[the_af]

The internet was pretty fucked up in the 90s / early 00s.

Much less regulated, you could find all sorts of weird stuff (and yes, also porn) in it.

And it didn't mess us up. Before that, we teens had access to naughty magazines. I had a friend who managed to rent porn movies from the local videoclub (before Blockbuster).

"Life, uh, finds a way."

[fragmede]

> And it didn't mess us up.

Honest question: If it did, how would we know? Here is a thread on incels.is where a dude tricked a woman into flying to another country because he "knows she deserves it". https://incels.is/threads/i-just-made-a-woman-fly-from-spain...

With reproduction rates falling, and people having all sorts of trouble with relationships, what does "messed up" look like, and why are we so sure that we actually aren't when the world is increasingly polarized and having trouble with authoritarianism? How can we prove those things aren't actually linked?

[the_af]

To be honest I think incels as a full-blown phenomenon came after my generation. In any case, as my sibling commenters point out, there are so many variables you cannot really isolate which one is responsible for the incels. Did porn play a part? Maybe. I bet there are lots of things that played a larger part, including other aspects/platforms of the internet which spread hateful and misogynistic rhetoric.

[iamnothere]

How can we be sure that it isn’t the result of the US leaving the gold standard? Or the increase in automotive recalls? Or the increase in the number of hot dogs consumed at hot dog eating competitions? I’m sure there’s a connection. https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

[Larrikin]

Hating women and having her waste money on a flight is way better than burning her at the stake, stoning her, or chatting her up because you are a serial killer.

Theres a long history there. It is already a good thing that most people identify that behavior as weird and awful instead of it being socially acceptable or even the law.