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?

No bot here, just a normal poster. Anyway, back to the topic.

Christ, yet ANOTHER post about just how awful and stupid everyone else is. I think MN needs a "Superiority" board.

How do you know that? You're not the OP.

The internet shows you more of what you look at.
My social media threads are all articles about physics, climate change and nature conservation, literature and travel.

I don’t even think it’s just every single thing is over sexualised. The dumbing down of society is everywhere. There are adults who actually watch random men eat takeaways from various places and rate them. I can’t imagine how boring and thick you must be to enjoy this ‘content’ and the worst thing is, the men doing the eating/eating of the takeaway establishments are making thousands and thousands on the back of it while we have Drs and Nurses on the bones of their arses.

Name change fail?

HILARIOUS!!! They used the wrong three word name. The generator must have packed up.

Absolutely disagree. Have we all forgotten about the Carry On films?

I don’t have a social media feed full of idiots and people ‘obsessed with sex’, so people might want to consider what they or other people in their house are consuming online that’s skewing their algorithms towards this kind of content.

I’ve now got to the age where I would(if she were still alive) agree with everything Mary Whitehouse complained about.

Nope. No “name change fail”. Anyone can click a username and see OP’s posting history, that’s all I did. You’ve been throwing AI accusations around multiple threads and it’s getting weird. Maybe take your own advice and move on.

Haven’t read the full thread but wholeheartedly agree with the OP @YourJadeLionand @222days

I see people doing those utterly ridiculous, faddy tik tik dances and I just despair.

Even just a few short years ago people would have seen someone doing that and thought “what the hell??”….how quickly it all moved and became so popular and normalised.

And that’s exactly the problem - social media means everything moves so quickly now, and it’s all moving in the wrong direction.

Why is it weird to spot and point out a pattern?

I find this when I’m with my DC as he watches YouTube. There is a lot of brain rot and I’m constantly trying to move him on to something a bit more edifying or genuinely entertaining.

But I’m sad to say that I’m having the opposite problem in my own social media experience - in a fit of intellectual enthusiasm a while back I signed up for a bunch of Substacks on topics I am interested in, by journalists and writers whose work I enjoy, and now I feel completely overwhelmed by how much there is to read, and how quickly the next publication comes out, and how each writer now has 3 different publications plus private podcasts plus live events - and I can’t keep up, and eventually just stop opening the app / the emails and sink into guilt and increasing ignorance.

I wish someone would just assign me one thing a day to read, give it to me in hard copy, and then make me write a short essay to show I’ve properly read and understood.

I didn’t know how good I had it back in secondary school!

The rejection of facts over feelings is pissing me off massively.

That’s nonsense though, isn’t it? What evidence is there that “we’re all equally intelligent in our own way”?

This.

That’s the whole point of the story.

I agree with this. Having been very consciously socially mobile through most of my adult life, I've mixed with all sorts including those whose everyday lives are like Trainspotting on repeat. Love 'em all: posh, derelict, prim, depraved, brainy and dumb. (The d-words are not always the same people.)

But here's the thing. I liked being able to choose. I'm pissed off with the d-words being everywhere, taking up bandwidth, infecting the reasonable discourse of civilised society and making people think d-behaviour is normal nowadays.

I use a LOT less social media now, you can't escape the fucking d-words!

... and while we're here, a well-constructed post using a varied vocabulary may well have been written by a human. If you refuse to believe that, read some books of at least Young Adult level and amaze yourself.

Me too.
Why was she never replaced?

For years there has been a focus on human rights, but no equal focus on the responsibilities that come with being a human. Many people are more self absorbed and don’t care for the consequences of their actions.

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

The internet has allowed politicians to reach people like this too, and now they’re voting accordingly.

I was just thinking yesterday (loads of empty boxes obviously stolen on shelves we had to search for one with the item in it) that petty crime is on the increase because those on benefits who’ve never had or intend to get a job don’t have to live with the threat of losing anything if they get caught.

Those of us with jobs risk losing them if caught stealing. Do benefits even get sanctioned if you are caught stealing etc?

In fact when DH and I retired early I commented to him we can go and steal stuff now (as a joke) because we don’t have to live by our professional conduct standards anymore!

Alas, we can’t because we want to live abroad and we’ll not be let in with a criminal record but…..honestly, it did cross my mind 😂

The more benefits are available to all the less educated (what’s the point if they never intend to work anyway) and law abiding society is becoming.

I see this a lot on MNs!

I believe that was in the 90s during the war, not something that's currently happening. Not that that makes it any better!