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The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#121

Post by sodapopcan »

spicyjpeg wrote: post #110
elmomle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big part of it for me. The old Internet was full of individuals sharing deep passion--whether on a personal website or on a forum. There was a sense of connecting to another human being. This is the only forum-style site I regularly interact with, and I must admit that I rarely try to remember another username here. The effect is that I interact with ideas, not people. And there is some deep connection betw…

The internet is still full of individuals sharing deep passion for all sorts of things, but only within the walls of invite-only communities you have to go out of your way to find (Discord servers, private forums) and/or make a financial commitment towards (Patreon). Or at least it was, before LLM "enthusiasts" started leaking into these otherwise hermetic communities and overrunning formerly safe spaces with mass-pr…

For me the difference today is that most people sharing their passions are now doing for The Algorithm. It's a far cry from the scrappy days of the early web where people just posted stuff because they thought it was cool. I'm not saying their passion is any less, more just that is so much noise. People are now "creators" and are pressured to constantly create.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#122

Post by chrisjj »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #117
aureate wrote: post #90

This reads to as pure AI slop to me, and Pangram agrees (100% AI). To use one of the idioms that give this impression, this is not just knee-jerk whining. It's material to what the article is about. If you're going to raise this topic, be a human and say something constructive. An AI generated ragebait whinge about ragebait is ragebait squared with a heaped serving of hypocrisy on top. This exemplifies everything it…

Yes. "High confidence." I confirmed it myself: > https://i.ibb.co/m5tPKPYS/Screenshot2026829-1.png But forget Pangram. This passage, from the conclusion, is 100% rock-solid proof that Claude was a key contributor. > "The question is not whether the internet contains useful things. It does. The question is whether human existence should be organised around alien and inhuman objective functions no human chose and nobod…

Grift poorly defined? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grift

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#123

Post by pixl97 »

aktenlage wrote: post #16

This so exaggerated. If you think some of the people you know are assholes, that's fine. If you think all of them are assholes, you are either choosing the wrong places to be, or (more likely) the problem is with you.

There are two competing ways of looking at this.

1. If everyone you know is an asshole about some particular thing, then you're probably the asshole. Think politics or design.

2. Everybody is an asshole some of the time for some reason. Because the internet connects and exposes us to so many people that even if someone only acts like an asshole very rarely said connectivity and algorithm boosting ensures you get exposed to it.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#125

Post by tacostakohashi »

TFNA wrote: post #73
Biologist123 wrote: post #24

> People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model. I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access - 20+ years ago. Like putting an alcoholic to work behind…

Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures. Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social med…

Yep... back then, the internet was a way people would discuss and organize their real world interests and activities, like clubs and usergroups would organize their next meeting... and then meet, off the internet.

Now, it's all just online drivel that never turns into anything else.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#126

Post by efdee »

TFNA wrote: post #73
Biologist123 wrote: post #24

> People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model. I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access - 20+ years ago. Like putting an alcoholic to work behind…

Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures. Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social med…

Sorry, but teenage me, growing up late 90s, wildly disagrees with this statement.

It's always been addictive and destructive. I was staying up past 3am to talk to my American friends, knowing I'd have to get up at 7am to get to school.

Painting the past with such a rose brush does not help anyone.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#128

Post by dominick-cc »

linster wrote: post #81

Ok article, and has similar points to “You should quit Reddit” (which was a pretty good book). About 2/3 in, the sentences got choppier and shorter, and you could tell some context rot was setting in.

I did not pick up on this being ai generated. I guess this was the first time I am realizing I can no longer tell, and it doesn't feel good.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#129

Post by hypfer »

stillpointlab wrote: post #31

One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and speculative optimism fail, one can just get down on it all. It is really hard not to succumb to this. It requires active effort and sometimes even a willful ignorance. "turn a blind eye" is the idiom here. Monty Python's "Always look on the bright side of life" kind…

I (self-servingly) don't think that cynicism is bad, nor that it would be a good idea to pathologize what is simply a healthy defense to a hostile reality.

It depends on how you wield it.

Cynicism shouldn't cloud your judgement. That's the actually correct point you wanted to make, I think.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#130

Post by qsera »

sicktriple wrote: post #12

You could replace nearly every instance of "the Internet" in this article with "capitalism" and it would make perfect sense.

Yea, It seems that the author is just waking up to the reality, and mistakenly thinks it's all the fault of some new fangled thing...

quite frankly iam14andthisisdeep material

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