I remembered last night that I first signed up for Facebook at the end of April; after a bit of clicking and scrolling, I realized that it was today, the 29th day of the fourth month of 2012 that I signed up. In the grand scheme of the universe, this is pretty dratted insignificant, but it does mark an interesting anniversary in my life.
Specifically, it was at that point that I really began to explore the weird world of the internet. Before that point, I'd wandered around YouTube a few times, and wasted a considerably amount of time on the Cheezburger websites, but really hadn't gotten into it. Now, going to college and having a lot more computer access, in the form of this laptop I'm presently using, were probably equally important factors in this. Joining Facebook stands out nonetheless.
The big thing I've taken away from all my experiences in Facebook, YouTube, Cheezburger, xkcd, definitely Tumblr, and more recently, Twitter, is a confirmed sense of overwhelming misanthropy. Every time I start feeling good about humanity, I can just head over to one of those websites and come away with a renewed hatred (or at least apathy) for human beings.
This probably isn't a good thing, but it's an undisputable fact. Now the question is: how do I react to it? Well, I've had some doubts recently about whether I'm an INTJ or INTP recently, but in either case, my first instinct is analysis. (Why do you think I was being introspective about my Myers-Briggs, anyway?)
Let's begin by looking at an example, which was instrumental in realizing whole internet-makes-me-hate-people thing. It's a Tumblr blog, which, if you hang around that corner of the web, you've probably heard of: the-unpopular-opinions. TUO, as I'll hereafter refer to it, started with what I believe was a good premise: challenge the prevailing (and often irrational) trends of tumblr thought by creating a place for people to state their unpopular opinions anonymously.
The problem is: TUO has gone to shit, if you'll pardon my French. A sizable portion of the opinions relate to fandom in-fighting, quite a few are just people whining about the gamut of social justice issues without contributing anything of value, and the vast majority are badly articulated emotional drivel. I could write an entire essay about how emotional arguments are useless, and the best way to really convince someone is to reason with them like you're both psychopaths, but I want to get this up before midnight EDT, so I won't.
I think TUO is indicative of a great trend in human action: so long as people get hold of something, it begins the decay. This may be an example of tragedy of the commons, but I think the problem is larger than that. People, as a generalized group, aren't very good. Any one individual is bad at almost every conceivable thing. For example, we're all very bad at photosynthesizing, which is why mammals are heterotrophs. More concretely, I don't know anything about bricklaying, which is why I wouldn't base my career around it. I would need to learn the skill, and thus overcome that barrier to entry, before I would begin building walls.
On the internet, those barriers to entry don't exist. Without excluding certain individuals from websites, it's nearly impossible to prevent someone from giving their unwarranted input in discussions. Now, injecting new perspectives into dialogue is usually a good thing, but when someone has no stake and no real interest in a particular matter, they feel no desire to do a good job in their discussion. As such, those who do not refrain from commenting pollute the intellectual waters.
If you're trying to burn time, as many people online are, this leads to the awfulness mentioned above. It takes, let's say, ten minutes to make a post on TUO (probably less, in fact). As such, unless you feel strongly about an issue and have thought on it extensively, you're not likely to make it very good. Most of the submissions clearly fall into neither category. Consequently, a method of discussing serious and controversial topics became another pathetic footnote of Internet history.
Far outside the confines of the web, the problem still exists, though in more limited form. People who don't care still interact and make their collective action known, without thinking. What sort of interaction? Almost every sort. They wipe their feet on public doormats unnecessarily. They throw trash in parks. They hit elevator buttons multiple times. In sum, they cause a great deal of pointless (and that would have great emotion in it) destruction and decay.
It seems strange to write this as an Objectivist, but a great element of wisdom is know when not to act, which is nearly always. Action should be intelligent, purposeful, and deliberate. It should maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes. It should benefit you without harming others, whether that is physically, financially, or psychologically. To really succeed in this enormous game that we call life, it is our duty--to ourselves, to our friends, to our families, and to the other minds that we know only as strangers--to be the most conscious beings we can be.
And realizing the unimportance, and, in fact, stupidity, of so many of our mundane actions is part of that.
