You can keep the wool over your eyes and defend your claim blindly. It doesn’t really matter. Unbiased historians will record what happened as it is, at the very least. If you can’t distinguish between invention and distribution, that’s your problem, I suppose.

I’m worried the one on the left might accidentally turn the knob or something.

Bro, lol Guess we can't imagine good things anymore after hearing that.

Again, you’re missing the point but I guess that’s okay. Let me lay it out simply: I’m not here to defend anything, I’m just here to state the truth. Everything has positives and negatives, and capitalism is no exception. But the fact remains that it’s the reason we have the internet in the hands of ordinary people. Denying this is simply denying reality.

As for the agricultural revolution example you brought it up, not me. And you have to remember, this isn’t some far-fetched comparison like the agricultural revolution; capitalism has a direct link to the spread of the internet.

But hey, maybe we can just agree to disagree there.

Exactly, we can’t know if that’s true or not, but we do know it emerged in reality because of capitalism. That’s all we need to make a case for capitalism, since real-life examples always outweigh imaginary ones.

It's tragic if that's true, and I didn't really know that such a tradition existed. Damn.

If you said ‘we got the internet thanks to farmers’ that would be indisputable, everything flowed from that.

And why not? Philosophically, a strong argument can be made that the Agricultural Revolution laid the groundwork for everything we know today, including the internet. I don’t see why admitting that would be a problem as it’s simply the truth.

I don’t see why an internet couldn’t emerge in other economic contexts because internet technology depends on physics and those laws transcend any and all economic systems. We already know this because almost every jurisdiction has the internet.

I never disputed that it couldn’t be done, but it’s still a hypothetical. The reality is that capitalists stepped in, and the internet spread like wildfire. Could it be done in other scenarios? Maybe. But pointing out reality shouldn’t be inconvenient.

The influence of capitalism on the internet has been a mixed bag. e-commerce: good. App ecosystem: ranging from good to addiction health crisis. Walled gardens and enshitification: bad. Misinformation and radicalisation of political groups: dire, potentially an existential threat.

Everything has positives and negatives, everything is a mixed bag. People try to label everything in black and white boxes but reality is mostly gray. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that the internet is in people’s hands because of capitalism.

Reasonable, I think that’s a fair argument. I’m just adding that some abused individuals who use video games as a way to cope with stress might be pushed over the edge when they encounter violence in those games. It may be a small percentage, but it can certainly contribute. But yeah, I have to admit that since it’s not such a tangible thing to grasp, it might be difficult to truly know unless the individual clearly says so.

Cool, I think it's correct and to pretend that it's otherwise won't help when you're in the search for truth. We can agree to disagree.

This is so cute, it's like she passed out from being overloaded by the cat's cuteness.

And what do you think makes people violent? Their upbringing, their environment, their circumstances, and so on. Obviously, if video games are a significant part of their lives, they can contribute to violent tendencies especially if someone cannot distinguish fiction from reality. That’s exactly my point.

I’ve made my case, and I never said that. What you do with this information is up to you.