Passionless Age of The Internet

Here's my rant on how it made us less assertive and determined!

Imagine your friend, Fat Tony, makes a very bold and uncanny argument about something. He explains it in an elaborate and convincing tone with his brilliant storytelling skills and emotional rigor — throwing his hands in all directions and enacting every minute detail. Now the first thing you’d do is to verify it on the internet because the claim is too odd to be true.

You look it up and you find that it’s not true. It was just some Reddit meme that a few people took too seriously and exaggerated over the internet.

This is good right? The internet makes us skeptical about random information that can be harmful in some way. Well, I think it is kinda cool but I also think that there is a downside to this particular effect of the Internet — a very indirect and subconscious effect on our psyche. And I think the people who are suffering the most are the intellectual ones who Google stuff a lot and made their account on ChatGPT in the first month it was rolled out.

The abundance of information makes the search for truth very difficult because one can only go through a certain amount of information. So people get lazy in their journey and resort to weak arguments of subjectivity (we can talk about this later someday, I have a lot to say).

It also makes it difficult to be confident about anything because there is always a chance that you might have missed some crucial piece of information that goes against your assertion. So you never hold a strong position for it. You use words like ‘maybe’, ‘probably’, ‘I think so’, etc. Your language becomes weak.

The Internet has created an age of doubt. People are doubtful and unsure about everything. They have this lingering sense of constant fear that maybe almost everything they believe in is wrong. Imagine the existential angst that it creates. You are doubtful of your entire identity altogether. Every shred of you is in constant scrutiny.

If you extrapolate this doubtful nature bred by the internet I think it has a deep impact on the internet power users’ ability to believe in their dreams and goals. I mean it’s obviously not a direct impact of the Internet but you have to understand what Internet has done with the nerds of the 21st century. We are unsure and doubtful about everything, so it is obvious that this impact on one part of our psyche will get absorbed into others. Osmosis bitch! If you are unsure about everything, how can you be sure about your goals and dreams? As a nerd, your natural state is of being doubtful, you are always in a state of uncertainty. Only God knows how will you hold yourself together when things don’t go your way — when the outside world adds and creates chaos in your plans.

Now don’t get me wrong, I totally think skepticism is a virtue. People who don’t have it are usually very obnoxious to talk to as they have caged themselves in a box and they just can’t get out of it. But at least the box has defined boundaries and dimensions. This means that they live in more certainty than us nerds (and hence have more psychological stability).

My uncle used to say that the dumbest people are usually the happiest. Now I get the total depth of it. Since the internet is a machine that produces doubt at a mass scale, it has given birth to a bunch of super-smart kids who can’t do shit because they are so dispassionate all the time. I think academically intelligent people usually don’t make it big because they think too much.

Here’s a quote from Top Gun Maverick that reflects the emotions I am feeling right now:

To summarize, I think the Internet is a great thing but I believe it has turned us into weak, dispassionate, doubtful, and mentally disturbed individuals who think too much and live in constant existential dread.

This is your sign to be more assertive in your arguments, to hold your ground as long as you can, and to tell fake stories like Fat Tony — even if your friends Google it at least they will get a good laugh at your expense. And when it comes to pursuing your goals, you need the spirit of an unstoppable bull that just keeps running with its steady momentum, no matter what comes the way. You cannot win with absolute Rationality!