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# 2025-11-23 - How To Use The Internet Again by Brooklyn Gibbs
The most common (and easiest) thing to do on the internet is
complain. The range of topics varies from person to person, but one
consistent grumble circles around The Algorithm and it's incorrect
assumptions about what a person might want to consume.
"Why does my feed keep showing me Taylor Swift think pieces?"
"Substack, show me literally anyone who isn't posting self-growth
hacks."
I am no Saint; I've definitely whined about my own feed more times
than I can count, but after a short sulk, I usually do the obvious
thing: adjust, use the search, explore a new site, or maybe even
delete the app entirely if it's no longer serving me.
What shocks me is how many people forget that option exists. I
recently had a post of mine get some attention where I shared six
cool sites to help expand your music library, and surprisingly, a
large portion of the comments were people confessing they had
forgotten how to use the internet. That broke my heart a little.
You can't call it the "online world" if you never leave your feed. If
your entire internet life happens inside TikTok, Instagram, YouTube,
Reddit, or Twitter, you're simply mall-walking, and malls are fine:
predictable, climate-controlled, food courts and chain stores on
every corner, but don't mistake the mall for the city. The city is
bigger, stranger, full of alleys, basements, and hidden doors. That's
the real internet, and you haven't been there in a while.
This curriculum is designed to remind you what the internet used to
be--and still is. I've built it to help you get your digital spark
back. After this course, you won't complain to the algorithm gods
anymore, praying for a better feed. Instead, you'll remember how to
make the internet your bitch again.
# Unit One: Getting Started
Before you can learn to be online again, you have to understand how
you already use the internet. Growth requires a baseline, and most
people have no idea how narrow their internet habits actually are.
This unit is about tracking yourself: what sites you visit, how you
behave inside them, and what patterns your devices nudge you into.
## Step One: Take Inventory
For one full day, write down:
* Every website you visit: For this exercise, do not count unique
profile pages on a platform. Two different Substack publications =
one website (Substack).
* How long you spent there.
* What you actually did there (scroll, search, click, comment, buy,
lurk): Pay attention to what types of content you are liking. Is it
negative? Positive? Do you auto-like everything or save likes for
what you love? When you post, what topics are you posting about?
Are you talking about content you want to see more of or less? When
you comment, why? Are you commenting out of support, anger, or
worse--self-promotion?
## Step Two: Notice Behaviors
After a full day of inventory, analyze your behavior. On your main
sites, what do you actually do? Are you just scrolling? Do you ever
leave your go-to app's fyp? Do you use the search?
If you type "I don't want to see XYZ" without using the actual Not
Interested button, do you notice more or less of that content?
Spoiler: it's more. Algorithms don't think like us. Their goal is not
to show you what you want to see; it's to keep you on the platform.
When you post "stop showing me sabrina carpenter think pieces," it
reads as: "Ah, Sabrina Carpenter keeps you here. Gotcha."
Are you traveling the online world with intention, or letting your
apps baby-bird content into your mouth?
I'm not judging you. I swear. I won't even see your notes, so be
honest. Look at your habits and--like I do with every conversation
I've ever had--analyze the hell out of it.
## Step Three: Gather Your Tools
Before the curriculum continues, you'll need:
* A notebook or doc to track your finds and your paths. Treat it like
a field journal.
* A computer. I cannot stress this enough: the internet looks
completely different on a computer than on your phone. Use both if
you want, but if you have a PC, use it.
* A willingness to wander. If you only stick to the main roads,
you'll never find the hidden rabbit holes.
In order to grow, you have to first recognize where you are. You
can't go deeper into the internet until you know your baseline. Unit
1 is about self-awareness: your current habits, your current tools,
your current limits.
# Unit Two: Rabbit Hole Theory
You've tracked your habits. You know what sites you haunt and how the
algorithm nudges you around like a Roomba. Now it's time to leave the
mall food court and step outside. Don't worry. This will be fun.
Rabbit holing isn't opening fifty tabs and hoarding them like Pokémon
cards. In this unit, you'll learn how to follow the thread.
## The Rules of the Rabbit Hole
## 1. External Links Are Portals.
Every Wikipedia page, blog, or article has a little "External Links"
section at the bottom. Most people never click through them. That's
where the real rabbit holes live. Follow one, read it, then go to
that page's links. Repeat until you forget what you started looking
for.
## 2. Inspect the Skeleton.
In the early web, you could peek at source code and literally learn
how the site was built. That hasn't gone away entirely, but fewer
people bother to look. Right-click --> View Source or Inspect. You'll
find hidden gems: commented-out code, forgotten links, even easter
eggs. Swifties used this to predict merch drops (though to be honest,
predicting Swift merch is like predicting streaming prices will
increase. Even Substack has a hidden easter egg buried in its
code. Looking where you're not expected to is the essence of rabbit
holing.
## 3. The Three-Click Rule
If you're not at least three links away from where you started,
you're not deep enough. It's time to... Click! That! Hyperlink!
Then another.
Then another.
Theeeeeeeeen another.
Don't be afraid of new tabs. Don't be afraid of your messy history.
That's the whole point.
# Homework
## Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Come up with two completely different topics. Search one in Wikipedia
and start on that page. Reach the other only by clicking hyperlinks
inside the articles. Count how many clicks it takes you. This will
train you to follow the trail.
Starter Prompts:
* One Direction --> The Oregon Trail
* Rubiks Cube --> Lean Cuisine
* Coffee --> The Bermuda Triangle
* Winnie the Pooh --> Quantum Mechanics
* Minecraft --> The Library of Alexandria
* Kermit the Frog --> The Byzantine Empire
## Inspect & Report
Pick a site you use daily. Open Inspect. What's hiding in there? A
careers page? A comment? A weird leftover link?
## The Everyday Object Test
Grab something in your room (your mug, hoodie, cat breed). Dig into
it until you find one fact so bizarre you have to text it to
someone.
We've turned the internet into a vending machine. Push a button, get
the Coke. If it doesn't spit it out fast enough, beat the living shit
out of it until it gives you two cokes. Instead, rabbit holing
retrains both your curiosity and your patience. It reminds you the
internet is more like a labyrinth, and the labyrinth rewards
wanderers.
# Resources
(HTM) The Wiki Game
I actually just found this. There's a website version of the game, so
you don't even really need my starter prompts. See, wandering works!
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Use this link to get a random Wikipedia article similar to the
deprecated "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google.
(HTM) "i just want you to be inspired to make things!!!"
# Unit Three: The Art of the Search
The Search is a lost art. Once the most powerful tool of the
internet, it now sits quietly at the top of every screen, ignored
while people let feeds decide for them.
But searching is like spell-casting; The right mix of characters and
symbols unlocks doors no algorithm would ever hand you. With
practice, you can summon forgotten PDFs, hidden forums, and whole
worlds buried under SEO rubble.
This unit's goal is to bring back the magic of The Search, and show
you how to wield it like a wand again.
## Summoning the Search
## Use Your Operators
Typing random words into Google is like making a wish at 11:11--you
might get what you want, but odds are it's just vibes. Using
operators is like ordering an Etsy witch to hex your ex-boyfriend
(with expedited shipping). That shit actually works.
site: --> Search inside one website or domain.
* site:nytimes.com soup --> everything the New York Times has ever
written about soup.
filetype: --> Pull up specific kinds of files.
* filetype:pdf cyberpunk --> research papers, zines, or old reports
in PDF form.
* filetype:ppt Greek mythology --> random classroom slides
" " --> Force an exact match.
* "butterfly tattoos meaning" --> only results with that exact
phrase
- --> Exclude stuff you don't want.
* best laptops -ai --> skips the new AI Overview answers.
before: / after: --> Time travel.
* "Harry Potter fanfiction" before:2005 --> early fandom results
before AO3 dominated.
## Switch Engines
Google is predictable. You know where everything is shelved--AI
overview right on top with sponsored posts following after. To
practice The Search, you must find stranger libraries.
Marginalia
A search engine built to surface small, forgotten sites instead of
SEO-optimized links.
MillionShort
A search engine where you can remove the top thousand, ten thousand,
or million websites from the search result.
Archive.org
A time machine of dead sites, VHS tapes, and zines. This is also a
great place for old movies! Currently watching: Spellbound
Kagi
A paid search engine (with free trials) designed to cut out spam and
sponsored results.
## Seek the Living Archives
This is my favorite part of The Search: forums.
There's something magical about old threads. Reading them feels like
eavesdropping in another decade. You see facts, but also opinions in
that exact moment of time. A thread from 2008 about iPods or Twilight
or Geocities being deprecated feels like time traveling because
you're reading people as they lived it.
To find these, you have to dig:
* "topic forum" --> "hunger games forum", "muppets forum",
"tattoo forum"
* site:proboards.com --> searches inside a massive old forum host.
* site:angelfire.com or site:geocities.com --> Ghost towns from the
early internet.
* before:2010 --> time-travel into conversations before feeds
swallowed everything
Even if the forum looks dead, the posts remain, and that's COOL. It's
like wandering an abandoned city where the graffiti talks back.
## Searches to Inspire You
* site:.mil filetype:pdf UFO
* site:.gov filetype:pdf "time travel"
* site:.edu filetype:pdf "dream analysis"
* filetype:pdf "cybernetics manifesto"
* "guestbook" site:angelfire.com
* "blogroll" site:neocities.org
* "Twilight forum" before:2010
* "Nintendo DS rumors" before:2004
* filetype:pdf "coffee symbolism"
* site:.edu history of the hoodie
## Homework
Mirror Search:
Take one phrase and run it through multiple different search engines:
Google, Marginalia, Million Short, etc. Compare the results. Which
did you prefer? Why?
Forum Anthropology:
Find a niche forum. Lurk for 20 minutes. Take notes: what slang do
they use? What was urgent to them in 2009?
The Forbidden PDF:
If you couldn't tell by my recommended searches, I LOVE a pdf. Pick a
random curiosity. Use site:.edu filetype:pdf or site:.gov
filetype:pdf to find a paper. Read at least the first page and
pretend it's contraband.
Not everyone can summon a ghost from 2007, or find a PDF that was
never meant to surface again. Learning The Search means learning to
time travel, to argue with the past, and to drag forgotten knowledge
into the present.
# Unit Four: The Internet is a Playground
The coolest part about the internet is that it's interactive. Books
share knowledge through pages. Movies through scenes. But the
internet? The internet is knowledge you can touch. Break. Play with.
It's sexy like that.
This unit teaches you how to play again. To stop treating the
internet like a mall or a library or any of the other exhausting
metaphors I've used through this piece, and start treating it like
the world's biggest... one more metaphor for the road... jungle gym.
Instead of simply scrolling, you climb, you wander, you swing too far
and fall on your ass. That's the point.
## Your Toybox
The internet is full of useless, delightful, and weird little toys
that exist purely for play. Start there.
neal.fun
A collection of internet toys for your brain. Rank things no one
asked you to rank ("Earth Reviews"), solve absurd moral dilemmas
("Trolley Problems"), or waste fake government money like a reckless
billionaire.
theuselessweb
One button that takes you to a useless site. It's internet roulette,
and half the fun is not knowing whether you'll land on a digital
screaming goat or a button that does absolutely nothing. I've spent
much time procrastinating here.
patatap
Turn your keyboard into a one-person rave. Every letter makes a beat
and animation.
neocities
The Wild West of the modern web. Handmade personal sites, clashing
backgrounds, autoplay music, half-finished projects. It's chaotic,
charming, and a reminder that the internet doesn't have to look like
a Silicon Valley pitch deck.
The beauty of the web is that you can poke at its skeleton without
consequence. Remember back in Unit 2, where we peeked under the hood
with Inspect to see what websites were hiding? You're going to do
that again, but this time, you're going to change it. Right-click -->
Inspect on almost any site and you can edit the text or images in
your browser. Change headlines, swap images, rewrite entire
paragraphs, or crank the font until it screams in hot pink. Nothing
breaks for real. It's all local--just your browser showing you a
temporary, alternate version of the web, but before we had AI images,
this is how fake news started.
Examples to try:
* Change a news headline to "Local Cat Becomes Supreme Court
Justice."
* Add color: hotpink; font-size: 200px; to a title and watch it
scream at you in neon.
* Replace images with something dumb from your desktop
These change nothing but your display screen, however it's a nice
window into how the internet is built--and also a reminder that the
web was never meant to be a glass box you just stare at.
## Remix the Web
The internet isn't finished, and it never will be. It's copy-paste
culture built for remixing. Stop thinking you need permission. You
don't even need to know how to code.
This is literally how internet culture was born. Glitter cursors,
MySpace themes, Tumblr GIF walls--none of that came from scratch.
People stole HTML snippets, broke them, duct-taped them back together
until it looked like "theirs.", and you can too! And you should! It's
fun!
## Ways to start:
Collage the Web
Screenshot a random forum fight and layer it with stock images until
it looks like a surrealist zine.
Neocities Frankensteins
View the source code of a hand-made Neocities page, steal a snippet,
and drop it into your own. Make your own website!
Rewrite History
Take a Wikipedia article and blackout words until it reads like
poetry. Or rewrite it entirely so your cat is the protagonist of the
Cold War.
collection of snippets i found while coming up with searches
This is how the web was meant to be used: a sandbox where knowledge
is cut up and reassembled into something new.
Make collages. Make art. Break it, bop it, twist it, ruin it on
purpose. It's play.
# Unit Five: Build Your Own Corner
Exploring the internet is fun. Breaking it is fun. Remixing it is
fun. But the real magic starts when you carve out your own corner.
The internet is made of corners--personal websites, tiny blogs, old
forums, weird projects. It doesn't matter if your corner is polished,
half-broken, or visited by three people a year. What matters is that
it's yours.
## Where to Start:
Substack blogs are a great place to start, but I'm assuming most of
you know that. So, let me give you some other options! If you miss
the tumblr themes of 2012, these are some options that replace that
feeling.
Neocities
The modern Geocities. Hand-build a personal site with raw HTML,
bright backgrounds, and GIF chaos.
Carrd
A drag-and-drop site builder that takes five minutes. Great for a
simple "about me" page.
Github Pages / Netlify
If you're ready for more control, these let you host your own
projects for free.
Notion / Are.na
Even a personal wiki or a visual scrapbook counts. If it's a place
where your taste lives, it's a corner.
## Ideas for Your Corner
* A personal blog where you review soups. (please please please
please)
* A fan archive for an artist, show, or game nobody else cares about
anymore.
* A living "digital garden" of your notes, links, and unfinished
ideas.
* A mixtape site that pairs playlists with doodles or photos.
Your corner doesn't have to be important to anyone, but you.
## Homework
Plant the Flag
Pick one platform from the list and claim a space even if it's just a
blank page with your name.
Add One Weird Thing
Post something dumb but personal--a list of your favorite chips, a
bad poem, a link you love.
Show One Person
Send your corner to a friend (if you want) just to prove it exists
outside your head.
The mall feeds you. The playground distracts you. The rabbit holes
keep you wandering, but the corner is yours.
And the internet needs more of 'em. Go build one.
# The Internet Is Still Alive
The internet isn't dead. It isn't just TikTok and Twitter. It isn't a
mall food court where you shuffle between the same five storefronts.
That's the lie the feeds want you to believe.
The internet is still a city. A labyrinth. A jungle gym. A sandbox. A
living, breathing experiment where curiosity is rewarded and
weirdness thrives.
You just forgot how to use it.
Now you know again.
You've tracked your habits. You've learned to rabbit hole. You've
practiced the art of search. You've played, broken, remixed. And now
you've planted your flag--your own corner of the web.
The algorithm isn't your friend, but it's not god either. You don't
have to beg it for scraps. You can leave. You can wander. You can
build.
So stop scrolling. Start exploring. Make something dumb. Make
something beautiful. Make something yours.
<3 brooklyn
(HTM) From: https://offlinecrush.substack.com/p/how-to-use-the-internet-again-a-curriculum
# See Also
(DIR) NoSurf: Stop Wasting Life On The Net
(DIR) Quit Shopping For Fun by FrugalGamer
tags: counterculture,political,self-help
# Tags
(DIR) counterculture
(DIR) political
(DIR) self-help