Does Anyone Else Feel Like They're 'outgrowing' The Internet?

[skittles]

I dunno why I'm posting this here.. I definitely lurk here more than I post, but I've been lurking here for like seven years now. I guess this place kinda just feels like home to me. And home seems like the right place to share my thoughts.

I'm thinking of taking an indefinite break from the internet. Like, removing it from my house and going to a cafe or something if I absolutely need it. I don't have a smartphone. I don't have any of the usual social media thingies (although I circulate three or four subreddits and this forum). I've taken mini-breaks from the internet before - a week here and there. But for the most part, I feel like I've been staring at a computer screen since the 90s.

And although the internet is an amazing tool for information and communication and yadda yadda yadda, and you can learn anything on it, and watch movies on it and blah blah blah... for some reason lately, I'm just tired of it.

Do I really need to know everything? Do I really even care?

I feel like things on the internet are far too deep inside my circle of concern. Far deeper than things in my physical world that should clearly matter more to me. I'm tired of cycling through the same old things, reiterating things I already know. My threshold for what I find interesting or exciting has become too low: "oh, hey, something that I'm not very interested in, but maybe I could possibly find it interesting, because there's nothing else more interesting in my immediate vicinity". I'm tired of feeding my stream of consciousness into Google. I'm tired of getting a chuckle out of memes. I'm tired of this artificial need to be endlessly entertained.

I'm tired of trying to convince myself that I'm satisfied by the conclusion without the journey.

Refresh...
Refresh...

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I miss the days when we had dedicated things, like books, and calculators, and watches, and written letters, and TVs, and CDs, and human interaction. Now it's like, everything happens through this one machine. Everything! And anything! And when you had a dedicated thing, it somehow made things more special. Back in the day, you didn't go buy every TV series under the sun, you only bought your favourites - the ones you'd re-watch over and over. You didn't waste your time and money on the rest of them because they weren't special. But now we just zip through something to get on to the next one.

I'm a music/audio production geek. These days, you can just torrent every plugin and virtual instrument under the sun. Click a preset. Next, next, next. But back in the day, you'd spend an assload of hard-earned cash on a fancy new synth. But you spent a lot of money, so of course you'd spend a lot of time with that one thing, getting intimate with it, experimenting with it within the confines of its limitations. There was something really special about that.

I even kind of miss the old internet. It was still available, but it was a hassle. You had to block up your phone line, and it was slow as heck. It wasn't very fancy or colourful, and it had obstacles that prevented us from obsessively checking back at the same junk or looking up random bits of trivia that come up in conversations. Often, you couldn't even find what you were looking for.

I'm getting off into the weeds here. I guess what I'm trying to say is - and I could be wrong, but - I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way lately. I think a growing number of people are getting tired of the internet, but they've spent so much time jacked in that despite wanting to escape, they have a difficult time breaking free from it. This machine doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't tell me anything I really need to know, and it eats up all my time. It makes everything less special. I feel like my life ought to be less 'out there', and more 'right here'.

The internet was introduced to everyone at roughly the same time, and we went through the big internet boom together. And a few decades later, we've seen, frankly, all there is to see. Will we collectively outgrow it?

This might just be my last post here. I'll miss you all.

See you on the other side.

 

[LeeLemonoil]

Nice post, I share much of the sentiment. So might say it’s nostalgia - part of it certainly is -

But part of it: information overload, addictive effects of net use and the joyless over-accessability of things. Humans are not adapted to that.

The Synthie-example is good. A musician thus had a limited amount of effects - but eventually he knew his tool intimately and virtuously within the inherent limitations - and that is where the real creativity began. Within these limits there were highly creative arrangements and so forth ... listen to 80s pop. Imagine some of the most iconic tracks had all the digital tools available .... none of them would sound so special. I like the synth-stuff for its unpolished yet atmospheric sound. And that’s applicable to lots of things. Too much possibility is as paralysing as no possibility.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, all the best to you !

 

[Attakai]

Nice post, I share much of the sentiment. So might say it’s nostalgia - part of it certainly is -

But part of it: information overload, addictive effects of net use and the joyless over-accessability of things. Humans are not adapted to that.

The Synthie-example is good. A musician thus had a limited amount of effects - but eventually he knew his tool intimately and virtuously within the inherent limitations - and that is where the real creativity began. Within these limits there were highly creative arrangements and so forth ... listen to 80s pop. Imagine some of the most iconic tracks had all the digital tools available .... none of them would sound so special. I like the synth-stuff for its unpolished yet atmospheric sound. And that’s applicable to lots of things. Too much possibility is as paralysing as no possibility.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, all the best to you !

There has been a retro synth pop resurgence the last few years.
Check it out, you might like it.

 

[ilikecats]

“I even kind of miss the old internet. It was still available, but it was a hassle. You had to block up your phone line, and it was slow as heck. It wasn't very fancy or colourful, and it had obstacles that prevented us from obsessively checking back at the same junk or looking up random bits of trivia that come up in conversations. Often, you couldn't even find what you were looking for.”

If this level of completely superfluous nostalgia isn’t indicative of physiological dysfunction I don’t know what is.

It’s kind of hard to outgrow the most profound and important research/information resource of.... all time.

 

[Andman]

agree with OP, the amount of time i spend in front of a screen (at work and in private) is downright scary. hard to change though

 

[Makrosky]

Your thoughts and concerns are totally legitimate. I agree to most of them and I felt reflected on what you wrote. Do it if you can but watch out for the withdrawal symptoms. It is worse than heroin.

 

[Lilac]

I sympathize with the OP's sentiments. I just spent 36 hours without the internet, and I slept long and well. But driving home from the country, I saw ugly cell towers spoiling the horizon and chemtrails mucking up what should have been a fresh blue sky. I was heading back to the fluoridated water. So even if you personally shut down the Internet, your air, water, brain frequency, food supply, and pictures of nature are still being degraded. It's depressing as heck.

But as the OP point out, without the Internet, I would not have found Dr. Peat and a lot of other truths. So use it as best you can.

I will try to read out of books this week.

 

[Sheik]

On the contrary, I've outgrown real life.

 

[LeeLemonoil]

On the contrary, I've outgrown real life.

 

[somuch4food]

The problem is not the Internet in itself. It's that we are the first generation with access to it. Like anything new and dazzling, we go crazy over it and get addicted by it. I do hope that future generations will be better equipped to live in the digital age, even though I know it will take a while to adapt to it.

Avoiding it if you want to will make your life richer I have no doubt about it, but I do think there is a place for the Internet.

I don't like what they're doing with 5G and the Internet of Things though. It's like we will all become productivity robots that don't need to make any decisions. AIs will be guessing our needs and providing to us without having to lift a finger, but we need to work to our death to afford it.

 

[Braveheart]

I dunno why I'm posting this here.. I definitely lurk here more than I post, but I've been lurking here for like seven years now. I guess this place kinda just feels like home to me. And home seems like the right place to share my thoughts.

I'm thinking of taking an indefinite break from the internet. Like, removing it from my house and going to a cafe or something if I absolutely need it. I don't have a smartphone. I don't have any of the usual social media thingies (although I circulate three or four subreddits and this forum). I've taken mini-breaks from the internet before - a week here and there. But for the most part, I feel like I've been staring at a computer screen since the 90s.

And although the internet is an amazing tool for information and communication and yadda yadda yadda, and you can learn anything on it, and watch movies on it and blah blah blah... for some reason lately, I'm just tired of it.

Do I really need to know everything? Do I really even care?

I feel like things on the internet are far too deep inside my circle of concern. Far deeper than things in my physical world that should clearly matter more to me. I'm tired of cycling through the same old things, reiterating things I already know. My threshold for what I find interesting or exciting has become too low: "oh, hey, something that I'm not very interested in, but maybe I could possibly find it interesting, because there's nothing else more interesting in my immediate vicinity". I'm tired of feeding my stream of consciousness into Google. I'm tired of getting a chuckle out of memes. I'm tired of this artificial need to be endlessly entertained.

I'm tired of trying to convince myself that I'm satisfied by the conclusion without the journey.

Refresh...
Refresh...

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I miss the days when we had dedicated things, like books, and calculators, and watches, and written letters, and TVs, and CDs, and human interaction. Now it's like, everything happens through this one machine. Everything! And anything! And when you had a dedicated thing, it somehow made things more special. Back in the day, you didn't go buy every TV series under the sun, you only bought your favourites - the ones you'd re-watch over and over. You didn't waste your time and money on the rest of them because they weren't special. But now we just zip through something to get on to the next one.

I'm a music/audio production geek. These days, you can just torrent every plugin and virtual instrument under the sun. Click a preset. Next, next, next. But back in the day, you'd spend an assload of hard-earned cash on a fancy new synth. But you spent a lot of money, so of course you'd spend a lot of time with that one thing, getting intimate with it, experimenting with it within the confines of its limitations. There was something really special about that.

I even kind of miss the old internet. It was still available, but it was a hassle. You had to block up your phone line, and it was slow as heck. It wasn't very fancy or colourful, and it had obstacles that prevented us from obsessively checking back at the same junk or looking up random bits of trivia that come up in conversations. Often, you couldn't even find what you were looking for.

I'm getting off into the weeds here. I guess what I'm trying to say is - and I could be wrong, but - I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way lately. I think a growing number of people are getting tired of the internet, but they've spent so much time jacked in that despite wanting to escape, they have a difficult time breaking free from it. This machine doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't tell me anything I really need to know, and it eats up all my time. It makes everything less special. I feel like my life ought to be less 'out there', and more 'right here'.

The internet was introduced to everyone at roughly the same time, and we went through the big internet boom together. And a few decades later, we've seen, frankly, all there is to see. Will we collectively outgrow it?

This might just be my last post here. I'll miss you all.

See you on the other side.

Nice...no, you are not an idiot.

 

[rei]

If you see the same thing over and over again you are doing something wrong. It took me in total ~10 years of intense research on the net to start understand how things actually work in this world, and ultimately it completely changed my body&health in unbelievable ways. I cannot even imagine what the next ten will bring unless my biggest fear comes true and the internet is neutered and censored by the ever more totalitarian governments.

 

[somuch4food]

If you see the same thing over and over again you are doing something wrong. It took me in total ~10 years of intense research on the net to start understand how things actually work in this world, and ultimately it completely changed my body&health in unbelievable ways. I cannot even imagine what the next ten will bring unless my biggest fear comes true and the internet is neutered and censored by the ever more totalitarian governments.

I agree that it's a great source of information, but it's becoming more and more polluted. The degradation has been becoming more apparent in the last five years as the same content gets published over and over by different websites attempting to get their share of a popular fad. Welcome to click bait Internet! Google and Facebook are the primary source of information for most and they do have their own agenda and filter news/website content according to their criteria and are influencing the world in a big underhanded way.

Do you have some tips for effective research?

 

[Motif]

You think social media will die out a bit anytime?

Or will this be around forever now.

I hope people will get sick of that sh

 

[Redshine]

I have this with the tv lately. I rather listen to music, the radio in the background, doing things around the house or taking walks with my son (when i'm not working). I had the same feeling, do I really want to know everything.. No, and when I'm sitting there inside the house there is a lot more outside to explorer.

 

[Cirion]

I can't really agree with eliminating internet entirely, because it has been extremely valuable in my health journey. Using the internet for gaining knowledge seems to be the only truly useful way to take advantage of the internet. Using it as an entertainment device though, has dumbed down society, I tend to agree.

However, I tend to agree otherwise with things like TV shows, facebook, video games, etc. All of these de-sensitize people to dopamine from everyday life experiences.

One thing that got me to quit using my phone was the excessive EMF's I was bombarding myself with. I rarely use my phone now and most of the time I don't even have it on so it doesn't blast me with EMF. I use Ethernet only now for the most part.

 

[schultz]

I'm thinking of taking an indefinite break from the internet. Like, removing it from my house and going to a cafe or something if I absolutely need it.

A friend of mine, who actually introduced me to Peat's work, doesn't have the internet at his house. He lives alone. If he wants to use the internet he will go to Starbucks, or something like that, so it gets him out of the house.

Do I really need to know everything? Do I really even care?

The internet is good for me when I need to fix something, like my car, or need to know about some livestock thing. It would be annoying if I had to drive to Starbucks just to look up how to fix my lawn mower, especially since I live 15 minutes from almost any store. Coming on the forum is probably mostly a waste of time for me. I find most of the threads that are started are almost clones of threads that were started 3 years ago, or whatever. It's the same stuff over and over, I think because new members keep joining.

This might just be my last post here. I'll miss you all.

GL

 

[danishispsychic]

I work on my laptop so there is no escaping it for me. I do agree tho- it is getting boring and watered down no? I so wanted something new like on the epsiode of Silicon Valley ( HBO ) when that guy is trying to invent " the new internet. " I want a new smarter one. :)

 

[LUH 3417]

I think the Internet makes it difficult to be present and to be in touch with your bodily energies. Unless of course you use the internet to discover tools that help you feel in touch with your bodily energies. For the most part I think culture, and internet culture, has a deadening effect on the body

 

[Cirion]

I think it's only gonna get worse too. Virtual Reality is starting to become more and more mainstream, as is Augmented reality. Eventually people will live in complete VR worlds, when things like VR MMORPGs and VR "second life" games come to fruition.

Funny because when I was a kid I wanted VR and holodecks ala Star Trek, but now I realize that it's actually gonna just make people even more out of touch with reality.