this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024

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How would American culture change if the internet went down? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hypothetically, let’s say the internet breaks down with no recovery in the near future. How would this affect culture in America (or the entire world)? Would monoculture return? The specific cultures I mean are…

Politics Influencers Big Tech Hollywood Work Force ???

Imo, with no internet, Hollywood would probably be the biggest beneficiary from this. Television would probably become a juggernaut again. I think influencers would fall off the face of the earth without the internet. Big Tech would crash. Politics would probably start to shift dramatically towards the left with the lack of echo chambers online. And I think labor would stall for like a month or two.

So yeah, without internet, I think Hollywood thrives and almost every other industry or culture takes a big hit.

What do you think?

top 18 comments

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I think it's important to understand that if the whole Internet just shut off in an instant, life as we know it would cease to exist. I'm not talking about a cultural change. I mean millions of people starving and freezing to death because literally everything you take for granted today is ordered, scheduled, and delivered using the Internet. That means no food deliveries, no fuel deliveries, no imports or exports, no trains, trucks, or planes moving, no payments or money transfers. Nothing. Oh, and all the emergency services that you're going to need will be unable to respond because no phones and no communication from dispatch centers. We don't know how to do business without the Internet anymore, so if it goes away, there goes your way of life. Building that back to the "old way" will take way longer than you or your neighbors are likely survive competing for essentially nonexistent resources.

But for those who manage to survive, I would say party like it's 1899!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago

We would just be back to the 90s where the internet exists but isn't as widespread. The internet was a hell of a lot quieter then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

There was a time before the internet. It would be like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

I’m asking about specific cultures that are heavily invested in the internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I was thinking last night about how I used to go cash my paychecks and then drive over to the Verizon store and pay my phone bill. I wouldn't be able to pay my bills on the website anymore. I'd have to call and give my checking info over the phone or get money orders to mail shit in. I can't even order standard checks with the account I have now.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Politics would probably start to shift dramatically towards the left with the lack of echo chambers online.

No, it would not. The USA was not more liberal before the internet. Fascism rose without the internet in many countries.

It would be nice to not have Russian trolls though.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I think right-wing talk radio has been going for quite a while as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

I think people forget these talk radio shows are still a thing. A lot of us, especially Millenials and younger, are streaming our own music/audiobooks/podcasts in the car. But there are a lot of people who listen to talk radio.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

You mean people have to actually go outside? 😱

Nah I rather in my echochambers no thank you.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Since a great deal of essential services rely on the Internet. It would probably be a bit like New York during 9/11 or Canada when one of their biggest ISP died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_during_the_September_11_attacks

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/what-we-know-about-the-network-system-failure-that-led-to-the-rogers-outage-1.5982790

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

To be fair, Rogers didn't die. It monopolized data communication with insufficient regulation. It had an inevitable outage that could have been bypassed if not for the reasons listed.

Rogers continues to make stacks while the public foots the bill.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

As someone who pre-dates the public Internet and spent a lot of time dialling in to BBSes when most people thought personal computers were for nerds…

The Internet will fracture, but not break down. What would happen is balkanization of the Internet, with physical areas running their own networks, and a bunch of poor “dark” areas. Some of those networks would likely have low bandwidth interconnections, such that digest data could still spread, much like the early days of usenet and fidonet.

Local culture and tribalism would increase, and information would skyrocket in value. The rich would still have access to, and control, the information. The poor would be left out completely.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Everything would take time to be fine for the younglings but many of us grew up in the age of non internet connected computers and consoles so it would be completely fine. Might actually be nice to be fair.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Who do you think gets hit the hardest from this?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Middle school and under kids

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I think we need to differentiate a bit between "no Internet" and "no open Internet". I have just enough grey hair and health problems to remember what life was like before the Internet really took off: you dialed into your ISP, like Compuserve or AOL, over a land line, and were charged per minute. And those services couldn't really talk to each other. But back then, computers also ran at 10 MHz and couldn't fit in your pocket.

So there was even connectivity back then, it was just very limited and each ISP had to provide it's own information, because they didn't really talk to each other. The same technological advancements would have happened over the last 50 years. Computers and networking would have gotten faster, cell networks would evolve to handle data and be more efficient, and broadband access to everyone's home and office would have happened. But if the Internet didn't happen in the open way it did, with an emphasis on open standards, its entirely possible each major media company would have had its own network to subscribe to, and it would be a lot more expensive.

But would that really be bad? Would social media really have eaten our brains if we paid for it per minute?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Good retrospective on dial up. But I feel most people wouldn’t go through that hassle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

Right, I think without the Open Internet, we would still be getting fast broadband, but likely tied to your Cable or Telco provider's network, and things that are currently websites would have to arrange for a presence on each network they want to do business on. And they would probably meter access, just like they do with your electric bill, or your cable company does with a basic tier but then paid access to anything important.