When did you/have you fallen out of love with the internet?

[Carpman 0]

Ok, a little background. (Rant not entirely relevant. Skip to bold below for thread.)

2-3 years ago, I used to spend a lot of time on the internet. No big deal, I guess. But I spent all my time here...every waking moment. It was most of my life. Now, still, not entirely out of the ordinary. especially for someone who at the time war 14-15 years old and not entirely popular outside of his own little world.

The difference was, for one, I was literate. Seeing that text was the dominant medium of communication on the internet, my lack of social skills and relative superiority over others my own age, in terms of writing, meant that I overshadowed my peers and even came across as older than them.

Of course, at the time I was sheltered. I didn't venture beyond, into the harsh backwaters of the internet. In time, I did. I found what it was actually full of. Cretins, creatures without any sense of civilised discourse or humanity. And that was the best of it. Upon returning to my previously hallowed websites I saw that I was surrounded by mewling infants intent of lying their way to attention, every remark false and mulled upon for hours before typing.

Of course, I was guilty of the same time. So at the time, I snapped. To several communities, I made a statement, mostly coarse and vulgar, and left.

And I return, a few years later, and I find that the web hasn't got any better. It is still populated seemingly entirely by wealthy pre-teens with a penchant for illiteracy. it is still a safe haven for liars and frauds in the pursuit of attention and sympathy, and it is still a petty, gross shell of what it possibly could have been.

Nothing has changed.

So. I am going to ask you...have you ever fallen out of love with the internet? And if not...why not?

[The boy formerly known as Evil Muzz 27]

I fell out of love with the internet a year or so ago. It seemed like a great place at first. Fantastic database of information, meeting new people and have fun, play games etc. But I had a similar experience to you, Carpman. I ventured beyond my favourite sites and discovered it's actually a bad place. One things is that everyone has the chance to spread their views, even hateful ones. The other thing was the fact that there are many horrific sites out there. Thankfully I have never stumbled on a truly horrific one, but I have seen a few that casued me to lose my faith in the innocence of the web (namely one that had videos of people being killed in car accidents and beaten to death, never went back there). So I just avoid these sites, and occasionally I find one again, but I do my best to stay away from them, and I swim only in the familiar water.

[GingerBlokey 30]

The world is full of idiots.

The internet is full of the world.

[granto93 4]

haha GingerBlokey

i have never fallen out of love with it though sometimes i think i am wasting my time......than i think about all the good friends i have made here and say nah!

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

The internet is, unfortunately, a haven for everyone... intellects and jerks alike. Too bad the jerks get all of the attention with their YouTube videos and MySpace pages.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I've probably had more to do with the net than most of you.  I used to be on ARPAnet as part of my job.  So I've been here, on and off, for a long time.

I neither love it nor hate it.  It is a tool.  The fact that there are tools using it, is not worse than many loose nuts holding wheels in cars nor those dangling fingers over a keyboard, although there are some real rats holding the mice.

Right now, because of the world wide presence of my wife, the internet is of great consolation to me.  I have made quite a few new professional friends due to her death.  I am now a member of a couple of really interesting forums: Bad Boys which is for graphics artists, and Pegasus Actual which is an SF site dedicated mostly to discussion of Battlestar Galactica.  Both of these sites are building memorials to her.

So, how do you hate a communications medium?  You don't.  it is a thing.  You can't be in love with it.  But you can make good or evil use of it.

Be good, people.

[autoVino 26]

well, I use the internet mostly for news, research, and some communication (facebook, simtrop, etc), but I never really fell in love with it.  Just don't trust this type of communication (same exact with telephones...)

I'm much better off with the person being in front of me instead of 2 thousand kilometers away...