Online Communities Make You Stupider
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 Now, I'm not one to hate society overall. I mean, human's are a social mammal. We have evolved to use our intellect while working in harmony to achieve our goals. But, after careful observation, one must notice that society causes people to become more and more stupid. Humans must slow themselves down, narrow themselves to one channel of thought, conform themselves to certain ways of living life- All so that a society doesn't break down. The human brain can think faster than a clock moves; in fact, the very existence of a clock in the environment of a person will slow the person's thoughts. But we still use clocks, just so we can work together. It is little things like this which are the flaws of society. And that's not the only effect. There's another effect which I've tried to figure out for a whole year now, but still can't. You see, I go to an "elite" school. But here's the catch, I'm in the "crazy, evil, naughty" class. We've made teachers cry, and are apparently the worst class our school has seen in a century. But we're not stupid, we just act it. I mean, if you were to pick out a student out of my class and talk with them for a while, you'd realise they were a normal person. A normal, nice, intelligent person. But for some reason, when you put two of them together, they'll start pinching each other after 10 minutes. And when you put 28 together... Well, it's ridiculous. I call it the contamination effect, where a small drop of stupid1 from student1 contaminates the whole class, and a small drop of stupid2 from student2 does the same. I thought this was a phenomenon... Until I looked closely at every society in history. There's no doubt about the fact that certain groups get stupid really fast, but there's also no doubt that a society will cause more stupid. (I mean, adding water to salt won't do much. But adding flame to oxygen is like adding stupid1 from student1 to stupid2 from student2). But as I've said, I'm not a hater of society. Even though society slows us down and limits our possibilities by around 1/30th, the proverb "two heads can think better than one" still applies. That is, if two people have an idea- a rare, albeit existing idea- then those people can work together to break their potential's limits. And with society, there are more than just two heads around you, so your chances of meeting someone with an idea like yours increases manyfold. And of course, in modern society, when people have an amazing idea, they publish it. They make the idea public. And soon, the whole society knows of it, and can work with it- build on it- to create greater things. Now here's the problem: Online communities. Online communities limit people, just like society, but with little to no benefits. It feeds that sense of popularity, that sense of "I'm special, and I have friends who will help me when I need it", that... blonde syndrome. It feeds that sense of "people actually give a damn about me". But not only that, it causes a person to think that they don't need to know anything- that they can just ask away on the almighty Internet and receive an answer. I mean, you see at least two threads a week just on Basil with students expecting Basilites to answer all their homework questions. And they get what they want; spoonfed work. Not even spoonfed knowledge; spoonfed work. Imagine the spam on websites like Answers.com. Where once, people took knowledge and worked with it to create more; now people just expect the answer to be somewhere else. "I don't need to do anything, someone else will." (By the way, if you've seen the episode of Simpsons where Homer runs for Manager of Springfield Garbage Disposal Program, you'd know that ideology is very, very broken). The problem is that now that people have this free space in their head, instead of working with it, we're filling it with useless banter. It'd be one thing if we were actually using this archive to allow ourselves to progress the human race further, but no: Children know more about the McDonalds menu than they do about their own teeth. Which brings me to my next point, which is one third of the proof I am going to provide here today. People younger than you are more stupid than you. Actually, they're more stupid than you were when you were younger than them. And when they're your age, they'll be spelling Mississippi with a few C's. (By the way, people think that defiling the English language on the Internet is just fine. That they can write with perfect punctuation, spelling and grammar in prose when they actually need to. Why don't you write properly now? English is a language created for communication. When I cannot comprehend what you are typing, you are failing at using English. Failing at using the one bridge that actually allows society to work. That is utter failure. I mean, what the hell is "ceebs" anyway?) Well, guess what: They don't just look stupid just because they're younger than you. They actually are more stupid than you were at their age. Why is this? Online communities melt brains. Especially children's brains. Because they just don't know when to think for themselves; and online communities can stop people thinking all together. Overall, humanity's almost reached the peak of it's potential, and is about to go on a decline. We are pretty much destroying ourselves. I wonder if it's too late to become a maverick... EDIT: Ok, to be honest, I forgot my prebuttal, because I had a *coughcoughvideo* distraction. So here it is. Now, you may be reading all I've written, and blatantly disagreeing, because of course, you learn a lot from the Internet. Of course, having an information highway is good, right? The thing is, you're not learning. You're absorbing. You're taking in all these random facts. Facts you find interesting, and facts that may actually be beneficial. However, you probably don't realise that the facts you are absorbing are consistent of a very narrow channel of thought. Because you do not have wonder any more, what you absorb is not your choice, it's the Internet's. There's learning, and there's absorbing. Absorbing is where you take in the facts. Learning is when you look for information, look at information, unlock it, translate it, take it apart and put it back together, understand how it works, then lock it into your brain. This type of learning is required for progress. This type of learning is required for the type of thinking that makes you go, "I wonder what made that apple fall from the tree onto my head". That was the point of this thread, and here's your summary people. And for those of you who flame while being too lazy to even read the summary, well, you've just proven my point. And you'll have to read this whole thing to figure out how I just insulted you. Otherwise, you can't flame. See, the only flames that'll hurt are those which logically disprove what I've said. New Blog: Camp.
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Replies
That is.... long
no, not really.
Tho, i'd say you pretty much are the proof of your claim. New Blog: ROW ROW FIGHT YOUR MOTHA
Not going to read all of that, but online communities have been around almost as long as the internet itself. Usenet is almost 30 years old.
New Pic: My Everyday Getup
A bit too long for me to bother with, especially since I disagree.
There are stupid people in every generation, as well as smart people. I can't say I'd really judge kids younger than me, as maturity and a few years can go a long way towards making a better person. The internet is still being used for distribution of knowledge
WIKIPEDIA IZ FOR SKOOL *gets slapped by principal* No really though, of course there is a dark side to the dubya dubya dubya [Ie: me getting addicted to basil foruming] but yeah, theres lots of good things that come to it [and its still very important for communication/collaboration] Vancouver?
My English teacher was telling us that studies show the complete opposite. We're getting smarter with internet and electronic communication.
everybody who says "too long to read", but still comments solidifies his claim. I do not agree with this however. People who feel that their role in online communities makes them important either devote excessive ammounts of time to them, or do not understand how little they matter to anything or anyone outside of them.
M0rtificat0r: everybody who says "too long to read", but still comments solidifies his claim. Good thing most people know how to skim well enough. New Blog: ROW ROW FIGHT YOUR MOTHA
Agrees with Anas.
Aya, Basil made me got smarter. I disagree - Information is easily passable from person to person with the internet. Knowledge is on the rise.
New Blog: What really grinds my gears Ep. 8
M0rtificat0r: everybody who says "too long to read", but still comments solidifies his claim. I do not agree with this however. People who feel that their role in online communities makes them important either devote excessive ammounts of time to them, or do not understand how little they matter to anything or anyone outside of them. Really? I'm sure he could have condensed his point a bit more, as there's plenty of stuff that isn't particularly necessary he could have cut out. So then it's my choice to skip through the seven or so paragraphs (that could likely be cut down into a few concise ones) and respond to the core idea of this thread, which is that online communities make people stupid. Franky: That is.... long Exactly!~ Listing: Peaks PG Leech
So a basiler walked into a wall...
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Use of any BasilMarket.com content without permission is strictly forbidden.
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