While in principal i agree that cognitive surplus on the internet is better than watching TV or engaging in any other purely consumption oriented form of spending free time. But, in all honesty, my core opinion is that there is too much BS that doesn’t really contribute to anything important or enlightening…and that overwhelming amount of BS dilutes the real benefits of the internet and its affects on cognitive surplus. The explosion of social media produced varying results…
On one hand it does connect people and facilitates a kind of a forum where ideas and opinions are exchanged, sometimes producing truly unique results.
On the other hand it created a new realm for those people who don’t really have anything constructive to say and really use social media for their own “existential” purposes… These people try to attract attention and reinforce, in a way, the importance of their insignificant lives through all kinds of nonsense…
One of the best examples of this behavior is when completely random people you dont know start talking to you online like they actually have known you forever and always put their 5 cents in like anyone really gives a damn… Happened to me multiple times on YouTube… After that i completely isolated myself from all the morons who sit on YouTube ranting about all kinds of BS… Now, if someone messages me it goes straight to trash… That way i save myself a bunch of nerve-cells and dont have to deal with Global idiots…who often cant even spell “you.”
Facebook is another prime example… When it first started, there weren’t that many privacy options and completely random people were commenting on my pictures… WTH is that all about? Its nuts, some random people started commenting in all kinds of languages on my pictures… The best example i can think of is the following… Imagine you are sitting at a park and someone comes up to you and says, “hey is that shirt from Armani?” You reply, “no…” And they reply, “too bad…” What the hell? Seriously if that ever happened to me in real life…i would …………………….
Another amazing social trend that i noticed is that sometimes, especially on tech forums, you have complete “NOOBs” asking question and looking for quality information from the tech community… I Love that aspect of the internet and cognitive surplus, as i am, myself, a user and contributor on many tech forums…
Most of the time people who are knowledgeable in the topic will provide a very good explanation and the “NOOB” will understand everything from just one reply… When that happens you feel great because you helped someone out with a problem they were dealing with.
But sometimes it takes more than one reply to explain how to troubleshoot something or fix an error or whatever…and that’s when idiots come out of their caves and start giving all kinds of BS advice… Half baked/misunderstood info that they literally got from a general topic on Wikipedia and are trying to pass off as a technical solution…as if they are information systems engineers or have any low-level understanding of how computers and information are actually related… So what ends up happening is the following… “NOOBs” get soo confused because they are being provided with a lot of different information from completely different sources… On one hand you have knowledgeable computer people who are either professionals in the field, or just advanced users who have dealt with the same and/or similar problem before and actually know what they are talking about… and on the other hand you have some 12 year old who thinks he is “super computer guy” and starts throwing terms around from completely different areas as if they sound cool when combined, not actually explaining anything at all… And thats when the community gets pissed-off because this PUNK is feeding misinformation to other people who are confused as is… People start to argue and within a day or so that account, the PUNK, usually gets banned by Admins… “Thank GOD for database and user controls.”
So, my point is that it would be best for all those who actually do something productive on the web, if all those stupid teens, bored stalkers, or just freaking weirdos, would go back to laying on the couch and drooling like idiots watching some stupid show on MTV or whatever and not pollute the web with their BS and nonsense…
I think the commercial below will kinda demonstrate what i mean…
PS: This is a very light example of what im talking about…
If anyone experienced the kind of stuff that i was describing in relation to Forums…leave a comment… Thanks!
Also…”NOOB” is just a word used in the Tech community to describe someone who is not knowledgeable or a rookie… Not disrespect, just tech lingo…