Assuming that the only thing that changes is that the Internet doesn’t exist; yeah. I would still have the same ideals. I didn’t learn history from the internet, I learned it from books. I didn’t learn empathy from the internet; it’s inherent to being human. I didn’t learn how to share or be kind from the internet; I learned that by being around people, having empathy, and from wholesome media like Sesame Street.
if internet didn’t exist, I’d probably be a religious person, who wouldn’t read any religious books but would have followed the customs. But with internet, and by interacting with different people, I became atheist.
If the internet didn’t exist I very likely wouldn’t be alive today, so I guess not
You mean like you wouldn’t have the job you have and thus can’t survive, or do you mean like… mental health peer support groups on the internet?
They were conceived on an adult film shoot.
Online friends helped me get through puberty tbh. Irl my classmates were mostly bullies.
I’m still trying to figure where these mythical online friends are.
The secret ingredient is spending too much time online as an escape from reality
Probably not. I build my philosophy bit by bit, by being exposed to a lot of different often contradictory ideas though the internet.
I would have never had patience for reading all the classic philosophers (they wrote a lot). Even less with modern ones (they are very niche these days). But having a summary of anything at my fingertips made me able to cross connect ideas and form something coherent on my own.
I don’t think so. It’s provided me with a lot of different perspectives and information that doesn’t show up in centralized media.
I certainly wouldn’t be voting for Trump since i have the rare human ability of noticing when someone has lied to my face thousands of times in the most absurd, lazy, and inconsistent manner possible.
My dad was a Republican and a military man who i respected immensely, so I could’ve seen myself going that route, but that route in my mind was “fiscally conservative” and not “socially conservative”, but I haven’t seen any fiscal responsibility from that party outside of implementing cuts to offset massive tax break handouts for billionaires, and there’s instead an extremely unhealthy emphasis on the latter.
Come to think of it i don’t think i even came across politics much during my childhood years with Internet, it was still web forums mainly and political web forums sounds as boring now as it did then. (though It’s kinda weird that i feel that way and still spend most of my time on lemmy discussing politics rather than any other topics)
I grew up in metro NYC Im shocked when people support him.
I grew up in rural farm country where they constantly talked about distrusting rich city folk because they don’t understand country folk and hated Russia because of the cold war. I have no idea how they all shifted to Russia loving MAGA idiots. Maybe they just absorb whatever the current propaganda is and don’t actually have personal beliefs.
That is the case for Fox viewers
Yes, I graduated high school before the web was widely available.
I think my beliefs would be similar but far less mainstream
eyup but im over 50 and I never took to popular social media (facebook, twitter, and the new stuff I can’t even remember the names) so my social media journey is like slashdot then reddit then here.
If the internet didn’t exist we wouldn’t be in the same political situation we find ourselves. So it’s hard to say.
That being said, I’m old enough that the internet wasn’t quite a household, in-your-face thing until I was already legally an adult, and I was already leaning left by then thanks to people like Rush Limbaugh who made me realize how selfish, racist, and uneducated conservatives are and I didn’t want anything to do with that. Life’s too short to waste time being a self-serving piece of ignorant shit.
As far as religion I knew that was all bullshit well before I reached adulthood. Internet wouldn’t have affected that at all for me.
Im an Anarcho-Syndicalist but without the internet I would probrally be a hardcore ML/Stalinist. Additionally IRL I have seen nothing but hate and the worst of humanity, without the internet I would not even know that humanity is capable of good and I would not have any regard for human life. So I would probrally join a radical ML militia group and shoot up some government building.
Wow, thanks for sharing. I’m glad the internet allows us to hear things from others experiences!
Yes. My worldview, morals, and ethics were pretty much fully formed before I even started using the internet.
Maybe I would’ve been slightly less cynical and nihilist and depressed, but the world outside the internet has let me down a lot more than the internet, even accounting for enshittification, so probably not.
I would definitely have less interesting fetishes, though.
I was on the left before I started reading / watching anything online. My positions didn’t change but it feels like all of politics shifted right. So I guess im further left now by comparison than I used to be.
I think the main difference for me is that the internet wrecked my trust in the mainstream media and people in power. I question things more now than I used to. Then again that could have happened naturally just by growing up too.
I think I’d need to be born before 1755 to have a significant change to my religious or some political beliefs.
Definitely. I only got easy internet in my pocket after school. Before that, I was raised by Sonic the Hedgehog and Captain Planet in my childhood years, and punk rock in my teenage years. And it was never a phase, mom.
