My long winded opinion on the modern internet climate

[cyndaquirl]

this is really long so tl;dr: i hate social media even tho im hopelessly addicted to it and i wish we could go back to the old internet

So, I can never seem to come to any sort of conclusion on this subject. In my own mind I bounce back and forth ad nauseum and I don't fully know where I stand. That being said, I'm going to present some of the thoughts/opinions in my head and my reasoning behind them. This is probably only going to be relevant to me, but I think writing it down will help me formalize my opinion and hopefully allow me to be able to take some kind of action in the future. This whole post is gonna sound like such a boomer take but it's how I feel so sorrynotsorry.

Firstly, I feel like the internet is so much more toxic and depressing than it used to be. The problem is, I can't tell if that's an accurate observation or if I'm just confusing my own nostalgia for an actual tonal/cultural shift. I can't tell if I miss the "old internet" or if I just miss being a kid when everything was simpler and easier. I'd like to believe it is entirely nostalgia, but the more I think about it the more I think that the modern internet is significantly less enjoyable than it used to be.

My main problem with the internet/social media is the overwhelming nature of it all. I think a lot of this comes from the rise of smartphones, and how we are constantly followed by our internet presence; social media is always at our fingertips. It's so easy to just mindlessly scroll through our app of choice when our phones are constantly with us, and we hardly have anything "better" to do. But I find myself feeling weighed down by this. I'll spend hours laying in bed staring at my phone, and I won't even realize that time has been passing. When I finally put my phone down, I feel gross; it's a hard feeling to describe, but it's mostly just a loathing feeling that I've just wasted so much time doing absolutely nothing. So why do I still do it all the time? Why am I so addicted to it? Every few weeks, when my internal disgust rises past its boiling point, I delete all of the social media apps from my phone. Then, for a few days I "cleanse" myself, but I invariably end up downloading the apps again. I do it because for some reason I crave the small amount of dopamine I get from scrolling through those apps even though it's mindless and never makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel so weak, and I hate it.

I wish I could find a better balance. I really enjoy Twitter and Instagram because I genuinely like keeping up with my friends' jokes and posts. But there's so much other content on those apps that I can't help but get sucked into, and then the cycle of time-wasting and self-loathing continues. I wish there was a way I could turn those features off so I could eliminate the temptation, but that's exactly the opposite of what the apps want. They are built to keep you scrolling via the use of complex algorithms that endlessly feed you content that keeps you entertained, as well as ads that try to coax you to buy various products. I think what makes me feel so disgusted is that even though I know those tactics are actively in play, I'm still too weak of mind to resist them.

The reality of my social media addiction always leads me to a place of fond recollection of my earlier time spent browsing the internet. Because I was a child/young teen for a lot of this time, I find it difficult to form an accurate picture of this time period that is not blurred by nostalgia. It's hard to tell if the experience I'm recalling is accurate, or if I'm just "missing the good old days" and ignoring a lot of the reality. Either way, I think there are some important differences between the two time frames that should be noted, for example:

• I was exposed to the internet only during my free time

I did not check twitter in class, I did not respond to snaps at work. The only time I was on the internet was when I was at home, in my room, using my laptop. There was virtually no overlap between my internet use and the rest of my life.

• I was connected to significantly fewer people

This is partly because I actually knew fewer people, but still. Social networking wasn't the focus of my "internet time" the way it is now. I did use Facebook, but the majority of my time was spent on other sites that didn't necessarily focus on people I knew in real life. One site that I really enjoyed (that no longer exists, unfortunately) was a small website that let you "raise" little pixel-art dragons. There was a pretty well-established community forum on the site, and I remember interacting with a fair amount of other users through fanart threads etc. I also used deviantArt a lot (ik cringe) where I had a lot of acquaintances who I interacted with on a daily basis. I didn't know any of their real names, and they didn't know mine. Nowadays I feel like that kind of interaction is a lot rarer, and I miss it.

• The internet seemed less "corporate"

I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but it seems like the only sites/services that most people use nowadays are the ones associated with massive corporations (Facebook (Instagram), Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, etc.). Before, there were a lot more, smaller sites that harbored their own little communities. It was more common for people to create their own websites for personal projects, and for those projects to develop communities around them. I don't really know how to describe it, but it almost felt like you had a bit more individuality/"free will" when you were using the internet. It didn't feel like one big site/service that everyone was connected to, which is sort of how it feels now (to me, at least).

• Sites didn't farm your data nearly as badly as they do now (and there weren't so many ads)

This is because there was a lot less data to farm. Sites didn't ask for my phone number or my full name. I didn't have a phone in my pocket that constantly tracked my location, either. While I'm sure there was still a significant amount of data collection going on at that time, it seemed like it was a lot easier to avoid. I personally don't really care that Zuckerberg has all my data now, but it's a thing some people find pretty unsettling so I thought I'd bring it up. Also, I hate the feeling that someone is constantly trying to sell me something. Ads are so much more prevalent now than they used to be.

On top of all that, I just didn't get the feeling of being "weighed down" by my internet usage as I do now. I don't know if anyone else feels the same way about modern social media, but I imagine some of you can relate at least a little bit to what I'm feeling.

This post is way too fucking long at this point so let me finish by saying this:
I can't bring back the old internet, so I need to find a way to balance my internet consumption more. I don't really know how to do this without deleting accounts or deleting apps because it's evident that I lack the willpower to do it on my own. At the same time, I don't really want to isolate myself even more from my friends, because I'm already pretty fucking bad at keeping in touch. I feel like if I were to delete my accounts I would just fall off the radar, which I would rather not do. I don't really know what I'm going to do at this point (probably nothing yet) but I do think posting this will be a way to sort of hold myself accountable for it.

Anyway thanks if you read this whole thing, though I don't blame you if you didn't lol. lmk if you relate

[Adoochi]

I can definitely feel that. I dunno if I'd say the internet has really gotten worse over the years (from my perspective at least), but that might be because I don't tend to use social media all that much, unless Discord counts. To me, the internet has largely stayed the same in terms of quality (ie: some high highs and low lows), it's just that there's a much larger quantity of content so the good stuff is harder to find. I usually spend time on Youtube with a good adblock installed, and I find that helps a lot with enjoying the site. Something that I do for Twitter that might help is to only visit the pages of friends using bookmarks to avoid the home page of the site entirely, since that way you avoid the problem of having an infinite amount of content getting poured at you.

I guess tl;dr: managing the content you consume goes a long way to helping improve your time on the internet

maybe this came off as a ramble since I only got up recently

[totallynotlydia]

To be honest, I feel like what you get out of the Internet depends on where you are. Various corners of it can end up yielding incredibly positive experiences, while other corners will leave you with an incomprehensible amount of dread.

During my adolescent years, I spent a lot of time on a relatively small forum. I was the village idiot; it made me feel like shit about myself. I was an annoying, naive 13 year old with little social awareness, and I was always the butt of every joke among the much older userbase. Naturally, I was made fun of for this; It really fucked with my self-image. In a kinda fucked-up-and-twisted way though, it also helped me learn internet-etiquette (and even social skills/knowledge) I likely wouldn't have obtained otherwise. Eventually though, by the time I was a freshman in High School, the forum had gotten to the point where the same 20-something year old assholes were flaming about the most irrelevant and dumbest shit imaginable; asking the owner to ban me was a great call on my end. Sometimes I go back there, and while I've noticed some users are definitely kinder to people who are my age when I joined, those same shitlords are still there.

I'm going to sound like a boomer for saying this, but social media interactions can't be a replacement for actual relationships just alone due to how limiting the context in which you're communicating is. On top of that, all the drama that happens on Twitter; its just petty non-sense for the most part. In the grand-scheme of things, almost all of it is worthless dribble over some white 20 year-old minecraft youtuber, and though I try not to get annoyed by it, I still do for some reason.

I guess it's important to remember that the internet can foster as much good as it can evil; it's become an invaluable resource for many, we live in a time where we can access almost the entire sum of human knowledge at our fingertips, that's incredible. No matter how legally dubious they may be too, we also have an extensive archive of so much old and almost forgotten media; if it wasn't for rom-sharing sites, emulation, and romhacking, I probably wouldn't have gotten into programming.

I probably spend a lot of time on social media for the same reason others do; dopamine. There's nothing wrong with admitting you want to shake that habit, social media is inherently designed to be addictive, having a phone with notifications about everything happening on there doesn't help either.

TL;DR: how good the internet is depends on where you are, it just so happens that major social media is corporate bullshit, and some smaller communities aren't any better.

[cyndaquirl]

^^ These are both really good points. After thinking about it some more, and talking about it with Alex a bit, I've realized my blame was a bit misguided. I shouldn't be angry at the "modern internet," because a lot of what I used to enjoy is probably still there, and ultimately I just have to be better at choosing what I interact with. I think my problem is I have a genuine social media addiction. Like, a bad one.

I blame a lot of it on my social climate in middle school/high school; I was just doing what all of my friends were doing. Instagram and Snapchat were so important in my social circles that it didn't feel like an addiction because everyone was doing the same thing. Now that I'm out of that environment I find myself scrolling just for the sake of scrolling (even though it makes me feel gross) and I can't fight the urge. It takes up so much of my time but it's so engrained in my routine that I find it impossible to stop. Even when I delete the apps I redownload them to satisfy this weird craving. It's hard to explain because it sounds silly but it legitimately feels like I'm addicted to it as if it were a drug or something. And it makes me feel so gross because even though I hate the behaviour (at the worst stages I legit had like 8-10hrs of screentime every day, but I'm still at like 4 or 5 now) I keep going back to the apps and doing it anyway. I honestly barely have hobbies because I just stare at my phone instead. I would really like to step away from it. I have made improvements in the last few months but I still want to do better.

Anyway, I'm really glad I made this post because I find laying everything in my head out onto a page allows me to dissect it so much better. And hearing other people's input really helps as well.

[Oldmanyellsatcloud]

I'm in a group on Facebook called "We pretend it's 2007-2012 internet". No ads, no huge Nazi presence, just absolutely terrible memes, 13-year-olds saying the N word and black guys letting it slide because they think it's cute and harmless fun, the way God intended the internet to be. I know peace

[cyndaquirl]

I'm in a group on Facebook called "We pretend it's 2007-2012 internet". No ads, no huge Nazi presence, just absolutely terrible memes, 13-year-olds saying the N word and black guys letting it slide because they think it's cute and harmless fun, the way God intended the internet to be. I know peace

im in that group too loolll i live for it