People

  On 6/20/2013 at 11:44 PM, Deer said:

 

Memes are unoriginal boring content and whoever posts/buys into memes are unoriginal boring fucks.

 

I think huge and fad oriented memes, the ones that are super crowd-sourcing oriented, show up on buzzfeed, etc. But smaller, niche memes are great, they have the same sense of community as certain music scenes/genres or local movements in art and culture. There's a beauty in things that stay underground - and some still function even after being co-opted or tainted (the sounds and and vibe of the original dubstep scene lives on in many forms for example)

For instance, this panel at SXSW talked about this small and absurd community of kids who built homemade flamethrowers. WATMM is itself one of these small communities. These will always exist and more than ever will be documented and remembered more so than those in the past, even if they never become known to mainstream society.

http://flavorwire.com/34915/what-we-learned-watching-kids-with-homemade-flamethrowers

http://learningtheworld.eu/2010/kids-with-homemade-flamethrowers/

I did learn stuff in college but I feel like post-college I've been doing more with it/understanding it better I guess? Like I took programming courses and I was like 'oh shit I bet our final project when I'm a senior will be like making a Windows clone or something' but that day never came, we were still doing stupid shit that had no relation to the real world. At least now I'm relating it to my interest in electronic music and making some effects and stuff/things that I can actually USE

I did make something I was proud of in college, it was this simple computer (a calculator with memory/branching/assembly language really) made in a circuit simulator program. I even made my own RAM and stuff even though I guess there was a pre-built unit for that lol

we also did a good amount of hard math but I sure as hell couldn't retain/apply it when I actually had an opportunity in the case of the equations involved in making an equalizer/filter

just another people thread

Thinking about things like these make me want to read more Tolkien and watch more Tarkovsky and listen to more David Bowie and go walk on moss. Sometimes I do that with kokoon and it helps.

now that God is dead people must self-defensively disregard reality's implications more opaquely and bluntly than ever before. swag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkcCBzihqjg&feature=player_detailpage

  On 6/21/2013 at 1:05 AM, Ivan Ooze said:

"posts kanye west song"

"posts kanye west song"

society has been on the decline ever since the internet became widely available. whether it will be through widespread dissemination of pornography, loss of sense of the individual and unique, creative ideas due to the pace at which they are copied/plagiarized, or people who seek to leverage anonymity to preach hateful/racist ideals in places where impressionable people will see it (young kids reading twitter or news comments), also the ever increasing shootings, it seems likely that we are apporaching end-times.

  On 6/20/2013 at 7:45 PM, kokoon said:

9gag generation. Memes. Internet as a communication medium is being (ab)used in the most shallow, banal way imaginable. And this attitude towards both humour and serious subjects has now become acceptable in the offline world as well.

I don't think I can take much more of this. Are people really getting dumber? Why is "trolling" now so cool? Did I miss some cultural stage that could explain all this? In a world where there's so much trolling going on, how can it still be considered cool?

Did I get old? What happened to sincerity? It's not a virtue anymore?

edit: some spelling, thanks lump

"posts another kanye west song"

  On 6/20/2013 at 8:02 PM, Friendly Foil said:

I'm sick and tired of people who never take anything seriously.

lol

@op ur definitely getting old, is all. making fun of people is fun, laughing at people failing is fun. saying shit you dont really mean and other people get offended by it is fun as well. also if you pretend to be a retard no one can call u a retard cus u can just say 'jokes on u m8 i was just pretending' not to mention many other advantages.

- Arthur Shopenhauer

Abnormality as the new norm

someone needs to design another aids, one that kills people not for being promiscuous and unsafe, but some kind of mental degenerative disease that slowly causes one to stop using the internet. it would be contracted by following internet trends and not thinking for yourself.

I'm not sure what role you think the internet plays in that decline. It's just a means of communication. People have always lived in their cultural cocoons and have always acted like idiots in public. Large unmoderated online communities often turn into a shouting contest of the lowest common denominator because posting easy to produce, instant gratifying content drowns out thought provoking or interesting content. But that doesn't mean there are no interesting communities to be found or that the whole thing is detrimental to society. That's like saying the printing press was a mistake because you just read the tabloids.

I don't think there is a societal decline. I very rarely meet people that trouble me.

  On 6/21/2013 at 12:54 AM, doorjamb said:

now that God is dead people must self-defensively disregard reality's implications more opaquely and bluntly than ever before. swag.

i dunno if this is a joke or if I read it right but I found this sentence to be very illuminating.

  On 6/21/2013 at 2:43 AM, Ego said:

I'm not sure what role you think the internet plays in that decline. It's just a means of communication.

finally someone said it.

like what do people expect exactly ? that people who posts stupid memes all day would go to the libraries instead had they not had internet access ?

  On 6/21/2013 at 1:14 AM, CharlesWatkins said:

 

society has been on the decline ever since the internet became widely available. whether it will be through widespread dissemination of pornography, loss of sense of the individual and unique, creative ideas due to the pace at which they are copied/plagiarized, or people who seek to leverage anonymity to preach hateful/racist ideals in places where impressionable people will see it (young kids reading twitter or news comments), also the ever increasing shootings, it seems likely that we are apporaching end-times.

 

 

 

Sure the internet has a downside, but I think the good outweighs the bad by far. The potential for uncovering corruption (huge deal in China for example), bringing people together, forcing them to type and learn how to articulate thoughts (all the dumbasses notwithstanding), incredible knowledge aggregator, etc etc

Throughout the history, people have been subjected to cultural influences in one or the other form in their real lives.

What is happening today is that the pluralization of the culture eliminated the very important component of self-questioning and critical thinking that was before only found in more educated (or should I say more articulated) segments of our society. Inevitably those people used to shape things to come into our "common consciousness".

As many put it well here already, Internet just made your everyday life less "censored" in this manner.

Combine that with the whole situation our global society is in at the moment (general apathy towards established norms and enforced politics) and you get less and less people who are prepared to dwell and discuss on matters that are really important.

Internet is a very potent medium. It is up to us whether we're going to make it our benefit, or our hazard.

My cold read of the subliminal premisse behind this thread: girl problems.

Internet is cluttered with shit because children are allowed to speak all the time instead of listening. It shows us again that as a race humans are still infantile creatures.

We need to rid the internet of shit-talkers and people who are passive-aggressive too. Then we can all just sit and agree with each other all the time, which would be sweet.

I'm also tired of people who write stuff like "this is good/bad." NO! What you mean is "this is good/bad, IN MY OPINION." You have to tell people that what you're saying is your opinion and your opinion only. If you don't do that I get confused and angry.

Well you know, you take the good with the bad, in for a penny - in for a pound. At the end of the day it's all swings and roundabouts innit? Apples and oranges pretty much. At some point you'll see the door swings both ways.

lol

exactly, early bird catches the worm.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.