'We are the Myspace generation'

[Guest]

[sinister_miss_nancy]

Does all this make us worse people? I've been on a delibrating mood for some time now. We watch all this crap on televisions, sign into our myspace/facebook/bebo/shit accounts, constantly checking for updates on what our 'friends' are doing. 'So-an-So is...eating a peanut butter sandwich'. Give a shit? We watch mind-numbing, spirit-crushing programmes on our T.V's, because apparently, they do us all round good. Fuck me, do they. I can blame my current mood on them. I apologise sincerely. Really I do. But everyones obsessed by it all. Why don't more people get brain tumours from all this shit we get fed. No body cares anymore. About anything. If your young, and say you believe in God, its weird. If I say hello to my neighbour, they don't wave back or anything, just stare blankly into space. I held a door open the other day for an elderly gentleman who was a little unsteady on his legs, and helped him through the doorway. He looked at me in complete shock then went on to thank me 50 times because he couldn't believe it. My peers giggled at thought me crazy. I'm not fucking crazy, I have morals. And perhaps some manners and a little care and consideration for other people, which obviously you couldn't care about. Just yourself, and the topless, pouting photos of yourself you put on your page. Your in-senseless vanity.

I could go on for far too long on this topic, and perhaps I'll write more later, but really, answer me this...Why have human beings completely lost all humaneness? Why don't we ask ourselves the big questions anymore? Who's looking after us, and guiding us. I constantly challenge myself everyday. Ask myself questions. Learn. Maybe in some ways thats hindered me. I've become the person I am. But without that I wouldn't be that person. For God's sake, open your eyes, people, to the world around us. This floor isn't just their, and the Eagle doesn't just fly because he can. The Eagle flies because he has reached the totem pole of life. He is God, or whatever is around us, in all its beauty and flaws.

To steal that impossible question, are we Human, or are we dancer? And take that as you please...

'Whatever you are, be a good one.' Abraham Lincoln

[Mr. Goldberg]

Well if I looked like Brosnan or had the body of Stallone I'd probably go on Facebook...or would I  ? To me it seems like you're inviting the world in to take a peek at your own freak show while you rubberneck into theirs. Or the world they'd LIKE you to think is theirs. Depending on who or what they chose to be that day and whose head they'd like to f**k or whatever agenda they have in mind because they're drowning in their own boredom cesspit. The only thing I've learned from messageboards really is don't go on them.

I agree I think a lot of air time is wasted by people proclaiming trivia about themselves, but no worse than the mobile phone fetish where you hear them on the bus making calls for the most trivial of reasons...

"I got them new shoes...yeah they were reduced from £199 to a tenner but wasn't that colour that I wanted...."

...in my day the landline phone lived in a special part of the house and permission and purpose was required to use it...the next person who visits me and starts texting their partner for an hour in front of me has their phone lobbed out of my window.

Also you look at any technological communications medium...TV, radio and the abject dross that that is packed out with hourly just to fill airtime. If you don't believe me tune into Radio Leeds.  So net time is hardly any different really.

Yes I think it's a way of coralling people via w.w.w. or 666 as it's referred to in some circles...people thinking they're being subversive when in fact their every word is being logged for posterity. Here W.W.W. PLEASE TAKE MY PRIVACY !!! Misinform. Disinform. There's others already doing that anyway both on screen and off.

I know what you mean...there is a certain solace when you meet people who never go near cyberworlds and just get on with...reality. What's left of it. Said it once will say it endlessly : it's always the same dozen or so people who surf them. What does that say about:

a) The remainder of the world population (about 98%) who NEVER go online.

b) The people who repeatedly go on them daily ?

Having said all that..at least its getting people WRITING (mainly rubbish but writing) and once it's up there its there forever . Really glad I didn't put out my teenage notebooks and lother stuff I've written for the world to see. Why should I ?

[Editor]

This is a very interesting question you've raised, Nancy. One of the problems of an affluent society, I think. I suspect we've always had the capacity for indulging in gossip and triviality, but in the past it was lessened by the sheer backbreaking work needed just to survive. People swapped tales at the village well, and whispered round hearths in the deep of winter when nothing was getting done, but that was the only opportunity for ephemera. But now, for most of the western world, survival isn't so hard so we're free to indulge in whatever nonsense takes our fancy. Add to that the fact of the increasing ease and proliferation of efficient long-range communications through a variety of media and you have a recipe for a bored, insular society. As Goldberg points out in another thread, though, it's no use complaining about progress: we have to adapt. How can we integrate this technology into our lives and avoid isolation?

I know what you mean...there is a certain solace when you meet people who never go near cyberworlds and just get on with...reality. What's left of it. Said it once will say it endlessly : it's always the same dozen or so people who surf them. What does that say about:

a) The remainder of the world population (about 98%) who NEVER go online.

b) The people who repeatedly go on them daily ?

Sorry, Goldberg, but this statistic is completely erroneous. Latest figures suggest that approximately 20% of the world popluation goes online, ten times what you suggest, with the biggest growth being in developing countries. People in China, India, Brazil etc want to go online, as they see it as being part of the club of developed nations. They're so desperate that they're often prepared to accept quite stringent curbs and censorship (which they then see as great fun to try to subvert) just so they can join in.

Agreed, though, there are still a large amount of people for whom the World Wide Web is meaningless... but this is lessening all the time. And remember, the web is only in its infancy. Technologies such as 'ubiquitous computing' promise to add everyday items such as cars, fridges, TVs etc to the web (your car breaks down, an onboard computer has already diagnosed the problem and a repairman is on the way before you even come to a halt). When that happens, we'll be enmeshed without realising it, and more dependent than ever...

Carpe diem,
Mike.

[Mr. Goldberg]

Ahhhh wots a  percentage  between shlemeels ? Or as someone once said facts , figures and more damned lies. 

Your other point was interesting though about how we're free to indulge in nonsense.  I was talking yet to someone on here the other night and we were saying that artistically the world is due for another Restoration period...the bit we had after we hacked Charlie 1st's head off and to me one of the most dismal episodes in the history of British drama... all curfews lifted and an overdose of light entertainment if you will...nothing too cerebrally demanding or taxing...just hardy-ha-ha-ha jollity pollity "Ooops ! 'Ere missus...wheeeeeeere's me washboard ?" hohohohoho. Because people are now happy to have their heads stuffed with multicoloured sawdust, spoon fed, on a plate, nanny state, bread and circuses with those sugar sprinkled things dropped on top.

[sinister_miss_nancy]

I didn't think of that but yes, your absolutly right Goldberg. What people write on these profile thingy-me's about themselves being up all night partying with their 10,000 'friends', or how their life is so perfect in every sense of the word, is generally just a load of rubbish-in-one-huge-great-stinking-pile.

And Ed. in response to your post, this 'dependency' you talk of...whats the opinion on that, to all UD? Is that a good or bad thing? To rely on computers...when the day comes that an electronic system of some sort is BETTER than a human, is that a day to relish in? I mean, it is, after all, what all these scientists seems to be striving for...

[Will]

Relying on computers allows us to focus on new things.  It's good and bad.  Obviously its best to be dependent on nothing, but it sure is easier to be dependent, and I'm lazy.  I can't wait until I can buy a robot to do my job, or make money for me in general.  Then I can get on with my heroin addiction. 

As for myspace, its trendy, which sucks but fuck it.  I don't use it to talk to my friends.  Well, maybe ones that live far away, but I just use it as a space, my space, to post a little piece of me.  People can come and see and tell me how shitty I am.     

[Mr. Goldberg]

Yes and before you know it Will we are all cybermen linked up to the net while our lives pass us by until the grave having lived out some artificial cyber reality of which wood carving, fly fishing or a little meandering in the library knows know place. I must agree with the sinister madam on here, who , for a woman, indeed I find her discourse most articulate and laudable.

[sinister_miss_nancy]

Okay well why do you want this robot to do your job for you? Other than the fact you don't have to do it. Sure, its easy. So is screwing up my ex with a baseball bat. I can depend on that bat to do what I ask it to. I can't depend on me, however. So next time someone annoys me I'll go back to that bat, and use it twice as hard on someone, because its EASIER.

My point is that you ask the robot to do your job because you don't like it. Then you realise there's all this other stuff you don't like...Eventually, we get to the point where we don't have to do ANYTHING for ourselves, take things for granted...

So why do you want that robot? And do you trust yourself in the long run?

[Mr. Goldberg]

Baseball bats...robots...? What on Earth are talking about which is any way germaine to this thread ?

[sinister_miss_nancy]

Relying on computers allows us to focus on new things.  It's good and bad.  Obviously its best to be dependent on nothing, but it sure is easier to be dependent, and I'm lazy.  I can't wait until I can buy a robot to do my job, or make money for me in general.

Will's comment on robots...our dependancy on machines, whether that be the aforementioned or the reason I posted the thread in the first place

[Will]

Okay well why do you want this robot to do your job for you? ...

So why do you want that robot? And do you trust yourself in the long run?

One day we're going to be pets and our master robots will take care of us.  We will come into this world via test tubes and hooked up to machines from birth to death.  Life will be as nothing but a semi-conscious, energy dependent mass of plasma.  Every passing moment will be saturated with good feelings and void of bad feelings.  We won't even know we exist until we die and decompose into the dark matter we were being harvested for to begin with.  Or something.

Actually, I just hate my job.   

[Februs]

Aldous Huxley got there before ya Will..."Brave New World" and "Doors of Perception"

[nauseamfromrum]

im gonna be spiteful and say that the inane facebook status and twitter are merely an inevitable manifestation of humanity's nuances: railing against this is like railing against the media for promoting a sensationalist culture. we ARE a sensational race, it's not being forced upon us by the media but rather iit's vice versa. im pretry sure rupert murdoch or at least some higher up  has been quoted that media ideologue is sustained by where the money is(viewership)-- but none of this is new or unknown.end tangent. thus i could say your argument highliting some sort of “unprecedented” surge of anti-intellectualism is a bit selective. the stupidity is the same, we just have more ways of seeing it, same way cancer magically “surged” as soon as we developed more technolgy to detect it. nothing changes but perception

[Will]

Like everything else, there is the good, the bad, and the annoying aspects of online social networking or whatever you want to call it.  Luckily we still have the option to unplug every now and then.  Hopefully it will stay that way.