Encourage yourself and all your similar-minded people to keep the fun going!
Yes, 99.99(however many 9s)% of the internet is walled-garden advertising garbage.
But, you can exist in the remaining space and bring your friends along!
I run my website and my blog like I've always done (since 1994), I run mailing lists for a few topics (some date back to 1991) and subscribe to many others. Zero corporate involvement, no ads, no monopolist in control. Just peer to peer real people. I run my email server so I can communicate without depending on the monopolists. There are still hobby forums for specialty topics, or start your own! I even still read Usenet weekly. And so on...
The fun parts of the Internet used to be all of it, now it is a niche, but it's still there for you. Keep it alive!
same can be said for a lot of things tho. e.g. nature used to be fun but then we discovered it all :’( I miss when ships literally sailed into the unknown and found surprising and novel things like hot peppers and pineapples
I don't agree entirely with the cleansing being done on behalf of AI. Sure the Internet was slowly descending into influence bot nets and sim card farms. But it couldn't scale to all corners of the internet. AI is the tool that destroyed that. Soon the amount of human content on the Internet will be so small it will be a place mostly for bots.
I actually realized last night that everything that got me excited about the internet circa 2013 is actually way easier now, fun little one-off websites are far more doable, but we've lost the zeitgeist perhaps. It makes me wanna move back to NYC and go to BrooklynJS again.
How many of these will we get on a daily basis? Ten million nerds—7 million of which work for Meta—writing ten million blog posts about how nothing is fun anymore, and about 4 of them are doing anything fun.
> I’ve been mourning the old Internet over the past year or two... As a kid on the Web from the early 2000s through the mid-2010s, we knew we were living through something special.
It's funny because I knew lots of people in the early 2000s who were mourning the loss of the "old Internet" then. Kind of like how everyone thinks the music they listened to as a teenager is the best and it's all been downhill since.
Lots of agreement and think there has been a lot written about the sterilization of something that was once beautiful and creative. Sad but inevitable when your best kept secret club isn't so best-kept anymore.
Left off, and what we really want to know, is... ok, so what now?
In some sense, the fun pockets still exist of course.
On the other hand, the algorithmic schelling points starve weird-ish corners of scale. The network effects + psychological draw of the single stream feeds is a powerful force.
The algorithmic spaces still have lots of weird. Maybe more weird than ever. But they also feel more bled of community (or even iterated contact with the same people).
It's a strange combination of facts. Maybe OPs post is not true in the literal sense, but it feels correct in the spiritual sense.
Dead internet theory seems mostly proven by blog posts gesticulating about it. Digital creation is easier, more collaborative, and just as fun as it has ever been if you stop thinking in terms of mass audience and following the herd.
I'll grant you: Flash is a hole that never fully healed back. Search engines might not be especially great for discovery now either. They weren't especially great for Geocities shrines either, though.
I've taken up gardening, I hike more, I go birdwatching every weekend, I practice pen and pencil drawing and sketching on paper, and I read more paper books these days since there's not much that's very compelling about the current web for me - at this point I'd rather be weeding than surfing the current web, it's great.
So I love watching 50s-70s television shows: honeymooners, I love lucy, twilight zone, alfred hitchcock, Mission Impossible, Columbo. (recent MeTV lineup).
I'm a millennial. It occurred to just the other day, the language they use, they say "dough" a lot. They need dough. Where's the dough. Any criminal is always involved with gambling and gangs and they need dough! And the normal working people storylines are pinned to their lack-of-dough situations.
I remember the internet very fondly too. There's always an age of innocence but it just takes time to realize everyone just really needs and wants dough. And that's what happens.
This take is always bizarre to me. You're not talking about the internet, you're talking about the websites you choose to use. There are alternatives for every single website/service that you don't like. They're often exactly like the Internet of yore in that they're not as streamlined, niche and have less people using it (these are aspects of the "fun" internet that people forget). The internet is a bunch of networked servers, not the handful of sites you feel like you're stuck using for some reason.
92 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 67.9 ms ] threadmake homebrew software for an old Nintendo console
pick up cross stitching or weaving
make an independent film with a friend; use stuff from your kitchen as props
find a borderline functional instrument at your local thrift store
write a 1 page short story in pen
it's not enough anymore to merely criticize this bad time we're having
Yes, 99.99(however many 9s)% of the internet is walled-garden advertising garbage.
But, you can exist in the remaining space and bring your friends along!
I run my website and my blog like I've always done (since 1994), I run mailing lists for a few topics (some date back to 1991) and subscribe to many others. Zero corporate involvement, no ads, no monopolist in control. Just peer to peer real people. I run my email server so I can communicate without depending on the monopolists. There are still hobby forums for specialty topics, or start your own! I even still read Usenet weekly. And so on...
The fun parts of the Internet used to be all of it, now it is a niche, but it's still there for you. Keep it alive!
Been doing this for 20 years.
I have less dev energy as an adult and dad, but I know what I want and how to make it.
All of my ideas I'm able to make not only a proof of concept but an entirely polished app, all thanks to AI.
I wouldn't say it's more or less fun than coding manual, apples to oranges, but it's certainly entertaining.
All the little niches can be your personal Web.
There are innumerable thoughtful, cute, interesting bits out there, probably more than ever before.
Craigslist is alive and well.
PayPay is weird but who cares.
The 'Grotesque Skyscrapers' of the web actually don't impair your view.
That's the beauty of it. Go where you want.
I would argue that's the darn point of the web, it's not for Curators it's literally for 'Whatever'.
It's funny because I knew lots of people in the early 2000s who were mourning the loss of the "old Internet" then. Kind of like how everyone thinks the music they listened to as a teenager is the best and it's all been downhill since.
Left off, and what we really want to know, is... ok, so what now?
People are still having a blast online, but they’re mostly kids or teenagers.
Garrys Mod got replaced by Roblox, forums got replaced by Discord, blogs got replaced by vlogs.
There’s still lots of fun and community still to be found online, people wouldn’t spend so much time on it if there wasn’t.
just don't participate in it and do your own thing.
Start your own blog. Without ads, not to be "monetized", just for the fun of it.
Write for yourself, not for "engagement".
Do your thing.
On the other hand, the algorithmic schelling points starve weird-ish corners of scale. The network effects + psychological draw of the single stream feeds is a powerful force.
The algorithmic spaces still have lots of weird. Maybe more weird than ever. But they also feel more bled of community (or even iterated contact with the same people).
It's a strange combination of facts. Maybe OPs post is not true in the literal sense, but it feels correct in the spiritual sense.
I'll grant you: Flash is a hole that never fully healed back. Search engines might not be especially great for discovery now either. They weren't especially great for Geocities shrines either, though.
I'm a millennial. It occurred to just the other day, the language they use, they say "dough" a lot. They need dough. Where's the dough. Any criminal is always involved with gambling and gangs and they need dough! And the normal working people storylines are pinned to their lack-of-dough situations.
I remember the internet very fondly too. There's always an age of innocence but it just takes time to realize everyone just really needs and wants dough. And that's what happens.
it feels like the folks who lament about the good ole days grew up, got a corporate job, and forgot how to have fun.