The state of the internet.

The modern age of the internet is in one of the worst places it’s been since its inception. The internet has largely lost its sense of community, uniqueness, and even its more decentralized nature. The largest internet conglomerates have ruined personal websites, forums, and online communities, leaving nothing behind but social media, biased news sources, and the same design and UI you see on almost every site. >> Oh, but Lain, the internet is so much more accessible and easy to use than it was before! Yes, but at the same time, it’s accessible in a bad way. We’re subjected to this paid-for marketing by literally every site out there, whether or not they directly want to push a narrative. Kids who should be developing basic social skills and societal functionality are wasting away on TikTok and YouTube, which I feel is way worse than the forums, IRC, and gaming communities I was a part of at that age. Don’t get me wrong, I had extremely early access to the internet as a child, but while great in some ways, detrimental in others. Even so, the modern internet is a terrible place to have such exposure to anyway! >> But there are still niche communities online; it’s not like it’s been completely wiped out. While yes, so long as the internet is free to publish to (to a degree), there will always be sites tech nerds spin up, and I love that! Hell, even I have a site up myself. With this push to Web 3.0, how much longer will it be until all that stands is a bunch of billion-dollar tech companies running the whole show? How long until sites like lainchan and its subcommunities fall into this soykafhole? I try not to make this post another one of those fuarrking shizo nostalgia-driven posts, but god, this soykaf is so frustrating to watch.

The internet has slowly been gentrified over the past 15 years. It's like Harlem used to be a soykafhole ghetto but with an awesome culture that attracted tourists and then in came all the hipsters, woke college students, white collar scum and the middle classes and the area is undergoing Obamafication. The worst thing is how centralized its become. In the past, free software like phpbb, vbulletin or kareha empowered people to create their own unique communities. Nairaland is very different from Something Awful. There was real human diversity. Today big tech has centralized everything. Beyond language, there's no real difference anymore. Everyone is assimilated into a horrible Silicone Valley Americanized monoculture. Everything is becoming one dimensional and the internet is being used to control and manipulate people. Everything is being monetized, even memes are being monetized. We're fuarrrked if we don't do something about it. We need to break the hold of big tech. We should be glad Twitter is destroying itself and we need to push it along. That's getting harder and harder with cloud computing and stuff. People have to stay in the walled garden of Apple and Microsoykaf because they have to use their software at work/college/school etc. Now they brand everything outside the mainstream as promoting social taboos or "extremism" (whatever that means) to imply any place outside their centralized big tech platforms are dangerous and should be shut down. Google is even trying to reshape tech by trying to get rid of C.

>>74791 Everything after Web 1.0 is AIDS. Post the link to your site.

>>74792 I think the best thing you can do is try to educate the people around you and hope they make the right decisions. Social media was forced upon me as a teen but I deleted it all about 4 years ago [I'm 23]. I'm slowly convincing my peers to stop depending on their phones; one friend regularly leaves it at home when out of the house and the other has switched to a notepad to record info. We're also making paper zines. I recognise it's not much compared to the grand scope of corporate sponsored brain rot but it eases my conscience.

The recent surge in AI just feels like the "GAME OVER" screen for anyone who was hoping the internet would ever become a service of creativity again. It pretty much serves as confirmation that algorithmically generated content is only going to further consume the landscape of the internet.

>>74792 >Google is even trying to reshape tech by trying to get rid of C. Can someone fill me in on this?

>>74794 >muh education but in the grand scheme its fuarrrking worthless.

>>74841 In the grand scheme of what, exactly? I'm just one guy, I'm not anticipating any of my actions are going to change the way entirety of society uses the internet. However, I do think I that by sharing my views with my peers some of them might stick. Ultimately the best thing I can hope for is a small group of meatspace friends that share my beliefs. I might not achieve that but it's expedient to try. The other option is apathy and living alone in a world I'm completely at odds against which I'd rather avoid.

>>74840 Same, this sounds interesting. >>74792 >>74792

>>74840 >>74847 I might be mistaken but I believe they're talking about Google's attempts at introducing new languages like golang, flutter/dart and now carbon, which aim to replace existing ones with some improvements here and there but ultimately being owned by the company which then has a disproportional say where the entire ecosystem goes and can enforce "clear goals and solid governance" over it. So even if it's arguably better tools, I'd be wary and look into and build and extend upon alternatives like odin or zig. That or just keep using C and C++ despite its drawbacks and tech debt. Anything really that isn't owned and operated by silicon valley corpos that dangle it in front of developers as shiny new toys and "the new industry standard" so that they allow their tools to get centralized down to the compiler and syntax layer.

I cancelled my internet today. It shuts down in two weeks. My plan is to finally get rid of the brainrot and read books that I have waiting. This will be especially hard since I'm a CS student but I think I can make it work. I still have access to University and library internet. I'm gonna go for at least a month and after that I might reintroduce it such that I use it only for work. I wanted to post this here to anyone here who has been thinking the same. I realized that I don't actually enjoy the internet anymore. I hate porn, I hate c o n t e n t c r e a t o r s and most of imageboard contents are worthless. I don't think I'll miss any of this but the work aspect might be the tough but necessary sacrifice for now. thanks for reading by blogpost. godspeed anons

Old person here. I've been using the internet since the mid 90s, I used to pirate anime before most of you were even born. Everything's better now. The internet of the past you're idolizing has never existed. >TikTok and YouTube, which I feel is way worse than the forums, IRC, and gaming communities I was a part of at that age. TikTok and YouTube are absolutely harmless compared to the human zoo that was live journal circa 1999. Like you have no idea.

>>74860 this. at least youtube censors soykaf for kids and has that 'YT kids' (cr)app. the forums i hung around when i was 12 or 13 were so full of depraved soykaf that they made me depraved. taking a whole summer off from the internet reset my headspace back to normal at least. but holy fuarrrk dude...the internet was no place for kids prior to 2012 or so. no way.

>>74860 They whose bodies and souls were not forged in the crucible of the neopets.com forums in the early/mid-2000s have never known the depths to which humanity can sink nor the heights to which it can rise

i think that there's some glimmers of hope here and there. i've been curious about mastodon, but i don't feel like signing up for a normal person instance. any lains know any good ones?

>>74860 >The internet of the past you're idolizing has never existed it did. If you don't feel like it, you weren't using it. t. old person

>>74855 done this before, the moment you introduce it it starts growing again and you'll be close to where you start it, the trick is you cant get off it cause its needed for banking sms verifications etc. so in a way its like being a heroin addict trying to get off and constantly being forced to take small doses

>>74930 How are you doing right now? Yeah I've heard and I've experienced this after coming from a trip with no internet. I think I can do my banking in library or uni and I will probably keep the phone internet for getting train tickets and stuff while having any non-productive site blocked for the browser. Seriously though internet can be the worst drug that is like kicking dead whales down the beach your time when you have passively consumed content pathologically for over 5 years. Most people talk about the dangers of social media but it's honestly all of the media made for consooming on the internet. Youtube has been a disaster for the human race and so on

>>74936 >How are you doing right now? chronically online, just trying to be somewhat conscious of the sites i use. live in an apartment alone rn so not much else to do, was easier to use the internet less when i lived in a house with parents

>>74860 OP isn't idolizing the old internet. He's talking about the state of the internet today. But I do get your point, the internet back then was pretty unfiltered compared to today. As soykafty as they are they are sites like YouTube are pretty safe to use but that's only if you look at exposure to gore, sex, CP, raw combat footage, rambling jihadi videos etc. and discount all the other harmful effects they have on society. Probably the best thing is you don't get yelled at for holding up the phone line.

Suppose people segregate themselves, Some are lazy and always do whats the easiest i.e. being parented by corporations like an infant. Then there is the lainon, which i dont need to describe. This board and most people visiting it, already represent one fraction, and then there is the other. Thats the current status, i suppose lainon wants to see this change. But the average joe will always do what is the easiest, therefore consume the internet. The state is what it is.

>>74948 joe vs lainon will be the the 2 sides in world war 3

>>74948 I feel the most you can do is try and nudge people in the right direction. I think a slightly less reductive dichotomy would be the average joe and the critical thinker. There's plenty of people out there that don't want to conform to the norm but don't actually know where to start. I hang around in a lot of alternative circles but the amount of people still existing within conventional forms of social media and the flow of information is staggering. However, most of them have a chip on their shoulder and the desire to rebel against norms they just don't realise that it's possible to go without their rectangular glass pacifiers.

>>74936 I've thought very similar while I was abroad and my phone plan didn't support the networks over there. Being disconnected like that was an unbelievably pleasant experience, and it's something I've tried to implement more in my day to day life. >>74970 I certainly agree with a portion of this. I think a good amount of people recognize that there is a problem, but don't know what or how to act on that knowledge. But I also think a large amount of people are too scared to get rid of the conveniences this new world offers. People look at me like I'm crazy for refusing to use Amazon, for example. Until people are willing to sacrifice convenience, this situation will not improve on a large scale.

>>74971 I don't believe the majority of people are willing to sacrifice convenience either, even when they're aware of ethical and moral problems. I had a family member tell me I had awfully strong opinions on Amazon for someone who didn't work for them or know a person who had; effectively they were saying that provided Amazon's bad habits didn't effect anyone they knew it was okay to keep supporting them. So, for some people even when they are aware of how bad things are won't change their behaviour. The most I can hope for is finding the small few that will and filter out the rest as much as possible. History has never been made by people that avoided hardship at all costs. I'm sure as the years pass my views will be justified in the eyes of others.

>>74855 Nice dubs. Been there, and still there. Havent had internet in a while. Going on free wifi is much better. The internet is goyslop for the soul.

I think part of it is the new cultures that come with every generation. I find that the kind of humor and slang that I grew up with as a kid feels natural to me and the humor and slang of the newer generations make me want to swallow glass. I think it's a part of getting old.

When I first saw 4chan back in 2009 I had this same reaction people have to TikTok. I hung out with older people and grew up fast because my home life wasn't good. I hated kids of my generation and just avoided them. I was posting on extremist forums, watching Iraq war footage and reading about economics when I was 11. So when I saw 4chan I saw a soykafhole full of dumb ass kids from a failed generation (as if I wasn't one of them) who couldn't take soykaf seriously. I only begun appreciating it later. Sometimes I'm angry at teens today for all the dumb soykaf they do, but other times I think "didn't people look at us that way? And we did far worse things than TikTok people." I mean, back then people were sharing child porn, bomb making materials and actual terrorist propaganda. Then I think, what's all the crazy stuff I'm missing out on now? I missed out on a lot back then and only appreciated it later and now I wonder if I'm missing out on amazing experiences again. I think the main reason the internet today is like kicking dead whales down the beach is because back then it was a blank canvas. You had a lot of teens using the internet who were too young for usenet and there was no guide on how to use it. So they just made soykaf up and used free software to do it. Because of the way social media works and how big tech is like this walled garden where everything is done for you, kids these days don't create their own new stuff anymore. They use platforms and apps created for them by a corporation where the interface and app itself is designed to encourage a certain kind of behavior. Teens today don't websurf, they don't explore stuff, they just use a premade system and are fed content by an algorithim and corporate/government propaganda. The corpos are killing the web and people have known this since the early 2000s.

>>74972 People who have that ethical compass of "if it doesn't affect me or someone I care about directly I don't care," are the worst self-defeating scum of the earth. They are critically stupid and can't recognize that when things get bad enough it will wrap around eventually and affect them too. This is why protecting universal rights matter when you believe that you as an individual should have a certain right. It doesn't matter if you're the most selfish person in the world or the most empathetic person in the world, either way, the only way to ensure your ethical goals are accomplished is to ensure them for everyone.

>>74992 im sure you also encountered comedy from before your birth that you still enjoyed. So you aren't limited to your generations humor. I rather think ideas also follow natural selection and jokes in the now are experimental which includes the bad attempts that will die out in the following gen. The good stuff however survives your generation and continues to thrive.

>>74995 In terms of amazing stuff happening now? I honestly don't know. I still keep with some lolcows and there's always an endless supply of them every year it seems. 4chan troll culture is still alive but it's definitely more insular than it used to be. Where before there would be hundreds of thousands of people obsessed with something now it's little internet cults of a few hundred people there a few thousand people here following a given person. Long are the days of raids and internet wars, truthfully 2016 seems like it was the last hurrah and it wasn't all that good because it got too real and as a result genuinely annoying. It's not fun when the raid is the entire internet either and even when I'm on some unrelated blog just talking about web browser rendering engines or something someone has to interject their culture war opinion. Gore and combat footage and stuff are still around if people look for them. Little forums still exist and I'm sure some kids are still finding it, even though they probably shouldn't. Those sorts of places are less prevalent now though and you won't find them on any corporate platform. Thankfully cp has genuinely been mostly scrubbed from clearnet and that is one thing that has turned around for the better. If I had to guess kids online are obsessed with vtubers, egirls, eboys, stupid vine-derivative memes, youtuber drama and video games. I'm 25 if it means anything, have one foot in both doors but I'm not on any of those corporate platforms except youtube. When I'm out with friends I still see them using them though.

>>74995 >Teens today don't websurf, they don't explore stuff, they just use a premade system and are fed content by an algorithim and corporate/government propaganda agreed. whenever ive told anyone about places like here they treat me like some kinda weirdo because i dare hang out anywhere other than corpo approved sites online. the concept of forums like these is beyond many my age. they think the internet is instagram/google/tiktok and thats it

lol dude above me when i speak of it they think its pretty ool since i get to see actually cool soykaf on their (like just generally funny videos, i know this sounds like brain rot ai generated post, but i mean it genuinly, soykaf thats just funny with no drawbacks; FUN) then again i dont dare to introduce them since that would imply i have an extremely unnaceptable social mindset

>>75232 Seriously, this is it. I just recently found out about the webring though I've been lurking lainchan for quite a while now. I don't even bother to tell anyone because I already know what their response will be. I believe that for most of Gen Z anything that goes outside the big corpo apps (Instagram, TikTok...) is automatically conceived as dangerous. Considering they even heard about what an imageboard is in the first place, which is probably limited to fked up soykaf they hear on the news.

>>75232 its cause everyone uses google and google searches are trash nowadays. You would need a new clean search engine and make it popular to reopen the net to the public.

Loss of anonymity and pseudo-anonymity is probably the biggest cultural shift on the internet. Anonymity doesn't mean having a username and an account because your still explicitly identifiable to other users. In the 2000s, the big sites were pseudo-anonymous or Japanese style anonymous sites like today's lainchan. You either created an alter ego or some kind of hybrid identity separate from your meatspace self or posted anonymously, unless you were some kind of eceleb or trying to be one. Now people cultivate avatars that are connected to their real world personality. People live to create a profile so everything becomes shallow, mimicking an aesthetic or "core" with idpol tribalism ("I identify as.... or I support....") and excessive misuse of irony and nu4chan speak. Because everything is a performance now you can never tell when anyone's being genuine, sincerity is a dead concept, and youth culture is just vapid self-centered nihilism. In the past, people created sites, forums, communities, memes etc. and put a lot of effort into something else today people are more obsessed with creating their own self-image. The Qassam brigades put out a video showing their fighters trying to take an Israeli women hostage and instead of doing the sane thing, resisting or going quietly, she has this huge grin on her face and she's trying to take selfies of herself being captured while they haul her off. It's not that she doesn't understand the gravity of the situation, she clearly does, but the social media image is more important than what's going on around her. The image takes precedence over the event, the avatar is more important than physical body. I bet she was more concerned with how this would all look and how it'd play out to her followers, how many likes or views she'd get or how she could spin it into a cool personal narrative about herself. We are living in a world that's becoming more and more fake and insincere.

>>75359 That reminds me of those two blonde girls who got their heads cut off for camping somewhere in Egypt(maybe). As the video rolls, and they're belly down, before any violence has happened, hands bound behind her back, one of them is fuarrrking smiling and laughing >oooh boy now they're gunna rape me! I can't wait! Then, in horror, her face and demeanor immediately shifts as the men start cutting her friends head off 2 feet away. IIRC Egypt got the guys responsible and executed them, just another day in sandland. Those girls didn't deserve to die, sure, but I don't particularly care about two bodies in a sea of blood. What's far more interesting is the effect culture has had on modern peoples' perception of the world around them, and exactly as you say, obsession with their avatar and maintaining it's ego and wellbeing instead of their own. This is absolutely idpol in every facilitation, a comparison I hadn't yet considered. Well said.

>>75359 >The Qassam brigades put out a video showing their fighters trying to take an Israeli women hostage and instead of doing the sane thing, resisting or going quietly, she has this huge grin on her face This is duping delight. They are enjoying manufacturing propaganda deceiving others into thinking it's real. Heaps of stuff presented as real is this. It's not just plebians that are obsessed with manufacturing a false image - the rich, the influential, and large organizations enjoy it too.

>>74855 Hope things go well for you. I DC'd my internet connection 18 months ago. Being 'off-line' has been a real eye-opening experience in many regards. The best one is that I actually went out of the house and did stuff, instead of feeling caged and being dreary and lonely whilst fantasizing about going outside and doing stuff. It still was mostly loner stuff that I did, but that's alright with me: I can be content in being alone. I have realized that by being able to be so, the social contacts that I do have - which aren't many right now - contribute something to a life which already feels complete, and thus are much stronger because of that. Previously I did the opposite, which was to 'use' others to fill in something that felt like it was missing in my own life. Now I think that's a very selfish way to approach relationships, and not surprisingly those relationships didn't stand the test of time. Another thing which I realized - at least in the city where I lived - is that in today's day and age it's impossible to be truly disconnected from the wired; there's always some tentacle of big brother watching you. So even if my motif would've been to not be an extension of this surveillance system anymore, the consequence was that it made me stand out even more as someone who was to be monitored for his behavior exactly because he was disconnected. I am fairly certain that I've been monitored very closely in the past years and that my idiosyncrasies have been added to The Great Surveillance Algorithm©, filed under 'highly-aware-meatbag-subtype-A'. I guess in a way, disconnecting from the Internet has made me hyper-aware of how connected to this system one truly is, even when one does not want to be connected to it. This raises a lot of questions about personal freedom, but I will not get into those right now because it usually sets me of in the statesmanship direction (which I do not necessarily dislike going on, but which also do not add positively to board-culture, I've noticed, and I do try to add something positive to this place). In general, I try to not let the surveillance system bother me too much because I do not let fear run my life. Another beneficial experience is that I have been unexposed to other people's media for all that time. I've experienced that consuming other people's media - especially the horrible stuff that's so prevalent today - has severely decapitated my own generating capabilities, which was gutting to my life's enjoyment because I enjoy creating things. So I am really happy that in those 18 months, I started generating a lot of my own content: from games, to music, to book-ideas, to sketches, a mural and poems. I hope it will add to a sort of renaissance of society because what's being said here >>74791 & >>74792 is true: the Internet and society has slowly been gentrified and dumbed down to the easily digestible McCrap that is being served today as breakfast, lunch and dinner. This is all by design because the sleazy corporate ass bags get to be the rulers in that society. While I used to be so demotivated by it that I just stood by and saw the train wreck happen, now I know that if you want to improve something, you yourself are the one to have to be doing so, which is exactly the thing I will be doing in the time to come.

>>74992 Lain, i am this generation, who uses said terms from your image. I dont know what 80% of this is. How about words like 'rad' , i think they are timeless. But this, heeeell no.

>>75361 >>75362 It was Morocco, Atlas mountains. They were kidnapped by an ISIS team in revenge for their leader being taken out by the US. I saw the video and honestly it's not uncommon or unusual for people to laugh when they're nervous or scared which is what it looked like to me. In the Qassam brigades video, which didn't look staged at all, the woman is giggling, constantly pulling out her smartphone and keeps trying to pose for photos with the men trying to whisk her away and get the best shot. Hamas has a reputation for treating hostages well and most Israelis know this, they're more worried by the Hannibal directive. It really seemed she was more obsessed with her social media profile and being the center of a hyper real media event rather than the actual chaos going on around her. She knows she'd probably survive, get her 15 minutes of fame, maybe write a memoir then start a podcast and millions might share and like her post. Social media likes have become this new currency social media addicts are obsessed with collecting and they will go to any length to get views. Did she not understand the gravity of her situation and was too lost in social media to realize or has the obsession with profiles and avatars become so severe that people literally put it before their physical well being?

>>74863 >the internet was no place for kids prior to 2012 or so In some cases, yes, it depends on which sites you were on (like a certain imageboard), but man am I nostalgic for the internet I grew up on in the 2000s. A whole generation of those currently in their early-to-late 20s had a stellar childhood online, even on websites, Flash animations/games, anime music videos, great rock and trance music, or YouTube channels that didn't make what some parents would consider "age-appropriate" content, but there was no real human gore or hardcore sexual material that I was exposed to, unless my brain has completely blacked it out. Cursing, some blood violence, and breast cleavage were the some of the worst I would come across online accidentally on an average week, and it wasn't used for a shock factor, but for comedy usually. Some things I saw did scare me, but those have been kept in the crevices of my mind, thankfully. Nothing traumatizing that I remember. Regardless, I wouldn't have traded in my internet childhood for the world, especially since most of it is utterly unretrievable or irrecoverable digitally. So, what I've saved and stored over the years in my collection on external drives is likely the last of its kind. Some websites I've saved that I rediscovered recently from my younger years have been shut down.

>>75411 How does watching a bunch of pixels make your childhood "great"? This is something I've never really gotten with the whole internet now-versus-then debate. A good childhood shouldn't be dependent on the internet at al; why do you still care about the crappy, throwaway animations you watched as a kid? The state of the internet is hard to guage as well because you can't be everywhere at once and if you aren't there, it's most likely because you don't care to be there. Judging this stuff objectively is almost impossible.

>>75971 >2004 - 2006 >chuck norris Yeah, I remember me and my friends being all caught up in the whole Chuck Norris facts thing during that period. I was a teenager growing up then also a young adult during the 2000s and even I am extremely nostalgic for all of the times online I had back then. It was special, magical, and quite adventurous. Everyday online back then was unique and filled with fun. I still frequent Newgrounds, various forums, and check back on the wayback machine for websites that may not exist anymore just to get a small taste of that rush again. I even returned to playing OSRS for a time as someone who spent so many fuarrrking years on RuneScape starting with RS classic. Ironically even hanging out on RS classic on it's very last official day before Jagoff employees terminated it on their server end. I could go on about a part of the internet that was special for me for a long time before I even scratched the surface of everything that I loved about it. I've been sitting at a desk on a computer every single day since I first experienced it and obsessing about getting my own computer. Going over to a friend's house who's dad had an old IBM running Windows 3.1 right before Windows 95 launched then getting my own desktop that Christmas. Maybe you aren't a web enthusiast and it's just not that important to you, but to many others out there it helped define who we grew up to become. Not everyone had the luxury of living in a big city where there was lots of things to do and see. Being exposed to such levels of culture was impossible for someone like me where I'm from. Some of us come from small towns with dying communities that had nothing for young people at all. Where it would be rare that we'd see anything "exotic" or interesting. Anime caught my eye instantly when I was first exposed to it in the mid 90s. So, thinking back it's really to no surprise that the internet truly affected my life the way that it did with the impact from browsing the web in the 90s and 2000s. Also as that Lainon mentioned, when mentioning about not trading it for the world. I feel the exact same way. Even the nights waiting for downloads to finish on fuarrrking Kazaa running back to my computer after waking up to watch in excitement was a such a treat to me during those years.

>>75971 It’s not much different than our parents planting us in front of a Nintendo or something. I’m sure a lot of young people have very fond memories of Neopets or Club Pinguin the way we remember playing some awful video game. Then again those entire days wasted on bargain bin licensed movie games were still soykafty uses of our childhood where we could have at least played really good games.

> Not everyone had the luxury of living in a big city where there was lots of things to do and see. Being exposed to such levels of culture was impossible for someone like me where I'm from. Some of us come from small towns with dying communities that had nothing for young people at all. Dude absolutely. I’ve lived in towns where I was surprised to meet someone who went on imageboards or program through my normal social group. Imagine going to school and everyone’s dad works in a factory or on a farm. Nobody’s parents went to an ivy. Imagine being in your 20s and richer than everyone you know your age making like 50k a year. The internet might be the only clue things could be different and better.

>>75971 That's like asking "how does watching a bunch of cartoons make your childhood great?" Lain wasn't talking about the internet making their childhood great. What they are saying the online experience for kids in the 2000s was pretty good. I had a pretty soykafty home and school life and the internet cafe was my escape. I loved it. The internet was really wild and strange back then. You had a bunch of new people just coming online thanks to cheap desktops and Windows 98-XP being easy to use and it was like this empty playground people were just experimenting with in their own way. Using a computer back then felt magical and exciting. Just websurfing was a lot of fun because you had no idea what you'd find next. Today everyone seems to have settled into a clear plan for how this tech should be used and instead of community built sites doing their own thing you have big social media networks with content algorithms and it's all feels colonized and controlled.

the internet is a communicative/informational tool that can also act as an extension of self. with mainstream internet (modern, corporatized social media platforms) being so tied to offline identities, many of the people who enjoyed the internet for its anonymity have been displaced. the internet previously seemed like an alternate world, while now it seems like the “real world” has migrated into the digital one. as a result, everything is fragmented and hyperreal, mirror reflecting into mirror and creating the illusion of infinite depth but its all glass. moreover, everything online is put into archived words, and profiles often by design insist that users define themselves. once youve defined yourself, you are that thing, as opposed to those who are not that thing, and then you get polarization and reduction. but humans are flux, organic creatures using a tool more complex than the brain can comprehend. this gets overlooked and hate is needlessly bred because we are animals and we fight, but unlike in the wild, its all documented. i think one of the biggest issues in “old” vs “new” internet is the number of people online. what was once a niche-er reprieve for people who Wanted to be on the internet has become a jungle-turned-metropolis for any person who Can be on the internet. it is stifling. a big shame is that the offline world doesn’t necessarily have a readily accessible community waiting with open arms for Critical Thinkers. i think we have to establish our own physical communities, but how? it’s possible that Old Internet ephemerality might only be replicated irl now. a book about these topics (Team Human by Rushkoff - same author as Cyberia) begins with the epigraph “Find the others…” and i think that’s what we have to do. maybe it’s what this thread is doing. [an idea i have is for a community facilitated online (likely through an email list, then maybe eventually through snail mail?) that focuses on real world activities - creation, exploration, learning - regardless of where everyone is physically. still figuring it out but if anyone is interested in something like this, or has ideas, or wants to discuss the state of the internet, email is linked. no strings attached i just think life could be more interesting.] best of luck to everyone

>>75982 You're trying a bit hard dude. The "community" you came up with is called a forum and they've existed for a long time. Social media does this as well but with faces and names attached. Come to think of it, you didn't really say anything here.

>>75995 i have to try. youre right though i regurgitated the same things the thread had said (though only because ive been thinking about these topics a great deal). im lost and isolated and seeking company in and out of that. i used to have a lot of fun on the internet and now i have no fun anywhere despite my efforts. id really rather not give up so my endeavors may seem redundant and embarrassing but rn theyre what ive got. yet of course the solace of this place is in the anonymity, external communication is just offered for the unknown potential it holds. idk though man. like i said im just trying