To think people are getting dumber and more perverted by the day?

[YourJadeLion]

Every time I go online lately, I’m either cringing or disturbed. People seem to be getting more openly shameless, more obsessed with sex and less capable of holding a deep or intelligent thought.

It’s not just influencers or extreme corners of the internet, it feels like the baseline has shifted. Conversations are dumber, jokes are cruder and softcore porn is basically normalised on platforms meant for everyone. You see adults behaving like teenagers and teenagers behaving like… I don’t even know what.

I know the internet plays a big role but I genuinely worry about what this means long term. Are we just desensitised now? Is it really funny that people can’t string a sentence together as long as they’re “hot?”

AIBU to think we’re on a slippery slope and most people don’t even notice?

There seems to be devolution taking place.

Fewer people read much and many seem incapable of grasping complex ideas or nuance. The general level of literacy and numeracy is extremely poor. There is a lot of inverted snobbery about anything intellectual. Meanwhile the internet has enabled people with disgusting views or perversions to find others to validate them and therefore they now feel comfortable to air them openly.

Politicians utilising the generally poor level of education and knowledge among a large proportion of the population to further polarise society with toxic rhetoric clearly doesn’t help as it shifts people’s perception of the Overton Window.

Such downwards spirals are very difficult to reverse until things reach crisis point because people are unwilling to or incapable of engaging rationally.

Good luck with this OP because folk are fiercely defensive of their low standards these days.

I was scrolling YouTube yesterday and a live feed video came by. It was of a grown man dressed as a clown with very rudimentary face makeup etc. The background was decorated very basically. He was making stupid noises and jumping around like a deranged chimp. Nothing at all about it made sense. Just some pathetic, talentless human trying to get attention. It was pure Idiocracy. I didn't know whether to feel pity or disgust.

YANBU. It's all so inane and basic.

“Shameless” is right and we need a conversation about how we’ve kicked “shame” into touch but thrown out that shame can actually be a useful tool in social cohesiveness.

People are no longer ashamed of bad behaviour. But they should be.

The social contract is in tatters.

I keep getting a man smeared with what appears to be faeces (I hope it isn't), with a toilet seat around his head like a frame, mumbling utter gibberish

I report it every time and block his channel, but he keeps appearing

He's using multiple accounts to keep going

The daily mash, which uses to be good, has a thing on how men plan their wanks today. It's so tedious.

Yanbu but I’m am heartened a little after reading replies so far.

This is not my experience. Bear in mind the internet shows you what you ask it to.

I know what you mean...some days I find myself thinking fondly of Mary Whitehouse though!

I think humanity is quickly becoming a cesspit anyway. On every level. The future looks bleak for mankind in general. Just read a newsfeed about human safaris in Sarajevos where people are shot by the wealthy from civilised countries, just for fun. Everyday, always something even more shocking than the day before.

This thread reminds me of my dad forbidding me to watch Tiswas in the eighties!

(Written before the Sarajevo post, obviously.)

I saw that, it can’t be true surely?

Whaaat?! That’s got to be fake news!

I think it has always been like this, it is just that social media gives them a platform whereas back in the day all they had was an audience of their immediate friends and neighbours.

If you look at some of the more specialised sites, there is some seriously good intellectual stuff on-line, only it doesn't make headlines the way the more popular sites do.

Watch the film ‘idiocracy’ it’s becoming more real every day 😂

This is alleged to have occurred in the 90s and is now under investigation. You've made it sound like it's something that's actually happening right now.
A prime example of not understanding what you're reading and reporting it as fact?

Have you not seen Idiocracy?

Yanbu. Doesnt help journalists are also dumbing down articles, i saw one the other day about someone on tiktok with 100k followers like who cares? Who even reads that crap?
I blame the internet. Before you could live in a little bubble, now you’re bombarded with constant crap.

I'm currently reading "Mania" by Lionel Shriver where calling someone stupid and failing to recognise that we are all equally intelligent in our own way is the last great civil rights fight.
It's a satire and takes the idea to the logical extreme but at times it does feel as though we're heading that way.

It's not the journalists, it's the owners. Many journalists have left the industry because they were being required to produce click bait and not given the time for real reporting.

Mmm, depends where you go. It's fairly light on Mumsnet admittedly but not gross. The algorithm doesn't show me too much shite because I am rigid about what I follow and hover over. And I have a few subscriptions to thoughtful things eg New Statesman.

You think that ‘human safaris’ are taking place in Europe in 2025 and it isn’t being reported on the mainstream news?

Heavy irony that you posted that on this thread. It’s this uncritical opening your brain and letting information fall in unchecked that is a massive problem.

Why would you spend time scrolling videos anyway? Total mystery.

Yet another three word user name post along the lines of AIBU ......to think humanity is unkind/going to ratshit/only doing good things when people are watching/doing performative grief.

OP will be written by AI. OPoster will put up two or three answers always changing tack, increasingly word soup, denying original intention and will then disappear into the ether.

The answer to the OP is that there is a lot of crap on line.
Get off line and talk to real people who are going about their business in the same way they always have.