Maybe The Internet Will Be Good Someday

“Despite how far the computer, Internet, and social media have come, they’re still in the relatively early stages of development — maybe even the infantile, pre-adolescent stages…. As these new technologies mature, so will the ways we use them. [We] now find it boring to go to chat rooms just to mess with people. And just think — most current versions of social media are still only a few years old. Eventually, people will grow tired of using computer power for petty teasing, and will use it for more practical and useful applications.”
 — Party enthusiast Andrew W.K. offers hope to those who worry about the negativity of the Internet. As someone whose low opinion of humanity expresses itself in a deep skepticism about its supposed progress — maturity, in this conception, is merely the ability to better disguise one’s selfish desires as efforts made for the good of others or disinterested actions that coincidentally happen to have happy results for the person making those decisions in the first place — I find it remarkably unlikely that the better angels of our nature will eventually emerge and make social media and the Internet in general something worthy of praise rather than a giant hole of suicide-inducing despair and bad behavior. But I am old enough to acknowledge that I am often incorrect about things, so it is quite possible that I could be wrong here. If the Internet does indeed transform itself into the beautiful butterfly prophesied above I will be the first person to celebrate its transformation. I mean, in truth I will be long dead in the highly unlikely event such a thing ever comes to pass, but sure, what a wonderful world that will be.