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The internet used to be fun

projects.kwon.nyc

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Re: The internet used to be fun

#81

Post by [deleted] »

rchaud wrote: post #31
xnx wrote: post #11

TikTok is where I find fun on the current internet. It's hilarious (Taylor Swift private jet memes), weird (grimace shake), surprising, emotionally moving (hopecore), educational (how to adjust a door closer), and always exposing me to things I've never seen (starting process for a diesel locomotive). It contains ads, but they're pretty easy to identify and very easy to skip.

TikTok is like a Potemkin village propping up the idea that the Internet is still just regular people faffing around. The reality is that TT, like all social media, puts people on a hamster wheel of 'content creation'. Post about this, not that. Post using code words if [geopolitical event] is advertiser-unfriendly. Post something every single day so that the algorithm deigns to distribute your post to randomly selec…

[deleted]

Re: The internet used to be fun

#82

Post by jauntywundrkind »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #70
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of websites are implemented poorly, but 3/4 of the problems listed with Flash were inherent. Flash absolutely was a problem. It did have a certain (imo over hyped) DX that people had a fondness for & that the web wasn't catering to. This was good for users in that they got a lot of experiences they might not have otherwise had. But the experiences were 99% things the web could do, and the web experience as a u…

It doesn’t matter how bad some tool was if the replacement is non-existant or even worse, even less used, etc…

No newcomer's tool will ever be as well used as an incumbent.

There haven't been a complete absence of Flash-like things, but on the web. There just wasn't much uptake. For all the people who swore Flash was the greatest, there weren't a lot of people willing to spend money or create a community around new attempts.

Flash was fun to dabble in, but it's unclear what value proposition similar tech has im todays world, besides being fun to mess around with (which I love but does not a market make).

Re: The internet used to be fun

#85

Post by MichaelZuo »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #82
MichaelZuo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t matter how bad some tool was if the replacement is non-existant or even worse, even less used, etc…

No newcomer's tool will ever be as well used as an incumbent. There haven't been a complete absence of Flash-like things, but on the web. There just wasn't much uptake. For all the people who swore Flash was the greatest, there weren't a lot of people willing to spend money or create a community around new attempts. Flash was fun to dabble in, but it's unclear what value proposition similar tech has im todays world,…

What's the point? It clearly was destructive, if like I said, the replacement is non-existant or even worse, even less used, etc… so pointing out all the flaws of the original tool can't change that.

Re: The internet used to be fun

#86

Post by reustle »

Ezhik wrote: post #15
johnny99k wrote: post #5

Everything is fun in the beginning. Then it gets commercialized and regulated and it's no longer fun.

A while back I heard an interesting observation: coffee shop conversations in the Bay Area went from being about cool tech to being about money. I can't help but feel that this is a deeper change beyond just me facing the usual disillusionment of growing up.

Tech started with a bunch of nerds. Those nerds made loads of money, which attracted the non-nerds. The non-nerds were better at marketing themselves and talking their way up the ladder. Now tech is mostly non-nerds.

Re: The internet used to be fun

#87

Post by zem »

ah, another delightful throwback to the old, fun internet - a page that is nothing more than a collection of facts or links on a hyperspecific topic :)

Re: The internet used to be fun

#88

Post by myaccountonhn »

rchaud wrote: post #31
xnx wrote: post #11

TikTok is where I find fun on the current internet. It's hilarious (Taylor Swift private jet memes), weird (grimace shake), surprising, emotionally moving (hopecore), educational (how to adjust a door closer), and always exposing me to things I've never seen (starting process for a diesel locomotive). It contains ads, but they're pretty easy to identify and very easy to skip.

TikTok is like a Potemkin village propping up the idea that the Internet is still just regular people faffing around. The reality is that TT, like all social media, puts people on a hamster wheel of 'content creation'. Post about this, not that. Post using code words if [geopolitical event] is advertiser-unfriendly. Post something every single day so that the algorithm deigns to distribute your post to randomly selec…

A friend of mine was ranting about this as an influencer. The algorithm had determined that what people needed in their lives was videos of her putting decor on the top shelf of her kitchen. She tried to post varied content, but the only things that would get views was variations of her doing the exact same thing. Absolutely ridiculous.

Re: The internet used to be fun

#89

Post by Thuggery »

BirAdam wrote: post #36
strict9 wrote: post #7

The internet is still fun. I was on bulletin board systems pre-internet as a kid and spent too much time on the web in the late 90s. I've seen it evolve from java applets and flash to something better. Though I don't like social media much anymore and worry about the effect of screens on kids, I still love the internet and value what it makes possible. I don't buy into these arguments of things used to be better. It'…

EDIT: this was largely just to strengthen one of your points. Every single time something becomes big, the hardcore early fans of that thing will complain about the change. This used to happen with bands. Early die hard fans enjoyed having their own tribe or clique built around the band, and then when the band became too successful they'd say that the band "sold out" and that the newfound fans aren't really fans and…

Humans may be tribal, but the universe is also entropic. Things decay in quality over time, and the only answer to this is cyclical rebirth.

The analogy of music here is telling because in fact the vast majority of bands are only truly good for an album or two in a small band of time, maybe even for just a song. People would be objectively right to say punk isn't what it was in the 80s in certain places like the UK.

Things really do sometimes get worse, or at least not stay the same style and quality forever. The repugnant conclusion alone pretty much guarantees niche things that are "good" to the niche that then get super popular and commercialized trend towards a worse for everyone steady state over time.

Re: The internet used to be fun

#90

Post by MrVandemar »

dinkleberg wrote: post #53

I can't help but observe that the majority of these sites linked are very ordinary looking sites. I don't see an abundance of "fun". In my opinion, if you don't think people are still out there having fun on the internet, you're looking in the wrong places.

> ordinary looking sites

That's an aesthetic judgement. A site doesn't have to "look" fun to be fun. It just has to present the content that the author, or audience, find engaging.

An all-singing all-dancing website may well not be any kind of fun at all; a brutalist HTML 3.2 page might actually have something interesting written on it.

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