[Throw_Away_5473]

> Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up.

People on the Internet are extremely pro-drug. People like to believe things that confirm their priors, and since nearly no one on the Internet is against marijuana legalization, the quote does normally go unchallenged.

[nkozyra]

> People on the Internet are extremely pro-drug

I think that's a reductive reading - the war on drugs and in particular as it relates to marijuana has been under a lot of scrutiny. And public acceptance of marijuana is steadily growing.

This more suggests to me that a critical analysis of the criminalization of marijuana has tended toward a verdict of "folly" (in the best case scenario) or "targeted mode of oppression" (in the worst).

Reading that as implicitly pro-drug is simplistic in my view.

[colek42]

Everyone in the US is on the internet, for all intensive purposes.

[gnu8]

Having a smart phone and a Facebook account does not constitute being on the Internet. In many ways, AOL users were closer to being Internet users than most people are now.

[vonseel]

To play devils advocate, if I don’t have a Facebook/Twitter/IG/Reddit account, and I am unaware of what’s going on and being discussed on social media, am I really “on the internet”?

[gnu8]

I was really talking about people who never stray outside of the walled garden of Facebook. In the case of someone who never enters the walled garden, but partakes of the web, email, and other such applications, I would say they are on the Internet.

[vonseel]

Understood. I was really asking because I have deactivated my Facebook account several months ago and had deactivated my IG. I re-activated IG, but I broke the habit of compulsively scrolling the feed and rarely open the app these days.

All that aside, now that I'm not really "on social media", I feel quite disconnected with the world sometimes. Unless I speak to them directly, it's hard to keep track of what any of my friends or acquaintances are doing in life: who's having kids? who's in a new relationship? who got married? who moved to the city? who had a major career change?

Granted, not everyone posts these kinds of details, in fact most of my feed in a network of ~850 persons was dominated by a handful of heavy posters/social media addicts. Even so, occasionally seeing something from someone I otherwise would not talk to was a small window into their lives and kept me slightly aware of things. Sometimes it's people commenting on news I wouldn't otherwise see, sometimes it's pictures of kids..

All that said, the compulsive scrolling action and concern over my own internet identity became a bit much for me, so I'm still inactive on FB.

[ysr23]

>> for all intensive purposes

I've never actually seen that written down, i have _suspected_ people have been saying it, rather than: "for all intents and purposes"

but was never sure, so i googled and its fairly common: https://grammarist.com/eggcorns/for-all-intensive-purposes/

[jessaustin]

One reading of GP would be "Online anonymity allows honesty, so basically everyone is against drug prohibition."