I don't enjoy the Internet any more

This is how I feel completely, having also grown up online all the way from BBSs onwards. I literally don't even have websites to visit any more. I get on my computer, scan hacker news for a bit, check twitter for a few minutes, scan some world news site, and thats it.

I still spend a lot of time programming (and thus a lot of time on the computer) but other than that, absolutely nothing appeals. Its a wasteland in my mind.

I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab. Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?

Anyway, the real internet is and always has been/will be smaller forums brought together by a common interest. Think back to the MMORPG private server communities of the 00's/10's. Kind of hacker news fits into that bucket today but even still a lot of the brainrotted brigading and average takes from reddit I'm seeing more often here (not calling out this post in particular; referring to the comment sections mostly).

> Learning about the world through 500-character snippets, or 30-second videos, is not a serious way to engage with knowledge. It triggers our worst instincts in terms of tribalism and groupthink and makes us intellectually lazy.

I can't agree more with this.

Stop absorbing everything. Limit yourself.

I with them on that. The internet is basically just infrastructure for email and some media like a podcast, otherwise the only reason I am here is because... well, I'm forced to be on a computer most of the week and not all of it is 'productive'. But after work, weekends, holidays I do not touch it.

I've been on the "internet" since before there was one, back in 1984-6 when bang paths were email addresses and DNS hadn't been invented yet. I was on one of the earliest BBSs (pre-FIDO) in Melbourne run by Peter Jetson and "Bear's Bull" running on a CDC-6000 at RMIT.

It's been an "eternal September" since Prodigy & Compuserve and then AOL joined the net, Usenet started degrading, people had more then 4-line sigs without a "-- " at the start of the sig, people top-quoted messages etc.

So the internet has been dying all that time. Lived through the dotcom boom/crash, growth/death of Yahoo Groups/Geocities/stumbleupon/slashdot/fark/etc.

I'm not sure whether AI/LLMs are really killing it more than the advent of social media and the endless slop that is time descending blogs.

I'm not sure whether the internet is just becoming yet another broadcast media, where small voices are drowned out by media conglomerates and the endless suck of advertising, or whether it really is "dying".

Either way, it will evolve, but whether it will evolve "well" is a very open question.

I agree, but if we're being very honest I think the reason is just nostalgia. And I think that you can still find what you're looking for, but it's less in-your-face (as in; it's not a url on altavista.com).

We're older now, being young was great, we had infinite time to roam and discover and have nice things (and our first real six-string, and trying different things and not thinking about tomorrow). The youth nowadays also has infinite time, and they fill it in their own way. They like how things are, even though we don't like it and yearn for the days of yore.

It is the way of things.

The problem isn't the internet but rather the sites that people use on it, and the monolithic nature of "social media".

Social media will be viewed as a failed experiment in the future.

The internet is fine. It's the web that sucks now. It matters, because we can build a different web without throwing out the internet.

We'll have to walk away from the attention economy, that'll be a journey that each has to take singly, but we don't have to walk back to the 1980's. We can build something that works for communication, but that doesn't work for advertising: something structurally enshittificationproof. It will not attract investors, because there will be nothing to leverage. We'll have to build it because we want it, which has never been easier.

We can steganographically hide it in AI slop which no human has to actually ever see, and we can trick our enemies into hosting it for us for free. It might even be fun.

I always appreciate a good Disco Elysium reference.

Last week I finally deleted my LinkedIn account, the last social account I had. This week, I'm close to deleting my YouTube account. There's less content I want to see and more slop than ever. Apple Music is on the chopping block. These days, I only use it to preview vinyl records that catch my eye. Once my iPhone dies, I'm done with smartphones.

The internet had so much potential. Shame.

I think it's time for people to have their own homepages. Building and customizing a homepage is more fun than you'd think. What's the main reason the internet feels less fun these days? I think it's because there are fewer people actually communicating. But wouldn't it be more fun if we communicated through homepages? Maybe someday there will be a community—a hub for people who have their own homepages—where only those with homepages can participate

I am sick to death of the seemingly obligatory oh-but-im-all-in-on-ai disclaimer embedded in what is otherwise a (totally valid) critique of AI. Have the courage of your convictions already.

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You should try chatting with a large language model—it's incredibly useful! The only thing is, I'm not sure if the answers it gives are actually correct.