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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

Solidarity !== cultural homogeinity.

You are confused on what both concepts mean.

Btw, a community where there is one single set of beliefs shared by everybody is a terrible place to be.

Politicians are openly discussing civil war as an imminent possibility in the US. What the hell do you mean by solidarity? If both sides agree that civil war is imminent, is that solidarity?

My honest opinion is that the people (30-50% of the population?) voting for authoritarians like Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, Meloni, Bukele, Ergodan, etc are not at all in Solidarity with what I'll call "the rest of us". From the ones I've spoken to there's legitimately a theme of wanting the chaos that these people bring to the world. Sticking a wrench in society for fun and profit.

And what I'm talking about isn't everyone having a single set of beliefs, that would be absurd. It's bad actors spreading what they know to be misinformation, and people falling hook line and sinker for the false rhetoric because it's repeated so often. People like Tucker Carlson who privately says Trump is a massive evil, publicly praises him. Or Russian troll farms that just constantly post the most controversial takes on social media until they become normalized.

What used to be a fringe group of conspiracy theorists that read rags like "The National Inquirer" and believed it has exploded because it's easy to make a website/podcast/twitter handle that looks legit and spreads like wildfire.

solidarity: unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group

If the feeling or action is something you don't like, that doesn't detract it from its meaning.

But I am now curious, would you say that, because of this, the internet is a net negative? (Even after considering the 20 points I've listed earlier, well, 19 I guess?).

> Even after considering the 20 points I've listed earlier, well, 19 I guess?

Gish gallop. Just because I didn't respond to the entirety of your list doesn't make any of it valid.

I do think so far the internet is a net negative, yes. People's brains have been rewired to have less attention span, more outrage, more instant dopamine hits they don't have to work for, and just generally we're in an era where instead of learning anything people spend time watching 10 second videos. "But I learn a lot from tiktok/instagram" is the most depressing sentence I've heard in a long time.

There are positives to it, but none of them matter if the current trends don't change. We're headed into an authoritarian / populist hellscape worldwide, with leaders who will ignore climate change and every other problem that is existential, while probably creating some of their own. And while all this is happening we have a population that has their head so far into social media they're more worried about transgender identity politics than the world literally burning down around them.

I'm not hopeful for the future, and most of it is because of what the internet has done to our culture.

I disagree with you but respect your opinion.

To me, the internet is one of the greatest things we're lucky to have.

I also think despite those things you mentioned (climate change, yada yada) we're going to be fine. I am hopeful for the future.

I can only wish life gives us both what we are hoping for :).

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