Idk, the internet has always felt kinda disingenuous to me. It took me 12years of using it before even socializing, putting my socially behind my peers at the time. ( I've had a personal Facebook since I was 5).
I'm very curious what research studies there are backing this idea of personality types curated based on the social media platform being used. Immediately when he talked about this, I knew what he meant. Video games kinda do the same thing. Kinda like how moba games curate hyper aggressive crowds (in my personal experience).
The old internet is kind of a dreamy history book to me. It seems all fascinating and different, but simultaneously arduous and underwhelming when described. (Note: I was not alive pre Y2K). However, Wetfish is the closest thing to "old internet," to me. I think this is mostly bc of what he was saying about everything being algorithmic curated. Wetfish is like the random shit I've seen on the internet in the most exciting and adventurous way. With social media, it's kind of assumed that everything is do is curated, so I curated it to what I like. That, while it waste my time and holds my attention, isn't really enjoyable by the time I get off. I feel bad and it feels like I wasted time, but while I'm on it I'm glued and hungry for the next piece of content. With wetfish, it's more of a lazze fair website with so much more personality and color. Additionally, I feel like this website is just definitely better for my mental health. Particularly my ocd, as I can get fixated on specific content, feeding my roomination and craving for reassurance. Giving just enough to keep going, but not enough to feel satisfied and stop. In contrary to mainstream social media, wetfish is like nothing I've ever seen on the internet. (Perhaps bc I'm a zoomer and haven't lived old internet). Wetfish keeps me entertained and inspires me to create content, but it doesn't pressure me or feed me more moremore. It cuts down on my cravings for silly and random shit on the internet without holding me hostage with exactly what I want (or truly don't want) to see, just to get a reaction out of me to stay longer.
Social media makes me feel disconnected from community, while Wetfish makes me feel like I'm part of one. If the internet is dying, I hope small communities on the web crop up and thrive. The biggest problem I have with these small communities on the internet is finding them. How could anyone ever find cool shit like this without the tech skills to do so, while the internet keeps these kinds of websites impossibly difficult to stumble across?
Title: Re: Dead Internet
Post by: Fishmé on June 06, 2025, 01:38:40 am
The sad part is that with SEO, I just always thought that the internet was designed that way and that that's how that works. Imagine how gen Alpha kids are experiencing internet. If they have no reference prior, AI internet is just how the internet works to them. It's not really a question in that case of, "is the internet dying," if that's how they've always known the internet to be.
Title: Re: Dead Internet
Post by: Fishmé on June 06, 2025, 01:41:55 am
Lol my partner just said, "the internet died when it was monetized." Lol "It use to be a place with individual passion projects, and now everything is centralized so it can have ads on it."
Title: Re: Dead Internet
Post by: rachel on June 07, 2025, 12:08:02 am
Lol my partner just said, "the internet died when it was monetized." Lol "It use to be a place with individual passion projects, and now everything is centralized so it can have ads on it."
Yeah that's pretty accurate
Title: Re: Dead Internet
Post by: rachel on June 07, 2025, 12:09:25 am
The sad part is that with SEO, I just always thought that the internet was designed that way and that that's how that works. Imagine how gen Alpha kids are experiencing internet. If they have no reference prior, AI internet is just how the internet works to them. It's not really a question in that case of, "is the internet dying," if that's how they've always known the internet to be.
Yeah search engines used to show you content from other real humans. The internet connected you with real people and you could see what the average person was thinking and feeling. Now everything is AI slop. Nobody can talk or coordinate anymore as we're all distracted by our own curated experiences
Title: Re: Dead Internet
Post by: spencer on June 07, 2025, 10:42:53 am
I think the problem starts with allowing website owners to do way too much: create major accessibility problems, run code on the user's browser, secretly feed data to advertisers and suggestion algorithms, etc. On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)) webpages are static ~markdown files. If a request is being sent somewhere, you definitely know it's happening. Because it's nearly impossible to monetize, the incentive problem is avoided and people post on Gemini for fun more than anything else.
So I guess the list of solutions is basically A) move off of WWW B) use webrings/trust rings/social credit for websites C) build search engines that only index what is linked from known good sources.
"assume any textbox that could conceivably lead to making money will be flooded with LLM spam"
Also a major component of the behavior that websites/algorithms program people into is ressentiment
Title: Re: Dead Internet
Post by: Fishmé on June 07, 2025, 09:32:44 pm
The sad part is that with SEO, I just always thought that the internet was designed that way and that that's how that works. Imagine how gen Alpha kids are experiencing internet. If they have no reference prior, AI internet is just how the internet works to them. It's not really a question in that case of, "is the internet dying," if that's how they've always known the internet to be.
Yeah search engines used to show you content from other real humans. The internet connected you with real people and you could see what the average person was thinking and feeling. Now everything is AI slop. Nobody can talk or coordinate anymore as we're all distracted by our own curated experiences