There are, though you have to build the conditions that make people want to act good here. By default they just will be in an arms race to be nasty for the attention, and it takes a lot more people acting pro-socially to offset it. But I was talking about social skills which tend to be missing for a different reason (me included)
I think that’s a fair description of humans in general. We’re naturally suspicious creatures whose trust is slowly gained and quickly lost. I think the internet feels peculiar because for most of us (still, though this is rapidly becoming untrue) the internet as it is today isn’t a natural habitat. The internet as we now know it didn’t exist when I was a child, and it’s still changing dramatically, but at some point I think it’ll socially “stabilize” and we’ll have broadly accepted norms for behavior, similar to what we see in so-called IRL culture. I think this period is exceptional because we’re still figuring out the norms for this medium, not because internet users are intrinsically poorer at social skills than non-internet users.
For sure, we do it IRL too. But being online is distilling it. You know, the people who end up in these spaces are note likely to already come with factors that make us difficult to talk to. Then we find ourselves in an attention economy which gamifies interaction but doesn’t select for meaning. I really want to believe that will develop positively like you say. I’m not counting on it, but I’ll try to help manifest it with you and everyone else I see being chill🤞
There are, though you have to build the conditions that make people want to act good here. By default they just will be in an arms race to be nasty for the attention, and it takes a lot more people acting pro-socially to offset it. But I was talking about social skills which tend to be missing for a different reason (me included)
I think that’s a fair description of humans in general. We’re naturally suspicious creatures whose trust is slowly gained and quickly lost. I think the internet feels peculiar because for most of us (still, though this is rapidly becoming untrue) the internet as it is today isn’t a natural habitat. The internet as we now know it didn’t exist when I was a child, and it’s still changing dramatically, but at some point I think it’ll socially “stabilize” and we’ll have broadly accepted norms for behavior, similar to what we see in so-called IRL culture. I think this period is exceptional because we’re still figuring out the norms for this medium, not because internet users are intrinsically poorer at social skills than non-internet users.
For sure, we do it IRL too. But being online is distilling it. You know, the people who end up in these spaces are note likely to already come with factors that make us difficult to talk to. Then we find ourselves in an attention economy which gamifies interaction but doesn’t select for meaning. I really want to believe that will develop positively like you say. I’m not counting on it, but I’ll try to help manifest it with you and everyone else I see being chill🤞
Being chill is a mind virus not unlike being frothing mad. It spreads slower, but it’s still contagious. 🫡 good luck out there, good vibes soldier.