But another side exists, women on dating sites being threatened with rape, is that because of how the internet makes men see women as objects, or example of how people would behave with anonymity in the real world.
I think it's more circular than that. The internet was created with good intent. The use of the internet gave people a public forum to push the envelope (racism/bigotry/porn/etc), then those people in turn further corrupted the internet and the circle just continued.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
The minute I got addicted to it, got addicted to aol, became antisocial, and started hacking and ddosing websites. So probably 2 months after my 14th birthday when I first got the internet? That was like 97 or so.
Now I make a living off the internet but there's no doubt the internet corrupted me.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
Yup, engaged all that in the 90s. I was eventually arrested by the SS in 2004 but they let me off easy. That was the end of my internet criminal career. Perhaps that's why i love this new Mr. Robot show so much.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
So as a construct of the mind the internet was filled with the minds corruption and therefore corrupted minds, is that your preposition and postulation?
The internet has just given people a mostly anonymous valve to be their unfiltered selves, which often means shedding social mores and niceties which comes out to people behaving like selfish, piggish, craven monsters.
I personally try to be a well-adjusted human on the internet (except for on KMC, sometimes) which is why for instance I rarely ever comment on Youtube videos because Youtube is the nexus of idiotic opinions.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Blaming rapes on porn is such a crock of shit. Similar to how people blaming the Confederate flag for racist evil acts is. Or blaming guns for people who shoot other people instead of putting the blame where it solely belongs. Which is on the person who pulled the trigger.
__________________ Darwin's theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, completely useless, and the object of superstitious awe.-Dr. David Berlinski, Philosophy
Most people believe Evolution not because they themselves are dumb, but cause they trust the "experts" who are feeding them evolutionary fast food, and so they don't bother questioning whether or not it's true.
Crime is down, at least in the US, and has been steadily declining for decades. I don't think the internet had/has any tangible affect on it.
50 years ago it was the dangers of television. Now it's the internet, or phones, or...people just want a scapegoat. Bad things happen, usually because the people are bad, not because of a vague, sweeping change in society.
The internet also facilitates education and connection. So to try to pigeonhole something that is so vast, and so ubiquitous in the modern world, as having only one type of influence, is laughable.
Whilst I agree that blaming rapes on porn is a dead end, none of those situations is equivalent.
The idea is not that the Confederate flag causes racism, but that it symbolises racism and should be opposed as a statement of rejection of those values- I know you don't agree, but I am pointing out how that's not the same as 'x causes y', which is the porn/rape accusation.
Likewise, porn is not accused of making people more capable of rape, merely of adjusting a mindset (nonsense though that is). Hence it is not comparable with guns which are actually a tool that can make murder easier.
Though in the US gun violence is an innate cultural issue also.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Never said they were "equivalent". I said "similar". Those are not synonyms, you know. And yes, they are very similar.
__________________ Darwin's theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, completely useless, and the object of superstitious awe.-Dr. David Berlinski, Philosophy
Most people believe Evolution not because they themselves are dumb, but cause they trust the "experts" who are feeding them evolutionary fast food, and so they don't bother questioning whether or not it's true.
Whilst I only mentioned the internet affecting traditional crime as a single aspect of possible corruption. Let's look at your first statement. Undoubtedly you are correct, traditional crime is indeed going down, however, virtual crime is going up and laws simply have not been able to keep pace. An example I could give are the threats of rape to women on dating sites when they knock people back or the highly publicised rape threats aimed at female public figures. The Police simply does not have the resources to deal with this type of thing and with anonymising software it's almost impossible to locate perps and given the volume of perps impossible.
Is it a scapegoat, some would argue the internet is allowing ISIS for instance to promote itself, In wayswhich have led the U.K. and U.S. to set up anti ISIS cyber units.
Paedos online are prevalent and much of their actions are impossible to prove offline.
The internet certainly facilitates education, no doubt, it also allows strangers into children's bedrooms.
Again Law enforcement simply would not have the manpower to deal with this.
If criminal law is based on preventing an infliction of harm then we would have to say that the real world laws can’t apply to the cyberspace. If cyberspace is being used to commit real crimes then it should be treated as such, but if it is being used to commit a new category of crimes then we should come up with a new way to handle them by developing specialized legislation.
This is simple messing around with words to empty effect. Me saying 'not equivalent' was, pretty obviously, me saying they could not be validly compared.
Hence no, they are not similar in any meaningful sense as related to your argument.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Do you think the internet can provide a place where due to relative anonymity it is easy for people to commit crimes like rape and death threats on a massive scale. The foulness to women on the internet disgusts me.