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The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

muddy.jprs.me

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Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#141

Post by brightball »

jonhohle wrote: post #20
functionmouse wrote: post #2

I agree, but it's been said by all... make homebrew software for an old Nintendo console pick up cross stitching or weaving make an independent film with a friend; use stuff from your kitchen as props find a borderline functional instrument at your local thrift store write a 1 page short story in pen it's not enough anymore to merely criticize this bad time we're having

Even the fun things “on the internet” are mostly still possible, it’s just the bulk of things we do now are not fun and main companies aren’t quirky risk takers but the oil/train/steel barons of our day. In the past few years I’ve done serveral of the things on your list in earnest and they are all easier to do today (specifically technical things) than they were 25 years ago (except maybe writing with a pen). Edit t…

We need to bring back BBS's over short range radio transmitters.

The early dialup and BBS world was magic and it pulls everything completely off of the standard channels.

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#142

Post by ranger207 »

yuppiepuppie wrote: post #115

I understand the sentiment. However, I would also suggest that people cultivate the culture/scene that they want to see. In my case, I really enjoy games. So I built a gaming platform where I can find fun, independent games. I find it to contribute to the "best of the internet" mentality. It's really up to the people around who discover and can award the people contributing to the culture that they want to see.

Yeah, it's all about communities, not platforms. What happens is that people find a community they like, then the platform underneath it dies (IRC, MySpace, Digg, etc) and they can't find the same community on a new platform. I've made a lot of friends on Discord, and ionce a year or so when it looks like Discord's about to finally give up we talk about our plans to migrate the community to a different platform. But since the community is the important part, we don't really care about the ills of the platform until it starts to actively hurt the community

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#143

Post by seydor »

munificent wrote: post #53

I have a pet theory that much of what we're seeing culturally is that the 90s and early 2000s (at least in the US) was a window of time that offered a sense of safety and surplus. 9/11 was extremely culturally disruptive, but aside from that, for many in the US, it felt like there was "enough to go around". That environment breeds a lot of creativity, innovation, whimsy, and doing things for their own sake. But that…

90s had much less wealth concentration than today.

Truth is everything rots over time, there is no escaping from entropy.

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#144

Post by dgellow »

the__alchemist wrote: post #52
functionmouse wrote: post #2

I agree, but it's been said by all... make homebrew software for an old Nintendo console pick up cross stitching or weaving make an independent film with a friend; use stuff from your kitchen as props find a borderline functional instrument at your local thrift store write a 1 page short story in pen it's not enough anymore to merely criticize this bad time we're having

I concur! Explore the big, bold world outside the internet. Or, on the internet, stop spending your valuable time on bottom-feeder content like medium articles, facebook, twitter/bluesky, rant blogs, news websites etc.

Do you have interesting urls to recommend?

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#145

Post by Folcon »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #113
functionmouse wrote: post #2

I agree, but it's been said by all... make homebrew software for an old Nintendo console pick up cross stitching or weaving make an independent film with a friend; use stuff from your kitchen as props find a borderline functional instrument at your local thrift store write a 1 page short story in pen it's not enough anymore to merely criticize this bad time we're having

Everything you said is good, but I think it misses the point of the blog post. The internet was special because it was a place to share those weird, human endeavors. I can do all I want in the solitude of my home but I want to share it! The internet is where you can find people with common interests that you can't find in people you know IRL. That was the escape. Finally you feel less alone, a stranger on the other s…

Just realised that reading your message, I really feel this, I've been designing a game and I've recently been having discussions with friends and people interested in it and it's just a really different experience talking with them vs posting about it, don't get me wrong, having a weekly cadence is nice and Sharing Saturdays can be really helpful to get the word out there, but it's such a different interaction and mindspace I end up in during the "plan to explain to people in this weird advertising, but not process about my passion project", vs "talk to someone about my passion"

And I'm aware that these are different activities, but I don't think they should be as far apart emotionally as they end up being?

For example the last discussion I had we talked about how I was exploring connecting the impact of actions in the small scale to the large scale, for example how designing a particular construct or vehicle, would change how efficiently a player would be able to mine and that would then impact how much that particular player made from mining in that area

This creates all sorts of interesting questions and even just that discussion was engaging

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#146

Post by armchairhacker »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #81
armchairhacker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they in the 1990s/2000s/2010s?

Lower cost of living and higher incomes when compared to purchasing power of a dollar.

Do you have sources? Because my understanding is that medium income/inflation increased

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#147

Post by DocTomoe »

fragmede wrote: post #65
coffeebeqn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t try to make money from it and you can still do fun things in life

How do you balance that with the need for money to afford things in life though? There's a lot of things I could go do if I didn't have to think about bills to pay.

That's why 'fun on the internet' was, always has been, is, and always will be a hobby, not a job.

If you do things for money, you optimize not for fun, but for return of (time) investment. Which is only fun if you have other issues.

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#149

Post by JohnMakin »

People created for the pure joy of creation. It's rare now. If you talk to younger people about it, they will sometimes look at you puzzled, like that was never a thing or doesn't make sense. "Back in the day" is a dangerous thing when you're older - we tend to idealize the past, but truly, back then if you made something that went viral, you didn't try to spin up a crypto rug pull and sell merch, you'd just go to a party and they'd be like "oh my god, you're THAT guy!" and you'd smile and say "yep, was me." and that was literally it. Perfect example of how distorted this is now is watching the brief story of the Hawk Tuah girl - one small viral moment, all of a sudden she's got crypto, a multi million dollar podcast, the whole standard path sans an onlyfans. Off a 10 second clip. Just absurd.

It was not without its dark sides. I remember at a young age seeing beheading videos, which were super easily available, even if not looking that hard, predators going wild in irc chats and the primitive online gaming of that time, several incidents of people on a webcam being encouraged to kill themselves via overdose, then that going viral, gore sites, etc. Addictive flash game sites riddled with porn ads. All of that stuff is still out there but a little harder to find. Back then there was a certain kind of exhibitionist spirit with the content, which wasn't all "fun" necessarily. But even with all of that, I do believe the web was better.

Re: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet

#150

Post by sandy_coyote »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #91
munificent wrote: post #53

I have a pet theory that much of what we're seeing culturally is that the 90s and early 2000s (at least in the US) was a window of time that offered a sense of safety and surplus. 9/11 was extremely culturally disruptive, but aside from that, for many in the US, it felt like there was "enough to go around". That environment breeds a lot of creativity, innovation, whimsy, and doing things for their own sake. But that…

The whole structure has changed. We are not even in the web 2.0 anymore and regressed to a client-server model where what we see is dictated from central platforms with little interaction between actual users. This was not a natural evolution of the web but the consequence of low-tech people accessing the web passively via a tiny touchscreen.

Tragedy of the Commons. It was around 2012 when my reactionary boomer relatives started trying to friend me on Facebook, wondering what the kids were all talking about.
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