Comment by hinkley

I’ve known a lot of neurodivergent and LGBT people, and I was in my late teens when The Internet happened and a young adult when the Web happened.

If you’re not within a couple standard deviations of boring, local living is isolating. Al Gore gave a mea culpa speech at one point because he thought, as a Senator, that legislating to give everyone the Internet would halt the rural brain drain but it had the opposite effect. People learned that they weren’t alone, they were just surrounded by (my words, not his) idiots and so they moved to where their people were. They voted with their feet in droves.

Ultimately, the Internet is good for support. It lets you find people who have the same obscure cancer your child has. Who are dealing with the same sort of neuroses your mom has. Who are being defrauded by a corporation in the same way. Who have the same feelings that the people around you ridicule you for even the hint of having. It lets these people find the patterns, see other people are feeling the same things they do, stop being gaslit.

Everything else has become about dopamine and money. And for those parts we should definitely unplug. But without forums or chat threads that same feeling of being The Other comes back.