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BrainBurner  ·  2897 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Stephen Fry's Blog post on Social Media.

I stopped reading after this:

    Well maybe. But I’m going to suggest that if I was young now, my proudest boast would be: ‘My friends and I, we disappeared ourselves. No social media, no email, no chat, no wifi, no selfies, no SMS, no smartphones. We did it. We did this thing. We Got Off The Grid.’

    Why should anyone want to dissociate themselves from all that connectedness, fun, convenience, reach and power? Well, because it would be – and I can’t be bothered to search for a better word and anyway perhaps there isn’t one – awesome.

I skimmed the rest to see if he expanded on this idea, but I was disappointed. Instead, this is what I got out of it:

As if I haven't posted this enough already.

So he's advocating that we ditch anything involving online communication, just to rebel? Because... it's awesome? What a nonsensical and unproductive load of hooey. Being a rebel for the sake of being a rebel isn't awesome. It's dumb.

I mean I get it, lots of what happens online today is frivolous and probably even harmful. In my opinion, people under 30 today are far too caught up in social media. Most people are stupid and lazy. They're going to use the Internet for the lowest common denominator content , and they're going to be exploited via it. But that's always been the case with any technology, whether that be the printing press, radio, TV or the Internet.

I still think more good than harm comes from it being online, and I think my life is improved by it. I get my news online, I read enlightening articles and conversations on Hubski, I can discover new and free music on any number of websites, and I can indulge my random interests on reddit. Why would I give that up just because of the bad stuff on the Internet?

(Normally I like to just ignore these types of articles, but this one was particularly asinine.)