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- Hacker News
- Greed ruins everything.It’s all about greed and cost keep going up & up. Hell you can even binge watch anymore unless it’s something old. I don’t even subscribe to Netflix anymore. It’s all garbage, nothing but garbage.by radar1310
- This happened when AOL came online and destroyed early BBS and Usenet culture too.by newsomix9xl
- I've been on the "internet" since before there was one, back in 1984-6 when bang paths were email addresses and DNS hadn't been invented yet. I was on one of the earliest BBSs (pre-FIDO) in Melbourne run by Peter Jetson and "Bear's Bull" running on a CDC-6000 at RMIT.
It's been an "eternal September" since Prodigy & Compuserve and then AOL joined the net, Usenet started degrading, people had more then 4-line sigs without a "-- " at the start of the sig, people top-quoted messages etc.
So the internet has been dying all that time. Lived through the dotcom boom/crash, growth/death of Yahoo Groups/Geocities/stumbleupon/slashdot/fark/etc.
I'm not sure whether AI/LLMs are really killing it more than the advent of social media and the endless slop that is time descending blogs.
I'm not sure whether the internet is just becoming yet another broadcast media, where small voices are drowned out by media conglomerates and the endless suck of advertising, or whether it really is "dying".
Either way, it will evolve, but whether it will evolve "well" is a very open question.
by rswail - I guess it might be a good example of evolution in action. Evolution benefits those that can adapt the best, not those with the most abilities.by ColdStream
- I with them on that. The internet is basically just infrastructure for email and some media like a podcast, otherwise the only reason I am here is because... well, I'm forced to be on a computer most of the week and not all of it is 'productive'. But after work, weekends, holidays I do not touch it.by ColdStream
- Stop absorbing everything. Limit yourself.by bblb
- Do you mean that they should [stop (absorbing everything)] and therefore absorb only _some_ things, or that they should [(stop absorbing) everything] and therefore absorb nothing?by agnishom
- There is a point beyond which the probability of finding meaningful content is too low to justify the work required to find it. Beyond this point, limiting yourself means never trying.
The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
by overtone1000 - I think what made the internet in the 90s and early 2000s more enjoyable is that it was way smaller than now and (mostly) free of bots, and trying to find that in social media and mainstream sites is counterproductive, since they are just the opposite.
In comparison, I've found small net places such as Mastodon or smolnets much more enjoyable even though the population is much smaller (which is nice since they also don't generate more information than I have time for). As a rule of thumb: The less interesting a place is for companies, the more pleasant it probably is.
by rbtms - > I hope that we’ll collectively decide that it’s rude to pass off LLM writing as your own, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I think it could happen.
When everyone first started tagging each other's face and location, I immediately hated it. It felt like an incredible violation of privacy, and I couldn't understand why anyone would do it. Now, finally, the zeitgeist is starting to catch up, and it's common to hear even "normies" worry about who is snooping on their data.
This process took about 20 years. I suspect LLM etiquette will take roughly the same.
by maplethorpe - What I have seen is that the Internet doesn’t attract interesting people anymore and such, the time they spend creating “content” is drastically reduced compared to, let’s say 20-25 years ago. And by “content” I don’t mean tiktok or youtube shorts, but code, blogs, demos or contributing to larger projects. The dynamic is different now, people are working disconnected and from time to time they might release ready projects that previously were seeing their development cycle happening online. Otherwise, there are many projects that don’t make it on the Internet anymore.by asmnzxklopqw
- Refusing to show the process is more of a generational culture difference than an indicator of how much effort actually went into the work.
The younger audience is the majority. They want to see effortless cool. They want their hero to be out there "aura farming".
Despite what they may say in words, they don't really want authenticity because it's "cringe". Everything that you consider uplifting, inspirational, community-focused, introspective, etc. comes off as pretentious and corny. They have a more cynical take on life and prefer fake drama and subtle quirkiness. They grew up watching "authentic" people get canceled left and right. You might as well just be a shameless actor then.
They want main characters. They want the whole song and dance. They are far from the first generation to be this way and it goes in cycles. Look at old Hollywood.
by sublinear - I get the point you are trying to make but I will push back on one little part. I think lots of people are putting in more time and effort than ever BUT they have become victims of 'Audience capture'. They are out to do what others want rather than what they want, and that is the death bell of a creative person.
It is no big secret, but it is said quietly, that the most popular creators online are generally fairly anxious people as they are always afraid that they could bomb their entire house of cards in a single day.
by ColdStream - A bottle of cool, hydrating water has been spilt onto dry dirt and soaked in, becoming mud, where the dirt and the water are not able to be separated back into their original forms. The water is the internet and the dirt is the real world. It was inevitable that the real world would absorb the internet into it.
I remember drinking the cool water and being greatly refreshed by it, but what I think is easy to overlook is what, in the modern real world, has been improved by its absorption of the internet into the combined normality. The things that have been improved we take for granted. Music, Movie, and TV streaming, instant messaging, working from home, online shopping, podcasts, webcams, smartphones. Not all of it is positive (but that's a tool usage choice conversation, which is a bit different).
The nostalgia, I think, is the "what could have been", with this new thing, and now we're living in it, it's a bit disappointing, but only in a way that anything that's 'normalised' is a bit disappointing. We're stupid, demanding, impossible to please humans; our imagined utopia will never be manifest.
I'm sitting here watching a webcam of a flock of pigeons drinking from a waterhole in the Namibian desert. That's cool! But I've still got to work, and work is still hard thinking and forcing myself out of bed in the morning and ignoring distractions of things I'd rather be doing - but I can have this extra screen showing me pigeons on the other side of the world.
We can still have this conversation.
by BLKNSLVR - > Learning about the world through 500-character snippets, or 30-second videos, is not a serious way to engage with knowledge. It triggers our worst instincts in terms of tribalism and groupthink and makes us intellectually lazy.
I can't agree more with this.
by King-Aaron - Brevity is an art form, one that most do not have. Just because something is short doesn't mean it is bad so long as it is sculpted just right. 99.9999% of stuff nowadays is not sculpted it is just simplified for quick reactions.by ColdStream
- I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab. Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?
Anyway, the real internet is and always has been/will be smaller forums brought together by a common interest. Think back to the MMORPG private server communities of the 00's/10's. Kind of hacker news fits into that bucket today but even still a lot of the brainrotted brigading and average takes from reddit I'm seeing more often here (not calling out this post in particular; referring to the comment sections mostly).
by akersten - A ⊆ X ∧ p ∈ X ⇏ p ∈ Aby smokel
- There are two internets: the one on your phone (ruined by outrage and mobile slop) and the one on your computer (ruined by marketing slop). They’re both dangerous and disappointing for different reasons - but mostly because independent voices got drowned out.
- Agreed. The ‘real internet’ is still out there, in the hinterland. You just need to make your own map to find it. And it’s not going to stick its head above the parapet and Dark Forest itself.
- "Too good of a product" is an odd way to put it when you could apply the same logic to slot machines.by rockskon
- > I'm simultaneously hearing that the internet is more addicting than cigarettes to the point where multiple states are finding success levying gigantic fines on companies for having too good of a product, and also that the internet is boring and drab
They are not mutually exclusive. Actually, the opposite is true: most addicts don't enjoy what they are addicted to anymore. They just have to consume it.
by raincole - Cigarettes is a good analogy. It is both addictive but broadly doesn't really help out the individual consuming them.by ColdStream
- > more addicting than cigarettes [...] also boring and drab
That's not actually a contradiction.
With addictions, it's extremely common for someone to do $THING not because of any (remotely durable) sense of happiness, but simply "to feel normal", as not-doing it feels empty or wrong or painful or intrusive.
If people are feeling hopelessly stuck repeating behaviors they don't actually enjoy, that's more like evidence for addiction rather than against it.
by Terr_ - > Are we on two different internets? Is the author simply immune from the hypnosis of social media?
Yes; and either yes or the author is separating walled social network gardens from "the internet". The "real internet", as you say, is not the addictive algorithmic feeds.
I believe that the "real internet" you're talking about is larger than it's ever been, but the signal-to-noise ratio of the whole internet has been killed by even larger amounts of noise. So it's difficult to find these smaller forums and get involved with them.
by CGamesPlay - This is how I feel completely, having also grown up online all the way from BBSs onwards. I literally don't even have websites to visit any more. I get on my computer, scan hacker news for a bit, check twitter for a few minutes, scan some world news site, and thats it.
I still spend a lot of time programming (and thus a lot of time on the computer) but other than that, absolutely nothing appeals. Its a wasteland in my mind.
by sibeliuss - Yes, I’m running out of websites that I value enough to spend my time. I have a large list for weekly and monthly reviews. I walk thru them periodically but the lists are rapidly diminishing in sizeby zippyman55
- In 90s I had a paper notebook with all websites that existed. After internet grew in size, I had a bookmarks’ file with thousands of them.
I had also a box with audio tapes.
Audio tapes are still functional. Links in bookmarks are 95 pct dead.
Internet is vanity. It was meant to be a communication tool. Now it’s some species of messy yellow pages.
On my grave, I think it won’t be written that I was a really good member of xyz bbforum :)
I would rather be remembered as a valuable member of local discussion club…
It maybe a reason why frequent internet users who remember the past, feel tired.
Appreciation on the internet is mostly fictional (not really real) and we feel it unconsciously…
by sixtyj - I just make AI videos nowadays and post on Reddit, rarely even browse HN.by sexy_seedbox
- I have said it for a while, Hacker news is the last place that still feels like the old internet, but even then I'm not a huge fan of it. Some days I open it up to see just 30 stories about LLM's, something I have little to no interest in.
While sites like Neocities are trying to keep the old web ideals alive, even there it can be difficult to find much of value.
by ColdStream