People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
The real brain melter was the societal culture shift.
I grew up witnessing "the end of history" with my own eyes. People were getting wiser and kinder year after year, decade after decade. It was like a feedback loop of positive changes, the only way was up.
Then 2010s hit and I'm still processing the 180 degrees shift. I read dozens of books about nazis, authoritarianism, societal memory, cults, fucking roman empire. But I still have cognitive dissonance every time I open news feed.
Eh, I still think people are generally pretty nice to each other. The problem is that when that same nice person goes online, they behave differently. The more time we spend online, the more impact that "alter ego" has on our "IRL" personality.
So what we need is more IRL connection, but we're instead spending more and more time online.
From "The Hunt for Red October", to "you shouldn't have started the war against russia then."
Red Dawn to half+ our leadership bowing down to him, and a president calling him a good guy.
God damn what a wild ride.
The internet came way too quickly, or at least it evolved way too quickly for us. We should still be on 56k and surfing Limewire for what may or may not be what we're actually looking for. 24/7 access to everyone all around the country, and world, was too fast as well. We can't acclimate that fast. Our brains weren't ready for it.
Facebook and unregulated social media. Up to now most governments in the world don't even have a clue or idea that the internet is a very powerful tool that should actually be regulated because there are very evil people who will always act in bad faith to manipulate others for power and control. The Golden era of the internet is definitely over, I think 2016 was a defined shift that will be recorded by historians.
Holy shit thank you. You finally put it into words for me. The shift of 'the internet is the greatest tool for knowledge, to what it is now, some cancerous corpo bloated bullshit that ignorant people are harnessing just to find others to support their shitty beliefs. Been such a hard thing to watch and understand how the fuck we got here.
I think it's lack of empathy as the root for everything.
Which I believe is opposite of human nature but here we are.
I’m reminded of this article from a couple of days ago in the Globe and Mail, specifically as a response to Musk’s anti-empathy comments: Empathy is not a Weakness, it’s a Strength
That's the saddest thing about people born after the 90s. We expected the future to get better. Kids now are just hoping we don't destroy everything.
Nice, you're spot on. We bonded for a while.. now we're in entropy!
Im still not convinced that crypto is worth it. It seems like just about everyone either loses money in crypto or makes very little, chasing a dream laid out to them by some youtuber who is part of the very small group to make any nice amount from it. Just seems too volatile and sketchy
It's a decentralized pyramid scheme. It's a way for the rich to syphon money from the gullible and gambling addicts.
That's all there is to it, it's not really hard to understand.
THIS. This is not being communicated enough.
The issue is the new(er) generations think they have discovered something never seen before, all the while truth being - the only new thing is the way people are being manipulated into investing in trickster scheme.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have been there when internet was born. We have witnessed it and we have learned from our mistakes. It is not you who are smarter, it is us knowing not to buy tulips.
Im still not convinced that crypto is worth it. I
That's because it isn't. In fact it is a completely destructive concept, which utilises a shitload of energy which could have been better applied elsewhere, and only facilitates scams and other crimes.
Crypto is basically a ponzi-scheme. I made a little bit off of it, then sold too early. Then bought back in, and sold way too early. Then bought back in, then lost a lot. The only real benefit is anonymity, which I don't really need and only really benefits criminals. I don't see it taking over if someone like the EU introduces fee-free digital transactions.
Most crypto is only pseudo-anonymous. One identified transaction and everything becomes public.
In 2024 Illicit volume dropped to USD 45 billion, down 24% since 2023. This represents 0.4% of overall crypto transactions
"before 1990" ffs. I was expecting "before 1960"
I've been called an "elder millennial" before and I thought that was funny. But just "elder"... bitch, fuck you!
elders
1990
It's not "brain melting". Even watching the internet go from "this is super neat, and way cool" (For nerds) to "Well, it's ALL going through enshittification now" wasn't "brain melting", it's just what happens under capitalism.
Going from seeing nothing but possibilities when I heard about some new device or software coming out to dreading what they are going to remove or break has been one of the most depressing parts about my life.
Hell, I was looking to replace my 10 year old mouse last weekend and couldn't find one that was equivalent or better. I even asked people who were more into computer shit than me and I felt like I was taking crazy pills reading their responses. I ended up just fixing the problem myself rather than replacing it.
I don’t expect them to understand crypto. No one expects them to understand crypto.
I expect them to understand FUCKING FASCISM.
Noone is expecting you to understand crypto, but I hear this about modern technology in general all the time and I just don't buy it. It's only brain-melting if you've spent your entire life being deeply incurious. There are 80-90 year olds who understand this shit just fine because they bothered to keep up.
Apparently I'm an elder.
The shifts in tech were easy.
It's the repeated economic punishment, school shootings, terrorist attacks, and political dive bomb this country has put us through that's been tough.
I’m old enough to remember going to Hollywood video or blockbuster with my grandma on Fridays. Have a movie night. Those were some amazing memories.
I remember going to friends places for sleepovers, we would all go down to the video rental and pick one movie each, then pick up takeaway on the way home. We'd stay up all night watching each video and pigging out on food
My grandparents lived in houses before electricity and lived long enough that computers in their pocket could talk to them. Hopefully it is a few centuries before that much happens in 103 years
Nobody is expected to understand crypto. Same with the stock market and generally the economy. If it was simple and see thru you couldn’t run this many scams.