Just say no — to no
So here’s what I’ve determined from my completely non-mathematical analysis of posts here on Medium and other socmed sites. People are claiming smaller and smaller pieces of life. I am not sure what their motivation is in doing this, so I am just going to make it up.
BITD, the internet was about connecting with people who had an overlap with your interests. Actually when the internet first became a thing for regular people, the only things you could share were science and porn. So if you overlapped with others in those areas, you were gold. If you didn’t, the web was not the place for you.
Then, just before the dotcom bust, it was all sockpuppets and porn. The stuff that is normal now. “Get your dog food delivered when your dog needs it.” “Sign up for daily fresh-squeezed carrot juice delivered daily to your doorstep.” “More porn. More often.”
And all of those ideas, honestly, were OK.
Now, it would appear (at least from my limited view), that our wagons are being circled into smaller and smaller circles.
It used to be that the web was about connecting people. Now this could be people whose interests overlapped in only a few small areas. But it also meant that anyone could find anyone else who liked the same things they did. And even more important, you could connect with people who were different than you.
That, seriously, was the biggest advantage of the internet. You could interact with folks who had different values than you did. People who lived on the other side of the world and who solved their day to day issues in ways you would never have thought of.
Now, it seems, with the circling of the wagons, that we increasingly see only people whose online preferences match up with ours.
True enough, there is a place in the world for Match dot com, but there is a place for that. One single place, not the entire interwebs.
So, I am thinking, in my title, Just Say No — To No, it’s important to find and connect with folks different than I am. It might be to you too. And if it is, that would be a good way to use the web, for the tool that it is.
