Live data from Hacker News

Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

cnn.com

1–10 of 57 posts

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#3
I still think the internet could undergo a "collapse" and rapidly shrink to something resembling the 2000's internet. The enshitification of everything is quite literally, "mining out" the value of the internet, hollowing everything from below. At some point, nothing is believable and putting your "content" online amounts to giving it away. Eventually, the users _will_ walk away and suddenly the whole affair falls apart.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#4

Wow CNN's website is awful. They only let me accept tracking cookies, then threw 'subscribers only' at me. I'm not sure I'll ever click a CNN link again.

Change the subdomain to lite for a more text-oriented experience. https://lite.cnn.com/2026/01/18/business/crafting-soars-ai-a...

There might be a browser plugin to automatically do this, like exist with old.reddit.com.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#5

  "It’s hard to quantify just how widespread the phenomenon is, but certain notably offline hobbies are exploding in popularity."
Assuming this is an actual trend that is actually "exploding"... I wonder what this means for the short term in the AI industry? Could we see a drop in users and then a big popping of the bubble?

That does seem like a really big assumption though.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#6

I still think the internet could undergo a "collapse" and rapidly shrink to something resembling the 2000's internet. The enshitification of everything is quite literally, "mining out" the value of the internet, hollowing everything from below. At some point, nothing is believable and putting your "content" online amounts to giving it away. Eventually, the users _will_ walk away and suddenly the whole affair falls ap…

Some have walked away from the worst sites already but the majority are undiscerning and if they haven't left by now I don't think anything will be different in 2026.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#7
This seems ubiquitous (in baby steps) in my social circles. I think there's a big difference between general ai (LLMs) and the troubling implementations of ai like flock, and other surveillance implementations, spotify and their distortion of music, and their investment into ai military drone tech, etc. and how wrapped up politics has become in everything. Its a bad time to have a browser in your pocket.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#8

I still think the internet could undergo a "collapse" and rapidly shrink to something resembling the 2000's internet. The enshitification of everything is quite literally, "mining out" the value of the internet, hollowing everything from below. At some point, nothing is believable and putting your "content" online amounts to giving it away. Eventually, the users _will_ walk away and suddenly the whole affair falls ap…

It’s not gonna collapse. It can only grow bigger; the entire world economy runs and depends on the internet.

Rather, what will happen is a bunch of us will willingly stop participating and stepping away from the technological singularity. A bit like the Amish, this time not for religious reasons. Let the urbanites enjoy their AI-generated virtual realities, with work, sex, and food from the comfort of your phone, competing for fewer and more bullshit office jobs creating more addictive apps; I just want to live on a farm with solar panels, grow tomatoes and write code for fun.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#9
post #7

This seems ubiquitous (in baby steps) in my social circles. I think there's a big difference between general ai (LLMs) and the troubling implementations of ai like flock, and other surveillance implementations, spotify and their distortion of music, and their investment into ai military drone tech, etc. and how wrapped up politics has become in everything. Its a bad time to have a browser in your pocket.

I don’t know how ubiquitous it is in my circles, but I have noticed a lot of folks in their 20s and 30s tell me they only buy paper books, never Kindle. I started buying only the latter years ago because of the convenience and lack of a need for storage, but have recently switched to getting everything I can (digitally) through the library and the Libby app.

Re: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026

#10

I still think the internet could undergo a "collapse" and rapidly shrink to something resembling the 2000's internet. The enshitification of everything is quite literally, "mining out" the value of the internet, hollowing everything from below. At some point, nothing is believable and putting your "content" online amounts to giving it away. Eventually, the users _will_ walk away and suddenly the whole affair falls ap…

Some have walked away from the worst sites already but the majority are undiscerning and if they haven't left by now I don't think anything will be different in 2026.

> the majority are undiscerning

this has always been true, and might be a real reason to have public standards?

Post reply on HN