Anyone who says "the internet is not real life" or something similar is still not paying attention, and misses how technology, humans and culture work together
I wonder if part of the fear that companies/media have about the internet and whether it is "real" or not is less if it is "real" and more whether their relevant sector is "important enough" to react to. I don't think this dilutes your point at all. I also think that just about EVERYONE is overconfident in their take on the world. We're more tribal, more rigid in our opinions, and less likely to consider that we might be (or probably are) wrong. (Please don't read that as a criticism of you, it is just a general observation of mine that overconfidence is the ruin of many). Cheers
Adam, just a quick comment/note to say that I appreciate your takes. I appreciate them because while I often agree there are also times where I say "Hmmm, I'm not sure". But THAT is how I'm going to expand my thinking and pivot towards a greater truth. I KNOW that many of my beliefs are probably at least slightly wrong or, at least, not optimized. I strive for confidence without overconfidence. Pragmatic action that is a net positive and allows me to learn, ditching fallacies and incorrect beliefs and strengthening ones that are supported by evidence.
The more important question is not whether the online world is sufficiently like the real world, but rather, vice versa. The lines are becoming so blurred that it's more like the real world is trying to keep up with the online world. A great example is in journalism, where during the heyday of Twitter, entire articles would be based on a handful of tweets, even those with little engagement. But if those tweets satisfied an angle that the journalist wanted to pursue, they were touted as evidence, thus creating a feedback loop where some obscure online artifact shaped the so-called real world, which would then spark online discourse, which would then feed real-world discussions, and so forth.
Agree broadly with your entire post. My add-on would be that some of the confusion is that the internet is an infinite collection of niches, and therefore there's no "the culture" like before the early 2000s (or maybe even earlier). Not an excuse, but points to how the old way of thinking/framing the world is even more outdated.
What is even more amazing, there seems to be now a new generation of business people who connect and network on online web-conferences and then follow up with LinkedIn profiles and zoom-meetings etc.
This is ground breaking, and many "old-school" investors are ignoring this fact.
I am still to figure to what extent this is applicable, but, even in the smallest bit- it is still huge difference to how the investing, the hardest nut of them all, was done before.
Great article. On the commerce side it think Real and Reliable are two very different things. They know the internet is real, but what people say, interact with and approve or disapprove of online is often very different from how they actually spend their money, effort or attention.
“The digital world ironises the ‘real world’, it makes physical spaces the site of dares and jokes and memes to be used as social currency in the digital world. The digital world becomes real - the primary social space - while the physical world becomes a stage.”
And there are problems with the internet world which need to be resolved. One of them is in the dating scene. The problem is that the average man does not understand why he is not taken now when his father was. I did not notice this because, with all of my defects, and there are many, I am happily going along life with his significant other and with a daughter who heats the very happy. this is the same situation that most of my male acquaintances are in.
However there is a large number of men are not in this position.
1. They want a virgin female, who checks off a number of other Christian, white, attractive boxes. That they themselves are well overweight and do not check off the attractive boxes themselves does not seem to bother them because in the old system just having a job would be enough to find someone.
2. They are being told by the females that they meet that they have no attraction to them. They have an extremely low chance of getting even a first date.
3. Thus: They have not had a date in almost a year.
4. This is noticed by the media
There are reasons that this is true. This is not just random chance but the operation of the simple mechanism, which in various forms we have gotten from our ancestors and have accelerated because of the unique factors of Homo sapiens.
1. The men who have a long-term attachment (LAA) are, overwhelmingly, on the side of females on such issues as health care, abortion, and other key issues politically and socially. They have plenty of options because they are on the side of most females.
2. The men who do not are overwhelmingly not on the side of females on these issues, and moreover they do not want to change at all. they have, therefore, a lower selection of females. is not zero, but if 60% of the men are in this mode where as 40% of females are in this category, the females will have an abundance of males pick from and that means that a large number of males in this category will not have a chance.
3. The power on the Internet is heavily towards the females. This does not bother the men who are LAA, because that is a normal condition: females long before the Internet made a selection of available males. It does bother the Incels, because in the pre-Internet dating scene, they had no competition, or very little, from the top 5% of the males, and therefore eventually the females would eventually pick them. Though I will note that the females would then divorce a large fraction (a very large fraction almost 50%)
This means that the very old pattern (as in pre-agrarian 500,000 year stuff) meant that the females would either take 1. An LAA 2. Hold out for the best genes in the world man who would overwhelm all defenses and get what he wants.
This leaves out the unattractive males because he neither has he basically non-LAA personality, nor does he have really great alleles. And he therefore is, statistically, has an enormously low chance of finding a female on the Internet dating scene. In essence he is a gorilla with low sexual attractiveness because he is neither an alpha male, and he fails at the chimpanzee mode where the dominant females do not want to have anything to do with his personality.
This change is normal for when the systemic mode changes: an enormous number of things need to be altered because of the different ways that people interact. I would say something about calorie driven waistline as well because that too is a change that has happened relatively recently.
I wonder if part of the fear that companies/media have about the internet and whether it is "real" or not is less if it is "real" and more whether their relevant sector is "important enough" to react to. I don't think this dilutes your point at all. I also think that just about EVERYONE is overconfident in their take on the world. We're more tribal, more rigid in our opinions, and less likely to consider that we might be (or probably are) wrong. (Please don't read that as a criticism of you, it is just a general observation of mine that overconfidence is the ruin of many). Cheers
Adam, just a quick comment/note to say that I appreciate your takes. I appreciate them because while I often agree there are also times where I say "Hmmm, I'm not sure". But THAT is how I'm going to expand my thinking and pivot towards a greater truth. I KNOW that many of my beliefs are probably at least slightly wrong or, at least, not optimized. I strive for confidence without overconfidence. Pragmatic action that is a net positive and allows me to learn, ditching fallacies and incorrect beliefs and strengthening ones that are supported by evidence.
thx alex appreciate you as a reader of this community
The more important question is not whether the online world is sufficiently like the real world, but rather, vice versa. The lines are becoming so blurred that it's more like the real world is trying to keep up with the online world. A great example is in journalism, where during the heyday of Twitter, entire articles would be based on a handful of tweets, even those with little engagement. But if those tweets satisfied an angle that the journalist wanted to pursue, they were touted as evidence, thus creating a feedback loop where some obscure online artifact shaped the so-called real world, which would then spark online discourse, which would then feed real-world discussions, and so forth.
Agree broadly with your entire post. My add-on would be that some of the confusion is that the internet is an infinite collection of niches, and therefore there's no "the culture" like before the early 2000s (or maybe even earlier). Not an excuse, but points to how the old way of thinking/framing the world is even more outdated.
I agree on this.
What is even more amazing, there seems to be now a new generation of business people who connect and network on online web-conferences and then follow up with LinkedIn profiles and zoom-meetings etc.
This is ground breaking, and many "old-school" investors are ignoring this fact.
I am still to figure to what extent this is applicable, but, even in the smallest bit- it is still huge difference to how the investing, the hardest nut of them all, was done before.
Great article. On the commerce side it think Real and Reliable are two very different things. They know the internet is real, but what people say, interact with and approve or disapprove of online is often very different from how they actually spend their money, effort or attention.
this is a great article, adam!
@mr_scientism (on X) said it best:
“The digital world ironises the ‘real world’, it makes physical spaces the site of dares and jokes and memes to be used as social currency in the digital world. The digital world becomes real - the primary social space - while the physical world becomes a stage.”
https://twitter.com/mr_scientism/status/964671903032950785
great post
And there are problems with the internet world which need to be resolved. One of them is in the dating scene. The problem is that the average man does not understand why he is not taken now when his father was. I did not notice this because, with all of my defects, and there are many, I am happily going along life with his significant other and with a daughter who heats the very happy. this is the same situation that most of my male acquaintances are in.
However there is a large number of men are not in this position.
1. They want a virgin female, who checks off a number of other Christian, white, attractive boxes. That they themselves are well overweight and do not check off the attractive boxes themselves does not seem to bother them because in the old system just having a job would be enough to find someone.
2. They are being told by the females that they meet that they have no attraction to them. They have an extremely low chance of getting even a first date.
3. Thus: They have not had a date in almost a year.
4. This is noticed by the media
There are reasons that this is true. This is not just random chance but the operation of the simple mechanism, which in various forms we have gotten from our ancestors and have accelerated because of the unique factors of Homo sapiens.
1. The men who have a long-term attachment (LAA) are, overwhelmingly, on the side of females on such issues as health care, abortion, and other key issues politically and socially. They have plenty of options because they are on the side of most females.
2. The men who do not are overwhelmingly not on the side of females on these issues, and moreover they do not want to change at all. they have, therefore, a lower selection of females. is not zero, but if 60% of the men are in this mode where as 40% of females are in this category, the females will have an abundance of males pick from and that means that a large number of males in this category will not have a chance.
3. The power on the Internet is heavily towards the females. This does not bother the men who are LAA, because that is a normal condition: females long before the Internet made a selection of available males. It does bother the Incels, because in the pre-Internet dating scene, they had no competition, or very little, from the top 5% of the males, and therefore eventually the females would eventually pick them. Though I will note that the females would then divorce a large fraction (a very large fraction almost 50%)
This means that the very old pattern (as in pre-agrarian 500,000 year stuff) meant that the females would either take 1. An LAA 2. Hold out for the best genes in the world man who would overwhelm all defenses and get what he wants.
This leaves out the unattractive males because he neither has he basically non-LAA personality, nor does he have really great alleles. And he therefore is, statistically, has an enormously low chance of finding a female on the Internet dating scene. In essence he is a gorilla with low sexual attractiveness because he is neither an alpha male, and he fails at the chimpanzee mode where the dominant females do not want to have anything to do with his personality.
This change is normal for when the systemic mode changes: an enormous number of things need to be altered because of the different ways that people interact. I would say something about calorie driven waistline as well because that too is a change that has happened relatively recently.