If internet never existed, how different would your life be?

MorphedSnowman

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I recently got this thought to my head. How different of a person I would be if internet didn't exist.

On one hand, I feel like maybe it would be for the better. I feel like I maybe would be forced to be social as a kid, which would have helped me be a more adjusted person. In reality
spent my early teens browsing 4chan. :pepoClown: I like to imagine it's not visible to the outside eye. At least not anymore.

Then again, I wouldn't know English now if internet didn't exist. I probably in general wouldn't have any skills that I have now because I learned most of the things by reading stuff online and having stuff there be on my path by accident. Also surpisingly, I actually got partly more social because of the internet. Because if I didn't have people to reach out to online in my early teens again, I think I would have became a hermit by now.

I think that's it. Like it's hard for me to imagine how life would be, for better or worse.

How about you?
 
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Sometimes i think could have been better without the influence of internet, i'm on the web since i'm 8 years old (around 2010), so my perception about the world was drastically affected by that, perhaps i would ended up being a normie weeb, perhaps i wouldn't met people onlie who would make my life a suffering for years, yet still, i'm not dissapointed in who i'm, for bad or good, i'm improving every day, internet provides me knowledge to do so.

In a way a life without internet is great, yet, my current world it isn't that bad, at least i became more critical and carefree.
 
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wot

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I'd be a lot less self-aware, wouldn't have picked up any creative hobbies, and would probably be in a real bad spot by now. Since my parents took a "you're smart, you can figure it out yourself" approach to raising me, I was dependent on the internet to teach me whatever I couldn't learn in school. Just wish I didn't spend so much time on /b/.
 
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consonant

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i'd probably be so different to the point where i wouldn't even know what i'd be like.
i don't remember why i started using the internet so much, i think it's just because i found it fun to waste time on but i think at some point it became escapism.
if i didn't have it as a time waster/escapism i usually think i would've been more depressed, but as a kid i had hobbies playing with toys, reading, and drawing, so i might've just put more time into them.

the internet also kinda gives me an excuse to not improve my social skills because i can just talk with people online, so i guess i'd be forced to be more social.
 
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Well first, I wouldn't know English either, rather, not as well, and certainly not Russian either. I wouldn't know national anthems either. But at the same time maybe I would've been more social, idk. I think I would've been depressed regardless of whether there was internet or not. I've been on the internet since I was 8-9 (2008), but started seriously getting into it around 2011-12, and had a period of pretty bad addiction from ages 14-18. I wouldn't say I'm addicted by now, it's just my way of interacting with the world since there is absolutely no one and nothing that interests me locally. I don't want to build anything there, so I build online and then will build in RL once I can put my plans into action. I guess I would've been more of a normie, kinda. Spending my time at the library. A lot of my personality wouldn't have changed, it would've just expressed itself in different ways.

I would certainly not have discovered my beloved Kazakhstan and in general Central Asia until much later, either.
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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No internet? I'd probably be a super-hardcore, right-wing Mormon with 5 wives running my own carpentry business. Internet is the only thing that got me away from those crazies.
 
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Ixion_SEROV

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I can say with great certainty that my life would be infinitely more boring, uninteresting, and underinformed.

I'm the sort of person who thrives on places like this- where diversity of opinion and subject help paint a more multifaceted portrait of the world which isn't being constantly warped or wrongfully steered by large media corporations. The internet was- and still is- the genie that can't be put back into the bottle. It has allowed entertainment, resources, and information to escape even the most erroneous censorship czars and bring everything cool to kids like us.

I can only speculate so much, of course. I just need to think about how gullible and lacking in critical thought I was before finding sites like 4chan and realize just how dangerous that would be.
 
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gathermore

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Umm I'd be a Farmer, a Lutheran Christian, married, and I'd probably have kids.

Based on how a lot of my family members are exactly that now with the internet.
 
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Outer Heaven

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I'd have a tenth of my bad habits and ten times the attention span. Other than that I genuinely cant imagine how life could be because a ton of my highs and lows are in some way tied to the internet. I wouldn't have went through most of my cringe phases without it but I probably wouldn't have been religious either considering the environment I grew up in so I really don't know.
 
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timelinker14

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Different enough that I would be unrecognizable to my current self. I do think I would be more socially outgoing, but spending tons of time researching and teaching myself stuff online has made me smarter and more independent than some people I know. I'm not a fucking genius, but I do think I know more stuff than the average person. My english would suck as well.
 
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Chen

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Same as everyone here, the internet influenced me enough that I can say most of my personality and beliefs came to be thanks to it, and the ideas I've consumed by using it.
If I were to extrapolate based on traits I had as a kid I think as a person I would have been a lot less patient and receiving, and a lot more irradiated. Then again I do believe a lot of your personality traits are born so maybe I wouldn't have been all that different after growing up? Trying to imagine a world with no internet is the same as imagining a world where I'm not myself.
 
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Its hard to say, I might have been more productive without all the gaming, but then again a hell of alot of reading / learning got done on the net.

For most of us Gen Y and later gens we would be completely different people thats for sure.
 
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Sable

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I recently got this thought to my head. How different of a person I would be if internet didn't exist.

On one hand, I feel like maybe it would be for the better. I feel like I maybe would be forced to be social as a kid, which would have helped me be a more adjusted person. In reality
spent my early teens browsing 4chan. :pepoClown: I like to imagine it's not visible to the outside eye. At least not anymore.

Then again, I wouldn't know English now if internet didn't exist. I probably in general wouldn't have any skills that I have now because I learned most of the things by reading stuff online and having stuff there be on my path by accident. Also surpisingly, I actually got partly more social because of the internet. Because if I didn't have people to reach out to online in my early teens again, I think I would have became a hermit by now.

I think that's it. Like it's hard for me to imagine how life would be, for better or worse.

How about you?
I would probably leave the house more often. And wouldn't have been as edgy as I was in my early teens. Otherwise, I don't think much would be different. That being said it's easy to overlook how much your personality and behaviors are shaped by online interaction.
 
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