Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
I think for me in my country it would be the collapse of the social contract. The bonds that society regulates itself.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
Design has changed. Instead of building powerful featues that are available to the user however they want to use it. The focus has shifted to providing a simplified linear interface where pressing a single button does the task and the tools to modify the action are hidden from the user. So if your use case doesnt 100% allign youre fucked.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
Isolation of individuals and the growing loss of ownership of, well, everything.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
No third places.
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4 things
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People are getting lonelier and lonelier, even if we have the technoloogy, we keep getting further apart, it takes weeks to make time to see someone. So here I am, travelling alone...
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The attention span
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The willingness to actually do some legwork, laziness, or conformity.
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This will not sound nice: people getting dumber.
There. I said it.
my 4 cents
peepull arnt getten dummer tho
dey allreddy was dumm b4
dum ppl got moar voyse naow -
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Humanity getting dumber and dumber…
Nah, its just that the stupid people got louder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
People got smarter overall.
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There are more idiots. Flatearthers, space deniers, antivaxxers. The more information people have access to the less intelligent society seems to get.
Surveillance Capitalism is getting more out of hand every year. Combined with more data breaches it's not great.
The number of idiots definitely grew, but the percentage of idiots overall probably dropped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
People got smarter. Idiots grew louder.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]From an artistic perspective, self-"publishing" (and I use quotations quite on purpose), changed writing as we know it and drastically dropped the average reading level of the public since now any chimp can bang their fist on a keyboard for an hour, upload it to Amazon and call themselves an "author" beside Stephen King or Umberto Eco.
It was always hailed as "the end of the so-called gatekeepers". Without stopping to realise that gatekeepers/publishers exist for a reason. So that the public zeitgeist isn't completely overrun with utter crap.
The response to having your short story or novel rejected used to be "okay...I'll learn, practice and get better for the next time." Now, it's "screw you...I'll pollute the zeitgeist with my 3rd grade level grammar nightmare with or without you and put it right up there on the shelf next to the actual writers."
Just imagine if a doctor flunked out of med-school, and instead of trying harder, just said "screw you, I'm going to open up my own surgery and put it right next door to you and there's nothing you can do to stop me...."
What a crazy stupid world we live in.
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When I was in high school, gay was the generic negative word. If Wendys gave you a medium fry when you ordered a large - gay. If your homie cancelled plans last minute - gay. If you slipped on the stairs and busted your ass - gay. It's bizarre in hindsight.
The rednecks around me have taught their children to use "gay" as an insult
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When I was still a kid, we went from bring a plate of cookies to your neighbor and introduce yourself to DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS!!
Maybe I took that advice too far because now I barely talk to anybody.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
There's not as many people outside just....existing. I'm not that old but I remember just going outside and seeing people just not doing anything in particular everywhere, now it seems like everyone always has some place to rush to and no one is allowed to just exist in public places anymore. Maybe that also has something to do with my perspective shifting has I got older, but I still feel like it's true.
Also bugs. There are like NO fucking bugs anymore. Couple decades ago you could walk out and get sandblasted by a million different bugs and now everything just feels so fucking dead and sterile and depressed. It's like outside was replaced by a clinic and no one bothered to complain.
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Nah, its just that the stupid people got louder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
People got smarter overall.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Actually...
study - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
CNN article talking about the study - https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html
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There's not as many people outside just....existing. I'm not that old but I remember just going outside and seeing people just not doing anything in particular everywhere, now it seems like everyone always has some place to rush to and no one is allowed to just exist in public places anymore. Maybe that also has something to do with my perspective shifting has I got older, but I still feel like it's true.
Also bugs. There are like NO fucking bugs anymore. Couple decades ago you could walk out and get sandblasted by a million different bugs and now everything just feels so fucking dead and sterile and depressed. It's like outside was replaced by a clinic and no one bothered to complain.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]The bug thing seriously worries me
I remember so many more bugs as a child. I haven't needed mosquito spray in quite a while even while hiking
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Kids are still mean, they just use different words now
Yeah. The way bullying happens seems to have changed since my time.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]The world has less colour.
This isn't a dramatic "I'm depressed" post, though that is a factor. Nature is still nature-coloured, for one, and it still looks lovely.
I mean that like, you'd go outside and look at the cars and see a rainbow of colours. Now it's all black, silver, or white. You only see colorful cars if they are really old beat up rustbuckets or if they are brand new luxury vehicles used by super rich people.
Buildings too. Businesses and the buildings they set up shop in would be painted with garish, eye popping colour. Now everything trends towards landlord-beige.
Edit: And it should be noted, this happened for a reason, and I am aware of that reason, and that just makes me crankier.
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Actually...
study - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
CNN article talking about the study - https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html
Interesting it briefly went back up in the 90s for many before dropping again.
I imagine it was because of the transition from analog to digital in many things
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There's not as many people outside just....existing. I'm not that old but I remember just going outside and seeing people just not doing anything in particular everywhere, now it seems like everyone always has some place to rush to and no one is allowed to just exist in public places anymore. Maybe that also has something to do with my perspective shifting has I got older, but I still feel like it's true.
Also bugs. There are like NO fucking bugs anymore. Couple decades ago you could walk out and get sandblasted by a million different bugs and now everything just feels so fucking dead and sterile and depressed. It's like outside was replaced by a clinic and no one bothered to complain.
I live in a massive city and you’ll see loads of people just existing all the time.
I used to think the same about bugs too but I see shit loads when walking near trees and in the woods or down canals. Even my car still murders 100’s on a commute to work. Headed you don’t see them in city centre but that’s just hygiene is better now. IMO
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Domestic flights should basically not be a thing. Trains should be the default option if you don't have to cross an ocean.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Uhh, I'm gonna disagree with this. My family is 1700 miles away, without high speed rail I'm not doing that trip if there aren't flights. It's still a long ass trip by high speed rail. I might be willing to do that trip on regular rail if corporations didn't fuck it up for passengers and if it was direct, very few stops, and activities were available on board. That's a long ass time to be travelling on the ground.
For the Europeans out there, that's like going from Paris to Kyiv, and I'm not even crossing the whole country.
I do agree that there should be rail between large cities, distances under 400 miles should be able to be done by rail.
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Is 1776 an American thing? Because it does not seem to ring a bell for me...
Yeah, it's when Americans told Georgie boy to eat a dick.
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Absolutely. I didn't realize they did more of a story arc until I ended up seeing clips on yt. I definitely remember some of the lore episodes but I definitely wasn't smart enough to piece together any lore. I might have to suffer through the occasional "lol random" episodes just to see the lore through.
To be fair, the randomness is part of the lore too and has to do with the effects strong magic has on most users, and maybe a chaos god I think.
