Intelligent, open discussion on the Internet is more or less dead. Whenever any big controversy breaks out (gamergate, this election, fucking literally anything else), people have become eerily accustomed to automatically dividing themselves into two neat tribes and then immediately waging large-scale ideological war with each other, instead of talking about it like adults, comparing anecdotes, debating facts, and eventually reaching some sort of consensus (even if that consensus is "agree to disagree").

Opinions about facts are core parts of our identities these days.

Nobody wants to question things anymore. Everyone has preconceived notions of how the world works, and the Internet makes it easy for them to seek out information to support their conclusions. Why bother living in the "real world" when we can just ignore facts and live in the idealistic dreamworlds that advertisers and political candidates are more than willing to sell us?

When you hear about some new video game that has a cool hook, or is a sequel to a video game you liked playing in the past, don't stop and realize, hey, maybe that $60 game won't turn out to be Literally Jesus in Video Game Form, because of course it will, preorder that shit now!! All your friends already did, what are you waiting for?!

I am very concerned about worldwide mental health in this Internet age. Constant access to the Internet has provided us with overwhelming amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and yet we actively choose to ignore anything that doesn't validate our opinions.

Sometimes you'll make a reddit post on a popular subreddit, (for example), and it'll get filtered out of the /new/ queue. You won't know if it was automatically filtered or not, but when your account is eight fucking years old, you'd think that wouldn't happen anymore. Yet, here you sit mashing F5 on /r/todayilearned/new, thirty minutes after posting, and your post isn't there among the other new posts, and your submission's score remains at a single upvote (your own).

You message the subreddit mods and never hear back. You begin to question how the content of your post "would have looked", in This Political Climate. Even though your post contained nothing but factual information, it's probably a bit inconvenient to point out that Michelle Obama has literally no official title or role in our government, aside from being the spouse of our President — after all, she's campaigning for another Presidential candidate at the moment. You suppose that, in some roundabout way, this information you wished to present to a community, having just learned it (literally the stated purpose of the subreddit) could be interpreted as being, as someone once put it, an inconvenient truth. Super mildly inconvenient, but inconvenient nonetheless.

Thus, it makes sense, when you think about it, that your post didn't even have a chance of being seen by anyone but you and that subreddit's moderators, because have you been paying attention you fucking moron, it's been like this for awhile now, why the fuck did you expect anything different? You were a fool to have submitted that post to begin with, of course this is how things were going to turn out. This is the Way Things Are Now.

You think back to the people who unfollowed you on Twitter for questioning things in the modern political sphere. Not even for supporting candidates or anything; even questioning the narrative every now and then, here and there, completely respectfully, is enough to make people uncomfortable enough to cut you off completely.

We live in crazy times. Like, a century ago, we only conveyed ideas to each other in a handful of ways: in-person conversation, books, art, maybe a telegraph or whatever. Now we're being bombarded by information constantly, from all directions... it makes sense that a human's natural reaction is to filter out anything that is too "crazy" to fit their mental model of the world — their mind is only barely holding together as is!

Honestly, at this point, I'm with Cypher. I want that goddamned blue pill and I want it now. I want nothing more than to just willfully ignore the tangled web of complex, interconnected systems that I've come to discover underpins everything. I want to ignore all of these greater societal problems that have been festering for generations (willfully misrepresented by politicians as needed), and just live a normal fucking life, consume entertainment like a normal person, get outraged at Those Evil Right-Wingers like a normal person (right in line with everyone on my twitter feed)... but I can't do it. I just can't lie to myself, and I fucking hate it.

I don't even pretend to know how it all works... I just know that I don't know how it all works, and neither does anyone else. Humans are naturally curious creatures, yet we've been conditioned as a society to accept everything at face value and just roll with it. Everything will work out okay! And if some kind of terrorist attack happens, don't worry, just change your Facebook profile picture in solidarity right along with everyone else. See? We even coded this button specifically for that, just to make it easy for you. Don't think too hard!

...I didn't mean mean to write that much; I guess your post just kinda struck a chord with me OP. I spent a large portion of this evening reading various angles on the latest bullshit surrounding the US Presidential election, and it got to the point where I realized I literally could not discern fact from fiction anymore. My mechanism for filtering out garbage data on the basis of "being too ridiculous" is completely shot after the events of the past couple of years.

On one hand, I could totally believe that the United States federal government is built on layer upon layer of corruption, with a horrifying child molestation and/or human trafficking scandal at the center of it all.

On the other hand... that's fucking ridiculous, there's no way that could be true, that defies all common sense.

I can feel the cognitive dissonance and it hurts.

I don't know what to believe anymore.

I really, truly don't.

Nice rant. I agree with the feeling but the fight continues. The red pill is bitter and it upsets your stomach, but in the end it's healthy for you to view the world as it is. The blue pill may be sweet going down, but your soul never wakes up to the danger it is in. Good luck brother.

Everything you wrote resonates with me at this point in time.

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Users who post interesting info end up being called shills/trolls, which is a shame.

Hi! Real person here Had to jump in and add my favorite... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-XuMvxi-vc

Just watched a CBS false flag news story on Russia and Al Qaeda boogie man attack set for tomorrow-election minutes ago. These aren't the droids you are looking for...

“Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.” -John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Exactly what a shill would say.

Kidding. Sarcasm can be lost in the internet.

If your posts and comments aren't anti-Hillary enough, you'll be mass down voted.

Real people, checking in.

r/hillaryforprison

r/wayofthebern

r/the_donald

r/conspiracy

Hi

I sure hope this broken fucking record doesn't return to normal. Status quo can go straight to fucking hell

here's one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O1v_7T6p8U

I am a demon and I agree with you

I think there has been a retreat to the chans. Harder for CTR to control.

http://www.rank2traffic.com/4chan.org

Everything is about the election and which puppet gets to play - look at me, aren't l great and l've got the biggest dick. Whatever, all the same to me.

Fucken distract us all with one hand and while we all watch, something else is going on. Every single time.

The same BS happened down under a few months ago, Aus went to the polling booth and the great illusion perpetuated.

Gotta be someone, some thing playing with us. Fucked if l know who or what and personally l couldn't give a single fuck.

For me it's the dichotomy of life and the balance of good/evil (call it what you will) that makes MY life worth living. Not sure about trying to wake anyone out of their self imposed slumber anymore. I used to have that drive but as l become closer to the end stage of this grand game of life, l find myself closer to most other lifeforms than humans. It's always about us isn't it?

Reddit is merely a medium for mass paradigm creation as is the WWW and if we can get to the core of our consciousness, our spirit, our soul we won't even need any of this. We are greater than this illusion IMO.

Sorry for the ramble, but yes there are still some of us here who believe :)