Idk, I do know that being on the internet has made me feel like a better person, or rather it's made me feel better about myself comparatively: before the internet my interactions with mainstream people were always brief, sporadic, infrequent, and shallow.
Spending most of my life living in sub-cultures: carnies; hobos; the homeless; bikers; to name a few, left me with the impression that so called 'mainstream' people were just fundamentally more civilized, more emotionally stable, more well educated, more reasonable, and just generally saner and 'better' than the kinds of people I was used to being around and among.
It didn't take the internet long to show me that none of that was true. There's this wafer thin façade of courtesy, composure, and conscience that groups in mainstream society adorn themselves with (and probably aren't even aware of) but I've found that when push comes to shove so called 'mainstream' people are just as subject to pride, egotism, all sorts of mental and emotional instability, dishonesty, and every other human failing as are the people on the fringes of society.
And if anything they're more oblivious and less likely to own up to it.
So morally, no, I'm just fine.
As far as education goes, it's always surprised me how well I've been able to keep up in places inhabited by people with even advanced degrees (we fringe-folk tend to spend a lot of time in libraries) and being on the internet has shown me that a degree isn't necessarily an indication that someone knows how to think.
On the down side, interacting with the same people for years at a time (something I almost never did prior to the internet) has shown me a few things about myself that I'm not so proud of: for one, I'm a narcissist, for another, I don't tend to become as attached to people as I probably should. I think spending all that time wandering alone has ingrained in me a habit of seeing all relationships as brief and ultimately disposable.
Just some things I need to work on I guess, but as initially cringe-worthy as these realizations sometimes are, having them shown to me is a gift too.
So has RF made me a better person? Like I said, Idk. But it has given me a clearer picture of who I am as well as what I should expect from other people.
