[kennyadam]

I don’t think it can be fixed. When the internet was used only by people who were geeky enough to find chatting on IRC exciting and set up websites and blogs simply for the fun of it, there was a thrill in doing all this stuff for the first time and you had to organise IRL meet-ups just to find like-minded people. Once everything became about clicks and ad impressions and content was created to make money, not just because you wanted to share something you thought was cool.

Obviously, this is still possible and many people do maintain blogs and websites for the love of it, the overwhelming amount of internet users are happy using a handful of giant social networks.

Heck, internet dating used to be looked down on as something so pathetic only complete losers did it. The world and the internet has evolved and as much as I miss the wild west days where it felt like anything was possible, the giant corps have taken over and people are too scared to say the word suicide on YouTube lest they be demonetised, so everyone trembles and mutters unalived and everything gets a little bit worse.

I’m rambling, sorry,

[mingus88]

I’m old enough to remember when blogs were bad news for the culture at the time, which was forums, IRC and static sites (you know, with under construction banners)

It seems the prevailing pattern is that removing barriers to entry means things get worse. In 2025 there are no barriers left and everyone is online all the time. It’s the end stage of the internet we loved.

In fact the barriers have been destroyed so utterly that we are awash in AI generated content now. The dead internet theory is real. Why are we still here?