Unlike the material world where we only have one life, on the internet you can live many lives quite easily, try out multiple paths, until one of them sticks.
When we run into issues, do we resolve them or do we merely replace them?
Are we educating people to think better or are they being taught to follow instructions?
Like let's use me as an example. I struggle with a lot of things and I would like assistance, but that means it would be better if I act the way you like, so that I become popular and have a better chance at securing aid.
If I see a post that has lots of upvotes and I think differently, that discourages me from speaking my mind, it means if I ever run into big trouble, people are less to help me.
And as we all know everyone is precarious worker under Capitalism, that means even if I'm independent now and don't need your help, what about next year? I can act tough now, but say I have a medical emergency happen in the future and I'm known to be a critic, what's going to happen?
At least what I think would happen is people would put on their smug face and say: FOFO
That's something often neglected by the Imperial Core IMO. Cultural assimilation is taken for granted and is seen as willing participation, how many of us are just clowns trying to entertain you for scraps?
I suppose we'll never find out, until our ties are severed and we become sovereign, only then our true selves can really exist.
Not only can you switch out masks to live different online lives, but also, it's an inherently alienated form of social interaction where no one has a face or physical body to empathize with. We're dehumanized floating text in the chat/forum/comments.
I don't know if this is inherently unhealthy, or if it just requires proper training to live in this very different form of social existence, but I do think it's to blame for online arguments being so fruitless. When I try to explain to someone that they're wrong about a historical fact, I'm not actually doing it as a equal human being. Again, I'm just floating text - a random encounter in the posting RPG.
Yeah. I think the best we can do is not to become luddites and declare a war on social media, that's like the traditional conservative talking point. That historical advancement can be stopped by sheer force of will and ideology.
We should acknowledge that Netizenship is inherently separate from your being and as Marxism, by extension Dialectical-Materialism becomes more popular and more practiced that we will be able to develop the most healthy version of the internet. In the meantime we should be using it as a force for good, however we can, but to make sure we don't let it hamper us either, inevitably mistakes will be made, but nothing is perfect.
There are lots of positive things about the internet and it can be useful tool for learning, positively mentally stimulating etc. Even if this does turn into just floating text on screen, in some ways it's liberating, what ruins it is Capitalism.