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Yes, Virginia, there is an internet that's out to get you...
4 years ago
General
If there's one thing about the internet that I've known since the 90s that I wish everyone else would realize, it's this:
The internet is evil.
Sure, it's full of people trying to use it for good. It's full of people using it to share knowledge, to share creativity, to share ourselves. We learn, make friends, improve ourselves, build communities, and sometimes even try to change the world, the real world, for the better. These are all good things. These are the primary purposes for which the internet was invented, after all.
But this doesn't change the fact that some of the greatest evils of humanity are only a click or two away. Visit a wrong page, meet a wrong person, or be in a wrong place at a wrong time, and you may find yourself hacked, robbed, tortured, warped, radicalized, enslaved, or worse. To quote a line from a famous 90s game: "Careless clicking costs lives".
Is the good worth the risk? I can't answer that with an unconditional yes. The answer is: Yes, if and only if you're smart enough to understand the risks, clever enough to avoid all the dangers, wise enough to know and follow all the unwritten rules put in place to mitigate these evils. Your safety can never be fully guaranteed.
This feels like a weird thing to be able to say to friends I would never have had if not for the magic of the internet, but... Given the choice between having you safe and having you here, it would be selfish and dangerous to prefer the latter.
We all need to be very careful out there. That's part of the price of being here, and if you can't do that, you can't afford it. The internet is out to get you.
...
I'm just a little disturbed right now because one friend had a momentary lapse of judgement and took some metaphorical candy from a stranger, and that was all it took for an entire Discord server - one with lots of people I liked - to get completely burned to the ground.
Now let's not victim-blame... too much... I want to be a supportive friend, after all. We can rebuild, in time, for the most part; and all be the wiser for it, probably. Hopefully.
But no one should overlook the lessons of this incident; Primarily, that a failure to understand the danger of a situation can horribly inconvenience far more people than just yourself.
In many ways, this is a metaphor, for another thing that I wish more people would realize: That the entire COVID-19 situation could have been overwith long ago, without nearly so many deaths, if everyone took the threat more seriously when it was first discovered in 2019. If only a few people who should have known better, knew better... At this point I just hope we're all smarter now than we were before the damage began.
And I'll say again: Let's all be careful out there!
The internet is evil.
Sure, it's full of people trying to use it for good. It's full of people using it to share knowledge, to share creativity, to share ourselves. We learn, make friends, improve ourselves, build communities, and sometimes even try to change the world, the real world, for the better. These are all good things. These are the primary purposes for which the internet was invented, after all.
But this doesn't change the fact that some of the greatest evils of humanity are only a click or two away. Visit a wrong page, meet a wrong person, or be in a wrong place at a wrong time, and you may find yourself hacked, robbed, tortured, warped, radicalized, enslaved, or worse. To quote a line from a famous 90s game: "Careless clicking costs lives".
Is the good worth the risk? I can't answer that with an unconditional yes. The answer is: Yes, if and only if you're smart enough to understand the risks, clever enough to avoid all the dangers, wise enough to know and follow all the unwritten rules put in place to mitigate these evils. Your safety can never be fully guaranteed.
This feels like a weird thing to be able to say to friends I would never have had if not for the magic of the internet, but... Given the choice between having you safe and having you here, it would be selfish and dangerous to prefer the latter.
We all need to be very careful out there. That's part of the price of being here, and if you can't do that, you can't afford it. The internet is out to get you.
...
I'm just a little disturbed right now because one friend had a momentary lapse of judgement and took some metaphorical candy from a stranger, and that was all it took for an entire Discord server - one with lots of people I liked - to get completely burned to the ground.
Now let's not victim-blame... too much... I want to be a supportive friend, after all. We can rebuild, in time, for the most part; and all be the wiser for it, probably. Hopefully.
But no one should overlook the lessons of this incident; Primarily, that a failure to understand the danger of a situation can horribly inconvenience far more people than just yourself.
In many ways, this is a metaphor, for another thing that I wish more people would realize: That the entire COVID-19 situation could have been overwith long ago, without nearly so many deaths, if everyone took the threat more seriously when it was first discovered in 2019. If only a few people who should have known better, knew better... At this point I just hope we're all smarter now than we were before the damage began.
And I'll say again: Let's all be careful out there!
What I've seen is that the world got a cure to the pandemic.
Consequence: The world let some of it's guard down, as the cure was the key to being free, once more.
Then, it seemed like all the conventions went into full swing to return to business as usual.
Only...if the cure was the fix it solution, then why are those vaccinated still being required to do all the protective things?
Just saying. I don't think we came through this...any smarter.
Which "cure" are you referring to? If you mean the vaccines, those aren't 100% effective, and they certainly aren't effective in the people who refuse to take them. Those people will continue to catch the disease and spread it, until it mutates to a point where pre-existing vaccines won't be good enough anymore, different vaccines will have to be developed, and the cycle will repeat until enough people get smarter, or enough non-smart people die.
Either way, we have not come through this yet, but once we do: smarter on average! I HOPE.
In fact, I wanted to pick up some good food at a local place, the other day. Only, I am usually at work during that period of time. The local high school was letting out and that place was easily within walking distance. So...they were all homing right in on making purchases, there. Knowing from chit chat at work, the kids like to party and gather. Which means they all keep coming down with this horrible problem and testing positive. And I had to think in a way I normally wouldn't. After all, they were all pouring into this small place. Masks or not, I had to realize the danger was extremely real and departed from there in seconds.