Gloucestrian
Ephemeral Spectre
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2016
- Messages
- 415
- Location
- Gloucester
Something that has been increasingly bothering me in recent years is the intolerance to diverse opinions. At the end of the last century, probably due to the new millennium, there were a large number of people who were promulgating new age attitudes and some pretty far out views. You only have to look at the earliest surviving threads in our very own IHTM section to see the kind of far out topics of discussion and largely people seemed more tolerant and willing to suspend disbelief.
In those days I only ever lurked on here, I didn't have a computer of my own until late 2004 when I was first able to afford one. But I was around on the early net, from about 1994, using library computers.
Now by the standards of the days I was distinctly not new age, being a rather old school liberal and quite conventional in my thinking on most things. New age stuff and much of the topics discussed in esoteric circles seemed hilariously credulous to me but I was, and remain, quietly fascinated by the unusual, the strange and even the very out there ideas that people had. So I liked the early web and its "every idea is valid" and worth discussing on its own terms approach.
Sadly we seem to live in a new age of an entirely different kind now. An age of relentless cynicism, of hostility to those who think differently. At first I thought a little scrutiny and rigour would be for the web but now I feel otherwise. While news media get away with publishing absolute garbage as fact with very little push back from the public, if someone posted today that they had a telepathic experience with a heron I imagine there would be no shortage of "brave" persons ready to ridicule and dismiss.
Thanks to the moderators here this forum does seem to have escaped the worst that our time has to offer but I do think that even here the tone has shifted to a generally dismissive one. Not a complaint, just an observation from a casual poster.
I disconnected from so-called social media a long time ago now and I do wonder how much responsibility lies with social media for the weary, cynical and unpleasant nature of the web. Certainly it seems to have emerged as the dominant tone online after the rise of Facebook and Twitter.
The saddest thing in my opinion about this change to a generally dismissive and cynical discourse is that it is probably hurting most those who are part of a minority. After all it is minorities of all kinds that are most likely to have experiences that are uncommon, not just of the Fortean kind but in every area of life. Yet their experiences are increasingly invalidated by a mainstream that grows ever more homogeneous and controlling.
I felt an urge to post about this in part because I feel that this is a phenomenon in itself of Fortean interest, and because I am interested to hear the thoughts of others here in particular why that new age openness has disappeared.
In those days I only ever lurked on here, I didn't have a computer of my own until late 2004 when I was first able to afford one. But I was around on the early net, from about 1994, using library computers.
Now by the standards of the days I was distinctly not new age, being a rather old school liberal and quite conventional in my thinking on most things. New age stuff and much of the topics discussed in esoteric circles seemed hilariously credulous to me but I was, and remain, quietly fascinated by the unusual, the strange and even the very out there ideas that people had. So I liked the early web and its "every idea is valid" and worth discussing on its own terms approach.
Sadly we seem to live in a new age of an entirely different kind now. An age of relentless cynicism, of hostility to those who think differently. At first I thought a little scrutiny and rigour would be for the web but now I feel otherwise. While news media get away with publishing absolute garbage as fact with very little push back from the public, if someone posted today that they had a telepathic experience with a heron I imagine there would be no shortage of "brave" persons ready to ridicule and dismiss.
Thanks to the moderators here this forum does seem to have escaped the worst that our time has to offer but I do think that even here the tone has shifted to a generally dismissive one. Not a complaint, just an observation from a casual poster.
I disconnected from so-called social media a long time ago now and I do wonder how much responsibility lies with social media for the weary, cynical and unpleasant nature of the web. Certainly it seems to have emerged as the dominant tone online after the rise of Facebook and Twitter.
The saddest thing in my opinion about this change to a generally dismissive and cynical discourse is that it is probably hurting most those who are part of a minority. After all it is minorities of all kinds that are most likely to have experiences that are uncommon, not just of the Fortean kind but in every area of life. Yet their experiences are increasingly invalidated by a mainstream that grows ever more homogeneous and controlling.
I felt an urge to post about this in part because I feel that this is a phenomenon in itself of Fortean interest, and because I am interested to hear the thoughts of others here in particular why that new age openness has disappeared.