[HN Gopher] Alive internet theory
___________________________________________________________________
Alive internet theory
Author : manbitesdog
Score : 147 points
Date : 2025-11-09 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alivetheory.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (alivetheory.net)
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| The constant re-styling of the page was annoying enough to make
| me close the tab and not come back.
| brulard wrote:
| I did the same and did not even think about it until i read
| this!
| stavros wrote:
| I managed to brave the cruel and punishing color changes long
| enough to click the button and was rewarded with an interesting
| session of nostalgia and exploration.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| i didn't even realise there was a button link to click. I
| thought the landing page was it. Let me go back..
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh yeah, the button is below the fold on mobile! Bad
| design, there.
| faidit wrote:
| I thought it was cool, the UIs of the past evoke lost memories
| of past eras. But sadly, the images glitched out and stopped
| displaying after I manually changed the date. Probably due to
| my internet connection haha
| al_borland wrote:
| I thought it was cool, but the changing text sizing/wrapping
| made it difficult to read. I kept having to re-find my spot.
| But I read slow and was too lazy to just click on the era I
| wanted to set it back while I kept reading. Keeping the text
| layout consistent with the changing theme would have been a
| nice touch, and maybe a good future enhancement.
| yakattak wrote:
| I liked the idea but it made it impossible to read the
| explanation of the experience.
| arcfour wrote:
| I loved it. Don't be a wet blanket.
| BonitaPersona wrote:
| I'm open to and interested in the thesis and discourse this
| website supposedly offers, but the medium forcefully expels me.
|
| Perhaps there could be a static 1.0 version we can read or listen
| to?
|
| edit: Okay, I get it now. It's an automatic aggregator! Only the
| style auto-change is egregious then, but the actual webapp is
| great!
|
| another edit, sorry: The call-to-action button should be at the
| top, not the bottom. On mobile you have to scroll to see it and
| it can be missed.
| gryfft wrote:
| > alive internet theory is a seance with this living internet.
| Resurrecting tens of millions of digital artifacts from the
| Internet Archive, visitors are immersed in a relentless barrage
| of human expression as they travel through the life of the web as
| we created it--every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a
| real person on the web.
|
| I like this a lot. It sort of turns internet history into a lava
| lamp.
|
| For those struggling with the styling on the splash page, the
| slider at the top lets you pick an era and stick with it.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I like the sentiment but how will you know as time goes on that
| the things were uploaded or created by real humans? The early
| things yes, but as I got closer to now I was less sure, which
| kind of disproves the alive internet theory.
|
| https://archive.org/details/TikTok-7272243823504313642
| ySteeK wrote:
| That's exactly my kind of humor: the page "aliveitheorie" remains
| black because I'm not allowing a Java script.
| van_lizard wrote:
| Read my post history here (the fist post).
| bryceneal wrote:
| I agree that "the internet will always be filled with real
| people: looking for each other". The question is will they be
| able to successfully find each other, and how can they be sure
| they have?
| koolala wrote:
| by using the internet or by using a website? if we included
| digital telephone would the answer be getting their phone
| number? i wish hosting a website was as easy as hosting a phone
| call.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Hosting a website might be easier now. Services like netlify
| make it pretty simple
| quantummagic wrote:
| Presumably, the value in finding each other will be the key to
| determining you have found someone real. If you literally can't
| tell the difference, then what does it matter? But many of us
| believe that there are important differences, that do matter,
| and that the dead internet can never truly provide.
| koolala wrote:
| it depends if you want real connection. imagine if this reply
| was a video call. _wave emoji_
| al_borland wrote:
| If the connection is real, one would think the people would
| eventually want to meet. We've all seen the stories of people
| being catfished and how devastating it is for some people.
| How long is an acceptable amount of time for someone to
| engage in an online relationship (of any kind, not
| necessarily romantic), before finding out it's been a chatbot
| the whole time?
|
| I just met someone, I think last year, who I've known via
| forums and chat for over 20 years now. I was looking for a
| place to watch the eclipse and totality was going right
| through his backyard. Imagine if I drove down there it was
| just some random address that an AI gave me after 20 years of
| talking. I'd lose my mind.
|
| Some people's only friends are people they know online,
| through games or forums. Imagine finding out your only friend
| in the world isn't even real. That's very dark.
|
| This seems like something the bots should have to disclose
| upfront. I hate not knowing if I'm talking to a real person
| or not. Imagine spending hours in an online debate with what
| is ultimately a chatbot... what a waste. If I want to talk to
| a chatbot, I'd go to a chatbot. There is a reason we are here
| in the comments instead of just pasting the link into ChatGPT
| and going back and forth with it.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| This ties in well with the Dark Forest theory of the Internet:
| that the public Internet becomes dead while humans flee to
| hidden, invite-only, private spaces.
|
| https://charlottedune.substack.com/p/the-dark-forest-theory-...
| batch12 wrote:
| Its a cool idea, just beware. Saw some dead kids and some NSFW
| among the otherwise interesting content.
| csomar wrote:
| This must be labeled NSFW.
| talkingtab wrote:
| Somehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about
| how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture.
|
| 1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to
| live vs dead internet.
|
| 2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no
| javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong)
|
| The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't
| critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you
| have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the
| problem share it.
|
| The "follower" internet has somehow instilled the notion that
| making a comment is the same as "doing something". It is not.
|
| Someone has done something here. If you want to comment, try to
| develop the thought, not critique. Help build something.
| kace91 wrote:
| Good critique to the comments!
| plastic-enjoyer wrote:
| > The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't
| critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you
| have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the
| problem share it.
|
| Yes, and no. I think a problem is critique in the form of
| action. There are movements such as the indie web (e.g.
| Neocities, Nekoweb, Agoraroad) that long for the old web in
| their nostalgia and form a counter-movement to the current
| state of the web. The websites and communities that emerge from
| this are more or less an imitation of the websites of the late
| 90s and early 2000s. My problem with this is that the indie web
| primarily defines itself by simply being the opposite of the
| web 2.0. It exists primarily as a counterculture, in which
| "counter" is more important part than "culture". This movement
| is cynical in that a better future for the internet and the web
| no longer seems possible, and the only way out is to escape
| into a nostalgically romanticized past. For me, this is more of
| a confirmation of the Dead Internet Theory than of the Alive
| Internet Theory.
| ktpsns wrote:
| I think Indiweb is more a cultural way of building tech and
| not only an opposition to current trends. As a dev I see
| indiweb in similar veins as "selfhosted vs cloud" or
| "Microservices vs Monolith"
| rdiddly wrote:
| And yet, what you are calling "the past" exists now in the
| present. It may be that some of those sites resemble "the
| past" simply because they value certain things, and those
| values just happen to have been prevalent then, and aren't
| now. Maybe to you those values look like the past because
| that's the last time we saw them. Or in other words, maybe
| they resemble the past coincidentally rather than
| intentionally. And maybe those values ARE the way forward.
| The future isn't always different from the past; in fact it
| seems history is usually cyclical. And it's not monolithic.
|
| Think of a great jazz saxophonist in 2025. Practicing sax
| every day for years. Is he living in the past because jazz
| isn't popular like it once was? To some degree, sure, because
| his inspiration and source material is probably 60- and
| 80-year-old recordings. But is he _cynical_ for appreciating
| craft, improvisation and organic individual expression over
| convenient digital production? And how should he advance his
| values? By trying to convert Taylor Swift into a jazz
| saxophonist? That 's never going to happen. And it's not
| cynical to think so, it's just obvious. (Edit: To some degree
| it might even be wrong, because she would have to deny her
| inherent Taylorness.) No, the way he can advance those values
| is by living them himself. Which is the epitome of non-
| cynical, really. If there are enough of him out there, it'll
| be a movement, but popularity isn't necessary for it to be
| part of the present and future, especially his own present
| and future.
| Groxx wrote:
| some of this is simply that it _is_ a counter-culture,
| because it 's in the minority (by a significant margin).
|
| that doesn't mean it's defined by that decision, or even that
| it made that decision in the first place - the majority have
| decided it for them. and you're letting the majority define
| it for you, whether it's even remotely accurate or not.
|
| indie web generally wants personal control and ownership.
| that isn't cynicism or "pre web-2.0" or counter-culture-as-
| self-identity, it's _personal control and ownership_. almost
| everyone wants that. the fact that the majority have given it
| up doesn 't make them cynical, if anything it makes the mega-
| corps denying those things cynical.
| imiric wrote:
| Allow me to criticise your criticism...
|
| > The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't
| critique.
|
| I don't see the connection. Critiques are also content.
|
| The issue is not related to the type of content, but to what is
| producing it. Dead Internet is the (proven) idea that most
| content on the internet is produced and consumed by machines,
| not humans.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Critiques, discourse, discussion..these are all things that
| make the internet "real".
| strken wrote:
| One interesting thing from the arts is that new works are often
| part of an ongoing generational argument. Two examples which
| come to mind are Notes from Underground and the hilarious
| Duchamp urinal.
|
| I think this form of critique - active, costly, valuable in
| itself, and barely even a critique at all - is really nice.
| weitendorf wrote:
| I completely agree. This is cool and fun and interesting, and
| dares to be unique. That's what the Internet should be. It's
| legitimately dangerous how reliant so many people are on
| computers and the Internet for entertainment, information, and
| their livelihoods almost entirely as passive consumers or
| users.
|
| We need to bring back something like the MySpace era, I think.
|
| I think it's underrated how much devices, tools, and a handful
| of companies contribute to the current stage. Everybody wants
| to monetize consumers' inability to do things on their own,
| developers' potential to make money with their product and get
| locked in ($$$), and funnel people into things. But at the same
| time, that's pretty much the only way anybody has been able to
| consistently get paid and keep up with technology by making
| software. It's just very hard to get unstuck when your primary
| computer is a phone that is basically impossible to use as
| anything but a pacifier for the mind, and every platform wants
| to keep you from discovering anything outside of it.
|
| I'm hopeful that better tools, AI, open source, and normalizing
| rewarding helpful people and things on the Internet will bring
| us back to what it could have been. Why is there literally
| nowhere to go anymore that doesn't feel abandoned or like
| marketing slop? Maybe we'll have to login with real names to
| access what comes after that, but maybe it won't be so bad if
| we get to decide for ourselves how/what we do with it.
| immibis wrote:
| Problem: the Internet is dangerous now. What you put in "your
| space" might get you fired, deported, etc. (Even if you think
| you're only posting safe things, consider the person who
| finds your space might not be sensible.) And not just people
| - everything you ever post can be assumed to be saved by
| countless "AI" systems by well-resourced groups, for future
| bad people to search through. See the imprisonment of Larry
| Bushart[1] over a Charlie Kirk meme. In most scenarios that's
| an okay thing to do, _except_ when there are bad people in
| charge who are data-mining social platforms.
|
| Posting anything is a risk. What benefit do you get from it -
| does it outweigh the risk? In the past, both the actual risk
| and the perceived risk were lower.
|
| This concept explains the move from openly public forums and
| blogs to more private group chats - including Discord which
| is somewhat less public than the world wide web (and also
| _feels_ less public because it 's not random-access from a
| user perspective, although data slurpers will have no
| trouble).
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/oct/31/tennessee-ma...
| plastic-enjoyer wrote:
| > Problem: the Internet is dangerous now. What you put in
| "your space" might get you fired, deported, etc.
|
| > Posting anything is a risk. What benefit do you get from
| it - does it outweigh the risk? In the past, both the
| actual risk and the perceived risk were lower.
|
| Yes, because people post openly their hot takes to the
| whole world. Their internet personality is completely tied
| to their real-world personality. One of the best things of
| the internet was the anonymity you had. But at one point
| people started to think it was a good idea to throw this
| away.
| weitendorf wrote:
| Every new generation reinvents itself to fix what it sees
| wrong with the ones before it. But they can't undo what
| already happened. The Internet is too deeply embedded in
| our lives now and too useful for that to change. And if
| bad actors insist on polluting the commons/letting AI run
| loose on it the only way to get any kind of
| accountability is for there to be identity mechanisms
| whenever you're interacting with people beyond those you
| already know.
|
| But regardless, it's like a party that started out as a
| group of friends, then an entire subculture, then an
| entire personality type, then everybody else kinda
| watching through the windows, and now all those people
| are here but too shy to participate. I remember the end
| of the anonymity era, and looking back, it really did
| enable people to just be cruel and nasty in a way that
| scared away 90% of personality types.
|
| Now a different kind of personality just sees the whole
| thing as a dump, strip mine, or a mark and the rest of us
| grew up. And I see an entire generation who truly
| internalized the cynicism of anonymous Reddit commenters
| who probably knew just as much about the world as they
| did, who are real people looking for any kind of
| authenticity or help they can find, and settling for
| that.
|
| So, I think people are almost ready to start being truly
| sincere, forgiving, and graceful to each other on the
| Internet as long as they can expect to receive it back in
| kind. Partially because we have no choice, but it would
| be good anyway.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| I don't share your optimism but I'm glad of it!
| weitendorf wrote:
| That's definitely one major and related factor, but I do
| think it's separate from the problem that all most people
| can do on the Internet is consume or post on someone else's
| website. Participating in the Internet doesn't have to be
| just writing down your opinions on somewhere that shows up
| on Google Search.
|
| There's this technical-nontechnical dichotomy that I think
| really holds back the potential for rich/diverse Internet
| applications, because the interest and specialized
| knowledge necessary for eg a "24/7 remote plumbing video
| chat" service or "open source education-adjacent gaming" is
| primarily held by nontechnical people. Not that technical
| people _couldn't_ do these things, but the people who would
| want to make them "their thing" probably aren't
| professional software developers.
|
| Anyway, I think we're culturally ready to learn how to
| forgive people who make forgivable mistakes and grow from
| them, even though there might still be some "cancel
| culture". It's just better for everybody because it
| disempowers the people that would abuse it, and everybody
| makes mistakes or changes their mind over time anyway.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no
| javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do
| it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
|
| Go back to internet in 1999... There weren't a lot of text
| boxes to type into that got your content out. It required a bit
| of work (html, so not a lot) to get something out there!
|
| Much like an amusement park with a sign that says "You must be
| at least this tall ----" the old internet was "You must be at
| least this smart/motivated".
|
| Discoverability was also harder. Much much harder. Even if you
| did publish it might not ever be found, or seen, or used.
|
| Today typing in a text box, and adding to a conversation (like
| this one) that someone else is going to read changed where the
| bar is.
|
| To that end there are still plenty of focused communities that
| are less tribal, less emotional, than your average social media
| post. These remain great sources of not only information but
| community as well.
|
| I find the places focused around work (like HN) and my hobbies
| to be the most interesting and engaging -- less "critical" and
| more thoughtful.
| g8oz wrote:
| Does your comment need an AI disclaimer? The tone reeks of it.
| deaux wrote:
| Absolutely not AI unless they manually edited it, in which
| case it isn't AI in a meaningful way. Need to tune your
| AIdar.
| g8oz wrote:
| I dunno, the combination of the "CLICK", the bullet points
| and tone of sweeping boosterism is a tell.
| jb_rad wrote:
| I'm glad you experienced the CLICK, I did too when GPT-3
| released. The comment section was full of snarky, cynical,
| dismissive remarks with hundreds of likes. It smelled like
| Reddit but it was HN.
|
| Cynicism is a dangerous instinct that captures many people.
| It's easy, it's rewarding, and it offers the psychological
| safety of unity. But it's missing a key component. Hope.
|
| I have no problem with critiques if they are accurate,
| insightful, and helpful. But cynics don't think this way.
| Cynics seek to find the minimum viable argument to destroy
| anything that threatens change.
|
| Stay awake my friend. Remain hopeful. We are hackers. We
| believe in the liberating potential of technology. We refuse to
| succumb to the lazy ignorant masses. We build.
|
| "Only optimists build complex systems."
| al_borland wrote:
| In the early days the barrier to comment was higher and there
| were no obvious points to score from doing so. If a blog had a
| post you had opinions on, you could write a response on your
| own blog, or email the author. These days we have sites (like
| this) where commenting is almost 0 effort, and people can rack
| up fake internet points for doing it.
|
| The best thing I've seen in recent years in on bearblog, where
| people will most their email address, so if someone has
| something to say in reply to a post, they can simply email the
| author. It's not a public pissing match for who can have the
| hottest take.
|
| There are a couple things that often resurface in my mind on
| this topic.
|
| The first is from Teddy Roosevelt's Citizenship in a Republic
| speech.
|
| > It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out
| how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could
| have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is
| actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat
| and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short
| again and again, because there is no effort without error and
| shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who
| knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends
| himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the
| triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails,
| at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall
| never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know
| victory nor defeat.
|
| The second is Ego's review in Ratatouille.
|
| > In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very
| little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work
| and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative
| criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter
| truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of
| things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful
| than our criticism designating it so.
|
| In modern times with comment sections, influencers, talking
| heads, and a seemingly endless supply of opinions from those
| who risk nothing while judging those actually putting something
| out into the world, we seem to place far too much value in the
| critics, while dismissing the risk and efforts of those who
| actually create.
|
| While some criticism is valuable or even necessary, it feels
| like we've gone overboard as a culture and the balance of
| creator vs critic is completely backwards. We have millions of
| people refreshing screens all day long just waiting to call the
| next new thing crap.
| tolerance wrote:
| I'd suggest that today criticism has subsumed the act of
| "creating" and access to the arena Roosevelt envisioned is as
| narrow as it ever was since he first evoked its image.
| superkuh wrote:
| I did. I've been running my website(s) from home for 20+ years
| now. I am the change. And I participate in many non-corporate
| communities on IRC.
|
| This site still looks dead to me because of the JS requiring
| captcha I cannot bypass. I therefore feel the critiques are
| relevant.
|
| There _are_ two webs. There 's the HTTP/1.1+HTTPS HTML websites
| made of files by people that have no specific time of use
| required. Then there's constant wave of _JUST POSTED NOW_ on
| the HTTPS-only HTTP /3 corporate web that only uses HTTP to
| deliver javascript applications. By choosing to use the later
| this site is contributing to my perception of dead corporate-
| only internet and not helping.
| Alex2037 wrote:
| people forget that even before LLMs, the Internet was already
| shit. a third was SEO slop by ESL thirdworlders, another third -
| a kulturkampf battlefield. looking for the good parts had never
| been easy.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Is it even more proof that the Internet is dead, that we are now
| in the Nostalgia Phase. Looking back fondly at what it once was.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Awful site, this is just a strawman. The dead Internet theory
| does not claim that real people do not upload things to the
| Internet, there was never any doubt about that.
|
| The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory"
| is or what it claims.
|
| >every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on
| the web.
|
| Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos.
| Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly
| automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic
| individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes
| the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims.
|
| Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that
| most users of the Internet are _consumers_ who mostly read
| discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who
| are actively participating are then engaged by "bots",
| supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the
| bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating
| infighting.
|
| If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will
| immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by
| any amount of uploaded archive material.
| crims0n wrote:
| I like this, makes me wonder what a curated internet by a
| benevolent dictator could offer.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Isn't the fact that most of the material comes from the Internet
| Archive somewhat a refutation of the Alive Internet Theory, which
| is that the internet is alive _now_ , as opposed to some past
| archived point in time? (yes, I know the IA archives contemporary
| materials, but the purpose and majority of the content are from
| the _past_ )
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Seems more 'undead' than alive given the methodology.
| jaapz wrote:
| Haven't read the rest of the site but I really enjoyed the way
| you present it using the slider with the prevalent styles of
| certain periods
| yoz-y wrote:
| Algorithmic internet can be eventually filled with bots and AI.
| But when you curate your own follow list you are pretty much
| immune.
| ansc wrote:
| Uh, definitely NSFW. Did not expect to see porn and other
| questionable graphic material. I mean, that is what I remember
| from the "alive internet", so it's not wrong perhaps, but maybe
| should be flagged as such.
| paulwilsondev wrote:
| Pretty sure it reacts to your cookies.
| koolala wrote:
| I think it's just pulling random stuff from archive.org on a
| given date.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Not sure what it's meant to be, it grinds to a halt on my M2 --
| if there was a message, it's lost.
| drowntoge wrote:
| > This website has been temporarily rate limited
|
| Although being stuck at loading something was reminiscent of my
| early internet experience in a way, the site's backend seems to
| be rate-limited and unable to serve. Will check back later!
| bilsbie wrote:
| Someone should just make a no bots forum. I'm against requiring
| ID but there must be a way to do it.
| al_borland wrote:
| Digg is in the process of being relaunched. I still haven't
| received an invite, but the marketing around it seems to be
| positioning it as a human-first platform. I guess it remains to
| be seen how it plays out.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| agreed about the point that this has nothing to do with dead
| internet theory.
|
| A similar idea, but without the timeline idea and with YouTube
| videos instead of archive.org was this:
|
| YouTube videos that have almost zero previous views
| (astronaut.io)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432772
|
| 1362 points by monort on July 14, 2019 | 239 comments
|
| I still like that one, maybe it appeals to more people here
| because the UI is more polished, and the video selection criteria
| work really well.
|
| Although it also has the feel of seeing stuff that you're not
| meant to see sometimes.
|
| It has an almost meditative feel to me, I like it.
|
| Last time I opened it, for example, I saw a video of an old man
| playing a guitar, lots of hobby sports matches, and videos of
| private celebrations etc
|
| Didn't encounter any NSFW stuff, but it's probably possible as
| far as YouTube can't prevent it, so if you must be 100% sure, you
| probably shouldn't open it.
| Venkatesh10 wrote:
| Shouldn't have clicked the website while I was on a bus. Now I
| had to see some ss cheeks in public
| spencerc99 wrote:
| hey everyone - creator here thanks for engaging with this project
| & all the feedback and thoughts!
|
| i know this isn't the "solution" to dead internet theory but i
| felt compelled to make this piece in response. i wanted to feel
| "overwhelmed" with human content in the same way i feel
| overwhelmed by AI content these days. More thoughts in the
| precursor post linked on the site
| (https://news.spencer.place/p/alive-internet-theory). if this
| sparks new ideas for you on how to engage with this topic id love
| to see.
|
| and sorry for the unexpected NSFW - i'll add a warning to the
| site
|
| p.s. site should be working again! & you can also add it to your
| home screen as a PWA
| abetusk wrote:
| I've felt that people who espouse the dead internet theory have a
| much different experience of the internet than I do. For me,
| browsing the web, reading articles, watching YouTube videos,
| consuming Twitter/X/Bsky/Mastodon feeds, is all very active.
| There's interesting information that I engage with. I learn new
| things. I get to experience new art forms that I didn't think
| existed.
|
| I think for people who gravitate to dead internet theory, the
| internet is more akin to flipping through thousands of channels
| on network TV, searching for a 5 minute segment of a show they
| like hidden in an ocean of ads, syndicated slop and reality TV.
| They use the internet in a passive way to entertain and so can't
| imagine anyone else would be consuming information in a different
| way.
|
| It's nice to see people actively pushing back against what I
| consider a cynical attitude.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| What sites they're using is a big part of it. My sites are
| content from people I know, aggregators like HN that pool
| together quality content, educational resources, sub-Reddits,
| and entertainment. The entertainment can be fake and I don't
| really care if it's good. The sub-Reddits vary considerably in
| content quality. So, my sites are mostly living people.
|
| It's also how we spend our time. Popular culture encourages
| people to only do it through devices. I spend most of my time
| away from devices or only passively using them (eg listening).
| I mostly focus on people all day at two jobs. My intuition is
| built on human experiences. There's a lot of variety in that in
| our area. On specific topics, they mostly converge towards
| talking points due to media, Hollywood, educational system,
| views in their physical area, and their religion. Maybe in that
| order.
| raudette wrote:
| Funny to have read this today - I read this this morning, and
| just happened to go to a small gallery in Guelph (small town near
| Toronto) presenting similar ideas:
| https://artgalleryofguelph.ca/exhibition/soft-internet-theor...
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