The Stupidity of Our Online Environment: What We’ve Created, What It Perpetuates, and How We Stop It

1. Introduction: A Digital Mirror Cracked

We were promised that the internet would democratise knowledge, empower voices, and bring people together. Instead, it’s become a chaotic feedback loop of shallow outrage, manufactured conflict, and performative tribalism. What was once a tool for global connection now often feels like a machine for division.

We are drowning in opinions and starving for dialogue. We are buried in comments and bereft of contribution. We are scrolling, reacting, insulting—and not changing a thing.

The stupidity of our online environment isn’t just a cultural shift. It’s a crisis. It’s a digital degradation of thought, conduct, and public responsibility.

And unless we address it, it will continue to erode everything from civic trust to political stability.

2. What We’ve Created: The Theatre of Outrage

Online platforms have devolved into performance arenas. The goal is no longer to inform or to solve—it’s to signal, to provoke, to score points.

Here’s the formula:

>>> Take a complex issue.

>>> Reduce it to a meme, a slur, or a sarcastic comment.

>>> Wait for dopamine: likes, shares, angry replies.

This is how algorithms reward interaction. Not by surfacing the thoughtful, but by feeding the combative.

We’ve built an environment where:

>>> Insults outpace insight.

>>> Snark drowns sincerity.

>>> Performance is rewarded over principle.

The result? Even serious platforms like LinkedIn now host comment sections that resemble playground scraps. No context. No solutions. Just digital point-scoring.

And let’s be honest: we’re all complicit—users, platform designers, and commentators alike.

3. What It Perpetuates: Division, Distraction, Dehumanisation

This stupidity isn’t harmless. It has real-world consequences.

>>> It creates false binaries: good vs. evil, smart vs. stupid, right vs. left.

>>> It fuels disengagement: people tune out because there’s no space left for nuance.

>>> It encourages dehumanisation: we forget there are people behind the posts, with lives and histories and pain.

Most damningly, it kills the habit of asking better questions. Instead of asking, “What’s the full story?” or “How can we help?” we ask, “How can I score points on this thread?”

The digital commons has become a performative cage.

4. How We Stop It: Reclaiming Digital Responsibility

We don’t need more content. We need more conscience.

It starts with personal accountability:

>>> Think before posting.

>>> Speak to inform, not just react.

>>> Don’t mock what you haven’t tried to understand.

It continues with platform reform:

>>> Prioritise posts that seek solutions.

>>> Build features that slow down reflexive reactions.

>>> Remove the incentives for rage farming.

And it culminates in systemic alternatives:

>>> That’s why I built Ideas-Shared.com—a place where people don’t post to provoke, but to progress. Where dialogue leads to action, not division. Where people come not to be seen, but to be useful.

Because we don’t fix stupid behaviour by banning it. We fix it by building better environments for smarter engagement.

5. Conclusion: From Stupid to Serious

The internet is not the problem. We are.

But that means we’re also the solution.

We can decide that we’ve had enough of performative flame wars. We can stop rewarding mockery and start amplifying action. We can build places—and habits—that raise the tone instead of lower the bar.

The stupidity of our online world is a choice. So is fixing it.

Let’s start making better ones.