> alive internet theory is a séance with this living internet. Resurrecting tens of millions of digital artifacts from the Internet Archive, visitors are immersed in a relentless barrage of human expression as they travel through the life of the web as we created it—every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
I like this a lot. It sort of turns internet history into a lava lamp.
For those struggling with the styling on the splash page, the slider at the top lets you pick an era and stick with it.
I like the sentiment but how will you know as time goes on that the things were uploaded or created by real humans? The early things yes, but as I got closer to now I was less sure, which kind of disproves the alive internet theory.
I agree that "the internet will always be filled with real people: looking for each other". The question is will they be able to successfully find each other, and how can they be sure they have?
really sorry you had to experience that! i added a NSFW flag - i'm just pulling content randomly by date and didn't know the Archive had that kind of graphic content :(
Somehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture.
1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet.
2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong)
The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
The "follower" internet has somehow instilled the notion that making a comment is the same as "doing something". It is not.
Someone has done something here. If you want to comment, try to develop the thought, not critique. Help build something.
Touches on the broader problem - that the less thought and care put into a comment, the more likely it is to be posted on the internet. Not sure what can be done about statistics.
people forget that even before LLMs, the Internet was already shit. a third was SEO slop by ESL thirdworlders, another third - a kulturkampf battlefield. looking for the good parts had never been easy.
Awful site, this is just a strawman. The dead Internet theory does not claim that real people do not upload things to the Internet, there was never any doubt about that.
The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory" is or what it claims.
>every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos. Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims.
Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that most users of the Internet are consumers who mostly read discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who are actively participating are then engaged by "bots", supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating infighting.
If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by any amount of uploaded archive material.
Isn't the fact that most of the material comes from the Internet Archive somewhat a refutation of the Alive Internet Theory, which is that the internet is alive now, as opposed to some past archived point in time? (yes, I know the IA archives contemporary materials, but the purpose and majority of the content are from the past)
Uh, definitely NSFW. Did not expect to see porn and other questionable graphic material. I mean, that is what I remember from the "alive internet", so it's not wrong perhaps, but maybe should be flagged as such.
Although being stuck at loading something was reminiscent of my early internet experience in a way, the site’s backend seems to be rate-limited and unable to serve. Will check back later!
1362 points by monort on July 14, 2019 | 239 comments
I still like that one, maybe it appeals to more people here because the UI is more polished, and the video selection criteria work really well.
Although it also has the feel of seeing stuff that you're not meant to see sometimes.
It has an almost meditative feel to me, I like it.
Last time I opened it, for example, I saw a video of an old man playing a guitar, lots of hobby sports matches, and videos of private celebrations etc
Didn't encounter any NSFW stuff, but it's probably possible as far as YouTube can't prevent it, so if you must be 100% sure, you probably shouldn't open it.
39 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 52.6 ms ] threadPerhaps there could be a static 1.0 version we can read or listen to?
edit: Okay, I get it now. It's an automatic aggregator! Only the style auto-change is egregious then, but the actual webapp is great!
another edit, sorry: The call-to-action button should be at the top, not the bottom. On mobile you have to scroll to see it and it can be missed.
I like this a lot. It sort of turns internet history into a lava lamp.
For those struggling with the styling on the splash page, the slider at the top lets you pick an era and stick with it.
thanks for trying it :)
https://archive.org/details/TikTok-7272243823504313642
1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet.
2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong)
The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
The "follower" internet has somehow instilled the notion that making a comment is the same as "doing something". It is not.
Someone has done something here. If you want to comment, try to develop the thought, not critique. Help build something.
Nice, that completely defines how I felt about Twitter when I decided to delete my account.
The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory" is or what it claims.
>every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos. Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims.
Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that most users of the Internet are consumers who mostly read discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who are actively participating are then engaged by "bots", supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating infighting.
If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by any amount of uploaded archive material.
Although being stuck at loading something was reminiscent of my early internet experience in a way, the site’s backend seems to be rate-limited and unable to serve. Will check back later!
A similar idea, but without the timeline idea and with YouTube videos instead of archive.org was this:
YouTube videos that have almost zero previous views (astronaut.io)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432772
1362 points by monort on July 14, 2019 | 239 comments
I still like that one, maybe it appeals to more people here because the UI is more polished, and the video selection criteria work really well.
Although it also has the feel of seeing stuff that you're not meant to see sometimes.
It has an almost meditative feel to me, I like it.
Last time I opened it, for example, I saw a video of an old man playing a guitar, lots of hobby sports matches, and videos of private celebrations etc
Didn't encounter any NSFW stuff, but it's probably possible as far as YouTube can't prevent it, so if you must be 100% sure, you probably shouldn't open it.