[sph]

This is good advice in general, but lately the Internet had grown so large it is healthier to expect no one will ever see your creation. Many of us grew up when the Internet was a pond, today it is an immeasurably large ocean; there is a good chance your audience won’t ever find you, and your chances get shorter every day.

Incidentally I also believe one would have more chance to market their own creation in the real, physical world than the Internet. I believe we’ll eventually see leaflets and indie books being distributed to passersby for free like 100 years ago.

In any case, create for yourself. Create without ever expecting an audience. If this doesn’t sound fun, you probably just like the publicity rather than the act of creation itself.

[Retric]

The internet has increased in the number of users and the amount of time they spend online not just the number of creators.

The odds 5+ people see your content is probably the same as it ever was, but ‘success’ has been redefined in terms of ever larger follower counts.

[sph]

In the age of bots, LLMs and people that have about .5s for you to impress them with a flashy image as they scroll by endlessly, I doubt you get the same attention you would’ve in the 90s Internet.

More eyeballs, sure, but worth 1/1000th of a visitor coming straight from a webring for your own niche, or that found you in the right section on Yahoo and AltaVista.

[rightbyte]

Ye. "Everyone" somehow ended up visiting The Best Page in the Universe somehow. The internet was way smaller and the reach in the internet population way higher.

[imachine1980_]

I personally believe that this doesn't hold, more and more competition outside of webpage, means that we check less and less pages each year, I feel ai could be a savior by destroying the whole internet by spaming SEO websited, and make small pages the only way to find something

[solaire_oa]

Not to make you more downtrodden, but it's not like AI would have any trouble at all producing a small page.

If you mean that there needs to be signals in place that an article was thought about and physically typed up by human fingers, well, that's a different problem I suppose.

In any case, the system prompt can factor in any existing signals that SEO might want to adjust for ("You are a chill software engineer dude, who understands the subtlety of colloquia in the field. You speak in modern slang and are very energetic about you field.").

I share your downtrodden sentiment, for what that's worth. The only idea I have for making genuine human digitized hallmarks is to start "writing" in heiroglyphs and pictograms. I'd love to hear more realistic ideas for signaling humanity, however.

[kevindamm]

you'll still get CDs handed to you if you walk around downtown NYC

[adolph]

If it worked for AOL, why wouldn't someone continue today? (other than a lack of optical reading devicen in most compute). Maybe AOL would be better off today if they kept mailing and just added NFC and QR-code.

In 2011, AOL CEO Steve Case took to Quora to reveal just how successful all those free trials were. “At that time I believe the average subscriber life was about 25 months and revenue was about $350,” Case wrote. “So we spent about $35 to acquire subscribers.” Because that $35 had a gigantic return, AOL was happy to keep pumping money into free CDs.

Marketing manager Reggie Fairchild chimed in on the Quora thread to claim that in 1998, AOL used the world’s entire CD production capacity for several weeks.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds

[stavros]

"Why wouldn't someone continue today (other than for the reason why they wouldn't continue today)?"

[brewdad]

I would guess most people over age 30 have at least one optical drive that can play a CD in their home today. Under 30, it gets rarer but any blu-ray player and many gaming consoles will still play that CD just fine.

[skyyler]

Often as part of an intimidation scam where the person that hands you the CD demands payment.

But yes, that does happen.

[al_borland]

The last time someone tried to sell me their album on the street I had to stop and think for a second... I didn't want it in the first place, but I could honestly tell him that I no longer had a way to play the CD. Ironically, years later, I now have a couple ways I could play it.

[abhaynayar]

hahah.. just reminded me of mr. robot..