Knox Hill - The Internet - Live Acoustic Video (Initial Thoughts)

 Missed the premiere last night, just didn't feel like going... Nothing against him, I was just not in the right headspace. I had just been social with coworkers all day and my social battery was so empty I just could not. I needed alone time.

I really really like this song. Lyrically, I think it's one of his best. 

Sonically, he killed it with the rap. The singing's getting there, but it was a good choice in the video to switch to more of a rapper's flow from the singing. He's learning, but it's still not great.

Anyway.

I just want to rant/vent about how much I hate and love the internet and am using this song as an excuse, so here goes.

It's a great way to find pretty much any information that's ever been produced anywhere in the world, and with modern translation tools and AI, the language barrier isn't even an issue anymore. Google Translate used to suck, but it's actually pretty decent now.

Also, because everyone is on the internet, pretty much, you can get exposed to so many different cultures and groups of people you didn't even know existed. Your world view broadens significantly, your vocabulary as well... You get to hear opinions from all these perspectives you didn't even think of. It's great.

There's two major issues with the internet, though - 1) mis- and disinformation, and 2) how addictive it is.
Because everyone is on the internet, anyone can write anything there. People may have their own biases or political or societal agendas, they may write something as an opinion or feeling-based piece and not disclose that properly, they might be misinformed or misremember something themselves and therefore accidentally spread misinformation.
Even if you know where you stand on a societal issue for example, the internet may still skew those views when you're exposed to them enough. It's like manipulation (done by people). In example - you're a feminist. You scroll Tiktok. The algorithm picks up on your feminist views by whose videos you watch and what you like there. It starts showing you more of those people. Eventually, you come across something you don't quite agree with and you leave a comment, to try and influence their opinion, to discuss. I.e. is the main problem in feminism men or the patriarchy - you think the patriarchy, and this person says the men benefit from it and unless they're actively against it, they're for it. The algorithm notices you're engaging more with content that speaks about men in this manner and starts showing you more and more of these people, moving away from the women who think patriarchy is a societal norm we ALL follow and that hurts us ALL, men included. For weeks or months, you only see women who say men are to blame. You start to feel alone in your opinion and that you must be wrong or dumb or naïve for believing in the goodness of men. Slowly but surely, unless you snap out of it somehow, you start blaming men, too. The content the algorithm feeds you gets more and more extreme and so do your views. Eventually you stop seeing men as people with feelings, they're just hollow shells of human beings and all they do is exploit others. It sucks you in and further away from the real world, where you PERSONALLY KNOW men who love other people, who DO feel things other than anger.

And then when you snap out of whatever it is - man-hating or something else - and return to the real world, you swear to take a massive break from the internet. You're going to read more books, watch old classic movies, learn things, start going to the gym, participate in events in the real world. Well, guess what you need to find specific books? The internet. Unless you already know where a book store is that surely has that book, or where exactly in your local library the book is going to be, you need Google or the website of your local library. Guess where the old movies are? Either on YouTube or in the library as DVDs, in which case you probably need the internet again to find them from your library network. You find a nonfiction book to learn things from and run into a piece of information you don't understand or you think is outdated. So you need to Google it. And the information you're looking for is likely in YouTube. And if it's not, if it's behind a paywall somewhere, your only option is to ask AI assistants like ChatGPT. Your gym's doors unlock with an app. None of the local event organizers update their websites anymore, it's all on Instagram and Tiktok.
It's practically impossible to live without smart phones and the internet, even without social media.
And I hate it. 

Life before social media was so calm and simple, or maybe that's just because I was kid then..? I was a kid, I lived on the countryside and the internet was almost nonexistent. Now I'm an adult, live in a town and the internet is everywhere. All the news are about what some celebrity said on Twitter, what the streaming numbers of some song are and which book is a Booktok hit this week.

Not to mention how much of your interaction with other people is online right now. I remember a period in my life where people would be insulted if I hadn't seen their latest Instagram picture (acting like that meant that I'm not interested in their life). My brother lives 300m away from me, but I haven't seen him live in 5 months. We play a video game online together almost every week.

This blog is very important to me. It's my own little corner of the internet where I can express my own opinion and no one can delete my comment because I said swear words or words like "suicide" or "nazi" or something else the platform or the content creator doesn't like. Platforms I sorta get, since the internet is public. They need to draw the line somewhere and it's much easier to prevent suicidal people from seeing content on suicide by banning the word "suicide" than going through all the videos manually or trusting that people flag videos that glorify self-harm. But some content creators do piss me off with how easily they delete comments they don't like. While usually specifically asking to "comment down below" and saying they encourage people to express their opinion and to have an open discussion about the topic at hand. Unless they disagree with your opinion, and then they delete it. </3 Fuck them. Why do you have an open comment section AND you ask for commentary, but then delete that commentary? Makes no fucking sense to me.

I wish I could live without the internet. But as I pointed out, it's nearly impossible. You need it for so many things and everyone I know is online anyway, so not being online is basically the same as being disconnected from society. And finding a balance is so hard. How to engage enough to stay connected but not so much that it gets in the way of other aspects of life or that you end up with information overload? If I figure it out, I'll let you know.