[HN Gopher] The internet is already over (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
The internet is already over (2022)
Author : thinkingemote
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-07-07 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (samkriss.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (samkriss.substack.com)
| shoubidouwah wrote:
| If Sam Kriss spent two years to write any of his blog posts into
| a book, he'd be Nietzsche. Still makes for a sparkling bit of
| thought, easily reread.
| mrkramer wrote:
| What makes you think if Nietzsche lived today, he wouldn't be a
| blogger?
| shoubidouwah wrote:
| temporal commutativity of thought in the media vector space?
| samastur wrote:
| No, he wouldn't. The whole thing is all blitz and little
| substance of someone who seems to be over-read and under-
| thought. It's best described in his own words: a handful of
| sugar instead of a meal.
| shoubidouwah wrote:
| It also was how N. saw his thoughts at times. An evidence,
| disgraced for being explained. And stylistic flamboyance
| around a theme is hardly foreign to philosophers, this one in
| particular (any chapter of Zarathustra can be read as a blog
| post in the same way).
|
| I still advocate that style - and being drunk with style -
| can lead the writer to singularly original and
| contemporaneous ideas. Language is a dynamic object, filled
| with the spirit of the age, and very high sensitivity to it
| within a philosophical context can act as a catalyst.
| samastur wrote:
| As someone with sweet-tooth I don't mind the style, but I
| do think it masks how empty his arguments are and how
| unsubstantiated. Explanations that aren't really.
|
| I guess our main disagreement is if he has original ideas.
| I've only read a couple of things he wrote so I'm certainly
| not in position to have the definitive opinion, but neither
| of his articles impressed me.
| shoubidouwah wrote:
| I think you're right on the crux, with a qualification:
| every argument has already been made in one form or
| another - the underlying universal concepts are not that
| complex. the talent of a writer is to present it in a
| manner congruent with the geography/times. Isn't vacuity
| when speaking in pure style, but in a style that itself
| acts as a mirror to the zeitgeist, a valuable tool for
| thinkers? A frame, a kind of meta-thought?
| luzojeda wrote:
| Delight us with your arguments against what the author states
| in his posts instead of just ad-homineing.
| samastur wrote:
| I'm not going to deconstruct the whole thing to appease a
| stranger, but let's just take the first point of the
| argument: That it's easier to imagine the end of the world
| than the end of the internet.
|
| Setting aside what does "end of the world" actually mean,
| who's making this statement?
|
| Almost nobody is, since practically every instance is
| someone referencing somebody else with little commitment.
| Essentially this is arguing against a person instead of
| some wide-spread view.
|
| Even if it was wide spread, does it even matter?
|
| It obviously can't be true since end of the world in any
| reasonable understanding contains end of the internet. So
| what exactly is this point and argument against it trying
| to show? I have no idea since believing or not in something
| dying generally matters little to it being (or not) in such
| process.
|
| Let's say it is important. What are the arguments that it
| is incorrect beyond being obviously so?
|
| Well, some unrelated people before you were incorrect about
| unrelated shape of future so you, but not the author,
| probably are too. Then he follows this by putting words in
| mouth of the people he disagrees with, before he swerves
| into his own experiencing of internet consumption and
| resulting numbness. I guess based on his expectations of
| near future there's an expectation of universality of his
| experience, but even if it was universal (and huge amounts
| of emotions exhibited online create at least some doubt
| that it is), why would it contribute to internet's death?
| It obviously doesn't stop him from scrolling, or writing
| and otherwise engaging on internet. Again, I have no idea.
|
| So all of it does not really add up to much, but I admit it
| is entertainingly written which is more than most of us
| manage.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| As contrasted to what? Chapter 4 of _On Good and Evil_?
|
| <http://www.thenietzschechannel.com/works-pub/bge/bge4.htm>
|
| (It's ... nothing but a compilation of epigrams. Fediverse
| Toots, if you will.)
| im3w1l wrote:
| Long but enjoyable read. I was surprised it didn't mention AI.
| dillydogg wrote:
| I guess it was published in 2022. It hadn't become as
| ubiquitous yet. I would look forward to a follow up that
| includes some commentary on AI accelerating these issues
| EGreg wrote:
| Here's the AI version:
| https://youtu.be/UShsgCOzER4?si=BNezapA1D5pz4dnW
|
| HN: "well, this was bound to happen anyway without AI, it's
| just fearmongering, dont pay any attention to the man behind
| the curtain" hehe
| rda2 wrote:
| Sam Kriss has at least two posts that came later about AI:
|
| https://samkriss.substack.com/p/a-users-guide-to-the-
| zairja-...
|
| https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-cacophony
|
| The second one is a bit closer to touching on the same
| themes, but both are a little more allegorical than TFA.
| MaxGripe wrote:
| I've been using the Internet since the days of Netscape Navigator
| and 14.4 kbit/s dial-up modems. Maybe it's just that I'm getting
| older, but I really miss the old Internet. Ironically, it felt
| less "anonymous" back then, and it was easier to be part of a
| community -- users knew each other. Now, everyone is here, and
| the quality of content has significantly declined.
| reddalo wrote:
| > everyone is here
|
| I think this is the answer. Once upon a time we were way fewer
| people, and many interests were shared among those people
| (because we pretty much were all "geeks"). We've always had
| trolls, spammers, etc. but it still felt like we were part of a
| big community.
|
| Now everybody is here, and that feeling is no more. It's like
| moving from a small village or town (where everybody knows each
| other) to a huge city. It doesn't feel like "belonging"
| anymore.
| peterleiser wrote:
| And nobody makes Monty Python or The Hitchhiker's Guide to
| the Galaxy references anymore. I had a boss 15 years ago who
| had watched all things Star Trek, just like me; Knew all the
| things. But at one point he mentioned he wasn't really a fan,
| it was just "required reading, part of the literature". This
| is an interesting one. There used to be certain things that
| all nerds knew, and could talk about, use as analogies and
| metaphors. Something to talk about just like sales people
| (stereotypically, used to) talk about sports. I realized
| early in my career that's why some people in business follow
| sports, so they didn't get cut out of conversations. I always
| had nothing to say when that topic came up. But it's tricky
| because geeks and nerds shouldn't be gatekeepers about what
| the entertainment is, or the literature, because that cuts
| out a lot of people who should feel included. But at the same
| time most people think it's generally nice to have some
| common things to reference, talk about, and normalize on. I
| think social media, politics, streaming services, etc. have
| totally blown away these shared frameworks in society, and
| it's kind of a bummer, even though it's great to have lots of
| choices. People used to watch the same TV shows and talk
| about it the next day. I guess sports is basically the last
| thing that's shared. Thanks for attending my Ted Talk...
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Back in the day of _The Internet of 1994_ , HHGTTG was only
| 15 years old.
|
| But today, HHGTTG is very nearly 45 years old.
|
| For how many decades should references to novel fiction
| persist, do you suppose?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| The TV version was broadcast just over 42 (!) years ago
| saulpw wrote:
| It's hard to believe that a 15-year-old book was a
| defining cultural touchstone. What do we have from 2009
| that has the _reach_ of HHGTTG in 1994? Twilight? Hunger
| Games?
| peterleiser wrote:
| 42 years, and then never mention it again.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Monty Python, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Star
| Trek are becoming old. These are references from the 70s.
| I'd say anime took over as the stereotypical geek culture
| thing. Japanese otaku and western geeks got along. Also
| fantasy became popular over science fiction, the video game
| landscape has changed dramatically, and of course, younger
| geeks grew up with the internet more than with TV. Also,
| there are series like Stranger Things that are definitely
| geeky.
|
| Things are moving on, we are just getting old.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I'd like to offer an alternative: people who still write on
| personal blogs and like to interact with each other.
|
| https://ooh.directory is constantly growing if you want to look
| for things to read.
|
| https://kagi.com/smallweb Is a fun alternative way to discover
| new content.
|
| I started a series almost a year ago to help people discover
| interesting humans and their blogs: https://peopleandblogs.com/
|
| Bearblog has a discovery section:
| https://bearblog.dev/discover/
|
| The spirit of the old web is still alive and thriving in places
| that are now no longer mainstream. It takes some effort to find
| them but great sites are still out there.
| interroboink wrote:
| I'll add some more "small web" links, for those interested.
| Thanks for yours!
|
| * https://search.marginalia.nu/
|
| * https://wiby.me/surprise/
|
| * https://neustadt.fr/essays/the-small-web/
|
| * https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3hn0a7/what_sma
| l...
|
| EDIT: and because this one just brings me joy, that it
| exists, with such excruciating detail (:
|
| * https://www.trilobites.info/
| sveng wrote:
| One more:
|
| https://www.leanternet.com/
|
| (Scroll all the way down; HN is mentioned first).
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If I'm gonna be honest, I never liked blogs. Never liked
| reading them and never liked the idea of writing one.
|
| Forums were the cornerstone of the old internet and more or
| less completely extinct today.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| As others have noted before, [0][1] the ideals of the 'small
| web' movement are essentially just a subset of the much older
| IndieWeb movement, which is more deserving of the credit.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269071
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29790502
| 13of40 wrote:
| Go back a couple of years and the BBS scene was that times ten.
| Imagine if everyone in this thread lived within 20 minutes
| drive of each other, knew each other's real names, and might
| even recognize each other if they passed on the street. Anyone
| else feeling too much CRT today? Want to go throw a frisbee
| around?
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Powerful contender for favourite thing I've read in the last 30
| days.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Really good read, through and through on the hook.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I'm going to go practice my banjo now.
| adra wrote:
| I dunno, maybe I didn't look deep enough, but skimming through,
| it feels like more a symptom of infinite growth. I think we're
| def. starting to plateau in many things that have had basically
| no growth for a long time. Anything that's gotten the attention
| like crypto and AI feel like "let's dump unbridled enthusiasm
| into this" while waiting for some real epiphany to arrive. The
| internet was imho the last real step forward in mankind (and a
| bunch of life saving drugs/vaccinations), though mass cellphone
| usage certainly helped to democratize it.
| mrkramer wrote:
| My take on declining online social engagement is; a lot of people
| like to consume online content passively e.g. just reading
| Facebook posts or watching a YouTube video without actually
| liking or commenting. Another thing is; increasing number of
| people came to realize that privacy does matter and they refuse
| to participate in online dramas that can damage their reputation
| or harm their mental health.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| It isn't novelty, it is dependency. Because we are dependent on a
| connection we stop using it for novel reasons.
|
| The internet age is over is correct. The age of being connected
| has started.
|
| More and more people connected to the internet but not actually
| using it the way we saw it in the 90s and 2000s. Mid-2010s we
| started to see the paradigm take place.
| api wrote:
| This person is just, like many others, mistaking the death of
| public social media and the open web for the death of being
| online. All the interesting activity has retreated to Discord,
| Slack, Telegram, Mastodon, Signal, private and niche boards, game
| chats, etc.
|
| This stuff is all taking place in private rooms and small silos.
| If you aren't in them, you don't see it. Reddit still has a bit
| of a pulse but is probably on the endangered list. TikTok is
| probably the last big social and has an increasingly negative
| reputation, meaning it'll probably be "out" pretty soon.
|
| The public Internet is probably dying, a victim of spam and over-
| commoditization.
| breck wrote:
| I agree with a lot of this, but think the future of the Internet
| will be u-shaped:
|
| - People will use it drastically less. I got rid of my smart
| phone ~2 years ago and it's been a huge life improvement. Still
| on the computer a lot, but when I leave the room I'm in the real
| world again.
|
| - When they do use it it will be drastically higher quality. I'm
| working on building the World Wide Scroll as a successor to the
| web (https://wws.scroll.pub/), an idea I first had 12 years ago
| (https://breckyunits.com/spacenet.html), but took a while to
| figure out all the infra.
| moffkalast wrote:
| There are always stories of people who "quit" normal tech
| things, buying obscure eink phones and other pretentious
| minimalist crap, claiming it does this or that to their sleep
| or attention span. Always devs or at least tech-adjecent
| people. A lone outlier is what you are. Meanwhile most of the
| population remains completely (happily?) addicted to scrolling
| <social app of the year> every free waking moment of every day
| with no sign of stopping.
|
| Not really surprising when the entire tech industry is hellbent
| on keeping everyone there and making sure the engagement
| numbers continue to go up for the next quarterly report. Until
| that changes there won't be any major move away from it.
| Systemic problems require systemic solutions.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| 100$ for a folder? Fellas, I'll give you a folder for 50$ over
| here!
| interroboink wrote:
| This article feels like a window into the mind of someone who
| drank too deeply of being perpetually online, and now feels the
| pendulum swing the other way.
|
| Like the verbal equivalent of that one time I drank far too much
| Gin and my stomach finally said "no" all over the bathroom floor
| (missed the toilet -- oops).
|
| I'm glad to never have gone down that particular path. Stuck with
| my flip phone for ages, etc.
|
| But for people who did, just know that there's room for
| moderation. There is plenty of space between "all day online" and
| "the internet is over."
|
| I like this quote from "Mutant Message Down Under":
| My suggestion is that you taste the message, savor what is right
| for you, and spit out the rest; after all, that is the law
| of the universe.
|
| You don't have to swallow the internet whole (or let it swallow
| you).
| 650 wrote:
| >for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also
| into you. - Nietzsche
|
| Because these apps are designed to be targeted and specific
| with some of the brightest minds in the world working on them,
| it's easy to overdose and become addicted.
|
| t. recovering addict
| interroboink wrote:
| Agreed with you there (:
|
| I'm not sure where the healing process begins, on the larger
| scale. Parents with their children, I suppose? I grew up
| without TV; probably that twisted my mind a bit, so I recoil
| from that stuff somewhat automatically. It's something I wish
| upon others.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32907473 2002 69
| Comments
| HPsquared wrote:
| I was about to make a snarky comment about 2002, but looking
| back that really was the early days. A lot of the early stuff
| (with a few exceptions) basically extinct now.
| alx_the_new_guy wrote:
| Again, returning to the "it's not the internet itself, but the
| content on it" thing.
|
| Facebook and microblogs use the same infra and can be accessed
| via the same means (web browser, etc).
|
| At least from anecdotal experience, the really good stuff has
| been getting easier to find through IRL-ish means, like asking a
| colleague for the invite link.
|
| I haven't really seen behind the invite veil much, since I'm
| about as far as it gets from someone cool you'd want in your
| group chat, but from what I've seen, "good" things are happening
| and thoughts are thought. It's just happening in private.
|
| There were comments or an article somewhere about someone being
| sad about "very deep technical discussions being held on discord
| servers and that knowledge being ultimately lost". I don't think
| it's that bad of a thing though since that knowledge was never
| intended for the public and being ultimately lost and forgotten
| is what the people writing said messages are expecting of it.
| Certainly, as a person, I care more about myself having less of a
| digital papertrail than someone in the indefinite future not
| being able to solve their nieche non-essential problem.
|
| I could elaborate more on the "onlyfans has replaced sex" and the
| such, which are, IMO, while somewhat true, are conclusions to
| which the author arrived to from a wrong place, thus continuing
| to think in that direcion would get them further from the truth,
| not closer to it.
|
| In the end, just as human brain is a sort of general purpose
| multimodal input-output machine, the internet can be used for all
| sorts of purposes. The good ones will stay, the bad ones will
| fall out of fashion, without getting a solid cultutal foothold.
| The test of time works as well as ever.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| By far, the majority of my time "online" these days is spent in
| a Discord server for enthusiasts that are also interested in my
| hobby. Due to the server's small size and narrow niche,
| moderation is straightforward and we rarely have any issues
| with trolling. We don't allow political discussion, which
| mostly allows members of diverse backgrounds to interact
| safely, since triggering discussions don't come up very often.
|
| It's not even a particularly novel idea, right? Chatrooms have
| been a thing just about since packet switching was a thing,
| this one is just a polished implementation of that idea.
| Trouble is, the one metric that matters to Google (inter-
| linking, engagement, etc) can't happen when the content can't
| be crawled in the first place. So our pleasant, intellectually
| simulating content stays hidden where the rest of the internet
| never notices it.
| tonymet wrote:
| The internet is over , if you want it .
|
| All the doomerism is gone if you avoid it.
|
| You can take back your life if you just go for it
| zw123456 wrote:
| I am old enough to remember when people said TV was a passing
| fad. And the radio. And the printing press. And the telegraph.
| And the written word. I mean come on you lazy shlubs, memorize
| Beowulf like we had to back in my day. OK, I am not actually that
| old. My point is, that with every technology that has been
| invented to improve, or expand the ability of humans to
| communicate, there have been the detractors and naysayers
| predicting the inevitable doom of said technology. I am still
| waiting for that whole writing things down instead of memorizing
| them thing to finally go out of style.
| tialaramex wrote:
| And bad for kids. Go back and you can read about how dreadful
| it is that some people are letting their _children_ read
| _novels_. What sort of person would do that?
|
| But the article isn't really about that, to the extent it's
| really about anything except the author's need to feel very,
| very smart. It's a vague gesture at how "over" it they are, for
| any value of "it". Best to pat them on the head condescendingly
| and then move on.
| zw123456 wrote:
| The person who wrote the article used the internet for all
| the sub-references. Had it not been for the internet, this
| person most likely would not have known all the things they
| mentioned. I don't know if they are listening, but it would
| be an interesting question.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I'm not sure if the examples you bring make the point you're
| trying to make. For most practical intents and purposes,
| printed press is but a small shadow of its former self. Pretty
| much all outlets focus on the digital and many have stopped
| printing altogether. Radio is the same, as a fraction of the
| population, the numbers are hitting record lows. Most people
| listen to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, podcasts, etc, not
| radio. I doubt I need to even mention classical TV. Point
| being, all of these technologies exist and people do consume
| them, yes, but compared to their former glory they're all
| practically dead.
| zw123456 wrote:
| And yet they persist. And continue to evolve. And TV, now
| streaming over the internet. The way humans communicate
| evolves. And so will the internet, and social media and all
| the rest to come.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| What we've had so far was not "the internet" it was "the
| internet, gatekept by socioeconomic and educational criteria".
| The number of internet users appears to be flattening off at
| around 75% of the world population. So far people have been happy
| to jump right into that mass of 6 billion people. But I think
| that this plateauing will allow sub-ecosystems to flourish. HN is
| one of them.
| parl_match wrote:
| > It's already trite to notice that all our films are franchises
| now, all our bestselling novelists have the same mass-produced
| non-style, and all our pop music sounds like a tribute act.
|
| This whole article reads as "i expected things to stay the same
| and they are"
|
| There are still tons of great films being made, and new concepts
| spinning up - just in non-traditional places or ways - netflix,
| apple tv, etc. So they're not in theaters? Miniseries are the new
| movies. Your streaming box is the new theater.
|
| Bestselling novelists have the same mass-produced non-style? Stop
| reading best-sellers, and focus on more curated and genre lists,
| such as Goodreads. Again, you expected the new york times
| bestseller list to be the arbiter of "good" and that is no longer
| true.
|
| And "all our pop music sounds like a tribute act"? Lmao. If you
| listen to the same top 40 pop crap, sure! There's tons of great
| pop acts that are way smaller - but again, if all you do is look
| at "most played" and listen to the radio, you're going to hear
| the same monoculture bullcrap
|
| Broaden your horizons or slide beneath the static.
| bsder wrote:
| > There are still tons of great films being made, and new
| concepts spinning up - just in non-traditional places or ways
|
| Are there? People parrot this over and over but rarely provide
| any reliable evidence.
|
| Even if there is interesting stuff being done, if it has no
| impact past three people then it is _by definition_ not
| "great".
|
| By most measures I can think of, there are _NOT_ lots of
| "great" things being made.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There's even new top 40 pop music that's doing well. It's hard
| to say that Chappell Roan is particularly derivative of
| anything, as an example, and before that you had Billie Eilish
| breaking in, the popularization of niche genres like Jersey
| club music, etc.
|
| A lot of the pop music kvetching is usually code for "new music
| that _I_ like and find familiar is hard to find."
| PmTKg5d3AoKVnj0 wrote:
| The internet is now just Real Life, with all of the same rules,
| regulations, and ideologies.
| c22 wrote:
| Sounds about like how I felt during my early thirties as well.
| But whether it's AOL and MSN, Orkut and Myspace, or Facebook and
| Tiktok, platforms come and go yet the internet persists.
| swayvil wrote:
| We love stories. Any experience, the first reaction is to ask
| "what does it mean?". This seems to be a long-lasting constant.
|
| That is a preference for the empty simulation over the nutritious
| reality right there. The internet, the infinite stream of empty
| simulations, will not lose its appeal I think.
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