people forget that even before LLMs, the Internet was already shit. a third was SEO slop by ESL thirdworlders, another third - a kulturkampf battlefield. looking for the good parts had never been easy.
Alive internet theory
21–30 of 86 posts
Re: Alive internet theory
#22I agree that "the internet will always be filled with real people: looking for each other". The question is will they be able to successfully find each other, and how can they be sure they have?
Presumably, the value in finding each other will be the key to determining you have found someone real. If you literally can't tell the difference, then what does it matter? But many of us believe that there are important differences, that do matter, and that the dead internet can never truly provide.
it depends if you want real connection. imagine if this reply was a video call. wave emoji
Re: Alive internet theory
#23Is it even more proof that the Internet is dead, that we are now in the Nostalgia Phase. Looking back fondly at what it once was.
Re: Alive internet theory
#24Awful site, this is just a strawman. The dead Internet theory does not claim that real people do not upload things to the Internet, there was never any doubt about that.
The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory" is or what it claims.
>every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos. Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims.
Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that most users of the Internet are consumers who mostly read discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who are actively participating are then engaged by "bots", supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating infighting.
If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by any amount of uploaded archive material.
Re: Alive internet theory
#25I like this, makes me wonder what a curated internet by a benevolent dictator could offer.
Re: Alive internet theory
#26Isn't the fact that most of the material comes from the Internet Archive somewhat a refutation of the Alive Internet Theory, which is that the internet is alive now, as opposed to some past archived point in time? (yes, I know the IA archives contemporary materials, but the purpose and majority of the content are from the past)
Re: Alive internet theory
#27Seems more 'undead' than alive given the methodology.
Re: Alive internet theory
#28Somehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture. 1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet. 2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong) The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no java…
Good critique to the comments!
Re: Alive internet theory
#29Haven't read the rest of the site but I really enjoyed the way you present it using the slider with the prevalent styles of certain periods
Re: Alive internet theory
#30Somehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture. 1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet. 2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong) The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no java…
> The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
Yes, and no. I think a problem is critique in the form of action. There are movements such as the indie web (e.g. Neocities, Nekoweb, Agoraroad) that long for the old web in their nostalgia and form a counter-movement to the current state of the web. The websites and communities that emerge from this are more or less an imitation of the websites of the late 90s and early 2000s. My problem with this is that the indie web primarily defines itself by simply being the opposite of the web 2.0. It exists primarily as a counterculture, in which “counter” is more important part than "culture". This movement is cynical in that a better future for the internet and the web no longer seems possible, and the only way out is to escape into a nostalgically romanticized past. For me, this is more of a confirmation of the Dead Internet Theory than of the Alive Internet Theory.