(Bad, post- modern, "future-less" (culture-less) timeline) Young people (1984-2014) giving up on life, future...

[Some_porcupine]

This is happening because financial and social success irl has become dependent on these online profiles. It is necessary to share a lot of things about yourself if you are looking to connect with others when business is involved. That is also why this happened in parallel to the internet becoming more and more commercialized.

Large anon communities were brought down by directly interfering with real world power structures, which themselves are in a state of decline and degradation into a purely monetary function.

I don't think that the course of the internet colliding with the real world can be reversed. But there can be political environments where art and truth are not banned because they got in the way of short term profits.

(you know what i want to say by these (collections) quotes at this point...)

 

[Ardea]

Might just be me but nothing has really felt real for years and years.

 

[Some_porcupine]

RE: small-a "anonymity":
The early web was dominated by the sorts of techie recluses who can trace their cultural origins back to the free software movement and from there to the hacker/warez cultures of the 80s and 90s, so it's only natural that they've inherited stuff like the emphasis of anonymity. Their influence can still be felt to this day in the preoccupation with security, privacy and cryptography that you find anywhere you can find Linux users (including here on the Agora Road).

#0 punks and emos of 2000s-2010s: basically "When we were young" fest, - safe for fact it was then "current thing": pic-rel + all those rock, punk, emo, - things (idea(l)s) playing on radio --- a psyop??? + 80s (music, not aesthetics) nostalgia occuring around that time... : music-rel (yeah, pretty much this playlist is "getting rich" from nostalgia - go, figure :/)​

​

#1 youtube campaign "broadcoast yourself" - dawg man, i am so confussed how we could "get bought" over this - and believe come corporation! it sounds so - ironic; looking at it from lens of someone, living in *these* times "after fad"... - really believing(?) that commonmen can, thru sheer "influence" thru net, shape world... (what a joke!!!) [were we sold on *this feeling"!???][1]​

​

#1b general naiivity over "corporations allowing us all this" - how was that not suspicious!! i wonder... (letting our guard and awareness so low) ~ but then, werent we (born 1999-and so; living with siblings (sister), of 8 year difference...)​

​

#1.5 campaign of web providers (geocities, goDaddy or such), *basically* saying "be you"/"promote yourself"​

​

(if you get me, that is; i am - getting nostalgic, over something i very fogly remember - in fact, now i get - why those "boomers" over here are getting nostalgic over living in socialism (when, they were kids... - so was i...)​

​

--- WAS this all^ psy-op - contrarian messages, just "selling feeling", scham, make-believe dreams?​

​

or is it that *there somewhere*, it was "all taken away from us" - well, as i see, that is very little probability, and it was just tactic to "get everyone on net" - those fxxx bastards!! (#me, being naiive...)[1]​

https://sites.google.com/view/utopistic-nostalgias/lostbroken-zillenial-dreams/lostbroken-zillennial-dreams-2010

RE: capital-A "Anonymity" as an ideal:

The history of Anonymity as an ideal seems to be a bit more convoluted. I'm not old enough to have been there and seen it for myself, but I'm surprised how nobody brought up Japan and the unique posting culture there, especially as it existed in the early 2000s. Being Anonymous (and related concepts like the "Right to Disappear") is a very specific idea that was imported from 2ch and was then spread around by early japanophiles and forum pioneers.
We're talking here stuff that happened like 5-6 internet generations ago. It's absolutely ancient history, but those were the guys who kept opening 4chan clones (not the /i/ refugee camps, the really old stuff like the original 5chan(?) and iichan (yes I know iichan technically came before 4chan shut up)), and, indeed, had a hand in shaping 4chan itself (I'm thinking of people like shii). I haven't looked into any of this stuff in years, but I seem to recall that it was one such moron that convinced moot to turn on the FORCED_ANON setting because that's what will finally "FIX /b/" (it didn't).
(They're also the reason why 4chan actually had a bunch of semi-functional textboards for a long while.)

The importance of anonymity and being absorbed into an Anonymous collective was kept around for a loooong time after all that shit faded away and the ancient greybeards finally kicked the bucket or found something actually productive to do with their lives. First it was reified through 2009-era hacktivism, and it remained a point of pride on /v/ (/v/ro culture as contrasted with the >reddit plebs), and once 4chan completed its metamorphesis into the right-wing maypole of the entire internet, places like /pol/ and /x/ (and /g/ & /biz/ to a lesser extent; and of course troll havens like ED and Kiwi Farms) made sure that every schizo from now until the heat death of the universe is absolutely convinced that using a pseudonym is a god-given right and duty, lest the glowies kick their door down.

netpunks

Add to that the fact that schools would drill this stuff into children in an attempt to protect them from pedophiles (the very same pedophiles that thrived in anonymized communities), and you see why it's become so deeply rooted.

Look, if you're still a firm believer in the internet as a sort of Information Superhighway with liberatory potential, kudos to you. I myself never post under my IRL identity and still using pseduonyms on registration forms and whatever.
However, all that said........ Don't you guys feel this is all a bit... quaint?
I'm not advocating for a transparent web or anything. But, honestly, in today's internet environment where most zoomers spend all their online time chatting on Discord, what is the point, exactly? To prevent doxxing, I suppose. It's a basic measure of self-protection against trolls and harrassment. But, well, what else?
We're like 20 years into this bullshit. All of it. We've had our fun and we clicked all the links and posted all the posts and engaged in all the online slacktivism, and by now it should be clear that Anonymity has no collective benefit. It's just a way of ensuring your community's will always have a place for trolls. It doesn't promote good-faith engagement, it doesn't raise the quality of posts, it doesn't harbor any serious political potential, it doesn't even discourage personal attacks. It doesn't do anything, really. So... why bother?

TINC/93 eternal september + adpocalypse, and y2k bubble pop, plus 2007-2009 emo kids millenials who "went to (retroactively) destroy every industry", and "how dangerous these channers are!(?)", occupy movement...

---

EDIT: Another thing about 4chan's relationship with Anonymity.
I'm a veteran of many flamewar battles over this point, but seriously, once and for all: The fetishization of Anonymity is a relatively new phenomenon there! As stated above, there was always a clique of grumpy weeaboos who insisted that The Future is Anonymous, but they mostly congregated around /jp/ once it was opened, and they kept that spirit alongside stuff like appropriately using sage (and even age). But it was always a minority position. Don't believe me? Check the archives. Namefags and tripfags were very common before ~2012. Their ubiquity only diminished with time, and has never increased.

weirdos, always. no admitted irl, so they closed themselves online. - when everyone else did (tumblr exodus/fire), it flopped...

it doesn't matter if, for instance, i happen to know the guy on SA in the mid-00s with the fucked up house that he extended himself is called grover, because that's functionally meaningless to real life unless someone poopsocks it incredibly hard and doxxes him (i don't think anyone ever did despite us knowing where the house was).

yup... ^

Yeah, in the mid-00s. Nowadays grover would have his own kiwifarms thread.

sadly. this is how times change (https://sites.google.com/view/utopi...nial-dreams/lostbroken-zillennial-dreams-2010)...

 

[Some_porcupine]

https://sites.google.com/view/utopistic-nostalgias/lostbroken-zillenial-dreams/lostbroken-zillennial-dreams-2010

 

[Some_porcupine]

never late to a thread!
i was reaching here for sure because i failed to mention that . like you said, social media has fully turned into a game. even i'll admit to playing into my "character" in order to keep face. not only as the big ping here on the agora road macintosh cafe forums, but on all of my big socials. each platform with a different version of the truth. tweaked to satisfy an audience. not because i want the likes.. but that's just the me they know.

and this is where i believe it gets fucky. you're bound to create a character wherever you go because the character is you.
that character either becomes a clout chaser or an approval seeker. i think i fall into the latter. approval seeker-lite, i'll get to that later.
some cannot live with the fact that they are not likeable so they become a clout chaser to prove they are so fucking cool and swag and get so many likes because they are so so so cool and they collaborate with all these big name big boys! others get so lost in the approval seeking they become a single aspect of themself. they can't live with the shit within so they exaggerate a shiny, clean exterior. relieved their mask is holding up, evidenced by their massive follow count and stellar like to dislike ratio!
and everyone who doesn't fall into those two buckets are the sigma small pack/lone wolves.

posting and gaining reputation or engagement has always been a given to me. my character, me, doesn't need clout or much praise because that occurs on its own. i don't have to try hard. i truly just be myself and people enjoy it.
and this is why i say i'm an approval seeker-lite. i do like knowing that people like me. again, not because i want to be liked but because being liked has been the norm ever since i can remember. it means everything is working the way it should be and i'm not out of wack (i mean this in a mental illness way.. like when i notice people are disliking me or being "weird" i'm like oh fuck am i having an episode? because the answer is usually yes).
on agora, i can tell when people do not like the things i say. and that makes me reevaluate my words and think about where i was in my head when i replied. it's like constant constructive criticism. i like it! i think i become a better person/poster because of it. i don't think the numbers reinforce my character, but instead it is the genuine interactions i have with everyone that builds my character. so just.. normal socializing lmao. long winded way of saying it's the journey not the destination. the issue is most people don't follow that mantra.

i still believe social media is straight up just socializing and media. if you're bad at both, you'll either be bad forever, have to fake it, or get gud. and that's why we have shitposters! i was trying to defend social media because shitposters gonna shitpost and goodposters gonna goodpost. nothing to worry about then, right?

NO! because i straight up did not know any of the following was happening:


this shit is crazy dude. the widespread want to be chronically online. i see the issues. shitposters make up the majority of our ecosystems and there is NO separation between irl and online.
though i question, hasn't that always been the truth? i recall most of the websites i saw on the early girlweb to be a blog for the webmaster. well, more like a diary containing too much information. many of these sites would eventually host ads and stuff as the web became more commercial. the webmaster was their blog, and they were monetized because of it. i was too young to remember any of these sites by name, but i promise, if you were an otaku neopets girlie you know exactly what i mean.
edit: forgot to add that i did not grow up with this lowercase a-nonimity web. my first concrete memory of the web was circa 2003. by the time i was well integrated, 2007, the web had lost a lot of that a-nonymity. so, from my perspective, yes it has always been like that.

also hate to say it (i fully don't hate to say it) eris, but i'd hire the mariachi band. that's absurd and therefore funny and therefore i like it lol

They were a plague and everyone else hated/ignored them, tripfag hate was always a constant no matter what board you were looking at. I don't know how you can think that wanting to be anonymous on 4chinz is a new thing when attaching a name or tripcode to your post back in the day was almost a guaranteed way to piss people off without doing anything.


This would make sense to me if I hadn't seen plenty of examples of anonymous posters not being massive cunts to each other, even when there was nothing preventing them from doing otherwise. You can get a community spirit going on an anonymous imageboard, but only within the context of individual threads, which never last too long and float around on the catalog alongside plenty of shit threads that look like proof of that theory. In my experience they're more like a collection of temporary micro-communities instead of a single cohesive one. When it works, people don't shitpost because they're invested in the thread itself as opposed to their own persona. "General threads" are one example of this (and not the best example, when you force the micro-community to stick around for too long it starts to rot), but the same goes for any recurring topic that attracts the same kind of people. Every positive memory I have of 4chan is associated with a specific kind of thread like this as opposed to a board as a whole.
I don't think anonymous imageboards are the ideal way to communicate with people on the internet, but they can work. Japanese people seem to be better at using them in a productive way than westerners, and that may have something to do with a cultural predisposition towards focusing on a thread topic instead of a username, but it's hard to say. I definitely think imageboards depend on most users having an uncommon ability to suspend their own egos for a while, which is why they're so vulnerable to bad actors and the general populace.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Vaguely related but not really to the subject at hand but did you guys notice around 2017-2018, normies became a lot more aware of furries, but not approvingly, as well as using the word "incel" around that time as well as other things that would've been exclusive to people inside online sphere back as early as ~2015? Idk if it was TikTok or the in-thing amongst Youtube at the time iirc being >reddit/4chan TTS and reviewing 4chan/>reddit memes.

It was around that time that the MSM started fear mongering over Qanon (and thus further spreading its influence) and a lot of other niche online micro cultures suddenly got attention as a side effect. Everyone has had this vague idea of "weird people online" for decades now, but it was only in that timeframe that it suddenly became Very Important™ to know about online communities and the threat they pose to society, or whatever. In looking for this stuff (especially on 4chan and Discord) a lot of normies and journalists came across all kinds of other weirdness they never would have seen otherwise, and suddenly "weird people online" was no longer a vague concept but an actual collection of identified subcultures. This happened across the board because the right wing could point to all the sexual degeneracy and say "See! They have had an agenda far beyond gay marriage all along!" or something similar. While the left wing could point out the crass and racialized language to say "See! Bigotry is alive and well, and is a growing threat to our society!"

You don't need to be hyper political to be swept up in it. Those hyper political people hear about it, then they talk to other people, who talk to other people, and it filters through society.

Your boomer aunt who watches Fox News all day hears about bronies for the first time and tells her less politically active friends and family about it, and when they look into it themselves they're surprised to find it's true. All the involved people are now aware of weird degeneracy they never would've known about, all because one person watched the news.

and related - from new thread -

The Futanari Psyop

About a deca-or-so ago futanari became slightly popular. I don't doubt that it happened organically, but the direction it went in pop culture was kind of weird. The concept of gender-bending has been an absolute staple in anime for several decades and never had anything to do with trans people...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

great point here, I think we mostly agree. I was trying to highlight that I think these discussions are dumb precisely because the "division" between the left/right we interface with daily is manufactured, almost entirely illusory. in order for left/right talk to be made more useful (it's not going anywhere) it has to be recalibrated to describe actual opposing points in the plane of transition away from capitalism. only then can we get to more granular specificity. correct me if I'm wrong but for most of the world this isn't much of an issue. the spectrum has been adapted from its previous meaning(s) to describe opposing ideologies, and it's far more useful than it is in america where I'm from

here there's a sizable part of the population that has been lead to believe that the actions of the democratic party constitute a shift toward a socialist government, but they don't. there's this prevalent belief that the population is "more divided than ever" but it isn't. peoples' political belief systems rarely go beyond a handful of stances on select pieces of legislation, most of which have been in the arena for several decades. reform is barely detectable in the zeitgeist, much less revolution. there's very little political imagination to be found and this is definitely a factor

Right Left and The center

left/right is only appropriately understood as anticapitalist/capitalist. left exists as the negation of right. though there are details and specificities these concepts are not relative to time place or culture. Uhm, you do know that left/right division originated in the French Revolution...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

The failure of online politics

I've recently reread Benjamin Studebaker's excellent essay on what he calls the Millennial Left, and how it's basically been not much more than a giant internet meme. (He's a great and very insightful writer, btw. One of those 'hidden gem' types who probably would've been respectable public...

forum.agoraroad.com

older threads:

Death of culture(?)

I made a thread on Lainchan about this, but I want to know what you guys think. Lately I've been reading Hyperculture by Byung-chul Han and he argues that since globalisation has given everyone nigh infinite access to all sorts of information at any time, any semblance of an individual culture...

forum.agoraroad.com

(which has doublepost: )

Do you ever feel that current western culture and current state of capitalism is ruining everything?

For my point of view sometimes it feels that current state of western culture and its current era of capitalism is slowly killing all the meaning and importance of things. When everything is so easily available everything will lose its meaning and value. Do any of you ever feel the same? For...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

The following is a discourse I made a while back at yesterweb together with a raw unaltered copy of an extensive essay originally written in two parts by daintyeco, I can only fit the first part though since it is just too long (i really want to ask for permission but i can't find a way to contact the original author):

The right-wing side of web revival​

I'm not referring to the classical right diversion here although they do have the similar premise. I'm talking about the general right wing attitude towards the modern internet, especially that of the alt-right pocket. Apparently, they have been the hardest hit victim of corpo-federal censorship that rules the internet nowadays.
Speaking as someone who lurked through 4chan back when I was a dumb kid researching conspiracy theories, I noticed that many people there shared the same views espoused by the cliques we are familiar with (such as this one we are in right now [YW]), particularly on security, privacy, and the popular history of internet. In fact they seem to be more militant when dealing with the good old "big tech". Many of the old timers I've seen often reminisce about the days before the increasing surveillance and commodification. And on the bigger picture, this is actually more known to the mainstream media. Indeed the first time I got such an impression was when I browsed through news sites looking into their opinions.
──────────────────────────────────────────────

the web revival space as a refuge for harmful ideas​

I​

Recently, it seems like the web revival/indie web/retro web/personalized web sphere has had a huge influx of members. Probably a mix of dissatisfaction with the bigger social media sites like Twitter/X, Instagram, >reddit, and maybe even Tumblr, as well as troubles to find spaces you're content with in the fediverse. I know some people have trouble with Lemmy and Mastodon, from choosing an instance to their instance closing down or the instance owner being involved in drama, being defederated, or having trouble finding content all in one place. I've also seen people who fled from >reddit fleeing from Squabblr because of severe disagreements with the admin, and delete Cohost over allowing or not allowing the sharing of sexualized drawings of underage fictional characters.
We've seen such migrations before, but for other reasons. I remember that the past few years have brought up a lot of issues to be extremely divided about. That produced a lot of hate speech that was removed, so the people responsible for that got (shadow)banned, removed, or grew tired of having their posts deleted or accounts temporarily locked. I remember all these "free speech" alternative places being erected that just almost immediately faltered or had other severe issues. Lack of members, corruption and drama, or speech that even free speech absolutists grew uncomfortable with. Even those sites eventually had to draw a line and made members mad, or simply shut down (like voat).
It seems like those people are wandering perpetually around the internet, searching for a home for their ideas that cannot be taken away from them but still gives them an audience. And if your spaces fail, and the others won't take you, where do you go?
Personalized web spaces like Neocities and the connected small web spaces like smol.pub, status.cafe, the MelonLand forum and others are perfectly suitable for this. Neocities barely has any oversight and as far as I know, does not really ban users for content violations. Other spaces are small, with even less oversight, managed by 1-3 people with busy lives outside of their web projects and communities. There might not be functioning report features either, or no prominent way to contact the admin. There is no advertising here, so no advertisers to please. People can be nice and gather an audience on forums, the blogging here and the statuses over at the cafe, and then lead back to their websites where they can share propaganda unquestioned and unbothered. These spaces here are small, so less people to upset, less likely for there to be a bigger "shitstorm". And since these people share their views elsewhere, hosters of the services where they play nice can find themselves in the tough spot of "Should I ban someone for content that is not on the site I host or community I manage?". It can be difficult to judge if someone can be a threat to a community, or ruin the vibe of it, if their views can be accessed but are not directly in these communities. It can also be a ticking time bomb as to when they will share some there. Do you risk it or not?
Another point: I think a lot of people coming here from spaces where their views got them banned over and over again expect it to be different here because there is a focus on freedom, reclamation of the internet, and a lot of nostalgia as well as criticism of modern social media. A ton of Neocities websites feature manifestos about these things, and it can be misconstrued to fit the views of these people and seem like a safe haven to share and promote questionable to downright harmful and dehumanizing views without consequence. The idea of reclaiming the web, to them, can be about reclaiming it from "woke" people or people they deem inferior, like people of color, LGBT, and others in a similar boat.
I think deep down, they hope, and maybe even know, that people here do not operate like thoughtless, cutthroat businesses who will just ban you without recourse. There is an emphasis on humanity here, showing up and being vulnerable, and giving people chances. Maybe they know there is a bigger potential for compromise, "agree to disagree", or a false sense of some form of "fair centrism" where we gotta have "both sides". But in my view, that concept an be abused, or stretched in ways it shouldn't be. Our spaces have a responsibility to watch out for being overrun by people with views that cannot be tolerated anymore.
After all, we should all be aware of the tolerance paradox at this point, and that tolerating specific extreme views can drive others out, silence, or even endanger them. I've also seen that a love of nostalgia can quickly lend itself to the romanticizing of extremely conservative and traditional ideas that are homophobic, misogynistic and racist, often coming from white supremacists. Also, the criticism of social media giants and big corporations can sometimes be co-opted by people who want to talk about "The Elite" and specific intense conspiracy theories, like QAnon stuff, Pizzagate and so on, usually ending up with extremely antisemitic talking points due to thinking that Jewish people are behind it all.
I think this online scene we are in needs to reckon with this some time and position themselves, with guidelines and what they'll enforce or not, and where their boundaries are. You cannot detect these people by asking them during signup to describe themselves or what they're planning to do with this, as they have learned not to mention it directly. They often hide it within some subpages or externally linked socials or alternative sites.
It is a fact that climate change deniers, covid deniers, antivaxxers, pedophiles, QAnon people, neonazis, and extreme transphobes have accounts in our spaces and there will be more because of the aforementioned journey of finding an audience without a ban hammer. We should discuss it.

This is just the antithesis of modern left ideology dressed up to be balanced. There are obvious things in the world that are wrong, but you can't outcast someone for seeing life in a slightly different way. You have to learn to accept people are not all going to think the same.

I find the labeling of transphobic particularly overused and misunderstood by people throwing it around. Just because I think someone has mental health issues when transitioning mid life after seeing the bandwagon of acceptance, that is not fear. I would rather help that person find their mental footing. That being said I do believe that some people legitimately at their core have something flipped in their brain that is female or male and they are actually are mentally disparate from their physical form. I have seen people destroy their lives jumping on the trans bandwagon only to recognize years later it was only to find acceptance and not because they actually thought they were trans. But I also know people that are 100% trans and I don't question it. They live happy healthy lives. So by the wisdom of this post I am transphobic and hate trans people, when in reality it is the weak minded losers trying to force people to accept them through lies and fear mongering I dislike. I dislike them because they hurt the people that are really trans and have to struggle with the newly found outrage. I discern my opinion by knowing the people and their situations over time. This is a whole complex issue and complex ideology at its core. But hey anyone that isn't blindly accepting and being best friends with trans people must be fearful. It's an ignorant saying and people slinging it around are ignorant and just using it to show everyone how morally superior they are.

You want an open web but only if it's to your standards and ideology? People that have religious views that don't align with what you deem to be moral should be banished?

So the choice is a dystopian internet of banning to preserve the left echo chamber or letting the people you deem lesser on the right in the door? Sorry but it sounds like you are the just creating a left utopia and contradicting your own ideology. The only way society moves forward is to stop classifying each other by political leaning and actually treating people with equal respect. Your ideology is not the right ideology because you deem it so.

If someone is harming someone beyond hurt ideological feelings, do something about it. If someone has religious views against trans ideology, accept it and choose to interact with them or not. Don't try and make the choice for everyone.

Move the world forward not backwards.

The second essay is actually quite a thought provoking thing, if it hadn't come from the mouth of someone who no doubt defines all these problems as "someone who disagrees with them even slightly".

There is a serious thought trapped within all this, which is pretty much that your /pol/ or Stormfront types really are looking for spaces to set up shop, as are hyper-lib identity politics munchkins, and either one of these is utterly fucking poisonous to a community. Users at either end of this spectrum only ever talk about their favorite shitty topic, and that topic is always some of the most flamebaity shit you can possibly imagine. If you let the /pol/fronter types set up shop, your website ends up full of stuff that would make well-adjusted people balk and walk away from your site. If you let the idpol types set up, you end up with endless infighting, witch-hunts and ripping each other to shreds over hurt feelings.

Neither of these options are good, and you gotta purge both extremes if you want a thriving community, imo.

It just sounds like Daintyeco doesn't like the personal web. Maybe they like their own little circle, but not the idea as a whole. People create spaces for themselves and sometimes you're not going to like that space/what that person believes. It's just the nature of things, ya know? I reckon the people Daintyeco sees as a problem see Daintyeco as a problem as well. It goes both ways. Of course the whole political issue can be avoided by not getting sucked into politics, but that's a whole other can of worms that doesn't belong in this thread.

I would like to add that tolerance paradox is not real. Tolerance is a social contract and if you don't follow that social contract, and you can't expect others to treat you based on that contract. (looked at wiki to check who first wrote about the paradox of tolerance and saw that they even wrote about tolerance being a social contract as a proposed solution)

the problem is that the corporations who largely control the web whether u like it or not, do, in fact have poltiical agendas

to an outsider looking in, they are used 2 the strict moderation and controlled nature of modern social media
the problem is less of an actual moral issue and moar of a surface level type thing
despite being pretty left leaning, i still see no reason that ppl who are right wing or racist or transphobic or whatever shouldnt b allowed 2 exist on the "old web revival", since yk, free speech is one of those ideals that is at the core of any movement like this

so to somebody who is unfamiliar with "yesterweb" or anything regarding personal websites, the fact that those right wing websites even EXIST could make them feel unwanted and disgusted and further damage the reputation of the web revival scene
(im aware an argument could be made that these people dont deserve to be a part of these communities to begin with, but i give most ppl the benefit of the doubt and just assume that they are simply uneducated)

when modern social media literally curates everything u see, its hard to imagine an internet where the user chooses what they see and what they interact with ... 2 a lot of people this is a foreign idea so even the presence of controversial websites puts a lot of ppl off, regardless of how popular or relevant they are


i honestly agree with this sentiment alot .....
the best part abt how the internet used2b is that is wasnt as tied to real life
introducing politics to online spaces (REGARDLESS of ideology) does nothing but seperate ppl and invite even moar volatile arguments 2 take place ,, instead of focusing on what we all have in common

You know, I'd never thought about it like this but I definitely think the algorithm has contributed to people's general censoriousness. Back in the day we all knew Stormfront existed, you might go there once or twice just as a curiosity just to see if it was as bad as people said it was (it was), but it was just whatever really, you didn't really think about it any more than that.

Now you get algorithm pushing stuff into your face just to make you angry, cause it keeps you coming back to get more and more mad, and there's nothing you can really do about that. So, it kinda makes sense that people's only recourse is crying out for bans of the posters etc. I hear the "don't push xyz in my face" argument quite a lot but I guess, how much is that the person pushing something in your face vs how much of it is a faceless algorithm trying to push your buttons?

This way of thinking is exactly what got us in this bloody mess to begin with! This self righteous sence of online vigilantism and political echo chambers is what bred the seeds of the current state way back when. It is not our responsability to "move forward as a society" in every single fucking online space. There will be lands to discuss politics, to shiftshape your gender, and to blame the jews and the blacks for stubbing your toe on the corner of the table and everything in between, you cant hope to police it all just because you dont like it or agree, it is one thing to have that sentiment in big tech social media sites that befell to political circle jerks and witch hunts, but to want to bring that to a whole movement when history has shown us once that only leads downhill is not only retarded but also something that can actively harm the web revival more than any political ideology.

These were written by someone younger or sheltered, you can tell. Someone that didn't actually have all that much experience (or any) with the older web.
I'll say something that i was thinking of making a thread on for a while, most zoomers and many people in general don't want to rebuild the old web. Especially those that have never experienced it and that are used to algorithmically run website that serve them with content and more importantly protect them. Many people online now have fragile identities and loose morals so opposing thoughts are big no no for them. Now I'm not gonna pretend that old web wasn't run by strict mods that were the subject of ridicule for a reason, but there were options back then unlike now.

But back on topic, most don't want the old web back in fact they don't know what they want back. They have these warped rose tinted images of how the old web used to be and want that back along with the corpo protection for their fragile identities. Instead of "rebuilding" the old web they're building an precise model of this duplicitous web they've imagined with all the fun and none of the feefees being hurt. And that's perfectly fine with me they can do that, but i think it's time to drop the whole "web revival" and "rebuilding the old web" identity.

Now the texts do approach (or try to) the topic with the whole "i get both sides" but the bias is pretty easy to spot, I will agree that having to deal with /pol/ tards or arguably even worse idpol tards shits up an online space pretty quickly and shortens it life span significantly, but the beauty of the now dead old web was that you could just fuck off to somewhere else something that you can't really do anymore. And as much as I would maybe enjoy not having to ever see either type again demanding of communities to go corpo with moderation will just bring us back to where we already were. Moderation is a very specific challenge that if approached with the gracefulness of a post-occupy wall street corpo checking off boxes and trying to score the ESG points will just lead to the corpo net spreading.

People forget why they ran away from these corpos in the first place and that the bias can easily flip to be against them and they don't learn from past mistakes.

I think what people want is:
1) No dystopian social media companies
2) More personal web pages
3) A search engine that isn't filled with paid results and arbitrarily hiding sites with a broken ranking system
4) An AOL type messaging/chat platform that becomes the standard but is like AOL in that it isn't it's main core business so they leave it alone.
5) Passive advertising
6) Equal opportunity to have your content consumed on platforms like YouTube. Not controlled by algos and having to chase monetization.
7) The old school ability to get lost on the web as a new frontier like the Netscape splash screen promised.
8) More niche bbs type things like Hotline for the pOwEr uSeRs.

I think these are the core issues.

1-Social media companies are popular because there's a legitimate need for social networking. Unfortunately, what is a legitimate need and what has become a psychological abuse has blurred. So tell me, what is a social media company that's not dystopian? Isn't dystopia by its definition very vague and ambiguous enough to say it's a "society I don't like the look of"?
2-I somewhat agree to a lot more personal web pages. I would argue a lot more personalised web pages is what people want. Most personal web pages are portfolio pages for job searches.
3-You already have search engine aggregation with searx which is the best half-way house you currently have. My question to you, is how do you make a financially viable search engine that can be used by millions-billions? Financially viable meaning sustainable here. A lot of stakeholders don't want sustainability, they want growth.
4-I don't think this is related to the old internet. You had IRC before AOL messenger. I feel this point comes out of disdain to Discord, which is fair, but isn't really related to the old internet.
5-Define passive advertising. Isn't advertising by its very nature active? Is word of mouth passive advertising?
6-Let me present it this way. The algorithms on youtube are designed to increase both viewer retention, viewer satisfaction and provider something they'll stick around watching. They are designed to send the right audience to the right videos, and to satisfy and provide them something they want to watch. Equal opportunity would be disastrous as you're then sending the wrong audiences to the wrong videos. And regardless, have you even considered the IMPLEMENTATION? If I type Minecraft into youtube, you're saying every minecraft-related video should have equal opportunity for the top ranking in the results. The only way I can see that happening is by randomly selecting any video that matches the tag Minecraft... but you're well aware how saturated and garbage the vast majority of Minecraft videos are. As a result of asking for equal opportunity, you're acting as a defender of garbage getting pushed to people.
7-You can still do this. Just click some links. Hell, even on youtube... click some links in a description. On Facebook? Click some links in a post. I think this comes down to the ratio of external links to other sites, and internal links to the same site. The vast majority of youtube links are to other youtube videos or youtube pages.
8-Forums died because moderators didn't work to keep an influx of users on them, and because of powertripping mods

1) There is no "need" for social media. Social media is responsible for the degradation of our society since its inception beyond MySpace. There is a want for people to present their reality in a different light than it really is so people will envy them. Social media where the person is the product and everything else be dammed is the issue. If we paid for the "needed" social media and they weren't ad revenue based...that would change the problem.

3) All these alt search engines are trash. That is a problem for someone else to figure out. I don't have the answers.

4) AOL is what the normal people used in the 90s and was the hub for communications online overall. If you met someone you asked what their screen name was. AOL made money from dial up subscriptions so they left the product mostly alone. There is no alternative like that. I have no distain for Discord, I just don't think it's the answer.

5) Passive is defined by advertising that isn't amassing TBs of data on me to try and sell me a spoon after I just bought one.

6) It's a flawed approach that creates a bot curated list of elite creators and takes away the chance for anyone small to get in beyond luck. The reccomndations are also flawed and never seems to figure out what I am watching and what I want to watch next.

7) I don't think you get it.

8) Who said anything about forums?

I think these are fair and wayyyy more realistic then what most imagine their perfect internet to be, I will add:

1. People brought the centralization of the internet on themselves, as much I would disagree people wanted there to just be like 6 sites they visit all the time.
2. Agreed, but actual web pages not link dumps
3. Agreed, although It would be pretty difficult to create a "not broken" ranking system but current google tier SEO sucks
4. So like whatsapp, or facebook messenger but like aesthetic and privacy respecting or whatever? I get what you're saying and agree but it's a big ask.
5. Depends on what you mean by passive, I guess stuff like banner ads are pretty passive and aren't all that intrusive when considering all other formats. Or alternatively other formats too but untargeted, like old web ads or regular IRL ads.
6. Like old school Youtube? You need to have some sorting of content and if you remove algorithms you're pretty much only left with sorting by upload date or views. I'll give youtube the benefit of the doubt this time since they are trying this as I see unrelated new uploads pop up on occasion, I've almost never clicked on them tho.
7. That would be cool, It's again on the people not making websites and getting stuck on the big 5(6).
8. No idea what this one is, but I'm all for more options especially for power users.

I've been really coming around to Mastodon recently. I initially joined to be part of a webring and had been barely keeping it up for appearances (as the webring demands activity). I do feel Mastodon is a decent pragmatic viability. It's as far as I will accept "social media" outside of smaller communities. To use >reddit or twitter or Facebok is to degrade the soul / society, I think. That's my line. To be at the direct mercy of the corporation.

I don't think accessibility is a catch 22 in terms of quality. I think the problm is in the incentives. Like the corporations thinking just because they're the most popular or the most accessible, that they get to exploit the users. The tools should be user-centered first, not corporation-centered first. Of course there can be incentives but they should empower the user not be dictated by a company.

I think the absence of authenticity is a valid issue. I don't think framing it as twisting reality itself is the problem. There IS an underlying current of greed and manipulation, which I think is very pronounced. I think there's value to be had in seeking out others who, if not completely abandoning that "game", are at least not prioritizing it. If you mean like in terms of networking, like for career / life goals, I also don't know how I feel about social media being involved. In my profession, at least currently, still benefits greatly from physical, irl connections.

I do wonder about the general degradation though, how society could perhaps be healthier without the focus on digital connections. What is the value of a solely virtual connection to a superficial IRL one? Is it not incomparable? Should we be caring about them at all?

Sorry, this isn't the most structured response but it is a very interesting discussion. Also, lol at the OP about censoring independent sites.

As for general degradation, this is a topic of society and is easily politicised- this means it's wedged within culture and policy(a lot of policies require phone usage nowadays). The degree culture affects policy and vice versa is an interesting discussion where you can compare how Policy chokes Chinese culture, but also that Western Culture is setting up policies that are sometimes harmful for individuals. This means it's easily politicised, despite them not being mutually exclusive. It's comparable, but my opinion is pretty simple on politicised topics affecting society. Look at both sides, then look at yourself and make the choice that benefits you the most. For me, this is reaching out to people I know virtually to attempt to bridge the gap and know each other in person, to reach out to local friends often enough, and to reach out to friends who offer a lot of meaning and value into my life often. This issue of connections, also negatively affects Extroverts, as they drown in superficiality, and introverts as they struggle to find meaningful friends who reciprocate and bridge the gap to be friends in person.

Mastodon's alright. As for degrading soul/society, I think it degrades society, but when I look at Western Society, I see a society that has gangrene, but won't cut off the rotting limbs. Perhaps it's "blackpilled" or cynical, but I think other non-western societies offer more hope and opportunities regardless of whether it's with and without social media. But like I said above, it's more about making a choice that's good for you. Social changes occur over generations

"The sublime" is supposed to refer to an aesthetic experience that transcends the limits of your senses, something that's so overwhelmingly beautiful that trying to comprehend it makes you feel small and inadequate. When I read "a landscape of the sublime" I think of 19th century landscape paintings where the tiny people in the foreground are dwarfed by the natural features in the background. I don't think the internet can inspire this kind of feeling, and in fact it usually does the exact opposite. The internet is more likely to cut things down to size and make them less impressive than they are in real life than it is to elevate anything to the level of the sublime. While it does operate on a massive scale and contains a huge amount of information (and I think this is where the idea of "the digital sublime" is supposed to come from), that information is always presented in a reductive and easily-consumable way, like something you're looking at through a peephole. Art gets reduced to soundbites of "content," people get reduced to text on a screen, nature gets reduced to a series of jpegs in a Google search window, reality gets reduced to the twitter newsfeed, etc. Using the internet is not an awe-inspiring experience. It's been deliberately designed to make massive amounts of information easily accessible, mundane, and not overwhelming.

I think the internet *was* the landscape of the sublime. Lately, I've taken to scouring the Web Archive for old japanese personal websites, hovering around the years 2001-2004.
Once you find one, you can follow links and get to hundreds of different sites in just an evening. And there are so many sites, all hopeful people, many of them artists, each of them with their diary/blog... I don't know, but I definitely felt something like that, though I'm not sure whether to go as far as to call it sublime. It's just all so earnest and genuine, though it could also be a strong feeling of "we've lost this", I'm not sure.

I checked, and indeed, the book was published in 2011, so maybe he was speaking of that internet as that emergent process that you could fall into when you browsed the web through its links? I'd call this the genuine digital sublime, rather than whatever that wiki article implies when saying that big data and machine learning is like a spiritual experience or something

It kind of depends on the interpretation of the phrase "landscape of the sublime". From my perspective, anything that can be considered as artificial products of human intellect are merely superficial attempts at duplicating the sublime and will never produce the same transcendent aesthetic experiences due to their property of being finite, definite, and easily comprehensible.

Internet is a weird space. It is invented, yet it also seems to evolve on its own. Today the status of the cyberspace has almost been elevated to that of nature, whom we venerate for its potentials beyond imagination and ability to inspire creativity. Nature is the original landscape of the sublime we directly perceive, while Internet becomes the landscape of the sublime through another layer of translation.

You see, eris they are just like the founder guys from the comic. You don't need reading comprehension when you are one of the founders that were there before the girls got into the hobby(cringe).

The forum is filled to the brim with threads about social issues that aren't read by most repliers. They don't expect noone to swoop in and call them out for not reading the thread even if their opinions are respected in the forum in general.

This is bad in general but actually on topic for this thread, they give us insight on people that weren't gatekept. Since they were always in their hugboxes that would agree with them on their opinions no matter how out of context they don't expect backlash. Vitnira wanted to talk about the effect gatekeeping has on the person, not community but the 1337 cool people that support gatekeeping can't even read soo they wrote their opinion on gatekeeping that always gave them updoods.

Honestly this is a great thread, you can read the theory and delve right into the negative effects of not being gatekept as a person.

 

[RisingThumb]

@Some_porcupine pinging everyone in the thread

 

[Some_porcupine]

I think going even further down, into the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan, post-Snowden, post whatever America, it's so bizarre to see the simultaneous prevalence and hopelessness of political cynicism that's developed in the newer generations. Enemy of the State was a movie meant to be as thrilling as it was ridiculous. "the government is watching everything I do" was the telltale sign of a nutcase.

remember the "fbi agent watching my phone" meme that was popular years ago? while obviously executed in an absurd manner, the way it garnered popularity was based on the unanimously-accepted idea of being under constant surveillance. not a month goes by without some friend or colleague or family member mentioning how "I was just talking about XYZ thing and now I'm getting ads for it!" everyone seems to be intimately aware of their utter lack of technological privacy, and yet it's just relegated to a dismissive phrase of small talk and relatable humor. this, in my opinion, is a staggering shift in attitude. not only the unthinking acceptance of the fact, but the resignation that comes with it. it's not mindblowing. it's not concerning. it's just another thing that "just is;" as the sun rises from the east every morning, and the rain falls where clouds gather, the fact that our every move is being watched is just another peculiarity of nature.

Life After 9/11

Many people know how much life within the United States has changed since the events of September 11th, 2001, one of the worst terrorist attacks in American History. But what many people find themselves still oblivious to is how much the impact of 9/11's legacy has left on the everyday life of...

forum.agoraroad.com

to youths, belongs thread :

Lies that taught us in schools

Get a good job so you can make more money, they said. There's a reason why financial literacy is almost ALWAYS discovered and learned outside school. People need to learn that life's at its best when money works for you (be it primarily or on the side), and not you purely working for money...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

I feel like the news has become unwatchable recently, even though I didn't watch it all that much in the first place. It's hard to tell what is from a tabloid and a "legit news source" now.

Juice the Bunglerman4597

I know a few a people who still act like that and they're in their 20s including the being piss drunk everyday and just trying any drug they could get their hands on, "we're" just as bad. Although to be honest it's more of a parental freedom thing, only people that I know that still act like this in their later 20s/early 30s had strict and controlling parents, while everyone else mellows out with that stuff in their early 20s.

Those who are terminally online now would have done the social loner equivalent in 90s/00s. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

punisheddead7128

at least vices like those have the silver linings of giving you fun experiences and good stories to tell. online vices like excessive social media/porn dont do that.

silktrader7730

An aspect that I feel is overlooked in this thread is how personally destructive being online can be, specifically when it comes to falling into groupthink. There's essentially death cults at this point I've seen play out that I feel so fortunate to have escaped. There's old friends I occasionally check up on from afar just to see them rolling with the same online crowds they have for years while further getting worse both mentally and from an overall personality standpoint. It's tiring in ways you may not even notice when you're in the thick of it.
SolidStateSurvivor3880

If you only relied on the grapevine then you'll most likely be mis-informed in the same ways we gripe about others in this thread. All it takes is for one part of said grapevine to be poisoned for the effects to trickle down to the rest. There's also the matter of some of the most important societal happenings being the things TPTB actively choose to NOT report on. Most of my close friends tuned out of the news for the same reasons you describe so I try and be their version of the grapevine.

But to tie it into why Twitter and similar sites have made being online so tiring, it's the fucking shills, grifters, and deliberate agitators, as well as their fucking followers. Twitter is so big on promoting these types, the bitter arguing and shit just keeps you on there longer. Assuming you're even arguing with a real person and not a bot, the margin of actually getting through to anyone on anything they don't already agree with is so slim, speaking from experience.

On the larger sites you're constantly being bombarded with the same manipulative/disingenuous shit that makes obligated real life interactions frustrating to deal with. It's not even so much "fuck Twitter" specifically but rather the inevitable subversion and enshittification of any online space worth a damn. It's simply become a chore to find genuine interest and character online shining through when there's this constant game to monetize every single bit of content getting published. 10-15 years ago someone would go through the effort to make a YouTube video on something because there was an initial personal passion behind it, not just "if I cater to [x] audience I can gain more views, subs, and cash." It wasn't always this way, online was an enjoyable alternative to irl because it made finding cool people easier than running the exhausting irl socialization gauntlet.

 

[AnHero]

I place the boundary at 9/11 myself, but I see others placing the boundary as far back as 1997 or 1996, and what I say is that if you lived 3 years of your life in the 90s, you're a millennial. Millennial refers to the millennium.

I'm pretty sure the term was initially concocted to mark the generation of people who would reach adulthood at the turn of the millenium. The earliest millennials were born in the early 1980s and turned 20 in the early 2000s.

 

[AnHero]

And ppl for the most part now have gotten to NEEDING their phone for getting to and from school. I think it's annoying how much it's relied on (but then again, having a real time MTA schedule and access to the announcements does help with getting home before midnight).

This is crazy to me, because I live where phones have never been allowed in school and things work out fine, they printed out our announcements and shit, or just mailed them to our parents. And I kind of just walk to the designated bus stop and hang around. I guess it's just an example of a system being too entrenched.

 

[Some_porcupine]

other (forgor)

On the original post here and some of the discussions:

Why are so many sites shutting down? Lack of money being made is an easy guess.
Many journalists today are really activists and lean either left or right. There isn't much unbiased reporting anymore that don't take one ideological stance. Social media has made it easier to build echo chambers and live in your own little bubble. Many publication websites have been taken over with new teams of younger reporters and journalists who are activists at heart and play into the culture wars.

Why are so many products being made with LGBT stuff? Marketing trends and trying to get them to buy stuff. It's really that simple. Big corporations have been marketing to them since the SCOTUS decision to legalize gay marriage, and when pride month became a consumerist holiday to market rainbow flag merchandise.

Despite how much mainstream media outlets push 'woke' stuff, a lot of it has been failing in the past few years. The Bud Light debacle caused a major reverse in trends for that company. 'Woke' movies aren't seeing returns on their massive budgets. This trend is seen all over the game industry as well.

The big talk now is DEI, and this year we have seen several companies reverse their DEI policies now that BLM is no longer popular. The corporations jumped on this bandwagon during the 2020 summer riots. Now it's old news, obsolete and they're waiting on the next big cultural thing to use in marketing. The 2010s was the protest era, and we're now in a time frame where people are sick of it and want something new.

Do you believe the wind down of social media and the end times of the internet are a coordinated effort?

It really does seem they want everyone to be docile, everyone gets trapped in a feedback chamber, only seeing stuff they like, but here on sites like agora? it feels like freedom, uninfluenced by big corporations, you really start to see the effects after experiencing the free web, but it does...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

Lost and broken zillenial dreams

Because of publ. censorship, people have lost the ability to articulate why they disagree. Even if they can say what they want, ...

www.tapatalk.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

/I know I ping people
It is the takes I collect and I try to not to ping now, only when on phone or if it is really interesting for both of us
Interesting how I am banned on quoting on here...

See last post on Frutiger aero/lost futures/retrofuturusm //thread

Do you remember (Now Lost) "Future"? (Promises broken - GVC, Ftgr aero, MCM...) / Don't fix what ain't broken / This would fry ancient peasant's brain

https://www.reddit.com/r/dumaflache/ > https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoricalCapsule/

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[Some_porcupine]

I thought with 29, almost 30 now I'm on the older side here but ok.
This isn't about reliability of the media, it's about hearing what you want to hear. If it's anti Trump, it's fake news and unreliable in his own words. If the bad mainstream media still was as powerful as you say then Trump wouldn't have won twice. So if left leaning legacy media keep smearing him...
So fucking what? It obviously doesn't work.

Andy Kaufman

I would say mainstream media today isn't as all-powerful as it was two decades ago, but it still holds a lot of weight.

LiraTirsoCaduceo

I feel like a lot of folks were in extreme denial.
Kamala was never a good canidate, and the democrats knew that:
Look at how she did in the 2020 primaries.

But when the party elites chose her, it's like a bunch of dems fucking brainwashed themselves into being ok with it.

brentw

Of course it won't vanish over night but people need to realise that it's on the way out. It's in its final days. Millenials like me stopped watching TV around 2010, zoomers probably around the same time and gen Alpha never watched it to begin with. The tipping point has been passed and I'm making a strong case for "alternative" media no longer being that. @Vitnira is of course correct in saying that old people are still watching TV but I also know of a frightening amount of facebook boomers who also stopped watching TV and now get their news via Social media.

Andy Kaufman

It works on 49% of the US. It's not just about the election, it's about being unable to have conversations with coworkers, friends, family, because each side believes the other is fascist/communist and hates minorities/wants to cut dicks off children. Their lies are pulling our country apart at the seams. The joke headlines about "losing to racism" are going to reinforce those divides.

Vitnira

Ah, my archnemesis!

A lot of people are tuning out of news because they're realizing that megacorps own all of the media stations. Podcasts are usually hosted by one person, in a small studio, and are (mostly) unscripted. No teleprompters, nothing like that.

Antogoos

I agree its no good to be down on yourself when you're clearly on top--for example, trump's shitty debate performance against kamala was easily washed away by his podcast blitz, and I have even seen people in J Rogan's comments saying that podcasting beats legacy media and debates should just be cancelled. But assuming the mainstream media is not strong, what do you think happened in 2020? I feel like their demonization of Trump over Covid and Floyd and his shitty debate performance back then was instrumental in getting Joe elected.

Additionally I'd like to add, like others, my parents watch zero podcasts that I know of. They're into BBC and stuff.

AnHero

That's the result of the OVerton window not shifting left or right but literally being ripped apart. The window now exists split on the right and the left and people like me who're in the middle are the weird/cringe/radical centrists who immediately get accused of being on the enemy's side.
And legacy media isn't the sole origin of this window split, online politics (alt right vs woke culture war), Trump's rethoric and all these podcasts and streamers did their part.

Andy Kaufman

Whatever happed to that dumbass "popular vote" agreement?
View attachment 120199

brentw

No wonder you turned out the way you are.

Andy Kaufman

2016: A New Cope

2020: The Empire Strikes Back

2024: Return Of The Chudi

AnHero

 

[Some_porcupine]

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/177t803/i_am_mad_about_the_lies_we_were_told_as_a_kid_and/


/i should call this thread "Zillennial" Dreams 2010, smh...

 

[Some_porcupine]

The Psyop is Dead, Long Live the Psyop

I'm making this thread because this is something I've been thinking about throughout the day and I just couldn't shake it away. Throughout this last period it is undeniable that the "woke psyop", for lack of a better wording, has been on the retreat. And with Donald Trump's landslide victory in...

forum.agoraroad.com