a goth. Science has proven it."

Really? Everyone that isn't social turns into a goth? Huh. If science has proven it, why isn't this person citing the research?

Because it's bogus and part of his emo rant.

"I didn't speak to him for six months. He sent me a letter, I mailed it back, unread, with a dead rat packed inside."

Wait, who's supposed to be the goth here? Just because he misinterpreted three words? Haha, what a loser.

"What's startling for me is realizing more than half of my "friends" are online-only. I've never talked to them on the phone or in person. So, if 40% of my personality has gotten lost in the text transition, do these people even know me?"

That's your fault, loser, for not getting your lazy butt off the internet and MAKING friends.

"Text = Less Communication"

Oh dear GOD, do I even want to touch this section with a ten foot pole? Hi, the Communications major here. Let me tell you something. If you think text is less communication, it's because YOU are a bad communicator. Either that, or you just know some really bad communicators yourself. This guy keeps talking about the good old days. Uh, is he forgetting that a lot of correspondence was through letters? There was no other way of talking to your friends or relatives a long ways from you. Text is not less communication. It all depends on your communication skills (or lackthereof). Nothing to do with text communication itself.

"It's seven percent. The other 93% is nonverbal, according to studies. No, I don't know exactly how they arrived at that number. They have a machine or something. But we didn't need it, I mean, come on. Most of our humor is sarcasm, and sarcasm is just mismatching the words with the tone. "No, thank you." The joke is all in the non-verbal."

I'll agree with the nonverbal bit, but seriously. You're trying to establish credibility with the reader, are you not? Don't bring up a statistic you know nothing about. "Used machines"? Who the hell are you and why are you trying to sound smart.

"In my time running a website, I've been called "fag" approximately 104,165 times. I keep an Excel spreadsheet."

AHAHA, LOSER. You've already lost my respect, but now you're just making it sad.

"There effectively is no "mass media" any more so, whereas before we disagreed because we saw the same news and interpreted it differently, now we disagree because we're seeing completely different freaking news."

This guy's pissing me off now. He doesn't even know what "mass media" is. (I bet all he knows is they use machines.)

"This is why office jobs make so many of us miserable; you don't get to see the fruit of your labor."

Welcome to the real world, emo goth boy.


James, I'm actually ashamed of you today. You always think things out so analytically and thoughtfully. So HOW did you not see how utterly RIDICULOUS and BIASED this is? It's an emo rant, that's all it is. It's one person's sad perception of how he sees the world. The 21st century is only making this person sad and deressed and miserable. Nothing he states holds any validity at all. He can't even quote or cite any of his "statistics" or scientifically proven facts. (God, THAT was a laugh.)

What a joke.

[Numbuh 278]

Oh, wow.

" And that ability to suffer fools, to tolerate annoyance, that's literally the one single thing that makes you a human being, that allows you to function in a world populated by other people who aren't you. Otherwise, you turn into a goth. Science has proven it"
Hhahaha -wipes tear- oh wow. I'd hate to meet the scientist who thought up that one.

And what he says about the net "escaping real life".. I don't think that's true. Maybe it's true to some people? But not all.
Some people go on the net to lie about who they want to be, but those people are just..pathetic? >_____>

But yea.. >.>

& what's with the whole idea of words being less "communicative"? The last time I checked, poems and songs are written in words, and they are looked at as great things..

Overall I think this man really needs to quit talking for everyone else and keep his "Science and goth" opinions to himself until he has a good argument. :'D

If you're mad at anything I just said, then good for you =) Imma go be gothic nows.

( >>;; No, I am not writing this against anyone in this thread btw. I wrote it about the article.)

[Numbuh 0xFF]

Can't quite get into a discussion on this right now (v. busy), but I mostly disagree. I do think it's a fallacy to believe people were somehow happier way back when -- how do you measure happiness, anyway? I think e-mail has problems as a medium of communication because the art of letter-writing is so very dead. I cannot see why, say, an AIM conversation wouldn't be grammatically correct, lexically rich and reasoned. There's really no reason to impoverish the language of online communication to such a level that all meaningful discourse is precluded. Unfortunately, the average AIM conversation (or anything simmilar) is almost entirely content-free.

Also I call major BS on some of his statistical claims. 93% info is non-verbal? I...REALLY doubt that. It may provide a richness of context but without the actual WORDS it is meaningless. Furthermore, all problems with the lack of noverbal cues in written communication can be solved by simply endavouring to write better. A good writter can transport you to distant stars, imaginary universes or inside the very mind of someone quite unlike you, surely a litterate person can craft prose well enough to give a sense of his/her own mental state.

All in all -- it just seems like an intense effort by someone to prove an iconoclast.

[valerie]

veljko said:

Also I call major BS on some of his statistical claims. 93% info is non-verbal? I...REALLY doubt that. It may provide a richness of context but without the actual WORDS it is meaningless. Furthermore, all problems with the lack of noverbal cues in written communication can be solved by simply endavouring to write better.

EXACTLY. I already tossed out any statistics he mentioned after the "they used machines" line (seriously, who IS this guy?). While I do agree that nonverbal communication is important to have, I'm pretty sure it doesn't make up 93%. I should check my textbook on that one.

You can have meaning in written communication. You just have to know how to communicate.

[diala]

numbuheightbitstar said:

Your interpretation of that article is an example: I fail to see how it could be interpreted as a rant about how the "good old days" were better. In fact the only time he even mentions the "old days," he actually admits they were worse. The article isn't about whether the "old days" were better, but rather about how people have increasingly more negative feelings due to the internet.

Um, James?

"Among the people who did have somebody, the average number of people in their circle of trust was two. And that includes spouses and parents. Yes, this is new. The numbers are down a whole bunch since just 1985. The world is becoming a colder and lonelier place. Here's why."

Even at that first sentence, he states that people have supposedly been losing close friends since 1985, AND that the world has become a cold and lonelier place. In fact, isn't the WHOLE FREAKING POINT of the article is that we're becoming more cold and depressed due to the internet, and that we were happier and had more friends IN THE PAST? Hence my POINT?

Oh, and James, your mini-rant about skimming did not make me want to read the whole article. Besides, my skimming would've been easier described as "reading the first parts of the article, then becoming bored with the logic and just passing over the rest."