The Internet has been around for decades, though, and your grandmother probably started using it long before 2016. I'm thinking something else might have happened around 2016... something or someone that could have emboldened hyper-racist nutters and encouraged them to voice their nuttery in public. Carrying that content way outside the audience of a 1997 home video. I can't really put my finger on what it might have been, though.

My grandmother didn't buy a computer until 2005, and didn't have the internet until around 2011.

A new, and foul type of orange came into prominence, is what happened.

It's not that the internet created new behavioural problems, but that intensified old problems.

It definitely gives people super-specific social niches in which to nurture their worst habits and views in a way that's not just unchallenged but even encouraged.

People who are chronically online tend to live in extremely insulated social bubbles. When you go out into the real world for your socialization time you tend to become less radicalized because you're more likely to encounter decent human beings with differing views from yours and your worldview becomes broader for it.

Most online communities actively discourage giving others the benefit of the doubt and instead prefer dismissing community-consensus-defying views with either overly harsh labels or extreme skepticism ("explain why you're not a troll for disagreeing with me politely", basically).

So in other words, I guess what I'm saying is that the internet seems to have given rise to a new wave of what are effectively cults. They encourage extreme views and extreme rejection of those with outside perspectives. Then when you conform to those views and behaviors, you tend to become socially isolated IRL, which leads to emotional dependence on the radical online community. It's a cycle of bullying that's extremely cult-like, and it's extremely common online.

I know that's what everyone says, what I'm saying is that I'm not sure I agree. I mostly think it just made old problems more visible. At the risk of upsetting Godwin, if you look at the rise to power in Nazi Germany, Hitler was able to appeal to people's inner prejudices and susceptibility to demagoguery and commit one of the worst, if not the worst, atrocities in human history.

Hitler didn't post radical content on Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, he just spoke publicly about stuff.

> Hitler didn't post radical content on Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, he just spoke publicly about stuff.

That's what social media allows random people to do much more easily: speak publicly about stuff. Before that you'd have to build a reputation and following in meat space which takes a lot of time and effort. Now it's just a like and share button.

I'm sure Hitler would have totally loved using Twitter, Facebook and the like.

But then Hitler would have to compete with a million other Hitlers

Or they simply join forces

> That's what social media allows random people to do much more easily: speak publicly about stuff.

GeoCities let you speak publicly about stuff, so that alone is an incomplete characterization.

What nearly all social media does is preferentially bias message propagation to boost engagement in order to enhance advertising sales and biases of its owner(s). This tends to amplify drama and stoke rivalry.

> we just didn't have the ability to see what most people were thinking or saying

I agree but the internet brought a new set of behaviors that weren't possible before. For example, communicating to millions or even billions of people.

Our brain developed when human groups were relatively small and it's not ready for the social scale that we're operating now through the internet.

Your grandmother didn't change; the world around her, the world she was brought up in, changed. She's not a nut simply because she refused to conform. She's a product of her environment just like you, and when she got older, her willingness to adapt to an ever-changing environment waned. It will happen to you, too.

No, she's definitely a nut.

I really hate that people that are sufficiently old enough just get a pass from a large part of society because "they're a product of their time". Well they're living in my time now, and I will judge them by the standards of my time.

I think it's wrong to decline a person from a job or from a loan just because they're old, but if that's the standard then it seems to me that I should judge them like I would anyone else. If my grandmother wants to insult Mexicans and call them all "lazy and living off the system" in front of my Mexican immigrant wife [1], she's of course allowed to say that but I don't feel even a modicum of guilt for calling her a nut or an idiot in the process.

Whether or not it happens to me is irrelevant. I would hope that future generations hold me to the standard of their time while they and I are living concurrently.

[1] Actual quote.

Where do you draw the line? Are most people from the near past a "nut" in some respect? Your case is more extreme, but pretty much all of my elders are nuts in one way or another in regards to obsolete beliefs. My own parents, for instance, who are otherwise intelligent people, still believe minimum wage should be $6.75 even though they also believe inflation has made groceries too expensive. Are they just stuck in the past or are they nutty?

I don't have a strictly defined "line", though overt racism is pretty much always past it.

If you're alive and not in a mental institution today, then I don't feel bad judging you by the same standards as everyone else. If an 80 year old says something racist or sexist, I really don't care if that stuff was acceptable when they were 15: it's not acceptable now.

Based on what you described of your parents, I wouldn't call them nuts just based on that.

ETA:

I'd like to clarify a bit; even though I don't agree with your parents in this example, and I think they're wrong, being wrong doesn't imply "nut".

I guess I view it as a matter of degree. I think overt racism is way worse than being a bit wrong about what minimum wage should be, and while, as I said, I don't have a strict line, the line does more or less exist.

And don't forget you can make some pretty sweeping generalizations about how young people are nuts, too. With similar justification: "We're different, so you are crazy."

Sure, and if a young person does something nutty then I'd call them a nut. It's not hypocritical on my end to do this.

My other grandmother is the same age as my idiot grandmother, and yet she's managed to somehow not be really racist around my wife. I guess I don't know for sure what's in her brain, but at least outwardly I wouldn't classify her as a racist, so please don't misinterpret what I say: being old doesn't inherently make you a nut.

If a young person says something dumb or offense, it's perfectly fine in my mind to hold them to the same standard.

> still believe minimum wage should be $6.75 even though they also believe inflation has made groceries too expensive. Are they just stuck in the past or are they nutty?

They're nutty. Other older people manage to understand the value of things and wages in the world now in comparison to when they were younger. I'm only in my 40s, I get surprised by changes since I was in my 20s, but each surprise is an update.

I think that thinking someone is a "nut" is an extreme position that should done very rarely. "Everyone seems crazy when you don't understand their point of view."

It's supportable to say that you strongly disagree with someone's worldview, but that alone doesn't make them a nut.

I mentioned that in a sibling comment, however I think overt racism crosses into the “nut” territory.

I get what you're saying, but I disagree that overt racism all by itself means the racist is crazy. I strongly disagree with the stance and think that it's immoral and idiotic, but not necessarily crazy.

This is getting into uselessly-pedantic-at-best territory.

Before the internet, if you were an insufferable moron, your social circle would likely curb your behavior to a more acceptable level.

Now you find communities of like-minded insufferable morons, giving support and cheering each other, and no one to say "cut it out, don't be such an imbecile".

Everyone says that, but there were plenty of insufferable morons before the internet. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson basically made an entire career out of validating the most insufferable people out in America, and for the majority of their careers the internet wasn't involved at all.

I really don't think people of today are more insufferable than before the internet. We know about a lot more idiots now than we used to, but that's subtly different.

Social media makes it easy to find people who think alike.

This reduces the inhibitions caused by social pressure, which normally dampens extreme behavior

> I get kind of annoyed when people look at the internet or social media and act like it causes all these problems.

I don't think it causes these problems. It seems very clear to me that it amplifies them, though.

Yet you are so casually using harmful words like "idiot" and "nut", which are ableist and offensive. Please educate yourself before spewing harmful, ableist language in the future:

https://web.augsburg.edu/english/writinglab/Avoiding_Ableist...

I am sorry if there was any confusion, but my goal was not to be nice.

I think my grandmother is exceedingly stupid. “Idiot” is a very common insult to call someone very stupid. My goal is to be mean in this case.

“Nut” is less defensible but I stand by it, and I don’t actually believe you’re offended by it.

Using 'n-t' as an insult perpetuates pseudoscientific mental health labels created to used to institutionalize women (particularly women of color) for simply speaking up or challenging authority.

'i--t' is a weaponized clinical term from the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, where IQ tests were used to justify forced sterilization of BIPOC individuals and women with mental health conditions being disproportionately targeted.

I know your goal is to "be mean" to a relative who isn't here(?), but it actually helps your case of not looking like a fascist when you DON'T pick terms coined by actual fascists used to oppress marginalized communities.

A lot of words that are used today have depressing etymologies. I dont think calling someone an idiot makes that person look like a fascist, as words change meaning over time, so I don’t really know what your point is.

Pretending to be offended by everything honestly makes people look childish. It’s perfectly fine if you’re actually offended, but frankly I don’t think you are.

You’re free to think I sound like a “fascist”, I just disagree.