Modern Web Woes - I'm mad at the internet

[Maggots on a Train v2]

I really miss the little informative personal sites that used to exist. You could pull up a page on every Burger King kids' meal toy from 1989-2004, or every piece of merchandise for a certain movie, a checklist of all trading cards series for a subject, best ways to clean vintage textiles, or a detailed list of ever B-side variant ever released by a band. Now all of that is gone. It didn't get replicated on wikipedia or YT. And anybody who got online after the iphone is completely oblivious to the idea of an informational internet, as opposed to a place to attention whore.

 

[Master Paux Fas]

YouTube is oversaturated with advertising, but adblock blocked them all (sometimes in the hundreds). That is, until today -- now there's these ads that appear in place of videos that you have to click "skip ad" on, even with adblock on. I hate internet ads.

It really is outrageous. I didn't notice it that much because most videos I watch on Youtube are de- or unmonetized anyway, but occasionally I watch something made by Tim Pool or someone else who takes the ad shekels and it shocks me how egregious the whole thing has become. 20 minute vids spliced with 4-5 ad breaks, often multiple ads per break. Completely ridiculous, and it makes audio-focused, podcast type videos even more impossible to listen to than they already were.

Thank fuck Null started shilling Brave, because I tried it out and it completely demolishes all the user-unfriendly bullshit that YT has institutionalized, as well as all other intrusive online advertising. I haven't tried the desktop version out yet, but the mobile one has been great thus far.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The modern Web is more useful but less fun.

Reminds me of that image with early Internet being shown as pioneers in the frontier, then a village, then a town, then slums, and in Current Year the honknet* is shown as commieblocks.

*(the internet of Clown World)

It really is outrageous.

At least one still doesn't get video ads with adblock. Also there were video ads only at the start or end of a video IIRC, but not interrupting it every few minutes. Like I said, at least TV ads have a transition from the show to ads. YT ads just suddenly cut in. Like you see video, then suddenly BAM! "Orange man bad" ad.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

This is the future of the internet and society in so many ways and it makes me really sad.
(AR nightmare)

The puppy in the shopping cart really bums me out, it hits too close to what will be real, the equivalent of microtransactions through guilt when shopping.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

(AR nightmare)

Yet hipster technophiles would likely embrace that and think we were living in a utopia.

 

[Coffee Shits]

This is the future of the internet and society in so many ways and it makes me really sad.
(AR nightmare)

The puppy in the shopping cart really bums me out, it hits too close to what will be real, the equivalent of microtransactions through guilt when shopping.

That was absolutely mesmerizing, and I never want to see it again.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I hate it when I search for a term, and some song happens to have the same or similar name, and the only results are on that song.

 

[Emp55t]

I agree man,
The internet was born to be decentralized not to be a bubble of the same websites and a breeding ground of retarded extremism so these large companies keep the people on there shitty websites as long as possible so they can harvest there private data like the sentinels from the matrix.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

I've pretty much disengaged from the wider mainstream Web because I don’t find it fun, and everything either wants my real name and phone number, wants me to use newspeak, spies on me or does all three.

Regarding the spying: I heard something on the radio today that Facebook, Google, etc. might be considering the use of the GPS in phones to track people infected with COVID-19 to make sure they self-quarantine and don't go places or be part of groups they shouldn't. If that's not horrifying shades of Big Brother, than what is?

I also agree with you that more and more sites want people to agree to some combination of self-doxing, compromising their OpSec, or disabling their ad blocking when it really seems unnecessary for whatever content the sites offer.

I use a few sites that are still fun like Kiwifarms, Internet Archive and Neocities and shit like Yahoo Finance and my credit union's site and that's about it.

Internet Archive has been a great resource to look up sites that no longer exist or find missing pieces of information needed for archival/historical purposes. Yahoo finance has been a decent resource as well. I don't like doing other stuff online, such as banking, unless I don't have a choice.

I hate it when I search for a term, and some song happens to have the same or similar name, and the only results are on that song.

I hated the point in the internet's existence when the most ordinary of internet searches produced a results list where most of the first page consisted of links to porn or malware.

 

[Coffee Shits]

I was browsing this site today, having a merry ole time, when all of a sudden my browser saw fit to stop what I was doing and pop a new tab telling me that one of my extensions had been updated. Not a native notification, not an polite icon popover in the toolbar, but a new, fuck-ass, browser tab: HEY WE DID SOME SHIT. HOPE YOU WEREN'T IN THE MIDDLE OF ANYTHING, LOL. HERE'S OUR PAYPAL LINK.

I thought we killed popups in the '90s, but I guess I was wrong!

 

[Sunday School Dropout]

I hate how the internet seems smaller than a decade ago. Just think about it, how many websites do you visit on the daily? How many sites does the average internet user visit on the daily? Three, four, five if we're being optimistic? I really loath that the majority of internet traffic is confined on five sites owned by three companies with the same ugly as hell layout, the same restricted and draconian terms-of-services, and the same bland, cookie-cutter content being promoted to the top. I miss how people would design and host their own sites/forums/communities instead of relying on places like Reddit or Facebook groups that constantly and rapidly change their rules without warning.

Most of all, I hate how the odds are stack against you if you dare try to build your own alternative. With payment processors pulling their services away if you host content that doesn't fit their political mold. It's just really tiresome.

 

[ColdOnes]

I hate how the internet seems smaller than a decade ago. Just think about it, how many websites do you visit on the daily? How many sites does the average internet user visit on the daily? Three, four, five if we're being optimistic? I really loath that the majority of internet traffic is confined on five sites owned by three companies with the same ugly as hell layout, the same restricted and draconian terms-of-services, and the same bland, cookie-cutter content being promoted to the top. I miss how people would design and host their own sites/forums/communities instead of relying on places like Reddit or Facebook groups that constantly and rapidly change their rules without warning.

Most of all, I hate how the odds are stack against you if you dare try to build your own alternative. With payment processors pulling their services away if you host content that doesn't fit their political mold. It's just really tiresome.

If you look at those alternatives like Mastodon, Bitchute etc..., it's filled with people who were deplatformed from the major sites. They are the ones keeping the web somewhat diversified even though they're tiny in scale. I really fear the day those who unabashedly support deplatforming reach out to those sites and drive the users there out for wrongthink, and thus further monopolize the internet.

 

[Jason Wynn]

This might be a stretch, but I hate how narcissistic it seems to have made people. The kind of people I'm referring to probably already had narcissistic traits, but them being online, on sites like Facebook or Twitter that they can cater to only reflect themselves, their likes and their interests, surrounded by other people with similar mindsets who keep them insulated in their bubble of validation, away from any dissenting thought has become horrible.

I've seen people who will fly into rages, call you every name in the book and have a full on toddler temper tantrum if you don't like a book/movie/game/tv show they do. Call you re.tarded or not as cultured as them for something so petty. I've even seen some people being that autistic here. I've seen people wish for your death because they saw you follow a politician they don't like, or you liked something by someone they don't. How DARE this stranger I'll never meet in my life think differently than me! Don't they see how many followers/likes/shares I get? Clearly I'm in the right and they're just jealous/stupid/haters!

 

[Never Scored]

This might be a stretch, but I hate how narcissistic it seems to have made people. The kind of people I'm referring to probably already had narcissistic traits, but them being online, on sites like Facebook or Twitter that they can cater to only reflect themselves, their likes and their interests, surrounded by other people with similar mindsets who keep them insulated in their bubble of validation, away from any dissenting thought has become horrible.

I've seen people who will fly into rages, call you every name in the book and have a full on toddler temper tantrum if you don't like a book/movie/game/tv show they do. Call you re.tarded or not as cultured as them for something so petty. I've even seen some people being that autistic here. I've seen people wish for your death because they saw you follow a politician they don't like, or you liked something by someone they don't. How DARE this stranger I'll never meet in my life think differently than me! Don't they see how many followers/likes/shares I get? Clearly I'm in the right and they're just jealous/stupid/haters!

This is not new. People regularly had WWF vs. WCW and Nintendo vs. Sony meltdowns 20 years ago, and it seems it was happening all the way back in the 80s on Usenet and BBS.

What is new is attaching your real name to your 10 paragraph sperg out over why TNG is better than TOS, as opposed to being Kirkhater67, anomyous internet nerd.

Why do you put a "." in the middle of retarded like a retard?

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Why do you put a "." in the middle of retarded like a retard?

Huh, I could have sworn that he fixed the retard thing.

 

[Stasi]

I hate how nowadays if you try looking up guides or other info for a game the search results are usually these Fandom Wiki sites. They are cancer and deserve to burn in hell. I miss old fansites that had nice straightforward walkthroughs and other useful information, site like this, this and this. Useful and full of character.

As an aside, gamefaqs is and always has been shit.

 

[Maggots on a Train v2]

I hate that instagram, a program with terrible image quality, absorbed the entire flickr user base. In fact, all modern social media has shitty overcompressed files. Storage and bandwidth has never been cheaper, but image quality online hit its zenith on the bell curve a decade ago. And nobody except game streamers even seems to care anymore that their files get ruined.

 

[ditto]

If you look at those alternatives like Mastodon, Bitchute etc..., it's filled with people who were deplatformed from the major sites. They are the ones keeping the web somewhat diversified even though they're tiny in scale. I really fear the day those who unabashedly support deplatforming reach out to those sites and drive the users there out for wrongthink, and thus further monopolize the internet.

Something that has bother me with "alt-tech" is that it's so focussed on just reproducing Facebook/Twitter/Youtube etc. so it becomes just a different place to attention whore instead of something liberating.

I really miss the little informative personal sites that used to exist. You could pull up a page on every Burger King kids' meal toy from 1989-2004, or every piece of merchandise for a certain movie, a checklist of all trading cards series for a subject, best ways to clean vintage textiles, or a detailed list of ever B-side variant ever released by a band. Now all of that is gone. It didn't get replicated on wikipedia or YT. And anybody who got online after the iphone is completely oblivious to the idea of an informational internet, as opposed to a place to attention whore.

Where have those kinds of exceptional people have disappeared because social networks are catnip of obsessive personalities and turn them into lolcows. Terry Davis was lucky to write Losethos in the early 2000s. If it had been 2017 instead of 1997 he'd be tweeting Orange Man Bad on Twitter 23 hours a day in between trying to chop his dick off.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I hate that instagram, a program with terrible image quality, absorbed the entire flickr user base. In fact, all modern social media has shitty overcompressed files. Storage and bandwidth has never been cheaper, but image quality online hit its zenith on the bell curve a decade ago. And nobody except game streamers even seems to care anymore that their files get ruined.

urgh, mandatory instagram compression. Someone uploaded, saved and re-uploaded a picture 340 times to instagram and this was the result. The original was a gif-animation, that's why it looks a bit shit to start with but it gets so much worse.

 

[Coolio55]

If you look at those alternatives like Mastodon, Bitchute etc..., it's filled with people who were deplatformed from the major sites. They are the ones keeping the web somewhat diversified even though they're tiny in scale. I really fear the day those who unabashedly support deplatforming reach out to those sites and drive the users there out for wrongthink, and thus further monopolize the internet.

Mastodon is pretty rich complaining about twitter considering it's a deplatformer itself. It hosts a blocklist of instances that support free speech and any mastodon instance app that doesn't block them gets spam reported on google play.