/lit/ - Literature

In a community where anonymity is the norm, social pressure becomes ineffectual. Without ties to a person's real world identity, without real world consequences for ones behavior, the lessening of inhibitions becomes inevitable. All boundaries put in place by a society to limit ones psychopathic tendencies melt away. There is no limit to what a man in this environment can do. He can ridicule anything. Not a single thing is beyond reproach. Nothing is sacred.

But the lack of real world consequences is a lie. His mind has been subtly altered by his lack of restraint, already these extreme ideas and behaviors have become more ordinary to him; they are being normalized: he will show even less hesitation next time. Worse still, refraining from contributing to the discussion will not save one from this effect; just by reading the thoughts of others, and being exposed to these radical ideas, one is already becoming desensitized to them. One's own reservations over the extremity of these ideas will fade away and eventually he may even join the conversation.

This normalization of extreme views is not unique to 4chan. It is most noticeable here, due its size and lack of registration and usernames, but it is happening everywhere. All over the internet, websites with pseudo-anonymity and even no anonymity(!), are slowly becoming more and more tolerant of these radical viewpoints as more and more peoples minds have become desensitized and dis-inhibited by the ease of instant communication.

All this will come to a head when rioters take these extreme ideas to the streets. They will see no reason to protect the institutions that provided them with the comforts of the modern age. They will destroy everything. And the survivors will look upon the ashes of the remnants of the world and wonder "Where did it all go so wrong?" But we will know. Deep down, we will know where it all went so wrong.

>tfw now /pol/ has been active in the thread we'll have to suffer from /lgbt/ again until the thread goes back to one post every 6 hours because the regulars leave for discord again
I still miss you dinoposter.

Someone needs to force moot back

Since discovering the possibility that this universe be a hologram I've become obsessed with it. I already always questioned the meaning of life but now I really do. Some people who meditate and have reached altered states have stated that they feel as if they're nothing. Are we really nothing? I like to read alot on physics and philosophy so I never thought of these thoughts as bad things, since they always encouraged me to read, but for the past few years they have depressed me. Why do I work this pointless job? Why have the events that have occurred relative to my sense of self occured, and why do they define me now? If time is nonexistent. Then what is the value of the time that we have? What's the point of it all? I'm sick of doing the same mundane things unable to find significance in things that most people do. I can't properly integrate myself into caring about going to work, or school, or reach some sense of economic wealth outside basic human needs from currency with a false value based on others perceptions. Why am I deemed to have the experiences I have? To what end do I need to percieve my reality as good or bad? Everything just seems so false to me, and it annoys me because it seems people are forced to go through this pain as a means to "grow" without any given reason as to why. And that in itself is a relative truth because nobody really knows why. These thoughts have added to an already depressive state and i often ponder commuting suicide without much care or worry about the act in itself. I don't know if I'm right or wrong to think that way or if there even is an inherit right or wrong. I've tried to be uber positive before but to no avail. I need things to change...