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Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
61–70 of 283 posts
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a specific type of gem you find on HN sometimes: full-blown rants. I find them very entertaining and started to collect them recently.
Also, occasionally there are REALLY high quality, altough subtle, jokes in a comment that is still a part of a productive discussion. Humour for humours sake is definitely frowned upon though.
such as the above post
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#63Fun and weird has moved into TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram with stickers, music, sounds and overlays. It allows millions of people to enjoy creating fun and weird things and not only the handful of people who want to mess around with html snippets. I miss it too, but we are the minority.
I find TikTok and Instagram primarily about vanity, show-boating and moral crusades than creative expression. Of course, the internet of old had those negative elements in it, but now those seem to have become the bread and butter of such networks.
Dig deeper. TikTok is fantastically weird and niche. I've learned about so many things I'd never seen on the web or YouTube like small scale trains that people ride around in their back yard, throw gliders, and tether car racing.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#64All the fun and weird stuff is still around, it just typically doesn't SEO well and doesn't show up on Google, and is too long-tail to show up on popularity-based algorithms like those of Reddit or Facebook. I've spent the last year or so building tools and algorithms specifically to dig up "fun and weird". It's still there: https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random
Precisely. It isn't fun or weird because YOU aren't fun or weird. If you were fun or weird you'd already know where all the fun and weird stuff is.
Another aspect is that your view of the internet, which on its own is incomprehensibly large, is largely shaped by the tools you use to interact with it. It's difficult to become aware of just how much your choice of internet gateway will shape your view of what exists.
If your primary mechanism is Hacker News, the internet is going to look like it's dominated by a bunch of startups and open source projects.
If your primary mechanism is Twitter, the internet is going to be dominated by big-name thought leaders, there will appear to be a lot of outrage and inflamed conflict, maybe some culture wars stuff will stay on your radar.
If your primary mechanism is Google, then a bunch of huge websites are going to be extremely prominent: Wikipedia, Goodreads, WebMD, Pinterest, Stackoverflow, etc. It's also going to look like every blog is just a bunch of spam.
If your primary mechanism is Facebook, then the web will look like a bunch of tabloid news articles, try-hard viral videos, minions memes.
and so on and so forth.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#65I remember the thousands of interesting and weird pages listed on StumbleUpon - directories of obscure topics, avant garde art projects and detailed field specific blogs - many of them both pretty and thoroughly made. Mind expanding stuff. I feel like today all of that has moved to silos like tiktok and instagram, in extreme short form formats that are easily disposable - so almost no one creates truly great "compila…
I doubt StumbleUpon would be able to take off in the same form today - it installed a browser toolbar, collected a profile of your interests, and collected your up/downvotes to fed them all to an opaque algorithm that took you to the next random page. Who knows where that data went.
Could we come up with a privacy-preserving equivalent to stumbleupon today?
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#66Don't sugar coat it. Call it what it really is: gentrification.
2000: creating content and fostering an online community in private was seen as super nerdy.
2022: binge watching TikTok in public and grown-ass adults fighting over Internet Points is "normal."
And, yeah, the content is much worse. It's a lot of overly-socialized people taking care to say the things they should say so the great Algorithm gives them more Internet Points. And those Internet Points warp the process of creation, especially when they're tied to money.
Like the article said, it's all taken way too seriously, and there's no going back.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, occasionally there are REALLY high quality, altough subtle, jokes in a comment that is still a part of a productive discussion. Humour for humours sake is definitely frowned upon though.
such as the above post
So subtle, it flew over my head and is still flying off into the sunset. I genuinly thought it was just someone enjoying collecting rants. (Which, some rants are quite enjoyable to read.)
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#68All the fun and weird stuff is still around, it just typically doesn't SEO well and doesn't show up on Google, and is too long-tail to show up on popularity-based algorithms like those of Reddit or Facebook. I've spent the last year or so building tools and algorithms specifically to dig up "fun and weird". It's still there: https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random
Thanks.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#69The same reason television isn't more fun and weird.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#70I remember the thousands of interesting and weird pages listed on StumbleUpon - directories of obscure topics, avant garde art projects and detailed field specific blogs - many of them both pretty and thoroughly made. Mind expanding stuff. I feel like today all of that has moved to silos like tiktok and instagram, in extreme short form formats that are easily disposable - so almost no one creates truly great "compila…
>I wonder why it wasn't viable.
Because for the most part, people making content would rather earn money for their content than not earn money. The silos of TikTok and Instagram and YouTube allow for sufficiently low transaction costs such that this market of advertisers interested in buying attention and content creators interested in buying money can exist.
Maybe stumbleupon was too early, but the fact that the app ecosystem makes it much more difficult to copy content makes the silos much more appealing to both content creators and advertisers.