As fun as the Internet can be, it’s not without its modern pitfalls!
Some can be life-changing!
Below, for your enjoyment, is my list of the 20 worst things the Internet has brought along with it into our lives, living rooms and social environments! The web began being notoriously untrustworthy, but over the past 20 years it’s undergone a passionate redesign with trust in mind! Once users began to trust, spend, share and forget about the untrustworthy … that was the perfect time, it seems, to turn the tables again, this time back to being untrustworthy. The second time, having built our trust, is the charm.
The Worst Things the Internet
Has Brought Along With it
People can insult other people in public, with no need to be face to face. This is done often on Facebook and similar platforms, and done by people who, without the Internet, would never behave that way.
Every insult, every killing, every fire, makes someone with a video camera feel famous.
People who represent small minorities get “followers” from all around the world who empower them and make them feel everybody must agree with them. They can lose perspective.
People who are socially distasteful can garner support if they have the gumption to, as well as appear to be much more important than they really are.
Just as truth can be shared, the Internet went from being an unregulated wild west to a filtered and friendly shopping and browsing experience to a place where it’s now commonplace for falsehoods to be spread.
If someone wanted to, they could easily spread fear, particularly if there were a conspiracy to do so.
China is outselling every other part of the world among US consumers, by manipulating Internet processes.
While small companies can have a voice, with the modern Internet, you will never be found unless you advertise.
Staying home and working from home is definitely not for everyone, and can vastly change how people socialize and interact, the quality of their relationships and their awareness of public opinion.
Levels of tolerance of violence and adult subject matter are constantly tested, and as a result every human using the Internet is forced to “grow up” faster than nature may have intended.
History can be erased. The Washington Post recently edited an old story, after the story “changed.” If a media outlet doesn’t print on paper, they can, and do, change what they previously said; it’s gone forever!
The things we trust about the modern Internet make it much different than the wild west it once was. While people trust most of the Internet, over the years to gain their trust, Internet designers had to filter unpopular, incorrect and sloppy websites and information. Ultimately this led to filtering whatever they wish, to manipulate truth.
Those in charge of filtering do so under the guise of being “fact checkers.”
Those who have enough money can manipulate almost anything on the Internet, affecting public opinion.
Even the truth falls victim to this manipulation, which can result in fictitious alternate reality.
Entire governments could be ruined by networked protagonists.
People have lost friends because someone trusted the Internet more, and the relationship was less important.
Those “filtered in,” and those doing the filtering (big tech) become big-headed, with more authority than they’re capable of responsibly using. Inevitably they misidentify their lucky position as a gift of power and influence, while in reality they never won any popularity contests, and they’ve given no reason to trust their influence. The influence can be world-widespread and often is either based on virtue-posing or wildly rebellious and anti-social. Social media platforms are the most guilty of being anti-social.
Because of enormous amounts of money the Internet has poured into their laps, media magnates like Mark Zuckerberg, who got caught in a windstorm when his pet project in college turned into a worldwide sensation, think less of how to make money, and more of what powerful things to do with it. The dollar runs the Internet, and rewards those in key positions, who then turn around and use that money to cancel the President.
If someone filters the truth from you on the Internet, you may never know.
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Mark Urso
mark@markursoblog.wpcomstaging.com
@A_Candle_Lit