- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
No, it’s not just you — people really are, per a number of surveys, way less intelligent than they used to be.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250316190341/https://futurism.com/neoscope/human-intelligence-declining-trends
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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Define community. I genuinely want to know because I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a community that wasn’t on reference to online forums.
When you pay rent to your landlord and are exploited by your job to afford it… that is the community everyone thinks is so great.
Dont worry about getting to know your neighbors. Rents going up end of your lease and you have to move yet again to find someplace you can afford. No point. But hey, the houses of the neighbors you never met increased in value. Thank you for your community service.
We never were civilized. At least we stopped pretending.
What the fuck? Are you serious? You don’t know what community is outside of the internet?
…Yeah? At least I don’t think I do. English is my second language so maybe I’m missing some nuance here, but no I have never heard of a “community” IRL.
A community to me is just members of something like an online forum or a subreddit or subscribers of a content creator. Though the last one is a stretch, since they don’t talk to each other usually. I’m not that young either, I remember being on IRC back in the day and I’d call that a community.
People I know IRL are disparate acquaintances and friends and friends of friends, none of them know each other or share anything in common or any desire to know anyone, I met them on dating apps mostly and through people I met on dating apps, so I don’t think that’s a “community”.
People at work are coworkers, prisoners of wage slavery assigned to the same cell so that’s not it. Neighbours are just people forced to cohabit nearby due to finite amounts of land, you’re usually either enemies with them or on friendly terms, but you wouldn’t speak to them unless there was something you needed, so that’s not community.
Most of the time I hear “community” it’s a dogwhistle meant to make something sound more polite than “people” so e.g. “LGBTQ community” - there is no such thing, it’s just people, but no one would read articles saying “LGBTQ people fight for rights” because that sounds too sad, so they say “community” or e.g. “migrant community”. It’s a euphemism.
Interesting. Well, community is a common word lol
It’s usually used to refer, non-specifically, to people that live around you. You’ll see it in places like “community gardens” or “community centers”. The usage on the Internet is pretty recent, linguistically, obviously lol
See that’s counter-intuitive to me because doesn’t it usually imply some level of knowledge of the people or at least something you have in common?
I don’t know them, I’ve never seen any of them more than once, I’ve never spoken to or been spoken to by them anywhere I lived, because people IRL generally keep to themselves and just talking to random strangers is pretty weird all in all.
With your usage of the word “community” in “community centre” i just figured it’s an extremely old timey generic way to generically refer to a settlement, including cities, towns, residential areas/neighbourhoods, districts, zones, boroughs, areas and other localities that’s fallen out of use.
In that case I’m not sure how I’m meant to interpret @AnIndefiniteArticle’s usage of the word, because I don’t know how someone can destroy the social fabric of random collections of actual strangers on the street lol, there isn’t any, they’re just randoms on about their day.
Yes. That you live in the same area. You have the same elected representatives, you use the same public services, you shop at the same stores, you live with the same stakes. That’s why people say you need to get involved in your community. Whether or not you acknowledge it, you’re part of it
Edit: to add, “community center” probably sounds old-fashioned to you, because of what they were talking about:
Getting rid of places where you can engage with your community has been part of this effort. Community centers are run by local governments, and are often one of the first things conservatives try to cut
But that’ happenstance. Literally thousands of randoms live in the same area. I’ve never seen the same person twice, and I’m sure they want to be left alone. Not really enough to start a conversation.
Pretty sure an average person has no idea who that is or what that means. Hell, I don’t know who that is for my area from a few months ago.
That’s a bit of an assumption.
I’m not even sure what you mean by that. We have almost nothing in common in our actual lives apart from living in the same city and area. Like, moving cities doesn’t substantially change anything about your life, you still do the things you do, work the job you work, know the people you know, etc etc.
People don’t just strike up conversations with other people because they live in the same apartment block.
I get that - what I don’t understand is how. And to answer that first I need to find this “community”.
You say it’s not a website, but the only time I’ve ever seen anyone discuss something relevant to a local area was a Facebook community for that city, which was mostly boomers whining about gormless buskers in the suburbs or old people posting black and white photographs saying they are looking for someone they saw in a bar hundreds of miles away 40 years ago, like some kind of strange ARG.
I can acknowledge it all I want, it doesn’t matter if most other people aren’t aware of this supposed community we share, or of other people in general.
I’m also a part of the cosmos but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a Martian either.
Idk again on paper you say things that make sense and I could picture a fictional Lynchian village where neighbours talk to each other and greet each other and maybe even discuss their elected representatives or whatever if they’re tight-knit, but this just doesn’t match anything even close to my lived reality.
I do appreciate the explanation though, thanks.
If your community is poorly connected, help out! Host a block party, set up a book swap, there’s all kinds of options. That’s a big focus of our local 50501 community in Michigan: restoring the bonds that have been worn away over the years by capitalists.
I strongly disagree with the majority of your last post though. It sounds like you’re determined to close your eyes and ears to the people around you