BEWARE Internet addiction

It may seem odd that someone such as myself with 57,000 posts would bring this up. Am I internet addicted? Probably but that isn't what this is about.

I had never heard of this until two weeks ago I heard some daily Donald Trump update on a talk radio station. Now this might surprise you but the spot/ad was to PROMOTE Trump's TV show and Trump in general---his words of wisdom and all.


THEN last week I was looking for an article and on a MSNBC link there was a tease about "internet addiction" on Scarborough's show.

THEN I heard about it on an Fox News promo on another talk radio station.

Aside from assessing IF I am internet addicted it struck me as odd that there would be such attention paid to it. The fact that all the sources seem to be from the same general realm really got me to thinking.

Is this some sort of effort to diminish or question the validity of what you read on the internet? No reasonable person believes everything they read but the internet does afford one a great variety of news sources as well as takes/outlooks on news stories. People communicating with each other is a great way to delude the powers that be's control over news.

Is this the "new truth" trying to fight off criticism and dissent? Think about that one for a while. Do you really think it is any accident that Cheney uses the phrase "rewriting history" just as they are in the midst of rewriting RECENT history? Did you get the message about how HORRIBLE and AWFUL and EXPENSIVE the transit strike in New York was? Did you know that the huge protests in Iraq yesterday were a GOOD thing? Now don't go out there getting the opinions of anonymous slacker loser just listen to our lovely blonde she will tell you everything you need to know.


Okay maybe I am being paranoid but this stinks to high heaven.

Addiction can be a problem for some folks and yes, I'm sure those dumbasses wish the whole internets would go away. It wouldn't help them much. There is still the radio, television and ways to record spoken lies.

that they're losing the ratings. How can they compete with the internet, they offer rotten few things, the internet has, well, everything.

several hours a day on the internet vs. watching tv or playing video games? Nothing, except you may find a different message than the one they want you to have. Now, this may not be particularly good for you or productive, but who says we have to be productive anyway? Am I expendable if I do not produce something useful for some rich corporate capitalist in some way? Well, duh, Mr. Consumer. Fuck that. Think I'll go sit in the woods somewhere watching squirrels chatter at each other while the wind rustles leaves.

How is YOUR chocolate ration?

Olafr

makes it tough to control us and our ability to access news( Truth!). Watching TV and playing mindless video games on or off the internet is the same. I played online backgammon ONCE then my 'puter froze. I am on hours but I think it equates to reading dozens of newspaper/magazines. I don't apologize for that.I do think it has gotten obsessive.

BTW, I have not seen any numbers but I would imagine it is MUCH tough for advertisers to get their message to us. Banners don't work and spam is deleted

I know a lot of people still have jobs where they are go go go all the time (I mean desk jobs not actually working) but every job that includes a computer has been made easier by the computer and dumbed down too. With these advances comes more slack time at work.

You can learn everything you need to know by listening to AM radio and watching FAUX news.

Direct quote from Homer J. Simpson!!

And TV content is controllable. My RW Mom used that very argument during my visit, "You can't believe what is written on the Internet, at least Television verifies their sources.

I'm very addicted to the Internet, but more specifically I'm addicted to information. I can't stand spin and propaganda.

Schiavo

I had never heard of her or the case until that Friday afternoon when the ruling came to pull the tube-the start of the whole thing.

Within about two hours right here on DU I got the link to that great website about the court rulings and I shocked and amazed people with what I knew and how the whole thing was going to end. I say in two hours because we were getting opinions about this and that and I wanted FACTS dammit. I got them.

The same goes for the Katrina timeline

and of course the Iraq War.

I think this is also pre-emptive for those who do not yet have internet access or those who do not use it.

Remember when the internet made us all depressed? Or socially isolated? Or paranoid? Or unattractive nerds with bad diets and worse skin?

While it's not inconceivable that some people run into personal problems from overuse of the net, it's also true that it's provided a great connection to the world for folks who would be isolated from it, otherwise.

I'm nearly as big a blatherskyte as you are, but I can't say I've suffered either cravings or withdrawal symptoms when I've spent weeks off the net on trips to visit my folks.

I suppose the next thing to happen is for Big Pill to come out with Dammitol, a pill to cure internet addiction and increase one's social graces.

Remember when the internet made us all depressed? Or socially isolated? Or paranoid? Or unattractive nerds with bad diets and worse skin?

...me.. ..me... ...me.. ...me again... - Wow, I'm really close on this!

fatter. But that's my fault.

Plain old fashioned greed and competition is sufficient to explain why television producers might feel threatened when people spend more hours per day interacting with one another-- or simply reading news-- via the internet than they spend passively watching those producers' programming-- and supporting their advertisers. My suggestion is to simply carry it to the next level. Get rid of your TV, or at least disconnect the cable. You won't miss it for long, and you won't hear those talking heads whining about your "internet addiction" anymore. Hell, I'd say that most of America is pretty thoroughly "television addicted." Getting THAT monkey off your back is a wonderful improvement in lifestyle quality, IMO.

-Homer J Simpson

the info one can find on the internet. They are waking up to the fact that the info is there for anyone with access to the internet and a desire to get to the truth. They have to try to minimize its effectiveness somehow....can't have the populace informed now, can they?

"You can't believe anything you see on the Internet"

Doesn't matter that it's the same shit they read in the paper or see on TV. Apparently it's all bull.

:eyes:

I heard that from a friend of mine who is left leaning but is surrounded by Republican good old boy types. This is actually true. We don't believe the media and THEY are sure it is still liberal lies.

I guess finding out what other people think would get in the way

Answer the following questions and find out.

1.) Does your thinking begin earlier in the day than it used to?
2.) Do you find yourself craving a think at a specific time each day?
3.) Have you ever had a blackout as a result of thinking?
4.) Do you think alone?
5.) Has your thinking ever caused you to perform an act which you later discerned to be certifiably insane or incredibly stupid?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you could be among the millions of people in this country who have lost the ability to control their thinking, a disease which, if left untreated, can result in jails, institutions, or a frontal lobotomy. And just because you don't think every day doesn't mean you don't have a problem. Many problem thinkers go for days or weeks without thinking, only to eventually find themselves on the inevitable three or four day thinking binge.

THINKENDERS can help you stop thinking. Call for our free brochure, "No thought for today" and find out how.

Is that an original?

That is fantastic

I am prone to constant thinking binges, and reading it helps to steady me down.
:hi:

will come out with a pill for this ...WAIT!

At work, I looked forward to lunchtime so I could have a good think.
Thinking on the job was prohibited, so I had to sneak a think.
I tried to stop thinking for a week or two, but failed.
Others have nagged me about my thinking. I wish they'd mind their own business.
I often wonder whether my life would be better if I didn't think.

Children are starting thinking at younger and younger ages.
Or my favorite "increasingly younger ages".

Illicit and unregulated thinking traffic is taking over the web.

:silly: That's why I pull over to the side of the road before I have a think.

Then again, I've got less than 32,500 posts so what do I know? :evilgrin:

but I believe some people do suffer from the malady. I have seen people lose their jobs because of their inability to limit internet use during work hours even after multiple warnings to do so.

I don't want to completely rule it out. I didn't mean that. Point taken.

...us to use the Internet. There's too much information, out here, that they don't want us to have access to. It shouldn't be surprising that the powers that be might advance a meme such as "Internet addiction" nor that they would employ the usual suspects--Scarborough, Fox News, talk radio, etc.--as conduits for that meme.

The Internet is a stream of information, and exposure to information results in, for better or worse, education. Remember what Karl Rove said about education: "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

be because of the internet. When they put this attempt in motion, the net didn't exist, and they didn't have a plan in place advanced enough to information securely under lock and key. The last attempt (Nixon) was stopped in it's tracks by a free media, so they got that threat under control for this latest push.

If we beat them back this time, attempts to control information disseminated online will be their first priority (coupled with further inroads into the voting machine business).

The Cost of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance.

ago in the New York Times. Without getting my ass sued, one of the therapists mentioned in the article lives in our home town. I will not comment on her. What I will comment on, though, is my belief that "Internet addiction" is a load of crap.

Julie

You'll enjoy this:

"I don't know of any other disorder currently being researched where the researchers, showing all the originality of a trash romance novel writer, simply "borrowed" the diagnostic symptom criteria for an unrelated disorder, made a few changes, and declared the existence of a new disorder. If this sounds absurd, it's because it is."
...
"Teenagers talk on the phone for hours on end, with people they see everyday! Do we say they are addicted to the telephone? Of course not. People lose hours at a time, immersed in a book, ignoring friends and family, and often not even picking up the phone when it rings. Do we say they are addicted to the book? Of course not."
http://psychcentral.com/netaddiction/

In short, lazy journalism.

To assume that this is some sort of coordinated effort to discredit the internet as a source of news assumes that this is what most people use the internet for.

you are talking about shopping right?

abilities--to be READING news and opinion, especially from a variety of sources--but, in particular, just to be READING it, and then composing thoughts yourself, WRITING it--rather than passively ACCEPTING (or even mentally arguing with) the narrow, rightwing, packaged news/opinion on TV, with its heavy, and often subliminal, image and PACING factors. (You no more get interested in something, a topic, which has been superficially discussed, then they're on to something else, or breaking for commercials.)

You don't see many stories from the war profiteering corporate news monopoly TV divisions about ADDICTION TO TV--that passive, brainless, physically and mentally inactive need to be spoon-fed all that colorful imagery and blather all day long. Many people leave their TVs on for company--but they never get anything out of it. It's apart from them. It's just fantasyland. And it can be lethal as to creating impressions in peoples' minds of what is real. For instance, many progressives believe that they are part of a minority in this country--and feel isolated and alone--when the truth is that they are part of a great progressive American majority that has become disconnected from each other, demoralized, disempowered, and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED. The fascist news monopolies give a BIG TRUMPET to rightwing views, way, way out of proportion to their numbers.

THIS addiction to passive acceptance of 24/7 TV blather is far more dangerous than an addiction to active interaction, reading, thinking, writing and other activities of blogging.

TV news (and other parts of news monopolies) also create a very false impression that our democracy is "working"--that our elections reflect the will of the people, and so on. Yet they were directly collusive in the 2004 stolen election by FALSIFYING their own exit polls, late on election day, on everybody's TV screens, to 'FIT' the results of Diebold's and ES&S's "trade secret," proprietary vote tabulation programming code. The exit polls said Kerry won. The Bushite-company controlled secret formulae said Bush won. They forced the exit polls to "match" the Bush win. They thus denied the American public major evidence of election fraud.

If the American people knew what really happened, they would do something about it. But the war profiteering corporate news monopolies don't want them to DO anything--except passively get advertised to, get brainwashed, and go "consume" some crap they're selling.

On line, you can find out the truth--and see the information that you are getting vetted before your very eyes, as bloggers here at DU, for instance, take it apart, challenge it, bring in other info, and come to consensus about facts and sources. And if you want to talk more about something that's on your mind, or you have information of your own that you think needs getting out there, you can start your own thread, or your own blog.

You can also read versions of news stories as they appear all around the globe, in different publications in very different cultures. You can go read Al Jazeera and see how the Muslim world is understanding and reporting things. And you can directly interact with people all over the world.

I think the managed, packaged corporate news departments must be very threatened by all this--and it wouldn't surprise me if they were inventing stories about "internet addiction." It's far better to be addicted to THINKING, RESEARCHING and COMMUNICATING with others, than it is to be addicted to their lethal pablum.

There are some problems with the internet--and one is that there is so much information available, and a finite amount of time and energy that an individual has. I can see becoming "addicted" in this sense. You want to know it all. You want to understand it all. And/or you have quite lot to say, and no corporate news monopoly editor is forcing you to write it in 150 words. And the "readership" is virtually limitless. This could definitely be "addicting." It's good in most ways--but could devour your time, and also harm you physically (and possibly socially--although for some it is an expansion of the world, not a contraction).

It's a very new thing--like electricity itself, and telephones, and air travel, and cars, for that matter--all new within the last hundred years. We may not at all be well-adapted to these things, mentally or physically. It took--what?--ten thousand years to create us, as we are now. And in a mere one hundred years, we have completely changed how we live, in most ways.

So we should certainly consider its impacts--on individuals and communities--but I really wouldn't give much credence to news monopoly propaganda about it. They are into disinformation, and well...MONOPOLY.

I notice that our media, according to you, is manipulated and false but alJazeera is "how the muslim world is looking at it". But then I think I just exhibited your very point about how we are able to break things down assess them and render opinions on them.

I find myself keeping a running list of things to look up (I tend to start on Wikipedia and then cross check THAT if I have the time-mostly I use to get the basic facts with a skeptical eye of course) hiccups and Tiannamen square were two things on my list this morning.

I have noticed many such "Words from management" recently which I noted in the original post. This morning The Today show was going to discussing the mysteries of 2005 including (hold on to your hat now) "Deepthroat being solved and Jennifer Holloway what happened to her" yes apparently the ONLY resignation of a US President and a missed hottie of prime egg laying years are now equal.

I agree with almost all of your post but I wanted to point out the first thing mentioned here.

This "addiction" crap is just a way for them to try-once again-to mind control us. The Bastards! :grr:

I can say from personal experience that although I've always had liberal leanings, I was never very political until I got online and educated myself about the corruption that is REALLY going on in this country.

I am EXTREMELY grateful for the internet! :applause:

"I was never very political until I got online and educated myself about the corruption that is REALLY going on in this country."

and this is why all the "experts" are raising "concerns" about the internet. the "powers that be" can't stand to have a multi-billion-dollar e-commerce producing, open and free, connected to the world, uncontrolled network in the hands of mere peons.

I've been hearing about this ever since there was an internet. It comes up on radio and tv every now and then.

Here's a psychologist who's been debunking it for years.
http://psychcentral.com/netaddiction/

An article he references from 1996:
"Is the Internet Addictive, or Are Addicts Using the Internet?"
http://webpages.charter.net/stormking/iad.html

bookmarking

Thanks