Most of the “boomer” discussion is veiled ageism and ignorance. The younger generations are setting themselves up to be “boomers” themselves. Inevitably they will be old. They’re already willfully ignorant. They take joy in it even. Not on a good track there.

It’s part of the propaganda strategy to pick their battles. They never speak on your terms. They only speak when they have the upper hand. Keep in mind in general they never directly acknowledge any of your talking points. Not unless they have an avenue to interject logical fallacies and pivot the dialog to their terms.

The moment they start talking about this they lend credence to your side. It carves open space in public discourse. This is the exact same tactic they use against you. And people fall for it every time. You’re never supposed to lend credence to their trolling. You’re not supposed to feed the trolls. Yet here we are. A decade into this era of internet troll right wing politics. People started feeding the trolls and cannot help themselves.

New media indeed coincides with revolutions. I disagree with your final assessment. We have yet to see how this turn of new media plays out.

Good or bad is a relative. The frame of reference should be contemporary. Just because we ostensibly have technological luxuries not mean things are going well right now. Authoritarianism on another up cycle.

The newer generation of tech users know only of a narrow subset of technology from big tech / ad tech. They know little of anything at all the grassroots era of technology.

There’s a facet of internet culture that revolves around ridicule. I’m not sure but I think it stems from the streamer world. It’s like a modern form of celebrity gossip (read: harassment) that got commoditized into social media. So it’s not just gossiping about celebrities like in the past era of media.

Harassment used to be driven by publishers. In this era of social media anyone and everyone is a content publisher. People trawl the internet for things they think can be made spectacle. Right down to a random internet comment 100 replies deep in a thread. If for whatever reason they think this person is to be made a fool of then they proceed to reply with such belligerence.

They engage as if they are an outside observer. As if they’ve an audience like it’s Jerry Springer or something. As if they are the only human being. They don’t see others as human. Everyone else are caged animals for them taunt. To throw objects at through the cage bars or to tap on the glass. They think they are the main character.

I think there’s some psychological effect where their parasocial relationship with their favorite streamers and the herd of loyal viewers gives them a false sense of power based on the crowd effect or something. They can’t see it from the perspective that they are a lone poster being deranged.

I think the vote/like/share model gives them a false sense of power. When they see the uplikes number go up, they think they have a herd of supporters behind them. A simple little number on a screen emboldens them.

Nobody seems to see anything out of the ordinary with this. Such is the nature of this era of internet and the hostility. It’s normalized. They don’t know of any way of being.

You’re not a streamer with a herd of followers. You’re just a sole internet user. You have no crowd behind you. It’s like you think you do. It’s bizarre. From observers outside your perspective, you’re like an unstable person wandering the city streets. Pedestrians avoid you. They don’t want to aggravate you. You’re seen as someone possibly having a mental break. Or is it drugs or some kind of substance abuse.

On the internet now it’s unavoidable. These crazies are out here. They’re aggravated. They jump down anyones throat. On much of social media it’s the only way they know how to be. Just belligerence against belligerence all the time. Nobody talks like a normal human being. It’s like they’re derealized. Dissociated.

A basic fact that internet has no moderators anymore. They’re moderators in name only. The definition of the word is lost. To “moderate”. To preside over a discussion. Nobody does this anymore. The crazies are allowed to run amok. There’s some hints of actual moderation on Lemmy instances. The extremists have been grinding away at wearing this down though. In general this kind of thing is completely absent on social media anymore.

The only time I see it anymore comes from people from the older eras of internet. Those to came about in the modern internet have no concept of civility.

I doubt your implying

This is exactly it. A lot of people out there don’t think it’s anything unless they’ve full on held you down and penetrated. And they go on the internet and think they can be clever in trying to use too many words to justify it like they’re Jordan Peterson or something.

I don’t get how their cover of Sound of Silence is a top video on Conans Youtube channel. It’s not that good.

There’s going to be a point where the sole goal of escape is more important than what skills and money an individual has. If you can empathize with that then congratulations I believe that is the refugee experience.

There’s absolutely some extremists who would martyr themselves.

Looks like the kid in middle school that everyone hates.

I don’t know how tech (il)literate people are anymore but a basic laptop with portable drives containing media. Portable drives with single folders containing movies, audioooks, music. Compile a few playlist files. Make sure a reasonable player like VLC is the default.

Seems kind of hard to mess up if you can get the nurses to play a list of media once in a while. It’s a simple as a few clicks.

One thing that snapped me out of that phase was a psychology professor saying your actions define what you are.

I don’t think there are as many edgelords anymore anyways. Since the Trump MAGA era nobody pretends. It’s all out in the open now. You either are or you aren’t. Nobody hides behind the “it’s just a joke bro” stuff like in the older internet eras. The bigots aren’t hiding their power level anymore.

Social media as a whole is the infrastructure of authoritarianism. It only needs someone to put it use.

That’s a paraphrase from some talking head I heard a while back. The world has been feeding this machine for about 15 years. It’s filled with everyone’s personal data.

In a sense this is the Skynet doomsday. It’s already in place. All it takes right now is a flip of a switch. Like the Doomsday Clock. We are on the verge of it. Midnight strikes soon.

I have no doubt ICE is already using this to know how and where to pluck people off the street. If I’m a person that could be targeted in America right now. I’d be 100% off the grid. Ditch every electronic device. Go completely dark. Disappear myself to another location before they disappear me.

Apparently ban has a different meaning than it used to. I keep seeing dramatic posts about Who-Gives-Shit influencer getting banned from somewhere. The next day or two I see another post about how they’re back.

If the far right would stop using Lemmy that would be fantastic news. (inb4 hurr durr echo chamber!!!11!)

Global affordability issues are a direct effect of the US.

People should find something to do with their lives than be a part of this culture that revolves around random people whose job it is to talk into a mic on stream.

Now’s the time for Espressif to spin off their own ecosystem.

Is there some evil villain angle to this. Like the data is hosted outside of any country thus not subject to any laws or regulations.

Bidens infrastructure bill. Democrats do a thing. Nobody notices. People wonder why Democrats don’t do a thing.