Who else feels this

i have depression

The web has been monopolized into a handful of big tech sites that trap everyone inside. The enshittification runs deep.

The chilling thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. There are still plenty of niche communities online. You can find web comics and blogs and hobby forums. But these all require some means of funneling people into them.
Where are the AlbinoBlackSheeps and ICanHazCheeseburgers and YDMNDs of yesteryear? They're on TikTok and YouTube, rather than their own boutique platforms, because there's no really good way to get people from Main Public Forum into your niche community.
One of the silver linings of Lemmy has been a nascent renaissance of this kind of community. Even then its predicated on creative folks contributing and participating and feeding on one another, like the goons over at Something Awful did. I kinda see that sort of thing with podcasts like E1 and Hello From The Magic Tavern. It feels harder to find but not impossible.
- To be fair the method that existed before tiktok youtube and the like was either word of mouth via discussion boards or google itself.
  I think the bigger problem here is actually that everyone is chasing money in some form, which means people aren't creating content for fun. They're chasing mass market. The problem with chasing mass market is that it reduces the quality of niche content that is designed solely and specifically to only appeal to fans of that niche. This content is only created by people doing it for fun, and it achieves the highest level of quality within its respective niche (but not for mass audience).
  If you like a bunch of niche things while finding mass stuff terminally boring, this becomes a problem when all the niche things no longer have creators.
  The other side of this is that people do still want to do it for fun, but don't want to do it for fun on a platform for someone else to profit from. The platforms being for-profit deters people from using or contributing work to them, because why contribute your labour to someone else's profit? Fuck them. (Fandom being an obvious example of this).
  Everyone was happier on the internet when everyone was just kinda doing stuff.
- it was real hit or miss, but it kinda makes me miss stumbleupon

Nothing to do anymore but work, shitpost, and cook crack cocaine in the microwave.

Back to Basics

I attribute Hexbear with keeping me up to date on the hip slang lingo of the modern teen-ager

I was using tiktok for that but stopped on the day i realized i had spent sixteen consecutive hours swiping tiktoks without noticing. Adhd is a horrible burden. There is no punchline.
- I get it
  I'm on the spectrum, so certain things tend to occupy my time a lot too
- My adhd makes tiktok impossible for me to watch because it's too fast and i get frustrated. Silver linings i guess.
- One of the first days I had tiktok I did the same shit. Just a haze of swipe after swipe after swipe until 9+ hours had gone by. I did literally nothing at work that entire day but watch tiktoks. I felt drunk/high afterwards with how mush my brain became
- That endless scroll is just digital crack.
fr fr
- No cap, this heezy is bussin'

i haven't finished reading every last HTML page on marxists.org yet

Hard agree. Shit's just boring now. Even hexbear, while the best place on the internet, still gets boring when the posts aren't there

a front page of threads all with 0-1 comments
Tbh I feel that this site has been more focused on culture war bullshit than before. And like, cutesy terminally online shitposts about power users or peepeepoopoo posting.
I know it's fun, but I do enjoy the more effortposty and analysis based content.
Or maybe I'm way off and reminiscing over something that never really was.
- It is true the majority of the activity here is rage bait content.
  But the site is getting old and the community is not realy growing, this is a larger issue with the western left after Bernie,
  The old sub was different because when you're on reddit(and one of the biggest subs) there is always new people/controversies etc. In contrast even compared to the past here we already had our struggle sessions, we actualy had a fair amount of AOC/Bernie libs or not explicitly ML "socialists" and they all left a long time ago too.
  Anyway the Ukraine war brought a lot of activity but it was downhill from there because Ukraine already lost this war over 6 months ago and now it is just throwing innocent black van teenagers into the meat grinder. I still keep myself informed and I rarely look at maps now because nothing is happening except a few timid Russian moves maybe.
  If it is any consolation I think it is a pretty safe bet things will get more active again during US election years just like it was in 2020.
- Tbh I feel that this site has been more focused on culture war bullshit than before. And like, cutesy terminally online shitposts about power users or peepeepoopoo posting.
  I believe this is because of however the new algorithm works. Before, you would never have posts that just stay on the front page for 2-3 days and just generate more and more comments. There was a lot more “churn”. But now anything that generates comments tends to stay around longer and generate even more comments, which is why culture war bullshit stays up longer.
- effortposty and analysis based content.
  RIP JoeySteel

Hexbear is the last fun place on the internet

I dunno what we are in now but the old web was better. 1.0 sucked. 2.0 was good though. You had all these nich communities bubbling with energy and ideas. Now it is just reddit and psyops and comodification.

https://neocities.org/browse

Hexbears should help expand our creativity on the web, by taking inspiration from NeoCities (successor to GeoCities). Not everything has to be sterile and bland and boring. I'd even like to be able to customize our profile pages more than just things like the banner and profile picture. I mean, just look at how much life can be breathed into a site with so much flexibility. Look at all the colors and non-standard layouts. What the web as lost is personality, which we should be taking back. We're on FOSS sites here in the Fediverse. We can do better, and we shouldn't be too afraid to take risks by deviating from what's accepted as "normal" these days.

We had way better tools for self-expression on older formats like early YouTube, MySpace, etc etc. We don't have to stay the course of sterile, standardized, corporatized web formats.

The original point of using the web was making things beautiful and tinkering around with different designs. It was to tell a story with the layout. That was part of the content itself, not just what we say and do online.

Edit: https://yesterweb.org/ (on NeoCities) has plenty of good and interesting information on this general topic of a worse present web (a manifesto, if you will)

https://mebious.neocities.org/
- https://fauux.neocities.org/ (CW: Epilepsy risk) (edited to the original)
- LETSALLLOVELAINLETSALLLOVELAINLETSALLLOVELAIN
I'm still hanging on to my own website even though I have 0 visitors because I LIKE having something I'm totally in control of to post my stupid writing projects.
- We all need our creative outlets. It's good for our esteem to make stuff we like, that isn't primarily intended to serve someone else.
  I've made a couple sites too that I have saved for time capsule purposes, and I genuinely enjoy viewing them once in a great while.

I thought I just had depression but no, the internet really does suck now

Check Hexbear

Pay bills

Order stuff

Watch a few youtube videos from select channels

Check email

Stream some show I don't even watch off a russian piracy site, I just want the noise.

Check twitter for silly shit

That's the entire internet.

Getting into meteorology because weather underground and staring at the sky are more interesting than the internet.

ripping off the twitter and reddit bandaids, in addition to not using ig or tiktok, means i can spend about 15 minutes online before i've seen all the current content. we probably aren't supposed to spend hour after hour surfing the web.

What else am I supposed to be doing while I avoid work then? Because I'm sure as shit not gonna be doing work
- i read books on the clock, and then when i read about something interesting in the book, i hop on wikipedia and read a bunch more on the topic. yesterday i was reading
  Breakfast of Champions and he mentioned "roller towels", so i spent the better part of a half hour learning all about roller towels. shit like that.

The only cool thing about the internet are niche hobby sites. Everything else is an SEO skinner box hellscape. I'm sort of glad honestly, it's helped to cure me from reddit scrolling and actually go do stuff like work on projects or go ride my bike.

Relevant relevant meme

I hate how gameification and memification has seaped into our everyday language too. Getting new skills is not "respecing", graduation isn't "leveling up", life isn't a videogame. It's like we can't even say coffee - cofefe isn't funny anymore people.
oldmanyellingatcloud.jpg

did that "losing net neutrality" thing everybody was concerned about circa 2010 eventually happen, and that's why everything's worse?

No, California passed a Net Neutrality law, and it's easier for ISPs to be in compliance with it for the whole country than have different practices in every state.
- I’m not sure this is universally true. Technically, phone companies violate net neutrality all the time by providing faster “lanes” for or access to certain streaming services (e.g. getting Paramount Plus or Peacock for “free” with your phone plan).
- well at least there's that

the internet does feel a lot more corporate than it did 10 years ago and especially 20 years ago. That sucks a lot of the fun out of it. Making money off of the internet was barely even a thing 15 years ago.

The peak of the internet was Friendster, Geocities, MySpace, and the chat with a random stranger button on ICQ

It is a conspiracy theory, but the way everything feels like copypasted crap really makes the Dead Internet Theory feel plausible.

Dead Internet Theory
Feels more like a reality tbh. The last human users of the internet are all washed ashore on social media.

It's been this way since like 2008 IMO. Internet is just an addiction that we're not allowed to break or else we get cut off from social and employment opportunities.

Internet is just an addiction that we're not allowed to break or else we get cut off from social and employment opportunities.
Same with having a smart phone too. I miss my old flip phone :(
- Cell phones peaked when they had the full slide out keyboard.

It’s turned to shit over the last 10 yrs, exponentially worse in the last 5. You cannot Google businesses any more such that finding home repair is an endurance trial.

You cannot google most things without hitting a top 24, 11, or 32 list. Product, business, topic, doesn’t matter.

And when you do get a result it’s the same handful of places. Product? Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair. Topic? Spruce, Reddit, Wiki. Business? Yellow Pages, Angi, Yelp and the business will not actually be anywhere near you but a national chain with an 800#.

All the interesting bits and random have been culled by paid ads and Google algorithms.

I think some niche youtube channels are fun, but it certainly is becoming a bore. If I had to guess, it probably is from everything being localized to a handful of websites and those are in turn optimized by an algorithm for profit instead of something enjoyable. The internet has been turned into what is addictive instead of fun.

My personal theory is that we are so detached from joy that many find "reaction videos" a source of amusement because we can't feel excitement ourselves anymore, so people vicariously enjoy something "new" by watching someone else be very excited and happy about it.

I only really partake in interacting with people I don't know on Hexbear, and anything else I leave exclusive to people I know in real life.

Its a fantastic reservoir of knowledge at your fingertips, but a terrible and inhuman way to interact with other humans. Much nuance and body language is not seen, and people essentially develop the same kind of anonymous rage they feel when driving a car except it is in front of a computer screen.

- idk, it sounds like that might be a superpower. "congratulations! you are now immune to parasocial relationships"
  at least it's not ever-growing nose hairs or something
I was watching some South Asian villagers react to the star wars prequels just before reading this comment because I find them so wholesome, I guess, even though who can say how genuine their reactions are. I don’t usually watch reaction videos but, at the time, there was nothing else I would rather be doing.
- Reaction videos are an occasional guilty pleasure of mine. But I avoid channels that are explicitly about "reactions" because as UlyssesT said, they end up all being the same
  reaction to different things.
  I do genuinely enjoy seeing people be excited and happy. But so much of that "industry" is fake. People either go over the top or provide nothing in addition.

no flash games

They were shitty because they were so easy to make so everyone was doing it. But when they were good they were really good. It’s hard to overstate the number of novel game mechanics spawned during that time that are still fueling the mobile game market.
- In a similar vein, auto chess came from DotA2 and now TFT is this massive game. But its origins came from is line tower wars and Pokemon... something (where you upgrade a team and battle other teams) from WC3. There's a massive pool of creativity that's untapped and can't mesh with Main Social Forum because of copyright and other ways of capitalizing the Internet
Oh man, I miss some of those
Nothing like a good round of Madness Combat to make that Comp Sci. class fly by
- I saw my GF's kid playing a somewhat recent Madness Combat game like, 3 weeks ago? Apparently that shit lives on.

Coming to hexbear feels like being able to breathe after holding my breath across the rest of the internet, which is truly a fascist cesspit, with the exception of a dwindling number of twitter accounts.

This is kinda a good description

i literally only have fun here or reading manga/fanfic online. gamification/algo-focused content really sucks the soul out of posting, but tell me something that hasn't been said a million times at this point, i guess

I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time each day following up on deranged Evangelical twitter users. Posted some of the worst takes to the dunk tank and would generally get worked up about things.

But I would never create an account because I’m not giving Twitter my phone number (that thing that easily identifies you to everyone and most people never change, which is why every website wants it).

So when Musk decided to not let people view twitter without an account, that part of my day just dried up. I wouldn’t say I’m happier but I really don’t miss it. Between that and the new algorithm here I’d like to think I’m spending less time online. I probably am, but I also find I do this exact thing a lot more (just open my browser and not knowing where I want to go, but I know I want to go somewhere)

https://nitter.net still exists for now, although if Musk follows through with requiring payment to use X, the whole site might collapse altogether
I’ve been using a fake email to access Twitter for years

I've found myself looking at porn more than I used to just because there's sometimes still some whimsy to be found

digital kessler syndrome

nice.

It really feels like 2024 election season is truly gonna make me log off. I'll be around the age

was when he got grillpilled. Internet got so bad I took up golf this year.

That just means more time to read theory!

There's still lots of cool stuff online, it's just not always new and hot. Doom scrolling is a trap. Return to random keyword searches to find the strange stuff. Even that is harder now with all these shifty walled platforms though. Pinterest is so annoying.

It's also harder because search engines have been rendered almost useless by optimization. It's so hard to find anything now. Youtube only shows you like five results you searched for before they switch to the useless "for you" category, which are just unrelated videos you've seen before.
- I just like the feeling of nostalgia of sitting at a search box like I'm in high school again using the internet for the first time.
  What weird word combinations can I put in this box, and what freaky stuff am I going to find? I guess the new version of this is AI generated content, but that's not usually nearly as interesting to me.
- I miss when i was able to type like half of a thought into google and it'd find exactly what I wanted. That was like 10 years ago
Pinterest is so annoying.
Those motherfuckers have massively and successively bombed search engines years ago with random snippets of sentences and niche stuff and copy-pasted crawled content and said search engines never entirely recovered
I hate them too
Pinterest is horrible. I should find an extension to block it from search results.
You should look into Kagi. It's a search engine where you can block sites like Pinterest entirely. You pay for search, but it's really good. You can promote sites you like, rank things, and it learns. Also has a Stumbleupon type small web feature!

Eh sometimes creative stuff happens on the internet, but it's all so monetized or becomes full of inscrutable drama before it can get cool.

I'm not gonna say the internet used to be more democratic or open, because when I first started using it every website was run by some white male computer dork from Bellevue, Washington who wanted to share his love of pictograms or declarative programming languages.

But there was a wacky amount of variety you could stumble into. No one was trying to make money because there was money to be made. No one was trying to build a huge audience because there wasn't one. Everything was niche and that was cool.

I mean I've basically hoarded a shit ton of older media from 2000 and before. I'll sometimes expose myself to modern media and realize I made the right choice to stay under my rock.

Did you ever use Stmbl (formerly Stumble Upon)? For those who may not know, it was an add-on for Firefox. It added a button to the toolbar and when you pressed it you were taken to a random website someone else in Stmbl suggested. That thing was great, I found so much crazy random stuff. I'm pretty sure it's still around but most of the links are dead.
- It's gone afaik, but ViralWalk is a good replacement

trump no longer tweeting was the spiritual death of the internet

True dat. Even the handful of niche subreddits i go to are pretty miserable, and beyond that is a vast and desolate silence.

Then why can't I log off? 😔

I'm a freak but I love looking at Google streetview pictures. If I have nothing to do at work I can spend hours looking at different places.

I didn't hear a peep from this guy when they banned my nsfw tumblr. But now he's going to complain that the internet is boring and stale.

WRONG. i go to hexy bear for my funs

I felt this constantly since social media

The only other place worth looking at anything is TikTok. If you aren’t on TikTok rn the internet sucks ass

Really?
It's ultra short form content with a super optimised algorithm, where loads of content is just a reskin of other content because the sounds are reusable.
It just feeds you stuff. Doesn't satisfy my hunter gatherer internet instinct.
- Purposely trying to tinker your own algorithm is the hunting part in TikTok
  Also TikTok probably has the most OC rn on all the social media tbh

The only places left to engage with people are so tightly controlled and stuffed out the asshole with ads that it's a completely miserable experience

I guess I'm easily entertained. I feel like there's tons of shit on the internet. my latest thing is learning crafting techniques for making my own house decorations/art. there is an insane wealth of knowledge among everyone from MFAs to like crafty homemakers with cheap ways to stain, manipulate/shape, and transfer images to a variety of materials.

I'm currently eyes peeled for a transparent plastic globe I can tent with modge podge and food coloring to make my own pendant light fixture. but for now I'm painting a weird elephant I found at a shop for cheap, and then I'm gonna black wash it or maybe even dry brush it with metallics to make it look old and valuable.

DIY information is still everywhere but requires you to be interested to find it entertaining or valuable. I love just watching youtube craftsmen, whether something I personally partake in or otherwise. Sometimes its to help improve my various crafts, other times its like watching "How its Made".

I do, but I also wonder how much of it is just getting old and having adult stuff (not the fun adult stuff, the "responsibility" stuff) constantly getting in the way of manic bursts of following rabbit holes that I remember doing way back in the day.

Nah, I've been on the net since USENET and it really is worse than anything before, even the flateups of flash ads and listicles only ruined things for a month or two.
Now even platforms with "fun" things still available, like you tube and twitch are fully enshittified. And Tik Tok has entered its terminal phase with no clear platform to replace it, because online ad revenue has cratered.
We're in the collapse imo and the businesses are stripping out the wiring while they can.
I dunno, I'm an adult with no real responsibilities and I can relate. Then again I am depressed as fuck and might have generalized anxiety disorder and/or PTSD. But I dunno, I'm kind of bored of this shit. The infinite dopamine drip of low-quality "content" just isn't actually fulfilling.

I dunno what we are in now but the old web was better. 1.0 sucked. 2.0 was good though. You had all these nich communities bubbling with energy and ideas. Now it is just reddit and psyops and comodification.

Part of it might just be because that was the dawn of an era. Like when I was a kid the Iternet wasn't a thing. Then it became a hobby, now it is a part of life and capitlaism is working on making it as miserable as possible to use.

1.0 was fun because that was the era of webrings and you could find weird cranks. It's where I learned about anime for the first time.
A website I had once in like 1997 was just a repository of pictures from Star Trek. Not even good pictures, they were like 178x123 compressed jpegs of Patrick Stewart and people would email me relentlessly to add more pictures.
- See, objectively that sucked. However that is cool as hell.
  Like, time cube guy would never survive in today's meme world. John Titor's AMA would flop.
- USENET and bulletin boards were better than 2.0 and they can fight me.

I’ve been trying to set up servers and make homebrew little websites for my kids to try and capture some of that magic. No luck so far.

That sounds cool. Tell us more!
- So far I’ve hosted an instance of neocities, a copy of twine, written a basic docs clone that I was planning on turning into a modern collaborative fan fiction site, and a handful of half written things including a TikTok clone.

SAME. IT SUCKS. Like I refresh pages hoping something fun somehow pops up but like....

Luckily I have the answer, all you should do is [content only available with hexbear premium, for only 8.79 a month]

it's go outside and make friends (I pirated his link)
- i wish it was that easy

There are fun places but I avoid them because they are made to be addicting and I am very susceptible

Hexbear and FFXIV are the meat of my internet usage. I have a huge media stockpile of stuff I've never watched/played/listened/read so it's not a huge deal yet.

I feel better after cutting off vidya games a couple years ago (caused too much stress/frustration) and deleting my reddit account a few months ago. I have an escapist personality. Those things — and others — are poor coping mechanisms that only make me feel worse when various social debts build up while I was “out”.

My lesson is, take the opportunity to literally touch grass or maybe join a club. We’re probably better off with minimal internet usage.

I was in this spot once about 10 years ago, and have since fallen into the opposite extreme.
Because I joined various clubs and groups, I ended up working my ass off and having barely any free time, all because I didn't know when to say "no". And its only gotten more extreme as time went on.
And I feel like it isn't so much games as it is Reddit, or similar online communities that, when overdosed on, cause a downwards spiral. I've noticed my mood improving significantly the more I avoided news and forums.
- Depends what kind of games probably lately i only play single player or couch coop games with my girlfriend. Any of these always online/competitive games are so toxic I can see them causing lots of stress and frustration.
- The worst part about established clubs and groups is the commitment for sure
  Better to try and form/join one made of friends so that you can just come and go whenever you want

The internet may be shit but at least I still have my three extremely specific niche forums that I hang out at and a tumblr art circle dedicated to making pictures of video game characters gay kissing with tongue

I do this thing where I block social media apps after 40ish minutes of use. And sometimes I do a social media "cleanse" where I just delete all the apps off my phone and...it bricks the phone and my computer. I don't play games on my apple devices, so other than youtubing constantly, or learning something, there's not a lot to do on the web. Maybe you could say Kanopy, or watching netflix but that's not like...doing things. You are just passively consuming.

It has been a steep slide downwards for 15 years at least, but Covid and Trump pumped a lot of life into Twitter and Facebook. Now that both are over, everyone is going back outside and my Facebook cycling group has an old man complaining about rainbow flags

You won't believe me, but I've found something sort of like that old Internet atmosphere in VRchat of all places.

I'm guessing it's because it's a "frontier" in communication that capital hasn't figured out how to monetize
Part of the old internet was the feeling of both being anonymous and having no idea what to expect out of people. Also creativity without an expectation of fame or money. So I know what you mean. The old internet thrived on stuff like ICQ and IRC. VRChat feels like a modern extension of that.
Could also be that VRChat is basically second life

Good faith is dead.

Outrage is fuel.

Hell is full.

I'm surprised all of you feel this way, sure you're not all just growing up?

TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, illegal anime streams, illegal tv show streams, illegal movie streams, illegal PDFs of books, any type of music you can think of, looking at any type of art you can think of, reading people's blogs, listening to podcasts, watching sports, etc. etc.

I recommend listening to the Joe Rogan Experience if anybody is getting bored of the internet. And try DMT while watching it

I recommend listening to the Joe Rogan Experience
- Have you ever tried DMT?

Guy's never heard of Youtube

There's an infinite amount of channels doing videos on every imaginable hyperspecific niche interest now, you will never run out

Just sit down and let the algorithm smooth your brain.

What's this? A guy comparing how the design and anatomy of the various species in the Oddworld franchise has changed across games in 25+ years? Well I know how I'm spending my next half hour

Abe's face has more wrinkles in New N' Tasty than in Abe's Oddysee??? The Slig masks were changed between Exoddus and Munch's Oddysee????

search for something on youtube
five results vagely related to what you were searching for
youtube: okay we're done with that. now here are videos you've seen eighty times before that have nothing to do with what you searched for
- It's baffling how bad the sesrch results have become- I have to assume it's intentional and that Google has determined that them being completely unusable drives up engagement
The early internet was just this but with articles instead of videos. I wasted a lot of my teen years reading X-entertainment’s takes on third-tier He-man villains
- I'm sometimes struck by how just a decade ago my bookmarks were full of sites with written content like Cracked.com, now it's all Youtube videos (and podcasts)

eh, there's still some fun to be had
though most of it is on discord and telegram now
and places like this exist

I think it's a bit of column A and also perhaps the highly engaging yet-sterile entertainment of 'the internet' doesn't have the same hit after ~25 years? spitballing

Be that as it may im too hopelessly addicted to screens to do anything about it

Nah im in a call with the homies watching ceotaku. Having a pretty good time