| I've come to think about internet usage as "high-stimulus" or "low-stimulus". Low stim internet usage would be things like looking up the actor from that one movie, and then getting the name. When you get the name, you get a low level of stimulus. You just go "oh yeah, right". High stim internet is an unregulated and extremely addictive drug. So much of the internet is meticulously designed to elicit the biggest possible emotional reaction from its users, who may then get caught in the undertow of looking for the next big emotional rush. Content is irrelevant; the same content could be styled as "FIFTEEN AMAZING FOOD HACKS, NUMBER EIGHT WILL BEAT UP YOUR FATHER!" or it could be styled as "hey did you know you can crunch up breakfast cereal and use it as breading" Twitter, reddit, instagram; these and many other sites are just ranches for people who are caught up in the undertow to spend half their day on, bleeding out personal information to whomever wants to buy it. So I guess I'm not baffled by how negative it is, how little you gain from it once you're on it long term, or why peopl euse it long term despite that. It's a drug. They're addicted. No one's stopping the pushers. It's not going to stop on its own. |