Sampson

I definitely hanker after days before the social internet tbf.

I think this kind of faux outage over everything so people feel so much pressure to never make a mistake is what’s causing our mental health crisis much more than trying to tell parents they’re poisoning their child’s mind by letting them put on green face point and stick a pointy hat on their head once a year.

To get on Bovril's train, it's just the ultimate result of the Americanisation of British and European politics. Because, unlike the rest of the world, America never had a socialist movement and so its divisions were just cultural ones rather than economic debates about the private sector vs the public sector and how much control and intervention the state get into politics. And it's a very sort of reality tv style of politics rather than discussing economic theory And so now because of social media and even before that I also think the success of US tv shows with its very American and black-and-white cultural politics like South Park played a role in it. I think Sarah Palin was a big turning point because she got so much coverage online and on the comedy panel shows in the UK back in the day for her very American cultural views that really were extremely unknown in the UK or European politics at the time, stuff like abortion was just never actual political issues in the UK and now I hear very Americanised arguments for the opposition of it and campaign groups outside abortion clinics that just never would've existed in the UK a generation ago. A big obvious example of it is how you see people call liberals "lefties" in the UK nowadays which would've been unheard of in the UK 25 years ago as Liberalism was always about freedom from the state and generally very pro-markets and private enterprise and liberals always used to be considered centrists or right of centre here (John Major and Tony Blair were probably the ultimate liberal PMs in post-war UK politics and they was always considered centre or right of centre back in the day in the UK whenever people were polled).

Yeah I’ve had it happened to very inoffensive and innocuous posts which is why I think there’s just a key word in there that triggers it

It’s happened to me a couple of times on this thread and the old general news thread - I’m convinced there’s a key word filter that triggers it.

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that a lot ot people actually want the structure an authoritarian government with no free press, no opposition nor grey lines which rules out of fear of doing something wrong, because it gives them structure etc. I remember Angela Merkel saying that when Germany reunited and she went from an authoritarian regime in East Germany to a liberal democracy, it took her years to actually get her head round that she had more choice and could do things she couldn’t previously without fear, because she had been programmed growing up that you’re only allowed to do certain things. I’ll see if I can find the interview but she said it was actually quite frightening to have that much freedom to actually hold opposing opinions etc.

Not agreeing or disagreeing but isn’t that just changing the subject to try and deflect into more criticism of the government? Feels like Starmer and Reeves are set up to fail here. They actually start to get the economy growing, which seems like a good first step and suddenly it’s not enough because we’re not at step 4, or it’s “well it’s easy to grown from a poor position” or “well other things are more important”. Don’t we all want the country to grow and do well under this government? Shouldn’t this be something that we almost universally agree is a good start of things moving in the right direction?

Yeah I don’t get that either. Surely it’s easier to keep something going than it is to kickstart something struggling?

Good video. Scares the crap out of me tbh. 80% of the data is good but it just makes up 20% of the data and then humans use it in videos, websites, articles and even research papers, so it becomes “truth”. Then when AI next pulls data it pulls from this data and uses the new human made things as the source. Creating a vicious cycle of fake “truth”. 4 years of this shit before the 2029 elections will be frightening.

There once was a thread, General News. Where the mods could only lose-lose. Bans and quarrels amok, And in came the lock, When the talk was on Muslims and Jews.

Am I missing something here, I don’t get either.

There’s definitely a word filter in play around certain political topics. I’ve had innocuous posts deleted because I used certain words - some even got “pre-moderated” with red text saying “we are waiting for a moderator to approve or deny this post’ before inevitably being deleted.

Yeah I don’t really get it either. Seemed like very civil discussion.

Just thinking about how Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid 2 - games from 2000 and 2001 respectively sadly got a lot right with regards to the internet. I remember when I used to think this was about conspiracy theories, now it kind of accurately describes Facebook and YouTube algorithms and AI.

He’s saying there’s a difference between the religion and ethnic background of Jews and the country of Isreal and the government of that country. Just like there’s a difference between the religion and ethnic background of Punjabs or Hindus and the country of India and the government of that country. And that you can support one and not the other.

Given who is behind the technology, I don’t trust that one but sadly. 4 more years of AI slop improving until it’s hard to tell facts from its self-checking made up “truth” will have a huge impact on the 2029 elections.

Interesting video on AI slop

It’s the internet and forum I have problems with not the social media apps. They went years ago.

On another note - trying to cut down on doomscrolling. Are there any devices where you can listen to music/podcasts and get emails or messages but can’t really scroll online so I can leave my phone at home and not tempted by the doom scroll? I wondered if smart watches do this?

I was banned from the last general news thread for an incredibly innocuous post where I just said something like “I wonder what would’ve happened if the wind rush scandal had broken now” There is definitely a filter in certain key words though. I don’t think Raj should be banned for having that avatar at all btw.

If you’re just measuring in years like normal people then nah. Person x can be 2 years old when person y is 1 and person x can also be 4 years old when person y is 2.

I don’t share your view sadly. Reform have already moved the goalpost to “we want net negative migration” and “we want to deport people and strip them with permanent residency even if they’ve been living here for 50 years with a British partner, children and grandchildren working hard and paying taxes.” And this kind of right wing populism is still just as rampant in Japan, which is a westernised economy famous for having very little immigration and Australia which already did all of that brutalising of its immigration laws a few years back and it hadn’t helped stop the populists. The “we just reduce immigration and Reform go away” feels like the optimistic talk of 2 or 3 years ago that hasn’t really paid attention to world events since. Reform will always go one further and they have their base now who’ll follow them regardless and their supporters will never be happy because their whole schtick is to constantly talk down the country, keep repeating what a shithole Britain is and keep it chaos and keep people in fear.

This is it for me. Social media exacerbates misery and amplifies fear to make it sound like Britain is some post-apocalyptic Hell hole, “a failed state” is a popular line of many who are on social media too much, but it’s not something most of us actually recognise in real life if we’re honest with ourselves, unless we’re actively looking for it in any little thing so we can complain about it. Go outside on a normal evening and you’ll see normal people enjoying themselves, sitting outside with friends or family and drinking or eating and laughing, people walking their dogs or going out on a jog, construction workers out fixing roads - just as they all did 25 years ago at the height of Blair-ite optimism before the Iraq war. Sure there’s some idiots, but the country is hardly some anarchist hellhole. Don’t let it grind you down, Britain is a good country and we only live once, so go out and spend time with friends and family and you’ll see most people who live in Britain are good people, enjoy life, and hope we don’t vote away democracy because social media has tricked us into saying the country has anarchy on its streets.

Agreed. I voted LibDem last election because Labour had it in the bag but it’s anyone but Reform as long as we have PR.

On one hand you had people on the left cancelling people for making mistakes and jokes and dredging up old posts from years ago which made people feel like they couldn’t make mistakes or change their believes anymore (which caused a lot of people to feel understandably cornered and go in defence mode, see someone like JK Rowling as an example of that) On the other hand you have that massively unpatriotic snake oil salesman Farage on the right who’s spent the past 15 years getting unheard of tv and media coverage never having a single good word to say about the country and who whips up people with absurdly negative things acting as if the country is some Mad Max anarchist hellscape to make everyone feel constant fear in order to get power. Then I think social media like Twitter and Facebook have exacerbated this problem because it’s something humans have never had to deal with before and because everyone is anonymous and I think a lot of us (myself included) are addicted to the drama and anger, because we just browse when we’re bored and want to feel any kind of emotion and angry debate every we massively exaggerate and say things we wouldn’t dream of saying in real life 15 years ago give us that fire in the belly and in the brain. Brexit and Covid also played massive roles too because they also dominated the airwaves and were very shit times that lasted years for many of us. All these things have in common that they’re made people feel fear and dejection, it’s very hard to find hope anymore in the country and the world. Just my 2 cents anyway.