What I have seen is that the Internet doesn’t attract interesting people anymore and such, the time they spend creating “content” is drastically reduced compared to, let’s say 20-25 years ago. And by “content” I don’t mean tiktok or youtube shorts, but code, blogs, demos or contributing to larger projects. The dynamic is different now, people are working disconnected and from time to time they might release ready projects that previously were seeing their development cycle happening online. Otherwise, there are many projects that don’t make it on the Internet anymore.
I get the point you are trying to make but I will push back on one little part. I think lots of people are putting in more time and effort than ever BUT they have become victims of 'Audience capture'. They are out to do what others want rather than what they want, and that is the death bell of a creative person.
This is how I feel completely, having also grown up online all the way from BBSs onwards. I literally don't even have websites to visit any more. I get on my computer, scan hacker news for a bit, check twitter for a few minutes, scan some world news site, and thats it.
I still spend a lot of time programming (and thus a lot of time on the computer) but other than that, absolutely nothing appeals. Its a wasteland in my mind.
I have said it for a while, Hacker news is the last place that still feels like the old internet, but even then I'm not a huge fan of it. Some days I open it up to see just 30 stories about LLM's, something I have little to no interest in.
While sites like Neocities are trying to keep the old web ideals alive, even there it can be difficult to find much of value.
I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab. Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?
Anyway, the real internet is and always has been/will be smaller forums brought together by a common interest. Think back to the MMORPG private server communities of the 00's/10's. Kind of hacker news fits into that bucket today but even still a lot of the brainrotted brigading and average takes from reddit I'm seeing more often here (not calling out this post in particular; referring to the comment sections mostly).
> Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?
Yes; and either yes or the author is separating walled social network gardens from "the internet". The "real internet", as you say, is not the addictive algorithmic feeds.
I believe that the "real internet" you're talking about is larger than it's ever been, but the signal-to-noise ratio of the whole internet has been killed by even larger amounts of noise. So it's difficult to find these smaller forums and get involved with them.
I don't think it's necessarily just the algorithmic feeds that are addictive. Even in a social media that was completely straight forward 'friend to friend' networking, you'd still have FOMO, the curiousity about what that latest ding/notification says, and much more. And I think these things are inherently addictive.
BBS' are probably a good example of this for those who around during that era. They were basic dial-up services with some basic social features, and they were extremely addictive even though it was limited to nothing but a handful of people in your geographic region, and long before 'the algorithm' was even a thought.
While there are still the small sites, they really are lost in the noise. The bigger players would probably prefer it that way, it prevent competition from getting a foot hold.
It is like trying to take on Coke/Pepsi with a new cola drink, good luck! They will do anything that can get away with so long as it keeps them on top.
> more addicting than cigarettes [...] also boring and drab
That's not actually a contradiction.
With additions, it's quite common for someone to do $THING not because of any durable sense of happiness, but to "feel normal" because not doing it feels empty or wrong.
> I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab
They are not mutually exclusive. Actually, the opposite is true: most addicts don't enjoy what they are addicted to anymore. They just have to consume it.
Exactly the example I was going to use. People do not get addicted to things because those things are too enjoyable. Watching people who are addicted to slots is just depressing, they just sit there gloomily depositing every single penny they have - until they have nothing. They just have a compulsion to engage with the slots. Engage, engagement, the exact thing big tech has been trying to optimize for since day 1. It's always just been a euphemism for addiction, and they succeeded.
People report spending obscene amounts of time on social media while also saying that social media makes them feel worse. So captain obvious says why not just quit? Well that's because they're addicted to it. This is probably also why you see overwhelming support for age restrictions of social media, even amongst demographics that would otherwise be quite reluctant to give the government yet more power - people don't want their children to end up being another one of these stats.
There are two internets: the one on your phone (ruined by outrage and mobile slop) and the one on your computer (ruined by marketing slop). They’re both dangerous and disappointing for different reasons - but mostly because independent voices got drowned out.
> Learning about the world through 500-character snippets, or 30-second videos, is not a serious way to engage with knowledge. It triggers our worst instincts in terms of tribalism and groupthink and makes us intellectually lazy.
Brevity is an art form, one that most do not have. Just because something is short doesn't mean it is bad so long as it is sculpted just right. 99.9999% of stuff nowadays is not sculpted it is just simplified for quick reactions.
This is too simplistic. There are simply many many issues and topics that can't be adequately explained in a few minutes. E.g. complicated weather interactions like El nino / la nina, or economic concepts like externalities.
And furthermore, even if you can compress your information into a short period, the audience might not beable to successfully absorb the information at that rate.
There have been studies done on this finding short form content to be less effective for education.
Sorry, my original comment may have some off as defending short form content in the context of social media, that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
What I mean is, there are times where folks tend to over expand their premise to the point of tedium. Something that could have been an essay become a book. That can drive people away from good stuff through sheer scale that wasn't necessary.
While to some degree you are right, I disagree with your assertion that "Just because something is short doesn't mean it is bad so long as it is sculpted just right." When we are talking about distributing information, I agree more with the author that short hand content breeds tribalism and makes people lazy.
I agree, I was talking more broadly. Unfortunately, on social media there is rarely time for people to sculpt well thought out takes. Those that shoot first generally win.
you are correct, there is a difference between a hot take and a laconic statement.
the issue is with attention-seeking. Platforms willingly turn their forums to competition for likes, instead of encouraging compromise, which is what drives interesting discussions.
I with them on that. The internet is basically just infrastructure for email and some media like a podcast, otherwise the only reason I am here is because... well, I'm forced to be on a computer most of the week and not all of it is 'productive'. But after work, weekends, holidays I do not touch it.
There is a point beyond which the probability of finding meaningful content is too low to justify the work required to find it. Beyond this point, limiting yourself means never trying.
Do you mean that they should [stop (absorbing everything)] and therefore absorb only _some_ things, or that they should [(stop absorbing) everything] and therefore absorb nothing?
I've been on the "internet" since before there was one, back in 1984-6 when bang paths were email addresses and DNS hadn't been invented yet. I was on one of the earliest BBSs (pre-FIDO) in Melbourne run by Peter Jetson and "Bear's Bull" running on a CDC-6000 at RMIT.
It's been an "eternal September" since Prodigy & Compuserve and then AOL joined the net, Usenet started degrading, people had more then 4-line sigs without a "-- " at the start of the sig, people top-quoted messages etc.
So the internet has been dying all that time. Lived through the dotcom boom/crash, growth/death of Yahoo Groups/Geocities/stumbleupon/slashdot/fark/etc.
I'm not sure whether AI/LLMs are really killing it more than the advent of social media and the endless slop that is time descending blogs.
I'm not sure whether the internet is just becoming yet another broadcast media, where small voices are drowned out by media conglomerates and the endless suck of advertising, or whether it really is "dying".
Either way, it will evolve, but whether it will evolve "well" is a very open question.
I agree, but if we're being very honest I think the reason is just nostalgia. And I think that you can still find what you're looking for, but it's less in-your-face (as in; it's not a url on altavista.com).
We're older now, being young was great, we had infinite time to roam and discover and have nice things (and our first real six-string, and trying different things and not thinking about tomorrow). The youth nowadays also has infinite time, and they fill it in their own way. They like how things are, even though we don't like it and yearn for the days of yore.
Earlier today I saw that Tik Tok has 2 billion monthly active users and the average user uses it for 100 minutes a day. The app is so addictive that I feel it’s not right to say the user using it every day for 100 minutes at a time is enjoying themselves. To me this doesn’t look like an organic expression of the youth’s desire to explore and create in ways different from precious generations.
1/4th of the humans in the world (many of them youth) are mindlessly scrolling short form content for almost 2 hours a day (and this is just Tik Tok). That’s a problem!
But it's life spend on what otherwise? I agree it's better spend creating and socializing, but will it be, if there was no tiktok? I guess socializing, yes.
That's indeed true, I share your concern, and I think most will call 2 hr/day rookie numbers. But there is also youth out there that do things differently. And (most) laws and understanding of the situation are changing for the better.
Social media is a race to the bottom. Who can make the most addictive platform possible while also preventing others from getting too much of a foot hold.
Also, the scale of the media they must process means 'the algorithm' is a feature not a bug. It was always going to devolve into echo chambers.
It is funny seeing writers from the 1950's through to the 2000's all figure out the horrors this would unleash even if they didn't have a clue on the specifics of the technology.
I agree it will be seen as a failure but I suspect it is only once it has a point of absolute devastation that it cannot be ignored any more. I don't know what that will look like or when but it will be horrible.
The internet is fine. It's the web that sucks now. It matters, because we can build a different web without throwing out the internet.
We'll have to walk away from the attention economy, that'll be a journey that each has to take singly, but we don't have to walk back to the 1980's. We can build something that works for communication, but that doesn't work for advertising: something structurally enshittificationproof. It will not attract investors, because there will be nothing to leverage. We'll have to build it because we want it, which has never been easier.
We can steganographically hide it in AI slop which no human has to actually ever see, and we can trick our enemies into hosting it for us for free. It might even be fun.
Funnily enough this is what both Medium and Substack were trying to do but both have ended up being sucked into the system.
Seems to be a universal thing, in a society that values capital as one of the highest achievements, it will co-opt anything that ends up trying to work against it and sell it back to you.
Last week I finally deleted my LinkedIn account, the last social account I had. This week, I'm close to deleting my YouTube account. There's less content I want to see and more slop than ever. Apple Music is on the chopping block. These days, I only use it to preview vinyl records that catch my eye. Once my iPhone dies, I'm done with smartphones.
At least with youtube you can turn off your watch history and a whole bunch of other things. Then proactively curate playlists. Cudos for Youtube for making it really easy to opt out of "the algorithm"
I will say this with ditching the smart phone. I have done it but also gone back to it. But it is merely used for specific tasks. SMS, a camera, weather report, the occasional podcast or audio book. And that's about it. Things that are difficult to do on a flip phone but alright on a 'smart' phone.
I have said it many times. Look at the original iPhone presentation. It was a device that was very deliberate. It wasn't made to addict, it was made to be productive. Get in, do the thing you want and then move on. If only it stayed that way.
I think it's time for people to have their own homepages. Building and customizing a homepage is more fun than you'd think.
What's the main reason the internet feels less fun these days? I think it's because there are fewer people actually communicating. But wouldn't it be more fun if we communicated through homepages? Maybe someday there will be a community—a hub for people who have their own homepages—where only those with homepages can participate
I am sick to death of the seemingly obligatory oh-but-im-all-in-on-ai disclaimer embedded in what is otherwise a (totally valid) critique of AI. Have the courage of your convictions already.
I think most people see AI as an economic inevitability, immune to what any of us thinks. Why spend the time and energy making a reasoned critique if nobody has a real choice in the end? It's like railing against the concept of money or the existence of the mosquito.
You should try chatting with a large language model—it's incredibly useful! The only thing is, I'm not sure if the answers it gives are actually correct.
What I have seen is that the Internet doesn’t attract interesting people anymore and such, the time they spend creating “content” is drastically reduced compared to, let’s say 20-25 years ago. And by “content” I don’t mean tiktok or youtube shorts, but code, blogs, demos or contributing to larger projects. The dynamic is different now, people are working disconnected and from time to time they might release ready projects that previously were seeing their development cycle happening online. Otherwise, there are many projects that don’t make it on the Internet anymore.
I get the point you are trying to make but I will push back on one little part. I think lots of people are putting in more time and effort than ever BUT they have become victims of 'Audience capture'. They are out to do what others want rather than what they want, and that is the death bell of a creative person.
This is how I feel completely, having also grown up online all the way from BBSs onwards. I literally don't even have websites to visit any more. I get on my computer, scan hacker news for a bit, check twitter for a few minutes, scan some world news site, and thats it.
I still spend a lot of time programming (and thus a lot of time on the computer) but other than that, absolutely nothing appeals. Its a wasteland in my mind.
I have said it for a while, Hacker news is the last place that still feels like the old internet, but even then I'm not a huge fan of it. Some days I open it up to see just 30 stories about LLM's, something I have little to no interest in.
While sites like Neocities are trying to keep the old web ideals alive, even there it can be difficult to find much of value.
I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab. Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?
Anyway, the real internet is and always has been/will be smaller forums brought together by a common interest. Think back to the MMORPG private server communities of the 00's/10's. Kind of hacker news fits into that bucket today but even still a lot of the brainrotted brigading and average takes from reddit I'm seeing more often here (not calling out this post in particular; referring to the comment sections mostly).
> Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?
Yes; and either yes or the author is separating walled social network gardens from "the internet". The "real internet", as you say, is not the addictive algorithmic feeds.
I believe that the "real internet" you're talking about is larger than it's ever been, but the signal-to-noise ratio of the whole internet has been killed by even larger amounts of noise. So it's difficult to find these smaller forums and get involved with them.
I don't think it's necessarily just the algorithmic feeds that are addictive. Even in a social media that was completely straight forward 'friend to friend' networking, you'd still have FOMO, the curiousity about what that latest ding/notification says, and much more. And I think these things are inherently addictive.
BBS' are probably a good example of this for those who around during that era. They were basic dial-up services with some basic social features, and they were extremely addictive even though it was limited to nothing but a handful of people in your geographic region, and long before 'the algorithm' was even a thought.
While there are still the small sites, they really are lost in the noise. The bigger players would probably prefer it that way, it prevent competition from getting a foot hold.
It is like trying to take on Coke/Pepsi with a new cola drink, good luck! They will do anything that can get away with so long as it keeps them on top.
> more addicting than cigarettes [...] also boring and drab
That's not actually a contradiction.
With additions, it's quite common for someone to do $THING not because of any durable sense of happiness, but to "feel normal" because not doing it feels empty or wrong.
Cigarettes is a good analogy. It is both addictive but broadly doesn't really help out the individual consuming them.
> I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab
They are not mutually exclusive. Actually, the opposite is true: most addicts don't enjoy what they are addicted to anymore. They just have to consume it.
"Too good of a product" is an odd way to put it when you could apply the same logic to slot machines.
Exactly the example I was going to use. People do not get addicted to things because those things are too enjoyable. Watching people who are addicted to slots is just depressing, they just sit there gloomily depositing every single penny they have - until they have nothing. They just have a compulsion to engage with the slots. Engage, engagement, the exact thing big tech has been trying to optimize for since day 1. It's always just been a euphemism for addiction, and they succeeded.
People report spending obscene amounts of time on social media while also saying that social media makes them feel worse. So captain obvious says why not just quit? Well that's because they're addicted to it. This is probably also why you see overwhelming support for age restrictions of social media, even amongst demographics that would otherwise be quite reluctant to give the government yet more power - people don't want their children to end up being another one of these stats.
There are two internets: the one on your phone (ruined by outrage and mobile slop) and the one on your computer (ruined by marketing slop). They’re both dangerous and disappointing for different reasons - but mostly because independent voices got drowned out.
A ⊆ X ∧ p ∈ X ⇏ p ∈ A
If you’re not a math major I can translate:
“if A is a subset of X and p is in X, that does not imply that p is in A”
> Learning about the world through 500-character snippets, or 30-second videos, is not a serious way to engage with knowledge. It triggers our worst instincts in terms of tribalism and groupthink and makes us intellectually lazy.
I can't agree more with this.
Brevity is an art form, one that most do not have. Just because something is short doesn't mean it is bad so long as it is sculpted just right. 99.9999% of stuff nowadays is not sculpted it is just simplified for quick reactions.
This is too simplistic. There are simply many many issues and topics that can't be adequately explained in a few minutes. E.g. complicated weather interactions like El nino / la nina, or economic concepts like externalities.
And furthermore, even if you can compress your information into a short period, the audience might not beable to successfully absorb the information at that rate.
There have been studies done on this finding short form content to be less effective for education.
Sorry, my original comment may have some off as defending short form content in the context of social media, that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
What I mean is, there are times where folks tend to over expand their premise to the point of tedium. Something that could have been an essay become a book. That can drive people away from good stuff through sheer scale that wasn't necessary.
While to some degree you are right, I disagree with your assertion that "Just because something is short doesn't mean it is bad so long as it is sculpted just right." When we are talking about distributing information, I agree more with the author that short hand content breeds tribalism and makes people lazy.
I agree, I was talking more broadly. Unfortunately, on social media there is rarely time for people to sculpt well thought out takes. Those that shoot first generally win.
you are correct, there is a difference between a hot take and a laconic statement.
the issue is with attention-seeking. Platforms willingly turn their forums to competition for likes, instead of encouraging compromise, which is what drives interesting discussions.
I with them on that. The internet is basically just infrastructure for email and some media like a podcast, otherwise the only reason I am here is because... well, I'm forced to be on a computer most of the week and not all of it is 'productive'. But after work, weekends, holidays I do not touch it.
Stop absorbing everything. Limit yourself.
There is a point beyond which the probability of finding meaningful content is too low to justify the work required to find it. Beyond this point, limiting yourself means never trying.
The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
Do you mean that they should [stop (absorbing everything)] and therefore absorb only _some_ things, or that they should [(stop absorbing) everything] and therefore absorb nothing?
Absorb and consume only some of the things.
Although now that I think of it, stopping absorbing everything, or, _absorbing nothing_, might be a good mindfulness practice.
I've been on the "internet" since before there was one, back in 1984-6 when bang paths were email addresses and DNS hadn't been invented yet. I was on one of the earliest BBSs (pre-FIDO) in Melbourne run by Peter Jetson and "Bear's Bull" running on a CDC-6000 at RMIT.
It's been an "eternal September" since Prodigy & Compuserve and then AOL joined the net, Usenet started degrading, people had more then 4-line sigs without a "-- " at the start of the sig, people top-quoted messages etc.
So the internet has been dying all that time. Lived through the dotcom boom/crash, growth/death of Yahoo Groups/Geocities/stumbleupon/slashdot/fark/etc.
I'm not sure whether AI/LLMs are really killing it more than the advent of social media and the endless slop that is time descending blogs.
I'm not sure whether the internet is just becoming yet another broadcast media, where small voices are drowned out by media conglomerates and the endless suck of advertising, or whether it really is "dying".
Either way, it will evolve, but whether it will evolve "well" is a very open question.
I guess it might be a good example of evolution in action. Evolution benefits those that can adapt the best, not those with the most abilities.
I agree, but if we're being very honest I think the reason is just nostalgia. And I think that you can still find what you're looking for, but it's less in-your-face (as in; it's not a url on altavista.com).
We're older now, being young was great, we had infinite time to roam and discover and have nice things (and our first real six-string, and trying different things and not thinking about tomorrow). The youth nowadays also has infinite time, and they fill it in their own way. They like how things are, even though we don't like it and yearn for the days of yore.
It is the way of things.
Earlier today I saw that Tik Tok has 2 billion monthly active users and the average user uses it for 100 minutes a day. The app is so addictive that I feel it’s not right to say the user using it every day for 100 minutes at a time is enjoying themselves. To me this doesn’t look like an organic expression of the youth’s desire to explore and create in ways different from precious generations.
1/4th of the humans in the world (many of them youth) are mindlessly scrolling short form content for almost 2 hours a day (and this is just Tik Tok). That’s a problem!
Based on that stat, if the average life time is 80 years, Tik tok burns up 4,800 lifetimes a day. (380,000 years) Ouch!
But it's life spend on what otherwise? I agree it's better spend creating and socializing, but will it be, if there was no tiktok? I guess socializing, yes.
That's indeed true, I share your concern, and I think most will call 2 hr/day rookie numbers. But there is also youth out there that do things differently. And (most) laws and understanding of the situation are changing for the better.
Pretty sure discord is the PHPbb of today. That seems to be the place where people's congregate and the communities are smaller.
It does have that feeling still but one does get the sense that they are on the path toward aggressive monetization.
The problem isn't the internet but rather the sites that people use on it, and the monolithic nature of "social media".
Social media will be viewed as a failed experiment in the future.
Social media is a race to the bottom. Who can make the most addictive platform possible while also preventing others from getting too much of a foot hold.
Also, the scale of the media they must process means 'the algorithm' is a feature not a bug. It was always going to devolve into echo chambers.
It is funny seeing writers from the 1950's through to the 2000's all figure out the horrors this would unleash even if they didn't have a clue on the specifics of the technology.
I agree it will be seen as a failure but I suspect it is only once it has a point of absolute devastation that it cannot be ignored any more. I don't know what that will look like or when but it will be horrible.
The internet is fine. It's the web that sucks now. It matters, because we can build a different web without throwing out the internet.
We'll have to walk away from the attention economy, that'll be a journey that each has to take singly, but we don't have to walk back to the 1980's. We can build something that works for communication, but that doesn't work for advertising: something structurally enshittificationproof. It will not attract investors, because there will be nothing to leverage. We'll have to build it because we want it, which has never been easier.
We can steganographically hide it in AI slop which no human has to actually ever see, and we can trick our enemies into hosting it for us for free. It might even be fun.
How?
Funnily enough this is what both Medium and Substack were trying to do but both have ended up being sucked into the system.
Seems to be a universal thing, in a society that values capital as one of the highest achievements, it will co-opt anything that ends up trying to work against it and sell it back to you.
I always appreciate a good Disco Elysium reference.
Last week I finally deleted my LinkedIn account, the last social account I had. This week, I'm close to deleting my YouTube account. There's less content I want to see and more slop than ever. Apple Music is on the chopping block. These days, I only use it to preview vinyl records that catch my eye. Once my iPhone dies, I'm done with smartphones.
The internet had so much potential. Shame.
At least with youtube you can turn off your watch history and a whole bunch of other things. Then proactively curate playlists. Cudos for Youtube for making it really easy to opt out of "the algorithm"
I will say this with ditching the smart phone. I have done it but also gone back to it. But it is merely used for specific tasks. SMS, a camera, weather report, the occasional podcast or audio book. And that's about it. Things that are difficult to do on a flip phone but alright on a 'smart' phone.
I have said it many times. Look at the original iPhone presentation. It was a device that was very deliberate. It wasn't made to addict, it was made to be productive. Get in, do the thing you want and then move on. If only it stayed that way.
I really liked my Windows Phone, mostly because it didnt have apps on it.
Although it did have facebook, it was facebook delivered by Microsoft engineers and was missing a lot of features.
I absolutely loved Windows Phone. It hit all the right notes on usability even if it didn't have the best app support.
Still bitter about that over a decade later.
What's the rationale behind ditching musicapp? It just delivers files to you with some UI fluff on top.
That is a fair take. Personally, I use my android basically an iPod. Only offline files via VLC.
Never hopped on the streaming bandwagon for anything but the most throw away stuff. Yes, I kept all my DVD's from decades back.
I think it's time for people to have their own homepages. Building and customizing a homepage is more fun than you'd think. What's the main reason the internet feels less fun these days? I think it's because there are fewer people actually communicating. But wouldn't it be more fun if we communicated through homepages? Maybe someday there will be a community—a hub for people who have their own homepages—where only those with homepages can participate
I am sick to death of the seemingly obligatory oh-but-im-all-in-on-ai disclaimer embedded in what is otherwise a (totally valid) critique of AI. Have the courage of your convictions already.
I think most people see AI as an economic inevitability, immune to what any of us thinks. Why spend the time and energy making a reasoned critique if nobody has a real choice in the end? It's like railing against the concept of money or the existence of the mosquito.
You should try chatting with a large language model—it's incredibly useful! The only thing is, I'm not sure if the answers it gives are actually correct.