What would happen if the Internet just disappeared?

America’s collective dick would get a rest.

We would all wither away, collectively.

They’d have to reopen a lot of those porn theaters they closed.

Back to manufacturing amateur porn.

Oh man, that would be bad bad! I love the internet… it is a source of information and entertainment in addition to enabling me to keep in touch with others.

No internet = sad Rachie indeed.

dude, don’t joke like that.

The world would stop for a few days.
The global economy would go to hell.
Baby boom.
Less obesity.
Less real-life flame wars.
People would have no idea what to do.
Support groups for internet withdrawal.
Trolls would go outside and play.
We’d have to use carrier pigeons.
Dinosaurs might come back.
The classified ads would be where the trolls hang out after they went outside.
Spelling and grammar would improve.
Cats would be trained to talk.

Nothing. The amount of lost productivity due to decreased communication would be offset by the increase in productivity due to not watching youtube, fluthering, downloading music, researching random facts, and talking to friends on facebook.

We. Would all. Die.

Not really, but I do think a lot would change. We’d have to actually talk to people. There wouldn’t be the secondary world of social networking eating all of everyone’s time with it’s unneeded ridiculousness. Research would have to be done by going to libraries or bookstores and finding books to read. Things wouldn’t be so quick, but they wouldn’t go away so quickly either. And we’d get used to the new world.

We would have to go back to doing academic research using The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. Students would have a lot more arm strength from lugging those volumes around. The world would also return to looking a lot like it did when I was in my teens and twenties! But that is mostly because I wouldn’t be viewing it from behind a laptop anymore.

We did not have the internet back in the 60s and we survived. i will admit the internet has made communications a lot faster. i think the internets original intent was a base for information for the public. for the most part, it is still this way. porn has made some rusty spots and online banking and purchasing can be very risky. all in all, i would miss the internet, especially from the social aspect of it.

Isn’t this like the 3rd time this has been asked this week?

I think I would assume a fetal position, rocking gently maybe sucking my thumb. once the initial shock and realization came that it was all gone, I would take up catatonics.

Yeah, I’m with everyone else (well technically 1 person) here. I would die. I don’t know how I lived before the internet came along and swept me off my feet. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, I’ll walk in circles aimlessly.

south park did a story on this… watch overlogging season 12 http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/south-park/#clip50420

American would find some way to blame it on the terrorists, then attempt to nuke a random middle-east country before realizing that no internet means no access to nukes/satellites etc.

A bit of panic and we’d figure it out.

Okay, more than a bit. Life would be bad for some time, but we’re not too hooked in to have society completely collapse (yet).

It would suck. International communication would be severely impacted and I think that is the worst of it. Granted, that would be quite bad.

Thankfully, it is still new enough that many people remember how to do most things the ‘old-fashioned’ way in daily life. I could still find a book at the library, check my bank balance, do price comparisons, etc.

Oh! Maybe we would get to generate random numbers in DOS again – it wasn’t all in vain!

@rangerr Cats already know how to talk. They know everything.

@Ivan Has it?

It would be like the end of that movie, Clones, where at the end everyone steps outside and goes, dude, what the fuck is that thing? ’‘Points at the Sun.’’

In truth, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t go down for too long, even if our current internet infrastructure was entirely vaporized or something equally catastrophic. It would be a global emergency, and every country would put billions if not trillions of their respective currencies into getting it up and running again.

@Supacase Actually, thats a good point (the DOS thing). I’d probably be more interested in computer science again since we’d be forced to come up with things on our own rather than use what other people have built.

Absolute chaos. BUT I’m sure people’s memories would be forced to improve (we couldn’t just look up anything we wanted to on Google, we’d have to actually use that thing called a memory).