Is the internet is supposed to be toxic?

[CornBogFitz]

I’ve personally viewed the primary culture…the lifeblood of the internet to be a form of graffiti. You can’t just put graffiti on canvas. Part of the art form is that it’s not supposed to be there. The cultures of early popular forms persist to this day with terms like “glowie”

However I will also say another primary usage of the internet is to communicate information. And too much toxicity can inhibit this

One point I’ve heard made before is that anonymity the interest once provided forced people to do their own research to a degree. Hence why places like /pol/ were the first to see through psyops. Doesn’t matter if you have 2PHDs explain your reasoning or you will be called a fag.

What’s your take on this. Feel free to argue against your own viewpoint as if the idea can not be debated with reason it can not stand on its own.

Mods feel free to move to mass debates if you think it’s more appropriate

 

[Mullet Man]

This is a good question.
It’s the same psychology behind masks at protests. Concealing faces behind a screen often leads to erratic and irrational behavior. This is why, no matter what site, group, forum, chatroom, comments, or network you’re on, there’s always gonna be toxic behavior, simply because the feeling of anonymity gives the user the urge to say things they otherwise wouldn’t in real life.

As the anonymity of the platform increases, so does the general level of toxicity. This is why users who have no public info on their pages tend to be the ones causing beef all the time, rather than users who display everything about their lives openly, generally speaking.

 

[Meelo]

This is a good question.
It’s the same psychology behind masks at protests. Concealing faces behind a screen often leads to erratic and irrational behavior. This is why, no matter what site, group, forum, chatroom, comments, or network you’re on, there’s always gonna be toxic behavior, simply because the feeling of anonymity gives the user the urge to say things they otherwise wouldn’t in real life.

As the anonymity of the platform increases, so does the general level of toxicity. This is why users who have no public info on their pages tend to be the ones causing beef all the time, rather than users who display everything about their lives openly, generally speaking.

The right of freedom of speech can't exist without the freedom of anonymous speech. It's nobody's job but yours to tune out bullshit and rage-bait. The rhetoric you're posting is exactly the same that every two-bit tyrant uses to justify censorship.

 

[BradeRunna]

Yes, the internet is supposed to be toxic. In the past the internet was most mostly made up of angry bitter nerds. Later on, the malcontents came along. After society started to become softer and lame the assholes came in. Throw in the fact that the internet is known as the autism ghetto to some people and yes, the internet is supposed to be toxic. It's not filled with happy well-adjusted people. It wasn't till the normies started using the internet in the late 2000's and early 2010's did it start to change. The internet became sanitized for the normies. The normies got online and encountered "the people of the internet" and didn't like them. They were mean unhappy and not very nice.

They said mean things to the normie that no one would say to their face in meatspace. They were quick to call the normie dumb fucks and tell them how stupid they and their opinions are. Normies are not used to this. They live in a very fake world where everyone walks around gritting their teeth and pretending to be nice and polite to them. People that are hopped up on SSRI's and other psychiatric meds, so they are always fake happy or at least calm. Normies went and cried to their corporate masters about these mean internet people how the wanted something done about them. The internet was just too unbearable to use as long as the internet people had the ability to say whatever they wanted.

The corporations started sanitizing the internet for the normies. They created a handful of sites for the normies to use. They eventually brought 1984 Orwellian style censorship to these platforms to create a normie safe environment. These sites killed the variety of the internet as well as any kind of free speech online. Now the normies just spend their days in their 4-5 normie internet ghettos and get warned about how bad and scary the rest of the internet is "you better not go on 4chan it's full of bad people". You better not leave your normie safe spaces. If you do you might encounter some mean internet people and your corporate overlords won't be able to censor...save you.

Normies ruined the internet. If they want that whole fake smile pretending to be nice and pleasant shit they should stick to meatspace.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Internets used to be "The Wild West" -- decentralized and heterogeneous. The honknet of Current Year Clown World is growing ever more centralized, sanitized, and corporate.

 

[3rdAccountFuckEmail.com]

The speech and toxicity depends on the culture of that part of the internet formed by moderation. You go to 4chan where almost everything is allowed and being a sperg is okay and you get everyone saying "NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER" and retards thinking death threats are free speech and that they are actually anonymous and getting arrested. If spamming is allowed people will do it. If saying nigger is allowed people will do it. If Null didnt constantly tell people to not discuss gayops on kiwifarms then people on the farms would be coordinating fucking with lolcows and gayops on other users.

I remember this guy like 10 years back who did streams where he raided the streams of girls with his audience to troll them and encouraging his audience to allow the girl stream to dual stream with one of his audience members who would then go "Nigger Nigger Nigger" or wear some ketchup outfit. hilarious shit. When the guy started streaming from a hotel one time and got his hotel doxxed his fans called in to the hotel and started being "erratic" causing him to get kicked out. Also hillarious.

I see this as the culture he promoted turning on him. Promote the culture you want.

 

[Historical Strelkov]

I think people in the real world who have fulfillment in meatspace probably don't use the internet as much.
You probably get a lot of people who want an escape posting all of their feelings on here, and that becomes toxic very quickly.
Anonymity allows people to post things they feel without there being a reputational consequence. The real world people are way more sensitive and have more power depending on their stature. On the internet, the power is in the administration, but the audience is there because of what is allowed, not what is disallowed.
If they ever force "Real ID" internet access, its going to become homogenized immediately.
If peoples lives get better materially, the content on the internet will be less negative.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

The worst that could happen was people calling you a retard or prank calling you for the lulz. Now, people actively doxx not only you, but your work place, your family and harasses them to fire you/break contact with you.

There used to be a humors side on the internet with people fucking with eachother but now, people want to ruin your life simply because you said something they didn't like or to feel morally superior.

 

[Neodanthril]

/pol/ were the first to see through psyops

the reason pol even existed was because forums like stormfront raiding the 4chan equivalent of A&N so hard they got the original A&N shut down and begrudgingly brought back as its own board.

Is the internet is supposed to be toxic?​

i think it was originally intended for instant transmission and proliferation of information, in the earliest iterations text files between universities. this eventually grew into people using it for social purposes, like discussing the latest goings on and inevitably politics or what have you. given the boundary free nature of places like usenet and later web 1.0, it was relatively easy to make or find communities of like minded individuals which unintentionally led to levels of groupthink previously seen only in royal palaces. so i dont think its toxic intentionally, but giving people access to echo chambers and the general consequence free nature of shit talking online contributes to that outcome.

 

[Tanuki Mixed Nuts]

I think the bizarre thing is that the internet has always been toxic in a way, but that way has vastly changed with time. I think social media and the amplification of attention on that toxicity has made it vastly worse.

 

[Otterly]

However I will also say another primary usage of the internet is to communicate information. And too much toxicity can inhibit this

How are you defining toxicity?
The internet should be organic. It reflects what’s there. It’s like a brain that grows connections to other synapses along whatever paths are needed. It cannot be pruned non organically. It should be wonderful, organic chaos.

 

[Rango Dango]

Gatekeeping is a form of keeping quality community. It separates people who are only "into" the thing for the community vs people who actually like the thing and just want to be in the company of people who think the same about that thing.

tldr yes

 

[ilovecornsyrup]

What happened to the internet reminds me a lot of what happened to a lot of cities. At first you have a city with lots of cool organic places to hang out (malls, parks etc) and even some "secret" spots that you'd learn from others or from exploring. Then boomers (substitute for normies on the internet) start whining about youth being there and eventually these spaces get bought up and commercialized, closed or sanitized. Eventually people just stick to the few city council approved bars or whatever places remain get ruined by a particular demographic (substitute for edgelords). Many such cases.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

It's a reflection on society. If society is shit, then the venting on the internet will be more extreme negative.
The old wild west days of the internet were partly great because life seemed pretty good. Even with 9/11, jokes were still made and most people understood that laughing is cathartic, and those trying to censor the jokes were themselves jokes.

Jack thompson was laughed off of the internet, but gamergate was super cereal business and type A/type B body selection is only acceptable because man/woman is offensive.

The more insane society becomes, the more insane the internet negativity becomes.

 

[YautjaWeeb]

No it was never like this.

Just a shadow cast on the wall by real world anglo society. Full of facts, events, information, software, etc.

Now its the "main thing" and not that shadow which is immeasurably fake and gay.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The worst that could happen was people calling you a retard or prank calling you for the lulz. Now, people actively doxx not only you, but your work place, your family and harasses them to fire you/break contact with you.

What if "cancel culture" was a "psyop"?

 

[crazedaze]

Feels nice to be anonymous in one hand, you can say what you want free from having to face consequences. This is a benefit and a problem. The internet is an unnatural way for us to commune, it allows anti-social, destructive ideologies to flourish, and this aspect is a net detriment to us as a species. It's made a lot of people mentally ill.

 

[William F. Clinton]

The Internet has never been any more "toxic" than the real world. Traditionally, there was always an understanding to leave your real life out of the Internet and vice versa. It was always toxic in the sense that you could act rude to other people or see offensive things, but there was a layer of unreality that made it easy for anyone who wasn't a pansy to play along. Despite that unreality, there was an honesty to it.

What has changed is that the Internet is now treated as an extension of people's social lives rather than a shadow of it, so all the fake and gay social games of the real world are now just as present on the Internet and just as fake and gay as they are in real life. The Internet was made and is used by people. If the Internet is toxic, people are toxic.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

As someone who was on the Internet in the "Wild West" era, I would say no, it wasn't like this until pretty recently. There were always trolls and people who used anonymity to say things they could not say IRL. Communities of more or less eccentric people would stick with each other on their obscure forum and were moderated by people similar to them. The problem comes when what used to be hundreds of communities are funneled into a handful of websites, yet you are exposed only to things that reinforce and push you further in the direction you were already going while facts that contradict your reality are hidden thanks to algorithms. Inevitably, they cross the path of someone who is as radicalized as they are, and end up going at it and some moderator with a clear bias towards one side steps in. The resulting ban or warning only further radicalizes the losing side, leading them to lash out even worse next time.

 

[Vonel]

I remember this guy like 10 years back who did streams where he raided the streams of girls with his audience to troll them and encouraging his audience to allow the girl stream to dual stream with one of his audience members who would then go "Nigger Nigger Nigger" or wear some ketchup outfit. hilarious shit. When the guy started streaming from a hotel one time and got his hotel doxxed his fans called in to the hotel and started being "erratic" causing him to get kicked out. Also hillarious.

I remember him. The guy went by goodideagaming, black screen media, BSMTVx, iirc. His entire shtick was laughing really loud on a shitty mic as his underage fans would yell NIGGER or whatever to teenage girls on younow. I dipped out when he started getting weird having his fans call him black daddy, then the self phonebooking happened and it all fell apart from there.
I would do a writeup on him because he was my first cow I followed, even before I knew what a lolcow was, but at this point it's been ten years and he's completly vanished from the internet.

I will admit watching the ketchup stream live was probably the funniest goddman things I've seen on the internet.