hey everyone. been stuck in this loop for years, but today I finally decided to fully commit to it. as you can tell from the title, it’s about the modern internet.
everything was great up until around 2013, but what came after literally paved the way for the so-called "old web" basically shelving the real internet and turning it into something to romanticize. content made strictly for money, thousands of identical videos made just for views, pulling absolute backflips just to keep people glued to screens... everything became pure brain rot and engagement farming.
i log onto modern social media platforms, doomscroll trying to find something anything different, but it’s all the exact same logic, built with the exact same goal. old forums, IRC channels, none of them feel the same anymore. everything used to feel infinite and endless, like there were millions of raw things waiting to be discovered. now, sure, technically there’s more content than ever, but none of it feels real. it’s all copy-paste.
and beyond the creators or big pages, i’m talking about us as individuals. we used to use the internet to drop raw bits of our daily lives, share our hobbies, ideas, stuff we knew, or stuff we were trying to figure out. now? every single post is built on a few shallow metrics: likes, engagement, curated aesthetics, and flexing fake wealth.
this is day #1 of wiping the modern web out of my life and going back to the real internet.
once again; hello, friend.
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larpmaster5222
Extremely late to this post but I regret to inform you that from what I have seen over the past 5 years the entire "Y2Ksphere" one could file FriendRewind (and the other MySpace clones) under is essentially just Tumblr skinwalking the "golden age" of the internet. I could probably go on a full article-length rant about this but almost all of these sites have userbases that can't understand that the "old internet" was a cultural thing more than anything else. They refuse to re-adopt any part of that culture beyond the aesthetics that came as a mere byproduct of it, like Aero design or ""retro web design"". Good luck with getting into it but ultimately I don't think there's very much of what you're looking for out there anymore, a lot would need to be recreated from nothing again.
i have already come across things that prove you right in this 4 week period. thank you. right now i am trying to keep this alive in my local and lab environment. thanks for your comment.
by d a v i d; ; Report
lulu.mp3
I wish you the best of luck on your journey! I also have slowly been cutting back on modern social media sites over the last 6 years and now only use rednote regularly to passively study Chinese and chat with my Chinese online friend. The only other social media platform I visit sometimes is Pinterest, but I could go weeks without being on it. I have completely cut out Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat from my life. Thankfully I never had a TikTok account. That now leaves me with YouTube and Reddit, which I have had blocked on all of my devices since the beginning of this month. Since you don't actually need an account to visit those sites, they have been the tough ones to cut out completely. I relied a little too heavily on them for entertainment, so now I am trying to find a good balance.
If I may ask, what steps do you plan on taking? Are you banishing yourself from all social media? What about looking something up? Are you allowing yourself to visit only specific websites from before 2013? I probably could get some ideas from you!
thank you for your thoughtful reply! no, my goal isn't to isolate myself from all social media, nor is it strictly about visiting pre 2013 websites. i was simply referring to that shift many of us experienced around 2013, a turning point where the way we use the internet changed, and it started to feel like the internet was using us rather than the other way around. that’s the dynamic i’m stepping away from.
for instance, i won't be using instagram to endlessly scroll through reels, i'll only use it to stay in touch with a few close friends. instead of being exposed to youtube's frustrating personalized algorithms, i’m opting for rss feeds, algorithm free platforms, and authentic content like podcasts over mainstream trending videos. i'm also switching to privacy focused search engines and browsers that prioritize unbiased results over heavy seo and ads.
speaking of which, did you know chrome sends your exact city location with every single search query to tailor the results? that’s precisely the kind of tracking i mean.
i hope that clarifies my perspective a bit!
by d a v i d; ; Report
Totally makes sense! I was maybe 11 in 2013, but I also noticed that shift back then. I also remember being so mad when the IOS update with flat design happened then, haha!
You have more willpower than I do when it comes to mainstream social media, which I why I have basically banned myself from most platforms. X_X I commend you on working to find that balance!
I also did not know that Chrome was THAT invasive. Like it's definitely glorified spyware, but all that location tracking is a big yikes. I have been using LibreWolf with Startpage as my browser for a good year now, and it has been a pretty decent system for me! I'd definitely recommend if you need alternatives. :D
by lulu.mp3; ; Report
yeah we can definitely make this work. btw i’m an old-school firefox guy myself.
by d a v i d; ; Report