[eddieroger]

I miss the quaintness of being on the old Internet. Maybe it's just the Endless September of it all, but the content seemed more cared for when it wasn't trivial to put out. I do think it's great that barriers for publishing are lower than what they were, but sometimes I sure do wonder if they're too easy, of people are too connected. Maybe that's just what getting old feels like?

[b112]

I miss the quaintness of being on the old Internet.

I think that back then, you'd often host your own site. Or at least, write most of it in HTML.

It was mostly your content, and maybe if on geocities or something, a few ads around the edges.

Now, it's 280 chars surrounded by a whole page of, what is realistically, ads or 'not you' content.

Content is broken up, piecemeal, not one.

While you can setup a singular resource, it's more rare for people to do.

Many old pages were just a text menu on the left "birds", "my dog", "the month I spent travelling", and then deep content.

Now you get mostly reactionary fluff "Can you believe the horrible thing I read!!!"

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Now you get mostly reactionary fluff "Can you believe the horrible thing I read!!!"

Could be worth checking the mirror there.

[b112]

Reactionary fluff != citing reactionary fluff.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Describing the internet in reactionary fluff terms != citing reactionary fluff.

[b112]

But that's what it is now.

Look at the news. The headlines. Entirely designed to create a reaction, to drive reaction, often entirely misrepresenting the contents of the article itself.

And news content has changed dramatically. It's all keyed to drive 'reactionary fluff' responses, so that it spreads. On Twitter. On Facebook. Via Google search.

And this is the biggest part of Twitter, Facebook. It drives clicks. It drives engagement. And by far?

If you look at sheer numbers, of what people do on the internet? It's engaging in this.

Even this site, is siloed into that model ... discussion most often about an external page. Now, this site attempts to reduce reactionary fluff, but it quite often leaks in, both through the story contents, and with people not even reading the article, just the headline.

If you take away porn, and all the SEO spam pages, and all the clone pages which use algos to clone content and just pimp ads, what does the average person use the internet for?

"Reactionary fluff" is apt.