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Comment by gingabriska | Hacker News Reader

Younger people's understanding of how world works and what a person is like comes entirely from the internet.

The moment you try to break out of your internet and go meet new people, it frustrates the hell out of you that life isn't as cool and people aren't as witty as they are on internet.

And you start thinking maybe you aren't with right people, so you try to meet the cool people from internet in real-life and it's again same. The same people you enjoy on internet, you can't tolerate them for even an hour in person.

What internet portrays is only a part about a person (which they've edited then edited and then edited again).

What we assume life is like a Hollywood movie and yes retakes frustrate the hell out of us but life is actually the retakes.

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> Younger people's understanding of how world works and what a person is like comes entirely from the internet.

They (we?) do/did go to school you know... Replace internet with tv and your argument goes through just as well, which is to say, not at all.

TV was passive. You just sat there and watched what was broadcast after you selected a channel to watch.

The internet is interactive. This easily allows the internet to become a much larger part of someone's life than TV could.

This is a big enough difference between TV and internet that I don't think you can really use TV as a refutation of his argument about internet.

We are more unhappy when we compare yourself to people we see as being close to us. Most people wouldn't be jealous that brad pitt is living the dream but they would be very jealous if billy or jenna from down the street is always partying and living the good life.

This seems to be the perfect example of extrapolating generalities from personal experience alone. I don't know if there is a cognitive bias that describes this, but if not, there really should be. The world is much more complex than your personal experiences. It is really tempting to believe the larger world matches what you experience, and I think that's the default state, but it's completely wrong.

How do you even know there _is_ a larger world outside your experiences?

I can't tell if you're trying to make a joke or make a serious point. If you want to believe you're a brain in a vat, that's your choice.

If in practice you accept that other people exist, then you should also recognize that their experiences are probably going to be different from your own.

But notice you are the ultimate authority to yourself on what is real. And I would posit to you that if you do enough self-inquiry you will find that reality is not physical, and that this is an absolute truth that is true regardless of the circumstance or perspective. The question becomes, have you become directly conscious of this? I don't believe brains in vats, all beliefs are false.

I've had quite the opposite experience. I've made maybe 20 real life friends that I met first on the internet (primarily Twitter) and almost all of them have proven to be at least as funny intelligent and likeable as online. Almost all of them I now just try to interact with IRL vs online.

I've never encountered this issue of expecting this cool person based on a manufactured illusion and then finding them to be mundane. And I know without the internet I might have more of a sense of community in general but I don't think I would have found people as unique and weirdly on my wavelength.

If you grow up comparing yourself to what you see on the social media, you are going to have profound unhappiness and anxiety. This almost always leads to withdrawal from the world for both men and women.

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