A retrospective of my time on the internet

In the old days, people were physically connected, so if you made hateful remarks, you could face physical threats. But now, it's hard to make those physical threats over the internet. And many people think of their online self and their real-life self as separate. So it was harder to express certain kinds of hate beyond the typical local community hate speech, and hate speech was just one agenda item that could be discussed.

But now, even hate speech has become fragmented. And as hate became fragmented, people became too willing to pay money to those who agree with their opinions. It became easier to pay people who say what you want to hear.

On top of that, in the old days, if you were a minority in a local community, you had to bend your opinions somewhat for the majority in order to be heard. Unlike the old society where you had to tone down your voice to create a single unified voice, now you can speak out even if it's unpopular. The only catch is that it's now subject to a different metric: popularity.

And the generational divide in internet usage has also changed a lot.

For example, in the old days, the internet was scarce, so people had the sense that their online self and their real-life self were the same. That's why internet etiquette was important. But these days, there's a binary divide: the internet is the internet, and reality is reality. People think that even if they do something stupid online, it's separate from real life.

Damaging physical infrastructure is visible, but polluting the internet is invisible. Yet once someone starts it, there's no end to it. And the broken windows theory applies to advertising too. Most websites run ads, and many of those ads are low-quality porn ads, which easily create a mindset of 'this place is fair game for attack.'

In the past, the internet was less widely available and limited to a small elite, so it was relatively clean. The reason is simple: because only a few people used it, they were socially traceable, and their online reputation actually affected their real-life reputation. But as everyone gained access, it became harder to track identities online, and that changed everything.

It's no one's fault. It just seems like a natural shift of the times

It's a bit of a shame it went that deep. What started as a fun new technology seems to have turned into a vortex that just absorbed everything (attention spans, social skills, overall IQ) and everyone (we're now more alone and isolated behind screens), save for the few who were smart enough to protect themselves.

I wonder how things would've turned out if internet had stayed a place for fun, exploration, and freedom.

CRTs are built like that because otherwise they would implode from the slightest bump and send thousands of tiny glass fragments flying in all directions.

Panel displays of today have their glass pieces glued together into one solid lump, and there is no pressure, so when they break the broken pieces stay where they are for the most part.