The Internet is a shithole

[Sean Hayden]

Civilization is a left-wing conspiracy!

[pErvinalia]

Civilisation is woke.

[Tero]

I would not have named his concept a vaccine, but:
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/foolproof
In fact, I have spent a good chunk of my personal life trying to understand the process by which people, including myself, become convinced of the veracity of all kinds of information, especially misinformation.

Most of my family on my mother’s side were executed by the Nazis in the Netherlands. My grandparents were able to escape – just barely ...

[Brian Peacock]

Facts are a left-wing conspiracy!

Your facts don't care about my feeling!

[Tero]

I started Bluesky, but it does not give me a useful feed. Just the 10 russian bots added each day as "follows" me. All disguised as an Asian beauty.

My Threads post got some 300 hits.
https://www.threads.net/@esa55jarvi/pos ... neWkCP-D6g

[Tero]

Scottish society throws out conspiracy nut
https://www.threads.net/@bigescotland/p ... xUdrwMbz2g

[Brian Peacock]

Snowflakes complaining about the facts of life.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has apologised after Instagram users were subjected to a flood of violence, gore, animal abuse and dead bodies on their Reels feeds.

Users reported the footage dominating their feeds after an apparent malfunction in Instagram’s algorithm, which curates what people see on the app.

Reels is a feature on the social media platform that allows users to share short videos, similar to TikTok.

An Instagram forum on Reddit, the online discussion platform, contained posts from users referencing the graphic material that had appeared in their feeds in midweek.

One user on the subreddit wrote: “I just saw at least 10 people die on my reels.”

There were also references by users to a video of a man being crushed by an elephant. Others flagged footage of a man being dismembered by a helicopter and a video where “a guy put his face into boiling oil”. Several users posted videos of their Reels feeds dominated by “sensitive content” screens that are designed to shield users from graphic material.

A list of violent content on one user’s feed, published by the tech news site 404, included: a man being set on fire; a man shooting a cashier at point-blank range; videos from an account called “PeopleDeadDaily”; and a pig being beaten with a wrench. The user in question had a biking-related Instagram account, 404 Media reported....

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -instagram

[Brian Peacock]

The enshitification of online services...

[Sean Hayden]

Brainrot, Not Ideology

The assassination of Charlie Kirk shows how Discord, memes, and “online brainrot” may motivate disaffected youth more than ideology.

https://quillette.com/2025/09/13/brainr ... ord-memes/

[Svartalf]

I don't get your point... granted, I've certainly not wasted enough time in the crapholes of the net.

[Sean Hayden]

It's an opinion piece that suggests Kirk's assassination was the result of a mysterious force called brainrot. The closest it gets to an explanation is the idea that somehow the kid’s offline reality was overwritten by a toxic online one, and from that new perspective a killer emerged. It's light on evidence and more than a bit snobbish. But, it will appeal to those of us who are convinced the Internet is a digital wasteland, so it goes here...

[Brian Peacock]

It's called 'brainrot' when social interaction encultures someone into a 'bad' way of thinking or behaving, it's called 'enlightenment' or 'consciousness raising' when it encultures someone into a 'good' way of thinking or behaving, and when it encultures someone into behaving without thinking it's called 'education'.

[Sean Hayden]

[Svartalf]

well, maybe it is actually brainrot because the boy was apparently not enlightenend enough to avoid being caught or to manage to get rid of more crap before getting caught... I just hope the next sensible administration gives him a pardon and has statues of him built, as the first to give a significant blow in the war against brainrot.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Yeah, kids today, amiright? There may be a valid point in the way that shitposting culture can normalize toxic ways of interacting, but there's a fair bit of toxicity in the general culture. The felon president saying Kirk was a 'wonderful American' and posthumously awarding him the highest civilian honor* demonstrates that pretty effectively.

[*]The Medal may be awarded by the President as provided in this order to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

[source]