What I've realized about the internet, and addiction

[Misery]

So, I've mentioned before that I had realized that I was heavily addicted to Youtube and such, and that I needed to get away from it. Drastically less of it. Well, drastically less screen time overall.

Some of this has been sort of gradual, sometimes I'll do a brief "detox" where I just refuse to touch the internet *at all* for a time. I chip away at it a bit each time.

However, in the process of pulling away, I've had a lot of realizations and discoveries and such.

Firstly, I must be honest with myself and acknowledge that the claws of addiction were deeper into me than I thought. Pulling away from this nonsense has been REALLY hard. Harder than I thought. I've relapsed badly more than once, though fortunately I pull myself back out of that after not too long each time. It also occurs to me that some of my autism traits can play into this. Youtube is a stim for me in a lot of ways. It provides familiar things that produce specific sensory effects that work as that, which can explain my high tendency towards certain specific types of videos, or videos with specific editing styles.

It's not just that though. I realized a much deeper reason for this addiction. I like to blame it on many factors, but the true underlying reason is that I'm constantly chasing something that simply is not there anymore, and cannot be recovered. I've been on the internet for a long time. A very long time. Since the start, really. And while I'm very quiet IRL, online I am different. I meet people and make friends online very easily, and I can draw attention to myself easily as well, getting others to approach me instead of the other way around. Because of that, I connected with people very often in the form of direct messaging systems.

Mostly, it was AIM, or AOL Instant Messenger. As much as I ramble on about Youtube, or about online gaming, the actual truly important part of the internet for me was AIM. It was the main way of communicating with those I met online, in direct real-time conversations. So very, very many of the most important events in my life were set off through AIM, and I made many lasting friends. Plenty of which I was lucky enough to later meet IRL (generally at conventions, but not always). There were people I talked to literally every single day. Not all, of course. But some of them, that closeness was there. It ended up being a "circle of friends", too. Since many of them also knew each other. Forums were also very important to me, and are where some of those connections were initially found, but really it was AIM at the core.

This lasted for a very long time. What... two decades? I think so, yeah. But the internet was changing. Suddenly social media started popping up. Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Reddit appeared, draining the life from forums. Many old sites started to fall. Remember LiveJournal? Yeah, neither does most people. I had a huge page on there... how have I forgotten that? Just been that long, I guess.

And eventually, AIM broke. It happened fast. It was inevitable, really. But none of us were prepared for that. And once it happened, it was irrevocable.

That whole circle of friends? Gone. Just gone. All at once. There was no way to restore those connections, no way to find any of them again. I never really used email as a method of connecting, and of course the many forums I'd met a lot of them on originally had long since vanished. I never saw or heard from any of them again, because how could I? And no amount of searching could fix it. They are gone. And that... that hurt. More than I want to admit.

The addiction began not long after that, and I realize now why: because I was chasing what used to be there. Something that couldnt be found. So, as I do, I latched on hard to certain places online, and just kept digging at them. Surely something would fill that void. Something, anything, to stop that pain. But stuff just doesnt work that way, does it?

Breaking away from the parts that I was most stuck to forced me to confront all of that. But it also did something else. The more I pulled away, the more the illusion started to come apart as well. With the connection to the main source of addiction damaged, suddenly the shiny veneer came apart, and I finally saw how ugly the whole thing really was. Which I had somehow not at all noticed all these years. And of course it wasnt just Youtube. It's everywhere, isnt it?

It's all corporate now... and poisonous, toxic, hateful, bigoted, bland, homogenized, mentally and emotionally draining, and so utterly packed with ads that trying to browse any of it without adblockers is torture. Social media reigns supreme, and is so strong that for some, their entire freaking life seems to revolve around it. Forums were torn apart and replaced by one single giant amalgamation, which is Reddit. Which is possibly even more toxic than freaking Twitter... I took some time to browse through it, randomly observing and seeing what I might find, and it's the worst place I've ever seen on the Net (almost). Which is what happens when you smash EVERYONE together into one spot, instead of having many separate locations. Instant message apps and chatrooms were replaced by Discord, which is just as bad... again, instead of many separate services people could choose from, now everyone just goes to that one, because it's just that big. Of course it's toxic as all heck.

In recent times I've often heard people say that soon the internet will be dead, a wasteland. AI and scammers and such taking over everywhere and such. But you know what? I think they got that wrong. I think it's been dead for a very long time. I dont mean like the "dead internet theory". I mean that it's gotten so utterly corrupted that it's not really even the "internet" anymore. Everything that made the Net special is just... gone. It used to be so chaotic and creative and personalized and just amazing. Now it's... corporate. I dont know what other word to use. And of course what helps those corporations is to zombify everyone, get them just glued to it all without even truly noticing what's happening to them (so they generate ad revenue). Nobody goes to Reddit or whatever to make friends, make connections. They go to yell at each other, scream into echo chambers, and find things to get angry at or scared by. Or to get told by influencers what to think. IS there even anywhere to make connections anymore? Steam is the only thing that comes to mind, but that's a bizarre bastion of a very special type, and it's a miracle it exists (and only possible due to the unusual nature of the company that owns it).

The internet as a whole though... It's all dead, and somehow I hadnt truly noticed until I started attacking that deranged connection I had to it. I'd been caught up in that illusion for YEARS.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this. I think to some degree I needed to just rant and type to get it out of my system and process it better. The addiction coming apart is very jarring, and the destruction of AIM still hurts as much as ever, even after all this time.

Just... ugh. That's enough out of me. I'm going to go and, I dunno, stare at a wall or something.

 

[Xinyta]

This is a wonderful revelation.

I do agree that the internet feels hollow. Especially now. I think all of us, who have used the internet for quite a few years. Are coming to this discovery too, in our own ways.

I do find myself trapped in watching specific YouTube videos types. Checking on long dead places, like Gaia Online. Looking for some semblance of my teenage years. It's all gone now...

It's another example of how damaging holding on to the past, truly is. But also. This revelation also shows how damaged the world really is too.

Socail media has truly poisoned the human experience and accentuated the darkest aspects of the human condition.

So much bitterness.

 

[AuAL]

Um. The Internet is a whole bunch of comms and DNS that allows computers and other digital devices around the world to communicate with each other. What we all do with it is a whole different story. I know “the internet” has become shorthand for all the ecosystems that have been layered on top of it, but this is classic “kill the messenger”. I mourn the days of Usenet News, I was there when September didn’t end. But it is up to us to use this communication technology to our own advantage. Isn’t that what we’re doing here? How can we find inventive ways to do more, and better.

 

[tlc]

Your post is a winner to me, but at the same time the sad truth. Aside from probably less than a hour of use in college from 1994-1996, I started online in 1997 at the age of 21. It was beautiful. The main ISP for northern Michigan had a chatroom, and I met close to 100 people on there. They had occasional meets where you could put a face to a screenname. Several turned into short term relationships.

Chatrooms actually taught me to become proficient at typing. I had typing classes in school, but it was always a secondary process. I would still have to use a pencil and paper to get my thoughts into writing. Then painfully type them if I absolutely had to. Chatrooms are the only thing that formed that connection between my brain and fingers to allow me to directly type what I was thinking. I couldn’t imagine going through life now if that hadn’t happened.

I also used Lycos chat, and IRC chat, for chatting with more of a variety of people. Once I knew someone, I kept up with them on either AIM, MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger. But also email too. Today a meaningful email is about as long gone as paper letters in the mail.

Once I got into my own house in 1999, I started on forums. Some still exist, but most of my favorites are long gone. Yahoo Clubs, which became Yahoo Groups, I had so many car buddies on there. Gone. After that I went to an A-body forum. 2 decades of experiences and enthusiast info, gone overnight without warning. Corsica forum, gone. CarDomain, gone. 60 degree V6 exists but they don’t take new members.

I miss Web 1.0, before social media. It really did have everything you needed. There was online banking, shopping, dating (when it was good and meaningful). Niche stores and auctions. Full of personal pages, which were either someone’s odd creation from their own personality, or an enthusiast page about a subject, which was great to connect with the author. I never used Live Journal but knew people who did.

Many sites that do survive are just a sad reminder of their heyday, with loads of old content, but new content is like the last few flakes of confetti in the air after a celebration. The hardest part for me is that I tried most of my life to get high speed internet. I had to run without scripts, videos, and could only selectively see pictures one at a time. By the time it came to my area in December 2020, the party was over. At least I could video chat with my doctor.

While there was much less content back then, it was easier to find. Now most everything is corporate, and bean counters and AI have all poisoned the pot. To quote a certain car enthusiast, the internet has become “a toxic soup of misinformation”. Another quote from an RV enthusiast 25 years ago “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Use only trusted publications.” Is more true now than ever.

I refuse to use toxic sites (yes I’m old, I still say sites over apps) like Facebook, Reddit, etc. I don’t have a Youtube account or anything like that. It’s like I wouldn’t even know where to start. Once in awhile I go looking at nostalgia, but for the most part, I just do my own thing offline. I have run into a handful of guys at car shows, who I talked with in forums over 20 years ago. Who are still doing the same thing as well. That’s been really nice.

I am thankful that this site has not noticeably changed since I joined in 2014. That kind of stability means a lot.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

I’ve never been much into “social media.” But I do have a canoe tripping forum which is regularly used by a cadre of us weirdos who think paddling (real physical effort) into real wilderness (read rain, bugs, wild animals) is what is meaningful in life. I do feel kinship with these people and have even visited a couple, though we are far-flung.

There is also still an active tropical fruit forum. I visit less now because of the stage of gardening I’m in now.

Everyone complains about Reddit, but when I’ve been referred there for specific topics, the threads have been cordial and helpful. It’s not somewhere I would want to hang out.

 

[Judge]

I still spend time on YouTube seven days a week. Though my scope of subjects I review seems to get smaller and smaller. Especially when I see so many patterns of deceitful and deplorable ways of content creators garnering their audience. But human nature being what it is, I suspect for every more astute and discriminating viewer of Youtube, there are ten times as many who routinely take the "clickbait".

 

[Outdated]

To me the worst aspect of social media is the AI generated search results that keep "suggesting" what you should read. That's Propaganda 101. And when you try to search for specific topics or videos you have to wade through mountains of rubbish to be able to find what you're looking for.

 

[NB79]

Internet could be a great tool, but i think it's bad for society.

 

[tlc]

Internet could be a great tool, but i think it's bad for society.

In my younger years I used to say that I believed the world could become 1000x smarter with this new ability to easily share information. Wishful thinking. What I failed to realize is everything would increase 1000x, not just the good but the bad too. We have made a lot of great advances, but toxicity has increased just as much.

 

[Kit]

I realized how addicted to Reddit i was because i was commenting so much in subreddits, I broke it and got my two accounts permantely suspended without any warning. It was just random and I was following their site wide rules.

I had this exact same experience on wrongplanet too when it was very active. I commented so much the mods decided I was violating the rules there. This was in 2009 and 2010. But the mods there were power hungry and saw bad motives everywhere.

I also noticed the older your account is, easier it is to get banned if you're too active. Just do lot of reading and lurking than commenting a lot. These days, websites with lot of traffic and over 100,000 users use AI bots and will suspend accounts randomly and customer service sucks now because it's all ran by bots. Reddit is like that and they don't respond to any requests in contact us. Reddit has even banned accounts without users even posting or commenting because the bot decided their account was a ban evasion even though it was their only account. The bot will deny the appeal.

Better to go back to using forums like this that is ran by humans than bots.

I can't just make a new account or their bot will just suspend it again. So I'm going to wait till I get a new phone. Wait until we move and I can try registering again on reddit and only use it on desktop. I will use an email I never used on reddit before. Then hopefully the bot won't recognize me. Maybe reddit team will Crack Down on accounts just getting banned for no reason and reverse the bans. It's happened before due to a bug in their system. I'm not ip banned or my husband and son would have been banned. I'm just device banned and by email. My alt got suspended and then my main hours later so I assume it was by device. I've been a reddit user for 10 years. That means commenting and posting.

So the reddit ban pushed me back here again and wrongplanet and other places. But I'm too afraid to comment a lot now so I won't break youtube or Facebook and Twitter.

 

[AspieChris]

IMO…. addiction isn’t generally running TOWARDS something. (I.e. nobody wakes up one day and decides to be an alcoholic, then consumes as much booze as the liver can handle until the brain is physically dependent.) Usually addiction is an act of avoidance, choosing an action or substance that helps stop some sort of pain. And in modern society….. that pain is often loneliness.

Social media is the new heroin. It cures loneliness so well that addicts can’t put down their phones. And the withdrawals are instant, and deep.

 

[Dagan]

I feel like it's come full circle for me. I started using online and such because it was the key to entertainment industry connections, opened up the world and all started out by mostly just using proboards style forums (much like this one). Myspace, etc. came along and changed the game, yada, yada. Then, yes, ads, congested corruption and all of the hate-spreaders infiltrated all of social media and even industry corners, basically trying to control the narratives of all things - seriously trying to entice or even guilt-trip you into caring about, championing and/or having to have opinion on and comment about everything, everywhere, every day, blah, blah, blah...madness.

Fast-forward to now, and I'm right back to being more at home on a very proboards style forum chatting with folks, and really just per whichever topic makes me feel I can relate and add something here and there. I don't feel the pressure or any animosity, if or when I can't have an opinion or comment about something. I think I know a pretty good bit of knowledge, but I'm definitely not some "know-it-all," nor do I want to be. Folks expecting such of me or even if it was just bots expecting me to be such...ugh...it's overwhelming.

I think people need to acknowledge for themselves and in regards to others that it's okay to not care about everything 24/7 and the world over. I don't mean that to sound heartless or careless completely, but I mean in terms of what you can honestly, truly help or do something about. In all of the whole world, you always must take care of you and yours' needs, first. Folks should understand that and not prey on you otherwise, but the internet is full of predators. Most of us grew up just fine without the internet at all. It was definitely a calmer time. You'd think the older generation in political offices would think and want the same thing, but for some reason they don't. They want all of the attention they can get. It's annoying. They need to quit running their mouths and just run their countries.

Dang, I didn't mean to ramble on, either. Good, solid topic. We are all feeling some kind of way about it.

 

[Misery]

Socail media has truly poisoned the human experience and accentuated the darkest aspects of the human condition.

So much bitterness.

Agreed.

Of course, good luck getting anyone to drop it. I tell ya, I'm REALLY glad I never fell into Facebook or Twitter to start with. When those originally showed up, I declared them to be bloody stupid, and didnt bother trying them.

And boy am I glad I didnt. Otherwise I might be where much of my family is... constantly checking and scrolling and checking. In between all the video watching.

Try as I might, I cant get them to spot the problem with it all. Fortunately they never got poisoned by hate from it or anything... merely hypnotized.

But it is up to us to use this communication technology to our own advantage. Isn’t that what we’re doing here? How can we find inventive ways to do more, and better.

I wish I had a good answer to this. But it seems that many of the good things already vanished, and many things that COULD be good are just misused until they are just awful.

It's part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. I cant fix the Net. But I can fix how I respond to it. And just wandering away seems a fine response right now.

For me, this forum and Steam are all that's left.

IMO…. addiction isn’t generally running TOWARDS something. (I.e. nobody wakes up one day and decides to be an alcoholic, then consumes as much booze as the liver can handle until the brain is physically dependent.) Usually addiction is an act of avoidance, choosing an action or substance that helps stop some sort of pain. And in modern society….. that pain is often loneliness.

Social media is the new heroin. It cures loneliness so well that addicts can’t put down their phones. And the withdrawals are instant, and deep.

Aye, many are indeed running from loneliness.

But I think there's one other huge thing they're often running from: Their own insecurities, their own fear of failure. And of course their fear of being PERCEIVED as a failure.

On the internet, so many people seem to have this attitude of "I must be a 'winner' at all times", even if what they are doing is DEFINITELY putting themselves in a losing position. So long as they are made to feel like they are winning, that's what matters. If the internet agrees with someone on things then surely that person isnt a failure... so they'll go to places where that'll happen, even if those places are some of the worst on the Net.

Even better if those echo chambers give that feeling of connection to fight back against loneliness.

And if those places are *deeply* hateful? Well, that's fine, they'll say. So long as it's hateful towards the "other", and not towards the person seeking that validation.

From there, the toxin spreads.

 

[Metalhead]

I am so happy I gave up Facebook a few months ago.

I am addicted to forums, though, and to hitting the refresh buttons waiting for replies to anything I say to anybody. I am too lonely IRL since most of my friends have families that take up their time and I really don't have much of that myself.

 

[Rodafina]

But it is up to us to use this communication technology to our own advantage. Isn’t that what we’re doing here?

I see it this way, too.

The Internet is simply fascinating and very new and fast moving relatively speaking. It makes sense that it would capture human attention in all sorts of ways. But, if it is getting in the way of basic responsibilities, obfuscating meaningful goals and achievements, or acting as a means of avoiding feelings, then surely, that is problematic.

It reminds me of a food addiction. This is not something I have personally struggled with, but as I understand it, food addictions can be especially tricky because we must eat food to live and it’s always there right in front of us. Whereas I, a recovering drug addict, can put myself in a position where I am never in the presence of opiates, doing so with food is impossible.

Although not exactly as necessary as food, the Internet does seem like a new necessity of modern life that would be extremely hard to avoid full stop. I imagine this would make breaking any addiction to it much more difficult. For most of us, our daily lives involve using the Internet for a whole variety of things – some of them more necessary than others.

I think another complicating factor would be that within our own group here, many of us use the Internet for a comfortable means of human connection. For a community of people who widely share difficulties in spending time face-to-face with other humans or maintaining long-term fulfilling friendships, the ability to have meaningful connections with others via the Internet can be very important and also healthy.

I guess the answer is to find a path of moderation and as @Misery mentioned, knowing ourselves. We need to recognize patterns in our own behavior that are detrimental and apply the necessary intervention to refrain from perpetuating harmful cycles. Whatever it takes will likely be worth it because a life governed by any sort of addiction can quickly become a very sad one. Life is too short to drown ourselves in unhealthy things for the short term reward that they promise.