Ask Lemmy

if internet didn't exist, I'd probably be a religious person, who wouldn't read any religious books but would have followed the customs. But with internet, and by interacting with different people, I became atheist.

If the internet didn't exist I very likely wouldn't be alive today, so I guess not

In middle school, before my family has access to the internet, I was taught about how other nations agreed to use the American dollar as a standard and the benefits of leaving the good standard for a fiat currency. I asked if they wasn't a bad idea because it means if that one country had economic problems everyone would and was promptly told that that's a dumb question because America can't have economic problems.

I was raised agnostic and abused through school for not being Christian by people who worship a man that condemned that exact action.

I think I was always destined to feel the way I do.

Probably not. I build my philosophy bit by bit, by being exposed to a lot of different often contradictory ideas though the internet.

I would have never had patience for reading all the classic philosophers (they wrote a lot). Even less with modern ones (they are very niche these days). But having a summary of anything at my fingertips made me able to cross connect ideas and form something coherent on my own.

I'd say i'd have the same political/philosophical beliefs, cuz they make sense with who i was before i had access to the internet, and the social context i grew up in. I rejected religion since i can remember interacting with it. On the other hand, i might not have the same cultural knowledge (especially in music, which i discovered on youtube and forums).

If the internet didn't exist we wouldn't be in the same political situation we find ourselves. So it's hard to say.

That being said, I'm old enough that the internet wasn't quite a household, in-your-face thing until I was already legally an adult, and I was already leaning left by then thanks to people like Rush Limbaugh who made me realize how selfish, racist, and uneducated conservatives are and I didn't want anything to do with that. Life's too short to waste time being a self-serving piece of ignorant shit.

As far as religion I knew that was all bullshit well before I reached adulthood. Internet wouldn't have affected that at all for me.

No. In fact, I can almost guarantee that they would be different, because the internet not existing would mean the entire world is dramatically different. It would be almost impossible to come to the exact same beliefs in an entirely different timeline.

Without the internet I probably wouldn't have lived in the same places I did, nor met the same people I did. So I guess it would've taken me longer to reach the political views I have today, but I think I would've them, eventually.

I remember that even before having access to the internet I was already seeing some hypocrisy in the arguments that I parroted from everyone around me, and I would sometimes argue back against some of them even without proper knowledge of the subject.

I certainly wouldn't be voting for Trump since i have the rare human ability of noticing when someone has lied to my face thousands of times in the most absurd, lazy, and inconsistent manner possible.

My dad was a Republican and a military man who i respected immensely, so I could've seen myself going that route, but that route in my mind was "fiscally conservative" and not "socially conservative", but I haven't seen any fiscal responsibility from that party outside of implementing cuts to offset massive tax break handouts for billionaires, and there's instead an extremely unhealthy emphasis on the latter.

Come to think of it i don't think i even came across politics much during my childhood years with Internet, it was still web forums mainly and political web forums sounds as boring now as it did then. (though It's kinda weird that i feel that way and still spend most of my time on lemmy discussing politics rather than any other topics)

No. I’d probably fancy myself a centrist or even be a little conservative

Yes, I graduated high school before the web was widely available.

Difficult to say. I feel like I’ve always leaned left, but without my exposure to leftist discussion online, I may not be as far left as I am today. I’d like to think that I would have ended up with the same political beliefs that I currently have.

I certainly would not have come out as trans until it became a very public thing. In the past I had always thought that I had some sort of fetish with dressing up in women’s clothing. It wasn’t until I was exposed to what being trans was, online, that I finally connected all of the dots. I’d still have come out as trans eventually, but it would have taken longer. I’m grateful for the trans spaces I discovered online, and the community I found within. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Core beliefs, yes, because I developed those for the most part before the internet existed by learning critical thinking skills from great teachers, books, and other sources. Public broadcasting exposed me to things that I had no personal experience with.

The internet has further impacted the way I see the world by increasing the ease of finding out more about topics from around the world that help me refine that worldview.

I formed my religious and sociopolitical beliefs before the Internet was much of an influence on anything.

I didn't really seek out political content on the internet when I was a teenager (this was before the powers that be really discovered the internet as a propaganda tool), but I was already pretty leftleaning just from reading/watching traditional news, reading books and talking to people in person.

I do wonder if my views would have changed if I was more financially successful. It's easy to believe that you deserve it when you have 'made it'.

Absolutely not. Intellectual and political life in my country is basically nonexistent due to decades of repression, so it was the internet (specifically the English-speaking internet) that provided me with the information necessary to make any sort of informed conclusion about, well, anything. Without the internet I'd have ended up as a vanilla guy with no political positions beyond autocracy bad and a wildly skewed view on life in general. My religion would've stayed the same, but with a lot less thought behind it.

I don't think so. It's provided me with a lot of different perspectives and information that doesn't show up in centralized media.

I was alive before the internet and still had the same basic views that formed what I have now so yes. Id probably be more spiritually devout though just because of work opportunities

As long as people know how to and are willing to socialize outside of the internet, and as long as they realize most knowledge is available outside of the Web (and away from those trying to take hold of it), they should not be that much different.

BTW, that 'outside of the Web' place filled with knowledge are libraries ;)

Religion: yes. I gave up on religions at age 13-ish. Not before internet but well before internet became the opinion shaper that it is.

Politics came later. However I naturally gravitated towards reading blogs who's opinions resonated with me. I also found myself agreeing with some points and disagreeing with others points made by the same person.

I'm mostly voting for someone who has ideas that is most likely to improve my top 2-3 issues (and don't see me as the problem in society).

Definitely. I only got easy internet in my pocket after school. Before that, I was raised by Sonic the Hedgehog and Captain Planet in my childhood years, and punk rock in my teenage years. And it was never a phase, mom.

I think so, yes - I first used the internet when I was about 18, it was the first real flush of it becoming a widely used consumer product.

As such, I had already formed most of my political/ethical stances, more or less, and they haven't really changed, other than to react to new factors in the world. I obviously still had some growing up to do but I think my basic life view hasn't really altered much.

Probably not. Podcasts have had a pretty dramatic impact on my worldview, and I don’t think I would’ve been exposed to many of those ideas otherwise. My political views would likely still be more or less the same, and the same goes for religion - or rather, the lack of it - since it doesn’t play a big role in my culture. But the way I see the world and other people would definitely be different.

Empathy is empathy.

I would not be as disenfranchised with all aspects of government without the Internet. I'd still care about people.

No, because I think being exposed to the plight of others increased my sense of empathy. In my late teens and early 20’s, I was convinced that anybody could “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” if they really wanted to. It was only when I realized that I come from privilege (insulated middle class white male) that I realized most people have serious headwinds or blockers in their lives, and that government propaganda is all bullshit.

More or less. My morals and where they come from predate the Internet. I'm not particularly old either.

Im an Anarcho-Syndicalist but without the internet I would probrally be a hardcore ML/Stalinist. Additionally IRL I have seen nothing but hate and the worst of humanity, without the internet I would not even know that humanity is capable of good and I would not have any regard for human life. So I would probrally join a radical ML militia group and shoot up some government building.

Yes. My worldview, morals, and ethics were pretty much fully formed before I even started using the internet.

Maybe I would've been slightly less cynical and nihilist and depressed, but the world outside the internet has let me down a lot more than the internet, even accounting for enshittification, so probably not.

I would definitely have less interesting fetishes, though.

I think it's impossible to fully know, though if we're talking direct influence, no, I don't think so. My ideology mostly comes from education, and my education mostly comes from my family influence- that is, I ended up getting a PhD and as they say "reality has a liberal bias" (although studying critical theory certainly helps).

That said, I've played MMOs since I was 15 and even met my partner of 13 years on one, so like... who the fuck knows where I'd be if there was no Internet, lol. Probably a lot more productive, though.

I'm not sure. I feel like I'd have stuck with my parents' political leanings if I didn't have a catalyst to know any better. I really don't know though. Maybe I'm selling myself short.

My biggest awakening stems from meeting my wife years before we got together. She grew up in a more religious family than I did and experienced a lot of issues with that. She was hip to the atheism and science scene and opened my eyes to it. I can credit her almost exclusively for being that catalyst to show me that the ability to use reason and logic is a foundational skill that all humans should value and that you shouldn't hold values that you haven't reasoned yourself into. She's amazing.

Vaguely, I think a lot of my outlook on life came from reading Terry Pratchett and Ian M Banks amongst others

I think I'd need to be born before 1755 to have a significant change to my religious or some political beliefs.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but even though I was a very empathetic kid, I would probably be a terrible person as an adult were it not for the internet. I lucked out by having a best friend who wasn't scared to have a blunt, honest conversation with me about some of my shitty views, but it was like planting a...not even a seed bc it was such a drastic slap in the face, but like a tree. And it was the internet that helped me learn more and explore ideas and metaphorically care for and nurture and protect that tree and keep it growing. Without the internet, the tree would have died. I had people actively trying to cut the tree down and poison the roots at every turn.

Today, it's a good tree. I've done a lot of growing as a person for the better, and the internet had a big hand in that.

Simply because I wouldn't have met my wife, I suppose I wouldn't have. Also, being on the more "conversational" parts of the chans as a late teen made me (perhaps surprisingly) very empathetic and more merciful with my judgement and actions, and helped create a bigger "barrier" of human understanding between the words I hear/read and my reaction to them (very helpful as a hyperactive, sensitive guy!). But most of my ideology's "building blocks" come from very old and popular books, so maybe I would've developed into it/found my way to it, just a bit later. How could I know? 😅

Probably not drastically different. Most of my belief system was established before modern Internet was available.

Probably not. The internet and interacting with overseas individuals helped me rethink my opinions. But at this point it seems American tech oligarchs are dead set on making little bubbles of content algorithms where that benefit may disappear.

Yes, those things were mostly settled in my mind before the Internet came around, and all of them were settled before social media did.

Don't get me wrong, I've continued to refine and add nuance to all of them since, partly due to online discussion (eg. Land Value Tax is something I picked up that way) but the core of "politically conservative — socially liberal — Christian Universalist — Stoic" hasn't changed in the last twenty-five years, even though I didn't know all of the correct words to describe my views back then.

I don't think I would be a leftist if it weren't for the Internet teaching me the way.

I can state pretty definitively mostly yes because a lot of my formative years were before the internet really existed as such. Www came about when I was about 15. I was already dialing into BBSes and Gopher and IRC before that, but DSL didn't come about until I was in my twenties and I must've been nearly thirty when broadband came about in my neck of the woods.

My swing from right to left was well under way by that point. The internet certainly didn't hurt that, and I might've hung onto some deep-seated bigotry longer without it, but my die was cast probably before 9/11 and certainly after it.

I formed my filthy inclusive solidarity leftist agenda before the web was a thing.

Though I did use dial-up BBS and FidoNet and later Usenet and email and FTP and some federated remote file polling services I don't remember, mostly to get my hands on newsletters and FAQs and docs on studio electronics and hacking and philosophy and occultism and punk rock and industrial music. Regular nerdy computerized teen stuff of ~1990.

But I also frequented the library and hung around in political circles.

So, I guess?

Yeah. I still would have studies science and that alone is enough to convince one that the ideology of the right is fucking idiotic.