Blogpost thing I wrote. Want to come through this and add hyperlinks and examples and screenshots to back up my points, but my internets out and I’m on lowspeed data. Point out any grammatical errors or things that seems to MATI or things that are shortsighted.
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You see a lot of these clickbaitey posts, youtube videos about how the internet is dead, how the internet sucks, how terrible it is to use these days.
It became a fad for a little bit, something that content creators would make money if they made a video about before the fad expired and viewers’ ability to care dried up. People that are talking about the internet sucking seem to repeat the same 4 or 5 bullet points, over and over. It gets annoying. It conjures to mind a visual that I can only describe as an M. C. Escher painting with more back-patting and dicksucking. Thats how the algorithm is these days — very few original thoughts. And thats okay. Jonny needs his rent paid. Jonny’s baby needs a new pair of shoes. It’s not Jonny’s fault.
The platforms that host these discussions themselves are part of the issue.
You hear the phrase “if the product is free, you are what is being sold.” When I had first heard this as a teenager who religiously used reddit and facebook, the thought seemed so absurd to me. More and more discussion about tracking and data extraction bubbled up into water cooler talk. It became pretty well-known that these websites were selling something, and that something was access to consumers.
These websites are valued sometimes into the billions of dollars. Billions. That is a lot of fucking money. You’re not paying for them.
The value comes from their ability to segment, track, and sell to marketable customers. I personally think its a bubble — I just can’t imagine buying something you see in a facebook ad, but this world continues to surprise me again and again. Maybe the suckers using these apps really do buy the shit thats forced down their throat. Love that chicken from popeyes.
Anything that’s free is going to be sustained by ads. Whenever I was in the journalism club in high school, I started to get my head around this, and fucking hated it. I went to college initially to study mass communications, and had to really internalize this and learn it the hard way, as someone who initially wanted to work in media.
The media that is created for these algorithms and content expulsion machines isn’t valuable, its just there as a placeholder to put ads next to. Thats okay, its just how it is. Nothing you can really do about it.
The “death of the internet” comes as a side effect of these machines trying to squeeze every last drop of value out of you as a customer. It has worked, kinda, I think. Maybe. We’ll see how it holds up in the long run. I’m hesitant to put my money into tech-heavy ETFs.
Scrolling is hypnotic — anyone who has every doomscrolled can personally attest to this. You’re transfixed, like a baby to dancing colorful fruit, and you're unable to stop going down, down, down, down, quieting the thing in your head thats bored and sad and searching for a distraction. You’re going to subconsciously register a few dozen/hundred ads during one of these sessions. Thats okay, its just how it is. Nothing you can really do about it.
When a service’s only goal is to keep you there as long as possible, the thing that its going to be feeding you is slop — junk, slop, slop, junk, slop. Its not going to be good. You’re going to consume it until, in a brief moment of lucidity, you ask yourself “why the fuck am I watching this.” You’re going to entertain yourself until you have to ask yourself if you actually want to do the thing that you’re currently doing. Most of the time, you don’t want to actually consume this shit, you just feel like you’re going to miss out on something. Facebook shows you a fraction of the next post down when you’re looking at the current post on your screen for a reason.
You’re not going to miss out on something. Your facebook algorithm just recommended you a truck meme. You don’t own a truck. You’re not sure what is going on. You scroll a little further. Its a twitter screenshot from 2017. A little further. That is a meme about being wheelchair bound. You have an adblocker, and their entire business model crumbled. They probably know — they probably want you off their service, so they’re going to show you junk till you do. Maybe. Maybe they just suck. I’m not in the habit of reading facebook’s internal memos.
Instagram is a bit better, TikTok is heroin, twitter is full of angry, bitter, shallow losers. Reddit could have been cool. Could have. I saw a bad leftist take from 2017 leftist twitter on the frontpage, posted in r/facepalm. The machine used to be cool — people laugh at me when I say that. Reddit used to be cool, instagram used to be cool. Nobody believes me. Nobody remembers. The narwhal hasn’t baconed in over a decade, and I fear it might never bacon again.
Its not really that ads killed them, its that they had a business model that necessitated perpetual growth, and they could really only grow so large. They’re at their peak now. I don’t really see them growing much further. Theres only so much irrelevant, mindnumbing junk bullshit I can look at before I ask myself “what the fuck am I doing.” I think thats why these machines are doomed to fail. A userbase subsisting on junk food alone is gonna get sick, fat, and sad. Thats what happens when you browse facebook. You get sick, fat, and sad.
The profitability of divisiveness has started to dry up too, I think. I don’t have proof of this — this is just me gesturing vaguely at the last six years. Maybe its a me issue — I think every political take I’ve seen on twitter has been the most stupid bullshit I’ve ever seen. Even if I agree with the sentiment. Everyone who chatters about their beliefs and never acts on them is a neutered dog. Theres only so many times a popular user can call someone who disagrees with them a racist nazi pedophile before their userbase starts to question whether or not that person actually is a racist nazi pedophile. Nine times out of ten they aren’t. In the words of a million stupid fucking junk news articles, that person has been “slammed”. I wonder how much money you made on that ad for balding cream. The illusion falls away, inverted Moon card and what not. Where am I gonna post this?
Whatever groupthink that has gripped the nuts of the net for about 6 years has slowly started to relinquish its hold, for the better. The services that facilitated that groupthink started to suck. The people that bought into it got told too many times that their gut feelings about a topic were wrong. They got fatigued. I’m glad. Can we go back to normal, please? I wanna be able to trust my gut feeling. All the people pretending to be educated who would say things like “educate yourself please” stopped being taken seriously. No one here is educated. These people have luxury beliefs that don’t work in reality.
People are not soft at their cores. We do not skew towards soft, cushioney egalitarianism like so many people wish that we would. We have cruel monkey hearts that want to hunt down animals and laugh at others. The world is not, nor will ever be, a soft, cushioney egalitarian place. You live in a perfect bubble where you think that the world can eventually be a soft, cushioney, egalitarian place if you protest on your college campus enough. I am still confused about that one time I got handed a slip of paper about how the word retard is harmful and we need to stop using it in our vocabulary. Cmon dude. You’re kidding me — this is what you think about and care about? This is what gets you going?
I don’t think its normal or okay to call people transphobic who don’t want to sleep with you. I don’t think it’s normal or okay for children to have access to hormone replacement therapy. I don’t think its normal or okay to teach people that they’re inherently racist and their stained because of being white. I don’t think its normal or okay to constantly shit on the country that you live in. I don’t think its normal or okay to attack others for being cisgendered, heterosexual, or white. I don’t think your luxury beliefs actually work. I’m tired of going along with your bullshit. I’m not a racist transphobe. I’m really just some guy. This is how most people think. This is what people talk about in hushed tones when you’re not around. This isn’t some act of protest, this is honestly just how normal people think and feel.
The net hit critical mass with this sort of stuff and people got tired. They started for people to talk to them differently. Please explain to me how Jordan Peterson is actually right-wing. These conversations are 5 years stale. They started looking for other opinions and started to find some interesting stuff that doesn’t really jive with the “status quo”. I don’t think whatever globohomo thing the 4chan guys keep worrying about is actually going to come to fruition. The art and community that comes out of that thing is fucking terrible, it has no staying power. Why did you make that cartoon character black and trans. Diversity hires are and have always been a bad idea.
The internet is “dead” because people got tired of the slop they were being fed, the algorithms that fed them the slop, the shallow, stupid political talk that got turned into content, and the ads that got placed right next to it all. Its fucking tiring. I usually scroll on facebook for about 2 minutes before I see something so fucking stupid it makes me log off. Thats okay. Thats just how it is.
With the amount of people that are online these days, I hope the hole is filled with some kind of bullshit to keep the masses gleefully occupied while the people that do get tired strike out and go find something else to go do. I browse KiwiFarms a lot these days, and I’m looking for more places online that feel real. I like places that pride themselves on quality contribution to the online community. I like places that force me to grapple with ideas and defend my beliefs. If I can’t defend them, why should I hold them? I like that WatchPeopleDie has an Effortpost tag. I think every service should have an effortpost tag. Upvotes mean nothing — did you put love into this post? Did you work on this for hours so other users could benefit from your research and work? Did this post mean something to you? You deserve a little badge. Unfortunately, only thing a lot of people want is for a post they made to blow up. I’ve had it happen, it feels really fucking good. But that kind of reward system doesn’t work in the long run. I have faith in meritocratic systems.
Imageboards are populated by people I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, but sometimes they have some interesting banter. Sometimes. I’ve browsed enough 4chan to know that everyone there is fucking retarded, and its too busy and ephemeral for anyone to really put much effort into any one post. I just don’t want to use 8chan. Dreamchan died and something good died with it. Forums seem to be where its at.
A lot of people are worried about the “future of the net” and whatnot. I don’t really care, I’m not too pressed. Places that need to exist will exist, regardless of whether or not advertisers wanna work with them. They will, and always seem to, find a way to continue to exist. If they don’t, then its time for me to log off and go find something else to do.
Reactionary sites, and anything with the word “revival” in it, anything like that isn’t going to last long. Its a fad. You see kids on neocities desperately fighting to get something going, when the staying power that these things have in the modern net is feeble and impotent. People aren’t going to refresh your SpaceHey and look at all your posts — people aren’t going to interact, make friends there. Theres nothing that this is centered around. Agora Road is stupid and isn’t going to last long, all of their conversations revolve around the “oldnet.” These users are twitter users trying to taste a shred of a nostalgia that doesn’t belong to them. Agora Road is not the “best kept secret of the net.” If it was, there wouldn’t be as many Lainposters. Good luck with your webring. Good luck with your Mastodon instance. You’re the same age that I am — you’re hardcoded to look at shitty memes, you don’t have an ounce of the werewithal or neuroticism necessary to effectively maintain a place like this online. You’re going to open twitter and forget to do that thing you needed to do.
None of this shit is real anyways.
