I think my beliefs would be similar but far less mainstream

if internet didn’t exist, I’d probably be a religious person, who wouldn’t read any religious books but would have followed the customs. But with internet, and by interacting with different people, I became atheist.

If the internet didn’t exist I very likely wouldn’t be alive today, so I guess not

In middle school, before my family has access to the internet, I was taught about how other nations agreed to use the American dollar as a standard and the benefits of leaving the good standard for a fiat currency. I asked if they wasn’t a bad idea because it means if that one country had economic problems everyone would and was promptly told that that’s a dumb question because America can’t have economic problems.

I was raised agnostic and abused through school for not being Christian by people who worship a man that condemned that exact action.

I think I was always destined to feel the way I do.

If the internet didn’t exist we wouldn’t be in the same political situation we find ourselves. So it’s hard to say.

That being said, I’m old enough that the internet wasn’t quite a household, in-your-face thing until I was already legally an adult, and I was already leaning left by then thanks to people like Rush Limbaugh who made me realize how selfish, racist, and uneducated conservatives are and I didn’t want anything to do with that. Life’s too short to waste time being a self-serving piece of ignorant shit.

As far as religion I knew that was all bullshit well before I reached adulthood. Internet wouldn’t have affected that at all for me.

Probably not. I build my philosophy bit by bit, by being exposed to a lot of different often contradictory ideas though the internet.

I would have never had patience for reading all the classic philosophers (they wrote a lot). Even less with modern ones (they are very niche these days). But having a summary of anything at my fingertips made me able to cross connect ideas and form something coherent on my own.

I’d say i’d have the same political/philosophical beliefs, cuz they make sense with who i was before i had access to the internet, and the social context i grew up in. I rejected religion since i can remember interacting with it. On the other hand, i might not have the same cultural knowledge (especially in music, which i discovered on youtube and forums).

Simply because I wouldn’t have met my wife, I suppose I wouldn’t have. Also, being on the more “conversational” parts of the chans as a late teen made me (perhaps surprisingly) very empathetic and more merciful with my judgement and actions, and helped create a bigger “barrier” of human understanding between the words I hear/read and my reaction to them (very helpful as a hyperactive, sensitive guy!). But most of my ideology’s “building blocks” come from very old and popular books, so maybe I would’ve developed into it/found my way to it, just a bit later. How could I know? 😅

No. In fact, I can almost guarantee that they would be different, because the internet not existing would mean the entire world is dramatically different. It would be almost impossible to come to the exact same beliefs in an entirely different timeline.

Without the internet I probably wouldn’t have lived in the same places I did, nor met the same people I did. So I guess it would’ve taken me longer to reach the political views I have today, but I think I would’ve them, eventually.

I remember that even before having access to the internet I was already seeing some hypocrisy in the arguments that I parroted from everyone around me, and I would sometimes argue back against some of them even without proper knowledge of the subject.

I certainly wouldn’t be voting for Trump since i have the rare human ability of noticing when someone has lied to my face thousands of times in the most absurd, lazy, and inconsistent manner possible.

My dad was a Republican and a military man who i respected immensely, so I could’ve seen myself going that route, but that route in my mind was “fiscally conservative” and not “socially conservative”, but I haven’t seen any fiscal responsibility from that party outside of implementing cuts to offset massive tax break handouts for billionaires, and there’s instead an extremely unhealthy emphasis on the latter.

Come to think of it i don’t think i even came across politics much during my childhood years with Internet, it was still web forums mainly and political web forums sounds as boring now as it did then. (though It’s kinda weird that i feel that way and still spend most of my time on lemmy discussing politics rather than any other topics)

No. I’d probably fancy myself a centrist or even be a little conservative

Definitely. I only got easy internet in my pocket after school. Before that, I was raised by Sonic the Hedgehog and Captain Planet in my childhood years, and punk rock in my teenage years. And it was never a phase, mom.

Difficult to say. I feel like I’ve always leaned left, but without my exposure to leftist discussion online, I may not be as far left as I am today. I’d like to think that I would have ended up with the same political beliefs that I currently have.

I certainly would not have come out as trans until it became a very public thing. In the past I had always thought that I had some sort of fetish with dressing up in women’s clothing. It wasn’t until I was exposed to what being trans was, online, that I finally connected all of the dots. I’d still have come out as trans eventually, but it would have taken longer. I’m grateful for the trans spaces I discovered online, and the community I found within. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, I graduated high school before the web was widely available.