Tim Burton: The internet makes me quite depressed | Hacker News Reader

Tim Burton: The internet makes me quite depressed

bbc.com

28 pointstartoran52 comments

I get kind of annoyed when people look at the internet or social media and act like it causes all these problems. People have always been terrible [1], we just didn't have the ability to see what most people were thinking or saying.

I used to think that the internet radicalized my idiot grandmother in 2016 and made her hyper-racist and part of the psychotic wing of the conservative party, until I saw a home video where I saw her very casually use the N word [2] where I realized that she's always been a nut. The internet made her more visibly a nut but I don't think it actually changed anything about her.

[1] By any definition; there's 8 billion of us, meaning there are probably millions of people that do stuff that you think is awful, no matter what it is.

[2] In 1997, well after using such a word was considered unacceptable in most places.

It's not that the internet created new behavioural problems, but that intensified old problems.

I know that's what everyone says, what I'm saying is that I'm not sure I agree. I mostly think it just made old problems more visible. At the risk of upsetting Godwin, if you look at the rise to power in Nazi Germany, Hitler was able to appeal to people's inner prejudices and susceptibility to demagoguery and commit one of the worst, if not the worst, atrocities in human history.

Hitler didn't post radical content on Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, he just spoke publicly about stuff.

> Hitler didn't post radical content on Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, he just spoke publicly about stuff.

That's what social media allows random people to do much more easily: speak publicly about stuff. Before that you'd have to build a reputation and following in meat space which takes a lot of time and effort. Now it's just a like and share button.

I'm sure Hitler would have totally loved using Twitter, Facebook and the like.

But then Hitler would have to compete with a million other Hitlers

Or they simply join forces

> That's what social media allows random people to do much more easily: speak publicly about stuff.

GeoCities let you speak publicly about stuff, so that alone is an incomplete characterization.

What nearly all social media does is preferentially bias message propagation to boost engagement in order to enhance advertising sales and biases of its owner(s). This tends to amplify drama and stoke rivalry.

It definitely gives people super-specific social niches in which to nurture their worst habits and views in a way that's not just unchallenged but even encouraged.

People who are chronically online tend to live in extremely insulated social bubbles. When you go out into the real world for your socialization time you tend to become less radicalized because you're more likely to encounter decent human beings with differing views from yours and your worldview becomes broader for it.

Most online communities actively discourage giving others the benefit of the doubt and instead prefer dismissing community-consensus-defying views with either overly harsh labels or extreme skepticism ("explain why you're not a troll for disagreeing with me politely", basically).

So in other words, I guess what I'm saying is that the internet seems to have given rise to a new wave of what are effectively cults. They encourage extreme views and extreme rejection of those with outside perspectives. Then when you conform to those views and behaviors, you tend to become socially isolated IRL, which leads to emotional dependence on the radical online community. It's a cycle of bullying that's extremely cult-like, and it's extremely common online.

Before the internet, if you were an insufferable moron, your social circle would likely curb your behavior to a more acceptable level.

Now you find communities of like-minded insufferable morons, giving support and cheering each other, and no one to say "cut it out, don't be such an imbecile".

Everyone says that, but there were plenty of insufferable morons before the internet. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson basically made an entire career out of validating the most insufferable people out in America, and for the majority of their careers the internet wasn't involved at all.

I really don't think people of today are more insufferable than before the internet. We know about a lot more idiots now than we used to, but that's subtly different.

Your grandmother didn't change; the world around her, the world she was brought up in, changed. She's not a nut simply because she refused to conform. She's a product of her environment just like you, and when she got older, her willingness to adapt to an ever-changing environment waned. It will happen to you, too.

No, she's definitely a nut.

I really hate that people that are sufficiently old enough just get a pass from a large part of society because "they're a product of their time". Well they're living in my time now, and I will judge them by the standards of my time.

I think it's wrong to decline a person from a job or from a loan just because they're old, but if that's the standard then it seems to me that I should judge them like I would anyone else. If my grandmother wants to insult Mexicans and call them all "lazy and living off the system" in front of my Mexican immigrant wife [1], she's of course allowed to say that but I don't feel even a modicum of guilt for calling her a nut or an idiot in the process.

Whether or not it happens to me is irrelevant. I would hope that future generations hold me to the standard of their time while they and I are living concurrently.

[1] Actual quote.

Where do you draw the line? Are most people from the near past a "nut" in some respect? Your case is more extreme, but pretty much all of my elders are nuts in one way or another in regards to obsolete beliefs. My own parents, for instance, who are otherwise intelligent people, still believe minimum wage should be $6.75 even though they also believe inflation has made groceries too expensive. Are they just stuck in the past or are they nutty?

I don't have a strictly defined "line", though overt racism is pretty much always past it.

If you're alive and not in a mental institution today, then I don't feel bad judging you by the same standards as everyone else. If an 80 year old says something racist or sexist, I really don't care if that stuff was acceptable when they were 15: it's not acceptable now.

Based on what you described of your parents, I wouldn't call them nuts just based on that.

ETA:

I'd like to clarify a bit; even though I don't agree with your parents in this example, and I think they're wrong, being wrong doesn't imply "nut".

I guess I view it as a matter of degree. I think overt racism is way worse than being a bit wrong about what minimum wage should be, and while, as I said, I don't have a strict line, the line does more or less exist.

And don't forget you can make some pretty sweeping generalizations about how young people are nuts, too. With similar justification: "We're different, so you are crazy."

Sure, and if a young person does something nutty then I'd call them a nut. It's not hypocritical on my end to do this.

My other grandmother is the same age as my idiot grandmother, and yet she's managed to somehow not be really racist around my wife. I guess I don't know for sure what's in her brain, but at least outwardly I wouldn't classify her as a racist, so please don't misinterpret what I say: being old doesn't inherently make you a nut.

If a young person says something dumb or offense, it's perfectly fine in my mind to hold them to the same standard.

> still believe minimum wage should be $6.75 even though they also believe inflation has made groceries too expensive. Are they just stuck in the past or are they nutty?

They're nutty. Other older people manage to understand the value of things and wages in the world now in comparison to when they were younger. I'm only in my 40s, I get surprised by changes since I was in my 20s, but each surprise is an update.

I think that thinking someone is a "nut" is an extreme position that should done very rarely. "Everyone seems crazy when you don't understand their point of view."

It's supportable to say that you strongly disagree with someone's worldview, but that alone doesn't make them a nut.

I mentioned that in a sibling comment, however I think overt racism crosses into the “nut” territory.

I get what you're saying, but I disagree that overt racism all by itself means the racist is crazy. I strongly disagree with the stance and think that it's immoral and idiotic, but not necessarily crazy.

This is getting into uselessly-pedantic-at-best territory.

The Internet has been around for decades, though, and your grandmother probably started using it long before 2016. I'm thinking something else might have happened around 2016... something or someone that could have emboldened hyper-racist nutters and encouraged them to voice their nuttery in public. Carrying that content way outside the audience of a 1997 home video. I can't really put my finger on what it might have been, though.

My grandmother didn't buy a computer until 2005, and didn't have the internet until around 2011.

A new, and foul type of orange came into prominence, is what happened.

> we just didn't have the ability to see what most people were thinking or saying

I agree but the internet brought a new set of behaviors that weren't possible before. For example, communicating to millions or even billions of people.

Our brain developed when human groups were relatively small and it's not ready for the social scale that we're operating now through the internet.

Social media makes it easy to find people who think alike.

This reduces the inhibitions caused by social pressure, which normally dampens extreme behavior

> I get kind of annoyed when people look at the internet or social media and act like it causes all these problems.

I don't think it causes these problems. It seems very clear to me that it amplifies them, though.

Is video calling your friends and family depressing? What about group chats with friends? Looking up the weather every morning before you leave the house? Checking up scores of the game your favorite team is playing when you are on the move? Clicking a photo and sending it to a loved one? Playing Wordle or solving the NYT crossword on your phone during your commute? Downloading episodes of your regular podcasts? Tapping your phone to pay at the checkout counter or the subway? Being able to translate between hundreds of languages in real time? Paying rent every month without mailing a paper check? Looking up driving directions for your next appointment? Managing your fantasy football team? Checking Wikipedia when you don't know something, or generally having the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips? Being able to work from home?

Most people (including Tim Burton I bet) do all of this every day and love it, yet "the internet" is scary and depressing? Just more low effort "everything is bad these days" clickbait content.

> Is video calling your friends and family depressing?

Could be. I tend to get depressed after positive interactions.

Yeah, I think it’s human nature for modern conveniences to fade into the background and just become “part of life”. When people say “I’m going on the internet” what they’re really saying is: “I’m itching for a TikTok / YouTube / Social Media Doomscrolling fix”

Convenience works for bad things too.

You are attacking it semantically, reading the article is a bit clearer he's not talking about the conveniences of services on the internet but specifically:

> 'Humans were the ones who scared me'

> "They were the angry villagers in Frankenstein - like the internet - these nameless faces [Burton makes monster roaring noises] and the monster always had the most emotion and most feeling even though they're looked upon as a certain way.

> "Every monster usually has some kind of pathos and some kind of humanity" that the humans lacked he added.

So "like the internet" means people on the internet, is it technically wrong to call comments, social media, etc. "the internet"? Yup, it doesn't mean it's not understood when we hear it, at least for me it's quite clear when people in real life tell me "I don't like to be on the internet" they mean this side of it.

I think it'd be a better discussion if you focused on what the article is about instead of your argument on semantics, you are verging quite into exactly "the people on the internet" by doing this.

I've seen too many fellow programmers fall into this. It's almost like they can't help themselves: a normie, valid complaint about tech gets summarily dismissed through semantic quibbles (even when done in good faith.)

It's quite common with engineering-adjacent or some hard sciences people. Attacking the semantics as if imprecise communication makes it valid to use technicalities to go around the main message.

I've been guilty of being somewhat that person when I was younger. Until I realised it doesn't lead anywhere, you just become a pedantic boring person, not dissimilar to these hollow debaters talking fast over people on the internet.

Imprecise communication still annoys me when I misunderstand what someone said because they used it but life is so much better when trying to understand what someone actually meant to say, and conversing about that. It leads places, or at least to some understanding. The other side is just self-stroking your ego to tell yourself you are "smarter", or "more intellectual" than someone else.

That's a paper thin argument. Convenience is not an anti-depressant. Additionally, all of those things had pre-Internet versions that were just fine and in some cases were even superior. And none of them existing now necessary necessitate the rest of what the Internet brings.

But none of that addresses the vast depth and breadth of the negative aspects of the Internet. Control, propaganda, data stealing, etc. It's just one level below The Matrix because we're all just human compute environments for corporations, criminal enterprises, and the wealthy. The Internet connects us in the most primitive way, connecting up primate emotional capacity, which is very low compared to some other animals, and encouraging short form content.

The Internet has killed the way things used to be made, especially the arts. You can barely even buy things today. You just rent them continuously.

These are very surface level benefits, mostly in convenience. You need to weigh those with the downsides of the internet as well to know if its really worth it.

Is using Wikipedia rather than an encyclopedia worth the damages caused by online porn? Or the loss of privacy both through data farming and digital hacks? Is checking the weather worth any number of children or adults killing themselves in part due to content they see online or how they are treated online?

I'm obviously not saying we need to immediately burn the internet down, but if what you listed are the best benefits that may not be the worst argument to make.

I don’t think the idea is clickbait at all. I deeply regret wasting my youth on my small portion of building out the Internet. What it became went well beyond the benefits you describe and might be the downfall of society as we know it in the end.

I won’t go into more detail other than that. The dream of 13 year old midwestern me playing chess with some random person in South Africa in the early 90’s died long ago for me. It was truly awe inspiring while the naivety lasted though!

I now operate on a harm reduction principle. I truly feel the internet as we know it causes more harm than good these days.

I'm fully in your camp. People are surprised when they find out I get depressed about the internet. When I tell them I've been on the internet for 35 years (technically ARPANET then), on the web for 30 years, and I'm tired of it, they begin to realize what might be in their future.

I agree entirely. I've been actively using the internet for roughly as long as you, and I find a great deal of it highly discouraging, depressing, and frightening. There's always been a dark side, even in the ARPANET days, but the percentage of it that's horrible has been growing steadily over the years.

It's become so bad that I've severely limited my use of the internet anymore. Too much of it actively makes my life worse. Avoiding it has improved things quite a lot. Lately, I've been thinking that I may even need to stop hanging out here on HN, which is the only "social media" I use anymore.

So, here's the thing. A lot of people used to smoke, and say they liked to smoke. They liked the nicotine stimulant, of course, and the comfort of the well-practiced physical motions, and the closeness of a smoke-filled room, its association with style and elegance, and the chance to take a break from work activity. Some really got into different types of cigars, while others stuck with the same brand of cigarette their whole life.

Few of them found it depressing.

But certainly some did. They didn't like the stink on their clothes or how it overpowered the taste at a restaurant, or how it affected teeth, or negative health effects. Yet even some of these needed to learn to smoke in order to fit in, to land a deal, or to get promoted.

Just because you don't find your internet use depressing, doesn't mean someone else - even someone actively using the internet every day - can't be depressed by it.

It is very hard to have a normal life without the internet these days. Alternatives which were once common, like getting a paper local newspaper with real reporters and useful advertisements - and weather predictions for your area! - have often disappeared or cut back, meaning that yes, if you want the local weather prediction without bugging someone else every day, you have to use the internet.

Try to find a good paper map, which were once commonplace and given out free at gas stations, now often requires going to a specialist store, forcing you online even to get driving directions for your next appointment. Not everyone thinks that's a good thing, and might even find it depressing.

For one who considers FOMO and the need to feel on top of things as a mental weakness, then yes, seeing how so many people lack the patience to wait a few hours to know the scores of their favorite team can be depressing.

The World Book is the only paper encyclopedia available these days, making Wikipedia the de facto encyclopedia for everyone, when there used to be multiple encyclopedias, each with a different slant and focus. Granted, you might have to go to a library to access three different encyclopedia sets, while Wikipedia is available within seconds, but if you prioritize both diversity and high curation standards instead of time, the internet might be depressing.

The depressing part are flat earthers, anti vaxxers, science deniers, anti-semites, conspiracy theorists, misogynists, homophobes, extremists etc.

Maybe X/Twitter/Facebook is what he means with "Internet"?

Hey Tim if you read that go to:

https://www.tasteatlas.com/map

Humans often strive to distance themselves from others in many aspects of life. We buy cars to avoid public transport, seek homes over apartments for privacy, and prefer remote work with its isolation. Yet, paradoxically, we turn to social media to engage with the very strangers we avoid in daily life. We reject unsolicited opinions in person, but eagerly seek them online from countless unknown voices.

I think I'd argue that's about seeking comfort rather than avoiding people. When public transport is unreliable and dirty, apartments are poorly insulated and offices so dysfunctional it's no surprise people avoid them.

Extraverts make up the majority and they aren't hiding from the rest of humanity.

Sufficiently recognizable name: Commonly held opinion

I really don't like this style of article. It tries to imply something greater than Tim Burton's experience of the internet, but it is more like hot sauce gives me heartburn. Know what you should do when hot sauce gives you heartburn, stop eating hot sauce.

Part of the problem is that it's become very difficult to avoid the internet. To use your analogy, it's like you know that hot sauce gives you heartburn, but the world has decided to start putting hot sauce on as much of the available food as possible.

Terrible article and headline. He doesn't actually say why it makes him depressed. Just says it's a dark hole. Which makes sense if you're a world famous successful person with hundreds of millions of dollars - the internet sort of sucks compared to millions of fans lavishing praise upon you while you sip martinis on your yacht.

He touches on one small part - AI generators making "Tim Burton" style transformations of people/characters/whatever, and feeling down about that. He doesn't really say why. I assume because he feels less special that his trademark style can be generated by computers instantly?

Not trying to be a dick here though maybe I am. He's allowed to feel sad. The AI thing from his perspective makes sense. I'm just annoyed that the BBC thought this was worth an article. This is, at best, a tweet that I don't really have any empathy for.

Not a super amount of detail, but it’s subtle:

“It was very clear from King Kong to Frankenstein to Creature from the Black Lagoon that all the monsters were the most emotional. The humans were the ones that scared me,” he said.

“They were the angry villagers in Frankenstein - like the internet - these nameless faces…

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