A good way to measure the worth of an economy is to ask, "Would my life be better or worse without industry [X]?"
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I'll confess to harboring a degree of nostalgia for pre-smartphone and Facebook (not necessarily pre-social media, as Myspace and Friendster existed) internet, but the sentiment here is a mild version of Heartiste's Luddite tendencies that impact more than shitposting (not to mention that while Google+ is a joke their search engine pretty much holds the internet together).
Any technological implement or instrumentation is just a tool, a thing. It's use is dependent upon it's significance to the culture that is utilizing it. I do, however, think that gaming and media's ability to submerge users into an inacurate comprehension of the realities of everyday life, to the point that a grasp of reality (what a concept!) becomes tenuous, is at least partly responsible for the decline of critical thinking in the U.S.A.. And in that way, it sucks.
Oh well, if you find that a subjective worth is a useful measure...of course, we wouldn't be hearing from you any more, so on balance, that's an improvement.
@Phil O'Macedon
While I enjoy Twitter's shenanigans more than I should, I have to admit it probably played a large role in this decade's political weirdness. Social media in general is at fault, but Twitter in particular brings internet forum pathology dangerously close to meatspace (Facebook is based around friend networks so it doesn't drift TOO far from the real world, Tumblr and its ilk might as well be conventional internet communities, and Snapchat/Instagram are arms of Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr more than their own thing).
Of course, sealing it all away won't really fix the underlying problem, which would rear itself some other way in any event; it's not like social media is completely novel to the human condition.
If you honestly think that you'd be better off without search engines, social networks, and easy access to most of mankind's information, then you're welcome to live with them.
The internet would be a much better place without these guys, and the world would be much better if they didn't use the internet to coordinate their activities.
>If smartphones, Google, Faceborg, and Twatter never existed
Donald Trump would never have gotten the nomination, push, or presidency
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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