I imagine archeologists digging up some ancient texts, written in a very sophisticated language,which eventually get translated and it turns out to be :" 101 social media tricks you can use to boost your business".
Yes, I'm fairly convinced that at some point some ancient civilization even more advanced than our own existed...then they invented social media and it all collapsed.
I get those Forbidden Planet feelings often.
Tell me about it.
That's actually the reality for a lot of Mesopotamian tablets, e.g "this cow was sold to the neighbor for 2 shekels of silver".
Bookkeeping of sorts is extremely old activity.I'm sure as soon as someone said ' you owe me 5 cows.No I don't,we settled last year' a need for bookkeeping was born.
I was just thinking that. Why even bother turning on comments if that's what happens? Maybe the final traces of our civilization will be a fossilized hard drive with some internet comments on it.
Can someone please write a short story with this plot.
Internet comments are the result of a giant experiment giving infinite numbers of typewriters to an infinite number of monkeys.
Possibly because nobody who actually reads scientific articles recreationally or for work will read the comments or at least won't consider them a serious discussion. However, leaving the comments off would likely cause those disagreeing to claim it's an "echo chamber" and push them to spread the article with quote tweets about how bad it is, causing much more of a storm. Letting people air their crazy theories is easier than having to deal with them getting built up until your publication is flooded with letters asking to stop whatever perceived malicious agenda you've got.