Post B3WSyNdiyIXdvug7yC by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
(DIR) More posts by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
(DIR) Post #B3WSyNdiyIXdvug7yC by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:22:41Z
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The internet went stupid? Sure, & water is wet. And your phone is currently vibrating with some half baked opinion from some dude who thinks research = I saw this TikTok. None of this is breaking news. The internet has been a public restroom wall with a keyboard since about 2005, when broadcast went from luxury to default. Before that you had to want it. You had to earn your time online the way you earned anything back then: by waiting, by listening to that demonic dial-up screech.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyOiMyVqrGbrLqi by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:24:23Z
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And most importantly, having a working relationship with troubleshooting & patience. The barrier to entry was competence. Back in the narrowband era, the people online were mostly the kind who could read instructions w/o crying. Not geniuses, not saints, just functional adults with enough literacy to type a sentence & enough curiosity to finish one. The internet was smaller, slower & crucially, less crowded with the human equivalent of 70 open tabs blaring autoplay ads.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyPVe1JGbjQuhea by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:26:22Z
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I remember joining a discussion board called the Internet Infidels. A cage match disguised as a symposium. Everyone was either an intellectual, an expert, or at least convincingly pretending to be one. I was 25, the perfect age to think you're immortal & verbally armed. That place was a training ground: you learned how to argue, how to cite & how to cut someone down with a clean sentence & no wasted motion.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyQMSqvWANFcsz2 by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:28:07Z
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You learned that language is more than communication, closer to a weapon with a safety switch most people never find. And I suspect I was the only deaf person there. Not just there but on a lot of boards. Which meant I learned the internet the way you learn a city by walking it: by pattern, by rhythm, by reading what other people miss. Deafness makes you allergic to fluff.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyQpt5X3NqVONqS by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:29:38Z
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Can't rely on tone to do the heavy lifting, so you start measuring words like calories, notice what matters & what's just empty air in text form. That is where I really learned the only rule that ever mattered online: signal to noise ratio. At first the signal was strong. The noise existed, sure, but it was background static. Then something happened that always happens: the room got popular. Popularity is a solvent, dissolves standards.
(DIR) Post #B3WSybStZMCKoNig2C by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:31:33Z
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Once a forum becomes a thing it moves from a conversation to a food court. More users show up, & not more good ones. Just more users. The distribution doesn't change. The proportion stays the same: a handful of thoughtful folks, a mountain of average joes & a smaller but louder group of professional clowns. So the noise grew faster than the signal. Not cuz people got dumber overnight but cuz the internet stopped being a place you visited & became a place you lived.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyiCqVQWFidGSUS by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:33:16Z
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Broadband sped up more than just downloads - it sped up stupidity. Social media took that & strapped a rocket to it, then handed over controls to advertisers & the most attention-starved people alive. The old discussions had substances (history, philosophy, science, substantial arguments). Then the tide came in: fads, trends, hot takes microwaved to boiling, the endless parade of "just asking questions" from people who never wanted answers.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyptduhubZOLEfY by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:35:11Z
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The conversation got watered down the way everything gets watered down when it's packaged for mass consumption. Just like beer, news, culture itself. And this is the uncomfortable part: the noise to signal ratio did not become a thing after broadband. It just became impossible to ignore. Cuz the number of intellectuals vs the hoi polloi has never changed. Not in 1999, not in 2005, nor now. The ratio is constant.
(DIR) Post #B3WSyy1Nhor6li1WqG by Gotterdammerung@glitch.social
2026-02-20T17:35:57Z
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The difference is scale. When the crowd was smaller the signal could still be heard. Now the crowd is the whole planet, & everyone's got a megaphone, & the megaphones are programmed to reward the loudest, dumbest, most contagious nonsense. So yes the internet went stupid. Not cuz it changed but cuz it succeeded.