Have people gone a bit madder or has the internet just exposed them?

We have reason to be worried, if Elon allows trump and people who use extreme hate speech back on twitter it has effects in real life , eg more attacks on minority groups. I can remember a time when there were very few characters who were gay in TV dramas, twiitter is a place where many minority groups have a voice Blm, me too, lgbt groups, yes its true some people are offended by lame jokes but at least people who are racist or sexist will be criticised and have to face public backlash on social media and that's a good thing

I think the internet and social media have given many people the incorrect belief that their opinion on everything is so good that everyone should read it. It’s also given people a way to say things to people that pre social media they’d have never said to them.

I'd say the potential has always been there - people looking for meaning in their banal, fleeting lives is not new. But technology, social media, globalisation and other aspects of modern life just facilitate and amplify it. Social media companies identify and exploit this human weakness and make billions from it.

These sort of discussions about cancelling etc. make me think about Liam Gallagher's altercation with a (black) paparazzo where he called him a gay boy's f*ggot's arse kebab dick w*nker. That was in 2001 - not ancient history. Hardly any fuss over it at the time, what woukd happen today? There hasn't been any attempts at a retrospective cancelling but then again some people might be "uncancellable".

Another one I thought of - Killian M2's TV Archive recently posted a clip of Julian Simmons (UTV continuity presenter) introducing Coronation Street and making a joke about camel jockeys. That also wasn't that old, 1990s at the oldest.

Sorry, but that really comes off as 'won't someone think of the children' type mentality.

Who gives a shite if trump gets back on twitter. Just don't listen to the guy. Like, he was president of the United States for 4 years spouting garbage on it. The world survived! Lol

The internet and social media in particular has given a platform to loonies. While before you may have two loonies talking nonsense on bar stools, they can now link in easily with other loonies, and they can have their own loony twitter accounts.

A lot more people have been given a “voice”, that’s for sure. But another issue would be that on a number of platform the user base has “aged out” a fair bit and seem to be populated by angry lads in their 30s/40s.

They seem to have inherited a boomer level of fear. A fear of change, people who are different from them and foreigners. These “types” wouldn’t, exactly, be “winning” in life either so they’d also have a lot of internal angry which they then direct at these “others”, and women. I guess they see them living a better life, or getting access to one, that they’ll never have. Well, they could if they spent a bit of time away from the computer maybe.

Thankfully, you don’t encounter too many of these in the “real life”. Crotchety men banging on about the WOKE (all caps) and evil immigrants. I guess these sections of the internet keep them distracted and off the streets. Sort of like a “Current Affairs” forum for the real world.

Hopefully, theses areas will continue to shrink and the, more opened minded, young people will continue to drive change, both social and political, while the angry internet “types”, the vocal minority, continue to fade into obscurity, and irrelevance.

I do think media addiction has driven people mad, or madder if you prefer.

I refuse to be on Twitter, read it or have anything to do with it. It seems very corrupting to me.

Musk's re-arrangement of Twitter is neither here nor there in a sense. Its already a horrible place regardless of whether it is about to get slightly better or even worse.

Back in the 90s there was a Viz character called Millie Tant who was bascially a pisstake of a woke social-justice warrior, so they definitely existed.

I think the problem is that the internet has fueled them rather than exposed them - they have the means now to reach such a much wider audience and it's gone to their heads. On top of that, they keep trying to "out-so" each other - who can be the wokeist? Or the most socially aware? Pure ego.

Think you're mixing up two different sub-cultures there!

EDIT - more than one, actually: "40-year old boomers"...??

The internet has just enabled more crazies to interact with each other. They now have a platform, an outlet, an audience. ‘Some’ control so….

facebook, Instagram, bebo or MySpace was never going to give them their outlet to enable their attention seeking goals, and exposure and their false sense of importance, with even added dollops of attention….which is their currency… But with Twitter….

I'm not sure I'd refer to people who class themselves as "woke" being open-minded - they have verocity to want things banned simply because they disagree with them, a belief that they are acutomatically right and moral and are just as relentless as the McCarthyists when it comes to trying to bring down people that just happen to disagree with them.

I guess you could say there are “extremes” on both sides, PCB. But, again, it’s nice to see the, more, nasty side of the conservative bunch are the older, more cranky, ones. So, while the younger people are becoming more tolerating, compassionate and accepting the older, angrier, types will be dying out.

This will, hopefully, lead to a brighter multi and, dare I say, inter-cultural society in the future.

Have to say, it’s nice to discuss these things with someone who doesn’t “lash out” with sneering, and insults. Most refreshing. But, I must say, you’d want to be careful with that level of discourse lest some turn on you and accuse you, yourself, of being WOKE (all caps).

You mean the 60-year-old millenials?

Boomer is not a state of mind, it's a generation of people aged mid 50s plus - if you meant "boomer-mindset" then, fair enough - but in fairness, it wasn't particulalry clear.

Beyond that, you also made a identified a few chracteristics that were nothing to do with who you implied.

"40 year old Irish boomers don’t use computers" --? 40 year olds don;t use computers...?? 40 isn't THAT old, be it boomer or boomer-mindset.

"people who say they “wouldn’t bang” the starlet du jour and yet are too vain to adjust to the idea that they have outgrown their XL Tommy “Hilfinger” polo shirts or that they need to start wearing reading glasses" - is this about the woke or the anti-woke? The first bit says woke, the rest - well, I don;t see how that connects with either group to be honest....

People who whine about [cancel culture] just don’t like it when people disagree with their opinions - isn't this both woke AND anti-woke? I mean, woke people try to cancel things and don't like it when people disagree with them probably more than anyway.

So forgive the confusion...

Your confusing posts, remember? Your incorrect use of "boomer" and the mismatching of various groups.

Boomer is a specific definition. If you intend it to mean something other than that, I'm not psychic.

The rest is self explanatory if you want to read it.

In fairness, Weinstein went a little too far in how he expessed his views. Most people are going to "cancel" perverts and sex-offenders.

I want Conservatives liberals, people of various political viewpoints, ordinary average people to be on twitter, I think people who promote hate speech against anyone or ask for violent acts to be committed against anyone to be moderated or blocked from twitter , I don't have any one example of a violent act that's directly connected to a tweet . Donald trump was removed from twitter I think it was maybe to do with speech that was racist or maybe for spreading fake news re implying the election results were fake which maybe led to the Jan 6 attack on government buildings, there's plenty of Conservative politicians on Facebook and twitter

they are allowed to post right wing content as long as its not extreme and it does not break the rules about encouraging violent illegal acts or racist hate speech or defamatory content about a particular person. I think it's obvious that certain people have been attacked or injured due to extreme content or hate speech on social media, just Google attacks on Asians Jews usa 2021 and you get plenty of results

You can look on techdirt. Com you'll see articles about how Elon musk does not seem to understand how moderation works on twitter and just saying I want more free speech is not a solution and he contradicts himself many times when he discuss, s this subject. Moderating social media websites with millions of users is a complex process which should be done by qualified experts not just by one person who is very rich who wants to change the rules

We live in a funny old time alright.

Dissent from the accepted narrative is like a cardinal sin.

People lose their **** if you question what went on during the "pandemic". ( It wasn't even a pandemic. The goalposts of what defined a pandemic were moved a few years in advance ).

If you question it at all, from a perspective of patient safety, you'll get looked down on and told, eh I'll listen to the scientists thanks. Nevermind the fact that the scientific community is corrupt from top to bottom as result of sucking on whatever tit will fund them.

A lot of people claim to be liberal and on the good team but shout down any attempt at questioning what we're being fed by the corporates. It doesn't make sense at all but nothing surprises me nowadays. 🤷