Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore
Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore
The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be over.
How deliciously ironic that this is paywalled.
https://12ft.io/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-the-internet-isnt-fun-anymore
When they put up a 10 foot wall, use a 12 foot ladder
And when they add 3 feet of plastic, use archive.ph
Mystery solved.
Also parents taking over something fun.
I'm a parent that grew up on the internet. Remember that many of us who grew up on ICQ and Geocities to Napster and the somethingawful forums and beyond are now approaching 40.
Today's parents and grandparents are 1993's internet kids. Some of us, anyway.
I miss the days of NewGrounds, Miniclip, and Kongregate.
I miss Flash games on browsers. Limewire. YouTube before influencers.
Thankfully we can still enjoy the flash games online at least. http://www.flashgamearchive.com/
I think that’s when the Internet started going to shit. When people started using it for shameless self-promotion. I miss MySpace, and GeoCities.
I miss the SomethingAwful forums from 2004
Ah, fuck I miss the goons, too. I still log in every couple of years or so. It's sort of like walking down a street you used to live on. It's all still familiar, but nothing is really the same.
I have a CD somewhere that I burned a few miniclip games onto. Also the combo number 5, which did NOT age well. (And was kinda unacceptable when it was new)
Because it’s run by companies and not people like before. Because the original internet community grew and they prefer being in family and outside.
"Why the internet isn't fun anymore" - proceeds to talk about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Completely fails to mention any fediverse sites, or any of the millions of other sites out there.
If you're the author, the internet isn't fun anymore because you don't use it. You visit the corporate websites only. You either never learned how to use the internet, or you're not interested in actually trying.
Its like the person who never leaves their neighborhood and complains that life is boring.
Agreed but isn't it the experience most people on the Internet currently have?
AIM/MSN/Yahoo chatrooms. GeoCities. Neopets. Limewire, KaZaa, listening to Art Bell on the radio next to you while you search for the latest alien news and read ancient texts. Webrings. Message boards. NSA hadn't partnered with Microsoft for the first version of PRISM.
It was more decentralized, but even in the centralized parts there weren't yet entire industries dedicated to stealing every last bit of dopamine from you to sell to the highest bidder.
It was an amazing time. RIP 1985-2010
Even worse when you realize it's the job of these journalists to tell people there's a whole world out there. The general public may not know about this, but if you're a journalist making these claims, they should know better
The internet I grew up with and loved couldn't survive having the whole population on it. It became about making money off the userbase, political manipulation, and addictive distractions. It's success killed it.
It was such a fun and fanciful place.
The unattainable is unknown at Zombo com!
I miss the solar death ray.
Ask the people that had you put a paywall on the article, writers and editors of New Yorker!
Six corporations ruin everything.
The internet is tons of fun
Spreed 42.zip, renamed in boobs.zip, in Facebook and you'll see how funny the internet can be.
Don't pretty much all modern .zip managers know to not open zip bombs anymore?
No, clicking on a zipfile make work a zip manager. But most AV identify the zip file as badware if it scan it. How many user scan downloaded files with an AV up to date, before open or use it? Or an atached file in the mail? Well, 42.zip is pretty known and you can download it from GitHub, but there are still zip bombs made and in use, even to eliminate AV protections, because it put the AV in a infinite loop in the intent to scan it, if it is a ZOD which isn't in the definition base of the AV, blocking and overloading the system, because of this they are still dangerous.