A video on The Dead Internet Theory

Thought you guys would find this interesting.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEn758DVF9I


By the way, what do you think of this comment? It's written by someone who says they were in their 20s during the old internet days and that nostalgia for the old internet is bullshit.
This is an interesting theory but imho, it's way too romantic about the old Internet, and that's what I want to comment on. The whole video is built around this premise, and so for me, it totally discredits the theory because the early Internet was objectively worse in almost every way. I'm no spring chicken either. I've been a very avid Internet user since Windows 3.1 in the early-mid 90s... I was the first kid with a Windows computer and Internet in grade school and one of the few in my high school. Did I have lots of fun back then? Sure, but if I'm honest with myself, it was nowhere near as amazing as this theory makes it out to be. Even though I had fun and have fond memories of that time, that's mostly because the Internet was new and exciting territory, not because of its capabilities. It was slow, buggy, unreliable, visually-jarring, and had an extremely small and mostly esoteric user base. Lots of this theory's premise has to do with the way our minds romanticize our youth too. I'm willing to bet that most of you, like me, were kids or teens during the early Internet, maybe some of you were in your 20s. I'm sure that if wehad been 40 year-olds using the Internet in 1995, we wouldn't be looking back on it so romantically. There were some fun things about the Internet back then, but to say that it was better than what we have now is just oversimplified nostalgia at best, and at worst, it's delusional.
The reason some of us tend to romanticize the early Internet is because that's what all people do as they age... most of us find adult life less exciting and fun than we had hoped it would be, and so we romanticize the things twe experienced growing up. For many of us, it was the early Internet.
Older people tend to look at these things more cynically than young people do though, which is why many Baby Boomers were largely suspicious or even scared of the Internet when it first became popular, and why many of them use it mostly to spread memes about how they miss the "Good Old Days", you know, when kids used to go outside and drink water from hoses while not wearing bike helmets! It's the same reason why Gen X and Millenials romanticise the early Internet but are now so scared of the modern Internet. Gen Z and their contemporaries will likewise be scared of the next incarnation of the Internet after that, whatever that will be. It brings to mind the memes that Baby Boomers pass around the Internet even today, reminiscing about riding around in truck beds, staying out til the street lights turned on, drinking water from hoses, dying from lead poisoning due to eating paint chips, etc... you know, the "Good Old Days". What most of us (somewhat) younger people can readily identify is that, objectively-speaking, it was a WORSE time to be alive. That's the same reason why young kids likely find it hilarious that anyone would claim that the early days of the Internet were better than today. They're not seeing things through the same rosy-colored glasses that the creators of this conspiracy theory are.
This is just a warped form of the same Baby Boomer nostalgia, except it's more cynical and wrapped in a conspiracy theory skin. Instead of just waxing nostalgic like most people as they age, Gen X/Millenials compulsively turn everything into a conspiracy theory. It's not satisfying to just say, "Life itself was more fun, free, and exciting when I was younger". Instead, there's a compulsive need to find a villain, to invent some insidious plot to explain why things aren't the way they used to be. The reality is that corporate interests have had their nails dug into the backbone of the Internet since even before the Internet became widely available to consumers. Let's not forget that the biggest tech companies that exist today were started during this same time on the Internet. Their influence over things back then wasn't for lack of trying. It was because it was a new and wonderful world, and it simply had not been around long enough and did not have the technological capabilities to do what it does today. All of those ISPs, web hosts, and so on from the early Internet were making money too. They were serving up ads as well, and often in more annoying, less avoidable ways.
There was never really a "Wild West" period of the Internet. It's always been mostly controlled by private or public organizations. Nothing has really changed there except that those companies are now gigantic and well-known. It would be far too obvious or mundane for people to accept that their perceptions have also changed. Instead, there needs to be some sort of nefarious plot going on in the background to explain why we feel so discontented with the state of the world. It's simply more palatable to most people to look to the outside world as the source of all our problems rather than to look in the mirrors and face ourselves. For Gen X/Millenials and even some younger generations, this manifests itself as conspiracy theories. So when we look back on the Internet of the 90s, there are indeed things we might miss, but what we're really missing is the way it *felt*, the feeling of being young and experiencing something so new and cool. The way that things feel shiny and new when we're young sometimes start to feel boring, tedious, and even dreadful as we get older. And yes, although the Internet, like many things, has indeed changed a lot over the years, so too have we.
 
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brentw

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I think that guy's take is crap, pretending it's all just nostalgia is a lazy way to ignore and avoid the issue. The internet is objectively more sterile and curated than before. And the bots and propaganda are everywhere.

Sure the internet is not as dead as the Dead Internet Theory suggests, but the basic observations are correct, the OP was just looking at them through a very paranoid schizo lens that magnified it to unrealistic proportions which normies will naturally roll their eyes at.

But there really is way more bot traffic, bot comments, bot reviews, bot likes/shares/etc, than the vast majority of people (that turd included) realize. And possibly even more insidious is how search engines and social media are controlling what most users see. Promoting content that fits their agendas and hiding what doesn't. They've got their thumbs on all the scales. It wasn't like that 10+ years ago.

And you know what else was different 10+ years ago?
You could have actual conversations, even on places like Facebook, Twitter, and >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk, with real people, about real topics, without being banned for having an unapproved opinion or being ever so slightly edgy.
 
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>[the internet back then] had an extremely small and mostly esoteric user base
>[Big tech's] influence over things back then wasn't for lack of trying. It was because it was a new and wonderful world, and it simply had not been around long enough and did not have the technological capabilities to do what it does today.

So he admits things were actually better, but insists you only think things were better because of nostalgia?
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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There was never really a "Wild West" period of the Internet. It's always been mostly controlled by private or public organizations. Nothing has really changed there except that those companies are now gigantic and well-known.

Well, a lot of terrible takes in that comment. This quote is especially egregious, though. Someone who used the internet during that period that doesn't find it to be the "Wild West" clearly did not use it for much or doesn't understand what the "Wild West" was. They sound as though, perhaps, they only had a cursory understanding of the technology at their hands.

A lot of crimes were committed via the early net, many unprosecuted and many more unknown. People did what they wanted with the net, because they and the people who ran it had no idea what they were doing. Just like the Wild West. Existence was created from nothing and people built the bedrock of what was later to become the new society. Sounds like the wild west to me.

Perhaps he does not understand the fascination with the wild west. Anyone who truly is fascinated with the wild west knows its not all sunshine and rainbows.... and that's why they like it. Life isn't sunshine and rainbows and they lean into it. Is the new internet faster, more accessible, easier to use? Sure. So what? What's the point of the internet being "better" if the content on the internet is sterile garbage?
 
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Thought you guys would find this interesting.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEn758DVF9I


By the way, what do you think of this comment? It's written by someone who says they were in their 20s during the old internet days and that nostalgia for the old internet is bullshit.

Im gen x, i grew up w a c64 and used to make my first connections to bulletin boards with a 2400 bps modem. dial them up and plink around on some muds for a while. i still remember their names BBS and MUD alike(Usurper was my favorite MUD as a kid). I had prodigy and netscape was my first browser after that. i never did use AOL though i can say that i think AOL was the tipping point for the internet. it was when the "normies" of back then finally got on board. now theyre all on insta or facebook or whatever. they seem to like their single use screen interaction.
back then though the internet wasnt better, it sucked. the first days of the internet were actually even lamer than the bulliten boards i used to use before it. it was just a bunch of clicking on links and roads to nowhere that interesting. livejournal and geocities were around and they just really honestly sucked.
and heres the thing, romantically reminiscing about those days actually does make the internet of today better. it produces a "new" retro aesthetic that is absolutely enjoyable on top of an internet that is actually SO VAST now. the internet archive alone holds more interesting stuff than the days of netscape.
today i can listen to a free book from the library of congress, look at endless piles of radical art, stream WHATEVER MUSIC I CAN THINK OF(from many different websites btw), come here(to agora road) and read some interesting perspectives on subject matter i like, host one of my static websites for free on github or gitlab (or i guess neocities now?), watch movies, perform numerous types of financial transactions, read a full book, learn something. im sure theres even more than that too
you get the point.
yeah it sucks facebook and google and >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk running the major part of the show but it only sort of sucks. theres gotta be a spot to coral the plebs though and the rest of the internet is so much more interesting than it used to be.
dont get me wrong, that guys comment isnt exactly right(us gen xers dont give a shit about conspiracy theories in any way that isnt ironic as far as i can tell) but generally i think people need to acknowledge that we can take those things we like from the past and use them today and also acknowledge that what we have got now is so much better already
 
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This comment just simplifies the issue down to a matter of speed and graphics. Yes, speeds are up. Yes, there is more content. And that's it. Other than that everything got worse. I get the aesthetic would have changed but that doesn't stop the fact that most interfaces today are convoluted and unusable. And more importantly it doesn't stop the fact that content has stagnated. There are no animators like there used to be. No new filmcows or oneys anymore, no good, new, comedy sketches like collegehumor or even smosh (though to be fair Smosh was never that good), and certainly less genuine conversation. It's the substance that matters, not the style. And the substance to the internet is now largely gone.
 
This comment just simplifies the issue down to a matter of speed and graphics. Yes, speeds are up. Yes, there is more content. And that's it. Other than that everything got worse. I get the aesthetic would have changed but that doesn't stop the fact that most interfaces today are convoluted and unusable. And more importantly it doesn't stop the fact that content has stagnated. There are no animators like there used to be. No new filmcows or oneys anymore, no good, new, comedy sketches like collegehumor or even smosh (though to be fair Smosh was never that good), and certainly less genuine conversation. It's the substance that matters, not the style. And the substance to the internet is now largely gone.
Video game fandoms (and other entertainment based communities) have suffered so greatly as a result of the sterilization of the internet. What used to be an extension of the video games we loved playing became something comprised of an insular circle full of very bitter people seemingly non-cognizant of the material they're supposedly fans of. Let's not forget the unnecessary political debates and "internet is srs business" mindset forceably brought in things that are supposed to ultimately be escapist entertainment. I think the internet getting worse really depends on your interests, but for video game communities there's been an undeniable decay in the aspects of social interaction and creative (hobbyist) output. My biggest issue with all of this, though, is not that it exists but because it's so unavoidable where in the past a lot of the shittier parts of communities were isolated to their corners of the internet. It's not normal that even the teenagers of today sound as unhinged and obsessive over fandoms in the same way only the really bitter adults did, back in the 2000s.
 
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Video game fandoms (and other entertainment based communities) have suffered so greatly as a result of the sterilization of the internet. What used to be an extension of the video games we loved playing became something comprised of an insular circle devoid of very bitter people seemingly non-cognizant of the material they're supposedly fans of. I think the internet getting worse really depends on your interest, but for video game communities it's obviously far worse in the aspects of social interaction and creative (hobbyist) output.
I've noticed that modding is much less prevalent than it was. I blame this largely on the fact that modern games have a much higher graphical standard which small time hobbyists don't have the time for. And I'd say unless you are a passive consumer of content, the internet is worse across the board. All communities stagnated or died.
 
Im gen x, i grew up w a c64 and used to make my first connections to bulletin boards with a 2400 bps modem. dial them up and plink around on some muds for a while. i still remember their names BBS and MUD alike(Usurper was my favorite MUD as a kid). I had prodigy and netscape was my first browser after that. i never did use AOL though i can say that i think AOL was the tipping point for the internet. it was when the "normies" of back then finally got on board. now theyre all on insta or facebook or whatever. they seem to like their single use screen interaction.
back then though the internet wasnt better, it sucked. the first days of the internet were actually even lamer than the bulliten boards i used to use before it. it was just a bunch of clicking on links and roads to nowhere that interesting. livejournal and geocities were around and they just really honestly sucked.
and heres the thing, romantically reminiscing about those days actually does make the internet of today better. it produces a "new" retro aesthetic that is absolutely enjoyable on top of an internet that is actually SO VAST now. the internet archive alone holds more interesting stuff than the days of netscape.
today i can listen to a free book from the library of congress, look at endless piles of radical art, stream WHATEVER MUSIC I CAN THINK OF(from many different websites btw), come here(to agora road) and read some interesting perspectives on subject matter i like, host one of my static websites for free on github or gitlab (or i guess neocities now?), watch movies, perform numerous types of financial transactions, read a full book, learn something. im sure theres even more than that too
you get the point.
yeah it sucks facebook and google and >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk running the major part of the show but it only sort of sucks. theres gotta be a spot to coral the plebs though and the rest of the internet is so much more interesting than it used to be.
dont get me wrong, that guys comment isnt exactly right(us gen xers dont give a shit about conspiracy theories in any way that isnt ironic as far as i can tell) but generally i think people need to acknowledge that we can take those things we like from the past and use them today and also acknowledge that what we have got now is so much better already
I think it really depends on your interests and which era of the internet you're focusing on. I don't really agree with your observations that the 00s internet has less content than the modern internet when I find diverse viewpoints and perspectives a lot more rare on the centralized social media than I did years ago when browsing various forums with their own communities. While it is true that online communities always suffered a bit of an incestuous mentality, centralized social media has made groups of users extremely predictable in their typing style and interests. Regarding that, the practical and convenience side has surely gotten more efficient but the community aspect is just lacking in every way. For instance, I can't even say something without potentially offending someone anymore, even in very non-controversial statements, which wasn't really the case for my early internet experience. People are also more high strung and volatile with what they deem as "problematic", which is pretty any kind of behavior that doesn't conform to a very high set list of standards imposed by a vocal minority on social media. It's like a battlefield out there, and I seriously can't see how anyone can think it's positive from a communitarian non-materialistic perspective, at the very least if they're interacting with people aged 15 to 30.
 
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Everyone has such a vastly different experience with the internet it's impossible for one person to say how it ever "was" or "wasn't".

Edit: my bad spelling.
 
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zalaz alaza

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I think it really depends on your interests and which era of the internet you're focusing on. I don't really agree with your observations that the 00s internet has less content than the modern internet when I find diverse viewpoints and perspectives a lot more rare on the centralized social media than I did years ago when browsing various forums with their own communities. While it is true that online communities always suffered a bit of an incestuous mentality, centralized social media has made groups of users extremely predictable in their typing style and interests. Regarding that, the practical and convenience side has surely gotten more efficient but the community aspect is just lacking in every way. For instance, I can't even say something without potentially offending someone anymore, even in very non-controversial statements, which wasn't really the case for my early internet experience. People are also more high strung and volatile with what they deem as "problematic", which is pretty any kind of behavior that doesn't conform to a very high set list of standards imposed by a vocal minority on social media. It's like a battlefield out there, and I seriously can't see how anyone can think it's positive from a communitarian non-materialistic perspective, at the very least if they're interacting with people aged 15 to 30.
yeah but i think yr missing that that was always the case somewhere. i know my experienc is unique to me but ive been into nerdy tech stuff my entire life. i wouldnt say i knew all the ins and outs but its always been more than just some "entertainment box" to me. that is i see my interaction with computing as something significant unto itself.

from the phone phreaking stuff in the late 80s and early 90s(when i was just a kid) to crypto currency mining in the last decade my relationship with computing is a good bit more complex than most people. and really, very seriously, now is the time i see as having most access to the widest variety of any and all things. Sure in the past there were more super secret pieces that lots of people didnt/couldnt access but that wasnt a function of ability it was just a function of slow communication. the reason those places existed isnt because more people made them it was because fewer people could ever know about them. thats something we have covered handily these days. so as a person that was into some of that deeper older internet, and that being something sort of rare into itself, i can honestly tell you that for 99.99% of people using the internet across that span of time there is greater depth and access now.

and i agree, those main channels are plugged up with tons of nonsense. but hey thats fine cause that not only encourages more forums like agora road to spawn but it also gives real purpose to their existence. thats something i think was really missing from the earlier internet. it wasnt essential then, that is there was NO dependency on its existence, and it was a time of discovery about what this rapid data exchange could really do. for most people that meant something akin to voyeurism(whereas using BBSs was more interactive).

Lots of people do this thing where they dont look at what they are currently doing as part of what they are critiquing, but i mean really, agora road is here. mastodon, all of the chans, odysee, and lbry are here. there are new PROTOCOLS like gemini. there are old Protocols like gopher and HTML(which is still cool btw). you can even still run a telnet BBS. Theres ENS. there are multiple blockchains you can deploy to(and explore). You can amass giant data sets your self and analyze them on your own at home with your GPU and then you can use that information to make investments just minutes later from your home. There is so much right now that you can mess with and there are great resources to learn about all of it right there.

Now im not saying yr doing that, i donno what you actually think. Its just that to look at the actual mass of available data NOW compared to like 2000 there is no comparison at all.

You can clone any of the millions(billions) of public repositories of code, edit them to your liking, and then share them with everyone else.

you can get an open source AI to integrate with you text editor to help you edit the repository you cloned.

You can even takeenough free college courses from the best universities in the world to fill up your schedule for years and years.

It has never ever ever been as vast and deep of a space to explore as it is right now, not by a long shot
 
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Thought you guys would find this interesting.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEn758DVF9I


By the way, what do you think of this comment? It's written by someone who says they were in their 20s during the old internet days and that nostalgia for the old internet is bullshit.

Part of me agrees with this take. but another part of me is very aware of the fact that the modern internet is curated to the point of no return. the modern internet is safe, and lacks nuance, especially in the surface level areas of the internet where MOST of the traffic is. I think that being exposed to ideas at a young age could potentially be harmful sure, but i think that many of us as evidence seem to have turned out okay. The early internet was definitely more interesting. early 2000s forums and places like newgrounds etc were counter culture to the core. nowadays many places that masquerade as counter culture movements are really just corporate advertising campaigns and politcal spaces trying to manipulate people
 
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Zakura

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Video game fandoms (and other entertainment based communities) have suffered so greatly as a result of the sterilization of the internet. What used to be an extension of the video games we loved playing became something comprised of an insular circle full of very bitter people seemingly non-cognizant of the material they're supposedly fans of. Let's not forget the unnecessary political debates and "internet is srs business" mindset forceably brought in things that are supposed to ultimately be escapist entertainment. I think the internet getting worse really depends on your interests, but for video game communities there's been an undeniable decay in the aspects of social interaction and creative (hobbyist) output. My biggest issue with all of this, though, is not that it exists but because it's so unavoidable where in the past a lot of the shittier parts of communities were isolated to their corners of the internet. It's not normal that even the teenagers of today sound as unhinged and obsessive over fandoms in the same way only the really bitter adults did, back in the 2000s.
Exactly and FB fandoms are the worst offenders. Bland memes, never anything funny, just virtue signaling and moralizing over digital characters. The memes they post always have a political or propagandist undertone. I don't even know why FB became the hub for all of this. Young people don't use it that much anymore. I suspect there is something more sinister behind those "shitposting" pages, because most of the mods seem to be working in fields centered around creating online communities or marketing.
Even on twitter, you write something that goes against the narrative and you have a bunch of goons attacking you. Even the people who pretend to be anti-woke are doing the exact same things "wokesters" do.
One of the main problems is that people who are the most vocal often don't even play the damn games. I see people on twitter posting "about to play some vidya series" and a month later they are either complaining about "leftist" or "rightwing" propaganda in those games. They just tweet stuff like that because some other tards did. It's funny because they make it look as if they are tweeting independently of each other, when in reality they are organized. One starts tweeting about how some anime/vidya is le propaganda and others follow. When in reality I don't notice the ~propaganda~ they are always talking about, especially not in Japanese games.
It's always the same with these types of people. I checked their youtube, to see who they are subbed to and it's always the same channels. I know this will sound outlandish, but maybe some type of mind control is happening there.
 
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yeah but i think yr missing that that was always the case somewhere. i know my experienc is unique to me but ive been into nerdy tech stuff my entire life. i wouldnt say i knew all the ins and outs but its always been more than just some "entertainment box" to me. that is i see my interaction with computing as something significant unto itself.

from the phone phreaking stuff in the late 80s and early 90s(when i was just a kid) to crypto currency mining in the last decade my relationship with computing is a good bit more complex than most people. and really, very seriously, now is the time i see as having most access to the widest variety of any and all things. Sure in the past there were more super secret pieces that lots of people didnt/couldnt access but that wasnt a function of ability it was just a function of slow communication. the reason those places existed isnt because more people made them it was because fewer people could ever know about them. thats something we have covered handily these days. so as a person that was into some of that deeper older internet, and that being something sort of rare into itself, i can honestly tell you that for 99.99% of people using the internet across that span of time there is greater depth and access now.

and i agree, those main channels are plugged up with tons of nonsense. but hey thats fine cause that not only encourages more forums like agora road to spawn but it also gives real purpose to their existence. thats something i think was really missing from the earlier internet. it wasnt essential then, that is there was NO dependency on its existence, and it was a time of discovery about what this rapid data exchange could really do. for most people that meant something akin to voyeurism(whereas using BBSs was more interactive).

Lots of people do this thing where they dont look at what they are currently doing as part of what they are critiquing, but i mean really, agora road is here. mastodon, all of the chans, odysee, and lbry are here. there are new PROTOCOLS like gemini. there are old Protocols like gopher and HTML(which is still cool btw). you can even still run a telnet BBS. Theres ENS. there are multiple blockchains you can deploy to(and explore). You can amass giant data sets your self and analyze them on your own at home with your GPU and then you can use that information to make investments just minutes later from your home. There is so much right now that you can mess with and there are great resources to learn about all of it right there.

Now im not saying yr doing that, i donno what you actually think. Its just that to look at the actual mass of available data NOW compared to like 2000 there is no comparison at all.

You can clone any of the millions(billions) of public repositories of code, edit them to your liking, and then share them with everyone else.

you can get an open source AI to integrate with you text editor to help you edit the repository you cloned.

You can even takeenough free college courses from the best universities in the world to fill up your schedule for years and years.

It has never ever ever been as vast and deep of a space to explore as it is right now, not by a long shot
You are missing the point though that most of these new protocols and stuff are basically fixing problems that shouldn't exist in the first place. I'm not saying that I think they should stop existing or we should ban them, but shit like crypto is just outright comedic. We are making a tool to decentralize a tool which was build to be open and decentralized in the first place. And in the end all it really does is just create a bloated app that has all the same issues the non-centralized apps have while being slower to use.

And the issue really isn't with technology, since we all know it's better now. The issue is with it's use. Where once internet was some cool place to explore, learn about stuff, watch cool animations, play some games, read articles. All with actuall depth, this now is reduced to masses of clickbait articles, low effort videos, sterile scrolling feed of social media engineered to manipulate you. It's also just repeat of itself. You might have billions of videos to watch, but that means jack shit when of every 10 videos, one is a original and 9 is the same video copy and pasted but it's someone reacting to it.

I can't be happy there's so much data, when all of it is noise. You would think that having billions of people connected together would create something wonderful. Which I still believe is true, but if you filter people voices through an app like twitter which limits people voices to short messages, you guarantee whatever they say will be easily to misinterpret and shallow.

Hell, with the hopes of being able to predict the usage on the internet to market stuff, it became even more sterile. Since if you introduce a filtering mechanism to it that shows you content based on the content you watched, you basically end up killing any hope for something truly new to come out of it. And I honestly lost count how many reboots of movies we had instead of some new franchises. And this isn't limited to movies, this is felt on pretty much everything. Everything in the last 10 to 20 years has become just a repeat of whatever happened in the past more and more.

Honestly, the nostalgia for the old internet is not because it was great, it was pretty bad. But it was a start of something wonderful. Then finance came and it just became an extention of social control in hopes of sucking away money from you in every way possible, while at the same time putting spyware into people hands that cold war spy aggencies could only dream of.
 
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You are missing the point though that most of these new protocols and stuff are basically fixing problems that shouldn't exist in the first place. I'm not saying that I think they should stop existing or we should ban them, but shit like crypto is just outright comedic. We are making a tool to decentralize a tool which was build to be open and decentralized in the first place. And in the end all it really does is just create a bloated app that has all the same issues the non-centralized apps have while being slower to use.

And the issue really isn't with technology, since we all know it's better now. The issue is with it's use. Where once internet was some cool place to explore, learn about stuff, watch cool animations, play some games, read articles. All with actuall depth, this now is reduced to masses of clickbait articles, low effort videos, sterile scrolling feed of social media engineered to manipulate you. It's also just repeat of itself. You might have billions of videos to watch, but that means jack shit when of every 10 videos, one is a original and 9 is the same video copy and pasted but it's someone reacting to it.

I can't be happy there's so much data, when all of it is noise. You would think that having billions of people connected together would create something wonderful. Which I still believe is true, but if you filter people voices through an app like twitter which limits people voices to short messages, you guarantee whatever they say will be easily to misinterpret and shallow.

Hell, with the hopes of being able to predict the usage on the internet to market stuff, it became even more sterile. Since if you introduce a filtering mechanism to it that shows you content based on the content you watched, you basically end up killing any hope for something truly new to come out of it. And I honestly lost count how many reboots of movies we had instead of some new franchises. And this isn't limited to movies, this is felt on pretty much everything. Everything in the last 10 to 20 years has become just a repeat of whatever happened in the past more and more.

Honestly, the nostalgia for the old internet is not because it was great, it was pretty bad. But it was a start of something wonderful. Then finance came and it just became an extention of social control in hopes of sucking away money from you in every way possible, while at the same time putting spyware into people hands that cold war spy aggencies could only dream of.
ok so i think my differing opinion here is as such

all that noise, all that predictable nonsense, that was what cable tv used to be for. just a place for normies to have some weird normies dance thing going on. there are lots and lots and lots of them and thats what happens whereever they go. Its just that now its on the internet.

this does seem lame at first, but it isnt all bad. for one it provides a cover for the fun stuff you can do. the noise can be some sort of a guard. secondly you can interact with it more completely than you could in the past(maybe you dont want to but its cool for some people). third, there are caches of that noise for you to analyze and think about. not all of it is nonsense but even nonsense can be fun to through some experiments at.

im just syaing, that predictable filtered noise has always been around, it just used to be in the townie bars and on tv. now its on the internet
 
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Talon

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While I don't find the comment completely off-base, I think the poster is over-simplifying the problem. Yes, early internet was crappy in a lot of ways and there was always a looming corporate presence on the easily accessible surface web, but now there's a lot of marketing astroturf campaigns and shill bots compromising regular conversation. As far back as Usenet days you'd see spam bots running wild on different lists/groups, but there was still good conversations to be had once you learned to skip those dumb posts. Now, even mundane conversations are ultra-polarizing and it's harder to find what you're looking for when search engines like google suppress certain search results. One thing to keep in mind though is that everything available on the internet back then wasn't always easily accessible. Basic web crawlers weren't always there and links had to be sent in manually to different search engines before being entered into their database. Most of the cool places to hang out were spread through word-of-mouth. I think a lot of people either forgot or misremember that aspect, you had to really hunt for the things you were interested in. The compromise of having information at your fingertips now is that you're no longer encountering content created by hobbiest 'spergs. Today's content is generally no longer created from a point of passion, it's created to generate money from an audience. That's the real tragedy of today's internet.
 
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Existence was created from nothing and people built the bedrock of what was later to become the new society. Sounds like the wild west to me.
but was this "vaporwave" could-have-been future stole from us? took from us by corporates, ads, monopolies, agendas?
or is it only that it became "normal" and then, from what was called "new world" became just another public space, as street is...?
 
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Anova3

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I don't think the internet itself is actually that different from what it was, if you know where (not) to look.

As I see it, all that 'changed' was 'the internet' became mainstream, and a ton of normies moved in, and as usual when normies adopt something: corporate finds a way to monopolize and profit off of it. The result is around 90% of the population spending the majority of their time on social media.

Saying the internet is somehow less now just because social media exists is like complaining that the countryside will never be the same just because someone built a city 100 miles away. Yes, that's where most people are, but that's not really different than back when most people didn't use the internet at all and we didn't have social media.

What I'm saying is: if you ignore the big sites and the people using them, then the rest of it feels just as esoteric and strange as it was before. And the people who use such fringe sites certainly are.

I guess something else that has changed, and will mess up the feeling of exploration we had previously: search engines.
I've been messing around with YaCy for some time now, and I have to say: it's really jarring the first time you fire up a search that isn't *HEAVILY* weighted by site popularity. It really feels like you're back in the 90s and early 00s again, because the weighting is based on matches to site titles and meta data instead of some kind of over-engineered AI algorithm.
Like, if you search for a string of common program code, you kinda expect to get stack overflow, but with this you're just as likely to get some random college student's blog. Which I think is a lot more fun, even if it's not always as helpful.
 
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