this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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It didn't. It's more alive than ever.
It's just you visiting wrong places, not paying attention to the correct ratio of negative and positive content.
I think xda is magical that it is still around and a resource to find out stuff about a specific phone. Then other forums like avsforum that's kept popping up to help me when I had TV model specific questions throughout the years. Overclockers.net for specific motherboard discussions that have continued to be a resource over the years.
Deal sites like isthereanydeal, camelcamelcamel, and pcpartpicker continues be so useful as it has been in the past. Then there's pcgamingwiki I use all the time. Oh Wikipedia of course. Even steam forums has been useful with guides there for games, and even sometimes people asking about troubleshooting for console versions because the devs are there.
I think there's a lot of wonderful places. If you look at the most popular billion dollar run social media services with massive amount of users then yeah it start to seem bleak. But, there's still places that were cool and are still cool because they exist with a more sustainable model as opposed to infinite growth.
Also forgot to add that something like archive sites exists is incredible too, so sites that will be lost will have more of a chance to not have content lost forever and be a glimpse into the past.
It's a subjective matter. I'm not you, I can't say what brings you joy and motivates you positively.
Say, Mastodon, Reddit, Youtube any other social site. Pursuing the topic of politics alone is going to push your mental balance towards negativity, pesimism, cynicism and possibly depression. Skip it, limit it, and if you can't resign from it, then balance it out with pics of funny things, jokes, possibly a community dedicated to some interesting project or hobby.
The fact that such an experience managed to frustrate you is a strong indicator that you could use a bit more organized approach to the online content.
"Disengage from the world, and chase escapism, and things will be better" says someone too privileged or too blind to know any better.
"The Internet is the real world for me, one I can't choose to escape from, or at least limit to some extent."
You don't realize just how privileged YOU are, to hold such an conviction...
this back and forth is ironically a good example of what the original thread seemed to be about.
I think this is true to an extent. The internet is still filled with magical things, but no one can deny that a huge portion is just ad-filled garbage at this point. Most everything "mainstream" is designed to manipulate us and suck us dry. I still say the internet is both the greatest and worst invention of all time.
Adblocker do great job at filtering out the majority of ads. Resign from social sites (or their parts) that drown in toxicity (anything dealing with "news" is usually the 1st place to avoid) and it's going to improve your online experience.
I'd argue that there are better contenders, but this is a discussion for entirely different community. 😜
Oh believe me, I've been running UBlock Origin for a long time. When I use a computer without it, I'm just amazed at the amount of ads nowadays
Oh of course, little bit of hyperbole in my statement, but I definitely believe the internet has been a gift and a curse for society.
Yeah, I was born in the early 80s and grew up watching the internet grow, so I know how to navigate for the best experience for me. But I don't think it can be denied that the vast majority of people don't and fall right into the toxicity most of the time. And the effect it's had on sociaty is hard to ignore.
So that'd be the gist of it, and the suggestion to everyone who perceives the Internet as a souless place: "learn how to use the tool that is the Internet correctly, so it won't misfire on you". I don't think there's any flaw in this approach.
I agree there's no flaw in the approach but like anything most people won't learn. People can't be bothered by and large.
Since I'm even older than you, allow me...
"KIDS THESE DAYS..." 😆
The web as a whole is more alive than ever, but many of those old school places aren't. They still exist, but most of the userbase doesn't.
I have some hobbies, which used to have a thriving online communities on forums and blogs. For the average internet user, that wanted to read up about such hobbies, they would gravitate towards those forums or blogs. This has fundamentally changed with the popularity of sites such as reddit, facebook, youtube & discord. The conversations that were had on the forums moved to the above platforms and as such a lot of the deeper nuances of conversation were lost.
A specific hobby of mine had a dozen active forums to read. Now all but one are mostly dead. The only one in my native language is also gone. My country's native communities moved to facebook, which is now only used for announcements and some simple questions being asked again and again.
There has been a complete reversal of internet discourse on many topics. Instead it's (again) back to having discussions with your friend group and building up connections locally.
It's not a simple thing, but the solution to is to do yourself what you wish existed. I'm shifting away from social media to my own site that I can personalize as I want. It feels nice.
At the same time, one of MY hobbies is blooming. There are thousands of sites dedicated to it, new productes emerge on daily basis, there are tools, communities, the interaction I couldn't dream about back in 80s or 90s. I can enjoy it with people from all the world, I can add to it and see other fans commenting on it. It grows, it becomes better with each new year.
I guess it begs for the question, whether the subjective choice of a hobby is enough to judge by as vast medium as the Internet...
I suppose it cannot. I guess my views are largely based on my own experiences.
I would still like to bring up another online activity, which is gaming. That has surely seen a huge change in culture and how the most popular games are played. 15 years ago one could show up on a public server, and after a while get to know the regulars. That served as a good stepping stone to creating online relationships.
With the advent of matchmaking, such interaction is no longer the norm. As such one has to go through the effort of finding communities, that they might want to be a part of.
Back in the days games were meant to serve for long. These days, new titles appear all the time and often disappear before they can mature enough. It limits the possibility to build a healthy, long-term fanbase/society and/or maintain equaly lengthy relationships.
But that's video-gaming problem, that only seeps into the medium that is the Internet, much like the state of the modern politics, or moviemaking. The Internet is influenced by it, but is not responsible for it.
I think you are confusing soulless with dead. It's more alive than ever yes but it has become monotonous. The original feeling of individuality of websites has been reduced to the monotonity you see when you visit different websites. For example, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or even their federated alternatives like Mastodon and Lemmy (I haven't used Pixelfed) are designed in a similar way to that users feel familiar and don't get turned off from using the website. This is just one example I can think of now.
I'm not. By "alive" I mean that from where I sit, the Internet is a vast, colorful tapestry. There's plenty of individuality, diversity and originality in it. It's just that it's not given to you on a silver platter.
Imagine being a person living in a skyscraper, rarely leaving it because all the things you require are situated on one of lower floors. What isn't there, you order to be brought to you, conveniently. So you complain that the world became souless, monotone, repetitive, not like in the old days, when you were living in suburbs and had to travel on your own to find the service needed.
I'm not living in such a skyscraper.
Maybe I need to expand the pool of sites I frequent. Any recommendations?
1st of all, if you're into politics and can't resign from it, replace the sites you know, with those that deliver news in as neutral tone as possible, with as little toxic inclusions as possible. AXIOS is one.
2ndly, use Feed Reader like INOREADER and consider sbscribing to one of its non-free plans to get the tools that filter out news by keywords, phrases or similar variables.
3rdly, prioritize what you actually need, instead of stuff that might be "somewhat" relevant to your interests. For example, if you have some good, reliable source of news/content on video games, then skip the rest - they tend to cover same games in similar time span, so you won't miss much when you reduce your feed from 10 to a single site.
I don't follow politics but yes I do use a RSS reader. Also you suggested US centric stuff and I don't live there.
But yeah I get your point