The internet has already ended

[SuicidalOrganism]

i wanna start a random topic cuz im pretty bored rn.

the internet has really started going to shit ever since the late 2000s and so on. the main reason is that big corporations took over and became the main thing, everything from there started going downhill. theres really nothing of quality to discover anymore.


1) ppl are more keen on being toxic to each other if they don't have to say it to their actual faces like death treats and more stuff, instead of improving themselves in the real world. the internet has shaped their minds way more than what reality does.


2) influencers, new trends, same type of content. all these influencers are chasing money and are not your friend. its all insanely overused to the point where its difficult to distinguish one thing from another. memes are dead, blogging is dead, youtube creators fighting for our attention, people abusing their kids for views, clickbait, etc. 15 second TikTok videos of people that dress up and lip sync, instagram, patreon, oversharing, trauma dumping.
Text to speech narrations, default gameplay vids to distract ADHD viewers, a flood of worthless content they can't even keep up with.
this is all a regurgitated slop. invent one new thing and you will have thousands of so-called trend chasers doing the same thing but in a slight variation out of it. people have also become tools for mass marketing, such as sponsorships for a certain product.


3) search engines have become so inaccurate that the things u want to see never pop up, and instead u get bombarded by marketing ads and promotion websites. and also the algorithm is trying to show you other things that u might be interested, rather than the ones u are actually looking for.


4) almost everything has become monetised. all these stupid sites asking u to make an account before viewing a page on it or pay a 20$ subscription and have membership in order to scroll it. could mention 100s other examples of monetization that 15 years ago never existed.


5) social media, this is self-explanatory. but i am gonna mention something that is rarely mentioned on behalf of social media as to why it contributes to the fact why internet sucks now. it can currently be used as a controlling tool by influential people in order to manipulate thousands of their followers to contribute to a nefarious act. herd mentality etc. want someone u dislike down? accuse them of doing immoral stuff, have ur followers harrass them and have their reputation ruined.


6) too many fucking bots, everywhere i go i see social media bots, porn bots, marketing bots, promo bots, ad bots, dating bots, scam bots, fake reviews and more. now with AI advancing we are going to see the same slop everywhere. ai art, ai music, ai text, ai games, ai social media users (that we never know if they are real or not), and you will ask yourselves "what is real". well until that happens, u are gonna need to brace yourselves for "enshitification" (look up the term, its quite new and interesting)


7) censorship, controlled information, disinformation, propaganda, almost everywhere i see there is politics and unnecessary toxicity etc. this phenomenon suddenly started to occur in early 2010s and started exponentially to grow.


8) websites look so unintuitive. the overdecoration of web pages has made it too difficult and confusing to navigate. too much of this "fancy" stuff ended up being quite impractical, unlike the old websites.


9) internet decreases peoples attention span, and makes them seek dopamine even more than it did in the past. porn, games, social media are more mainstream now. also it contributes to many other things such as mental illnesses, jealousy, bitterness etc. because it is easy to fake in social media that you are a rich person who lives in a mansion or somebody travels occasionally. it should also mean that some people who your content could be easily affected by it. be it that rich, hot or smart person, people will always find a way to tell themselves "why the fuck am i not like them? this is unfair!"


10) the internet no longer feels human like it did a few decades ago. in the old times the net was surely a wild place but it felt more alive. search it up yourself if you want to find out more about it. wayback machine was a lot of sites/forums that are no longer active, and go back to early-late 2000s to see how it was. i used to have like hundreds websites bookmarked that were prevalent around 2005-2010, and deicded to check them out one day. only like 4 of them are still up. the rest are either taken down or gone. everything online seemed exciting and nostalgic. flash games were played, people were thriving in myspace, newgrounds and aol and youtube was all about making fun videos, now everywhere I go online feels cold and bland. this is why i only consume content related to education now. at least thats what is still for use currently.



BIGGEST OFFENDERS: Money, views, toxicity

AFTERWORD: the internet was the wild west when growing up but it devolved into being like a dead mall. In the future, i think the internet at least will be abandoned by sane people and only these emotionally damaged pathological narcissists and corporations will remain, endlessly spewing and creating the same self-absorbed bullshit. The Dead Internet Theory is no longer a "theory", but a mere reality. May they all burn.

 

[damyon]

i think the internet at least will be abandoned by sane people

Where would they go?
There doesn't seem to be an alternative on the horizon.

 

[Agon321]

I generally agree with your points.

The funny thing is that I can find porn in a few seconds without any problem, but finding information about something is a VERY tiring struggle.
I know humanity is built on sex, boobs and penises, but it's still bothersome.
This is, of course, one of many examples.

We only have ourselves to blame.
It's all because of us.

In my opinion, completely giving up the Internet makes no sense, but if someone wants to be mentally healthy, they must change the way they use the Internet. But even this may not be enough.

Let us also remember that the Internet has a very good side. Not just the bad and corrupt one.

 

[ColorlessTrees]

Generally agree with your points here; I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Good writeup.

What I've become most sick of is how watered down and lifeless and uniform everything has become. Gone are the days of niche but active communities with their own culture, instead of being centralized to a heap of strange faces with the same five topics every day and increasing censorship. I strongly dislike how the main platforms have taken away any sense of uniqueness and identity; Discord isn't a good replacement.

Yes, sure, communities still exist, but as a shell of their former self. I find myself annoyed by the hivemind and similar sentence construction and slang whenever I want to find other people with my niche hobbies. To top it all off, media literacy is deader than dead and politics and radicalization are infecting what should otherwise be neutral spaces. It's mindnumbing, and I feel like an alien among the supposed misfits. I hate social media. And while Youtube has plenty of decent content creators, you have to dig. I'm also sick of the shady sponsors and ads and algorithms and censorship. stfu and let me brainrot in peace. I have nothing better to do but now I can't even have this.

Thanks, I've let off enough steam about the degeneracy and end of times. I'll go crawl back into my hole and continue to rot while the iPad babies and corporations take over the last bastion of sanity

 

[AbusedInnocent]

The internet was definitely better before centralized social media, it used to all be forums like this one that were run by people genuinely passionate about the topics they discuss.

Now it's just centralized platforms that only care about collecting user data and maximizing ad revenue.

 

[Saturn_]

Generally agree with your points here; I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Good writeup.

What I've become most sick of is how watered down and lifeless and uniform everything has become. Gone are the days of niche but active communities with their own culture, instead of being centralized to a heap of strange faces with the same five topics every day and increasing censorship. I strongly dislike how the main platforms have taken away any sense of uniqueness and identity; Discord isn't a good replacement.

Yes, sure, communities still exist, but as a shell of their former self. I find myself annoyed by the hivemind and similar sentence construction and slang whenever I want to find other people with my niche hobbies. To top it all off, media literacy is deader than dead and politics and radicalization are infecting what should otherwise be neutral spaces. It's mindnumbing, and I feel like an alien among the supposed misfits. I hate social media. And while Youtube has plenty of decent content creators, you have to dig. I'm also sick of the shady sponsors and ads and algorithms and censorship. stfu and let me brainrot in peace. I have nothing better to do but now I can't even have this.

Thanks, I've let off enough steam about the degeneracy and end of times. I'll go crawl back into my hole and continue to rot while the iPad babies and corporations take over the last bastion of sanity

You have only the best takes on the internet and social media. Love this, couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Hvergelmir]

The Internet is just a global network - a tool for communication.
Participation in specific platforms is voluntary. I've personally stayed away from most of the things criticized in this thread.

The old school Internet is still there, and censorship is still minimal outside the commercial platforms.
Privacy tools are more accessible than ever. Ad blocking is built in to more and more browsers. There are free alternatives for almost everything.
(Please ask if you're looking for something specific.)

I'm not convinced that the bullshit Internet trends are fundamentally different from prior generations bullshit trends.

 

[pollux]

15-20 years ago, you'd go to the internet to get away from the real world. Nowadays, at least to me, it feels like I'm often trying to do the opposite.

 

[derpyderpins]

i wanna start a random topic cuz im pretty bored rn.

the internet has really started going to shit ever since the late 2000s and so on. the main reason is that big corporations took over and became the main thing, everything from there started going downhill. theres really nothing of quality to discover anymore.


1) ppl are more keen on being toxic to each other if they don't have to say it to their actual faces like death treats and more stuff, instead of improving themselves in the real world. the internet has shaped their minds way more than what reality does.


2) influencers, new trends, same type of content. all these influencers are chasing money and are not your friend. its all insanely overused to the point where its difficult to distinguish one thing from another. memes are dead, blogging is dead, youtube creators fighting for our attention, people abusing their kids for views, clickbait, etc. 15 second TikTok videos of people that dress up and lip sync, instagram, patreon, oversharing, trauma dumping.
Text to speech narrations, default gameplay vids to distract ADHD viewers, a flood of worthless content they can't even keep up with.
this is all a regurgitated slop. invent one new thing and you will have thousands of so-called trend chasers doing the same thing but in a slight variation out of it. people have also become tools for mass marketing, such as sponsorships for a certain product.


3) search engines have become so inaccurate that the things u want to see never pop up, and instead u get bombarded by marketing ads and promotion websites. and also the algorithm is trying to show you other things that u might be interested, rather than the ones u are actually looking for.


4) almost everything has become monetised. all these stupid sites asking u to make an account before viewing a page on it or pay a 20$ subscription and have membership in order to scroll it. could mention 100s other examples of monetization that 15 years ago never existed.


5) social media, this is self-explanatory. but i am gonna mention something that is rarely mentioned on behalf of social media as to why it contributes to the fact why internet sucks now. it can currently be used as a controlling tool by influential people in order to manipulate thousands of their followers to contribute to a nefarious act. herd mentality etc. want someone u dislike down? accuse them of doing immoral stuff, have ur followers harrass them and have their reputation ruined.


6) too many fucking bots, everywhere i go i see social media bots, porn bots, marketing bots, promo bots, ad bots, dating bots, scam bots, fake reviews and more. now with AI advancing we are going to see the same slop everywhere. ai art, ai music, ai text, ai games, ai social media users (that we never know if they are real or not), and you will ask yourselves "what is real". well until that happens, u are gonna need to brace yourselves for "enshitification" (look up the term, its quite new and interesting)


7) censorship, controlled information, disinformation, propaganda, almost everywhere i see there is politics and unnecessary toxicity etc. this phenomenon suddenly started to occur in early 2010s and started exponentially to grow.


8) websites look so unintuitive. the overdecoration of web pages has made it too difficult and confusing to navigate. too much of this "fancy" stuff ended up being quite impractical, unlike the old websites.


9) internet decreases peoples attention span, and makes them seek dopamine even more than it did in the past. porn, games, social media are more mainstream now. also it contributes to many other things such as mental illnesses, jealousy, bitterness etc. because it is easy to fake in social media that you are a rich person who lives in a mansion or somebody travels occasionally. it should also mean that some people who your content could be easily affected by it. be it that rich, hot or smart person, people will always find a way to tell themselves "why the fuck am i not like them? this is unfair!"


10) the internet no longer feels human like it did a few decades ago. in the old times the net was surely a wild place but it felt more alive. search it up yourself if you want to find out more about it. wayback machine was a lot of sites/forums that are no longer active, and go back to early-late 2000s to see how it was. i used to have like hundreds websites bookmarked that were prevalent around 2005-2010, and deicded to check them out one day. only like 4 of them are still up. the rest are either taken down or gone. everything online seemed exciting and nostalgic. flash games were played, people were thriving in myspace, newgrounds and aol and youtube was all about making fun videos, now everywhere I go online feels cold and bland. this is why i only consume content related to education now. at least thats what is still for use currently.



BIGGEST OFFENDERS: Money, views, toxicity

AFTERWORD: the internet was the wild west when growing up but it devolved into being like a dead mall. In the future, i think the internet at least will be abandoned by sane people and only these emotionally damaged pathological narcissists and corporations will remain, endlessly spewing and creating the same self-absorbed bullshit. The Dead Internet Theory is no longer a "theory", but a mere reality. May they all burn.

Excellent topic and good points on the write-up. I say this all the time: the simple experience of going online for some basic information has gotten objectively way worse for the consumer.

Here's a good one I just pointed out (that tracks with your points about monetization.) Growing up, if I wanted to look up a guide or cheats for a game, I would find myself on a cheats-specific website where people made awesome guides and lists for no reason other than it being their passion. Now if I try to look up the same thing, I'll get pages and pages of advertising links where the actual information I want is somewhere way down at the bottom of the page under completely useless fluff and ads.

Then there's the clickbait-y titles, jesus:

• Here's 10 reasons I won't click on your dumbass link (and 10 reasons why I fucking hate you for using this title format)

 

[DefinitelyReady]

On the contrary, I unfortunately think this is another revolutionary transition, and not for the better.
The internet and its insidious force of it will only grow imo. Thanks to greed, competitive self-worth, vanity, marketing, etc.
I was overwhelmed with decision-making, self-esteem, monetary value, negative body image, etc in the 90s dude... I was a kid then, but at your core, you are who you are so I was aleady predisposed with progressing paralyzing anxiety, debilitating depression, and worsening ocd.
Really, what chance did I ever stand? The story of all too many.
The world is a cosmic joke, who the fuck laughs in the end is anyone's guess. I just know I won't be one of them nor will I meet a creator who gets the last laugh.

Odd how we are now forced to use the internet yet it's "use at your own risk."

Great piece though

 

[Gangrel]

Generally agree with your points here; I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Good writeup.

What I've become most sick of is how watered down and lifeless and uniform everything has become. Gone are the days of niche but active communities with their own culture, instead of being centralized to a heap of strange faces with the same five topics every day and increasing censorship. I strongly dislike how the main platforms have taken away any sense of uniqueness and identity; Discord isn't a good replacement.

Yes, sure, communities still exist, but as a shell of their former self. I find myself annoyed by the hivemind and similar sentence construction and slang whenever I want to find other people with my niche hobbies. To top it all off, media literacy is deader than dead and politics and radicalization are infecting what should otherwise be neutral spaces. It's mindnumbing, and I feel like an alien among the supposed misfits. I hate social media. And while Youtube has plenty of decent content creators, you have to dig. I'm also sick of the shady sponsors and ads and algorithms and censorship. stfu and let me brainrot in peace. I have nothing better to do but now I can't even have this.

Thanks, I've let off enough steam about the degeneracy and end of times. I'll go crawl back into my hole and continue to rot while the iPad babies and corporations take over the last bastion of sanity

That is so spot on it kinda hurts.

 

[Angst Filled Fuck Up]

I think it's clear that the internet is in fact becoming real life. If you take the average person now, their interests, thoughts, feelings and moral compass are all largely dictated by what they consume online. People's personalities are being shaped by their feed or for you page. Take this incessant virtue-seeking behavior for example - calling out people for thinking differently or having any sort of prejudice, despite the fact that these things are pretty normal. And I'm not saying these are great things, but they're part of being human. And this is an internet phenomenon.

I realized things were immensely screwed up when I'd interact with others online, and despite ostensibly having a very keen sense of ethics or personal code, I'd notice that as people, they were kind of... shit for lack of a better term.

It's so immensely powerful to be able to shape all these things, and there's so much spillover from online into the real world that to my mind, they're sort of one and the same. I consider myself lucky to have lived a life before the internet. And granted my world was smaller, but my core beliefs were at least molded by in-person interaction.

 

[Seered Doom]

The internet's become a tool; one that people need to understand in order to wield better. Tools can assist you as well as damage you. Most compare it to a knife; I compare it more to pharmaceutical drugs. The right ones can help, but the bad ones can hurt you, sometimes beyond repair. I think people need to be taught not just internet safety, but also just how to speak your mind properly, especially in written form. Considering the decline in education and general illiteracy only increasing by the moment, I fear the worst.

 

[Heavy Rain]

The world felt like a better place before the social media/smartphone era

 

[SpamMusubi]

Internet fell off, it might be an Amish angle.