The Death of the Web (2024)

Not every was around when the web was obscure. It's hard to explain how magical that time was. The pinnacle of the web for me was Audio Galaxy. A website where you could find new music to download and even push music to your friend's computer (using the Audio Galaxy Satellite app) [1].

I spent so much time in IRC rooms and discussion forums. It wasn't doom scrolling. No one was trying to manipulate me for my time or money. Perhaps you can think of it like going down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia articles. But there were so many people sharing so many unique perspectives - some I became friends with and many of those remain today.

I felt something like neocities might recapture that feeling. I haven't put in enough time to see if that's the case. I do hope that for a future generation that they get to experience something like the very early web ... it truly was remarkable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiogalaxy

I have a theory that part of why you don't see such great niche sites now is that they were the productive of cognitive surplus. People had spare brain power and not that much to do with it, so they built and contributed to fun sites.

Now, FB and YouTube and Tiktok etc have gotten very good at consuming all that free time and energy.

Just a theory.

Boiling take: Myspace doesn't get enough historical heat for walling the blogosphere while simultaneously Eternal-Septembering it.

Once something becomes about the money, it's going to be about the money.

The death of the Internet was so insidious. I guess I trusted too much that what people built would remain the same. Once a few players took over their respective niches, they opened up a Pandora Box of ways to make money.

I miss finding niche forums where we saw a number of very active members, and we could distinguish them. There was often great care curating their content. These communities have been concentrating on Reddit, and I don't like it.

The wild thing is that the web has achieved both the aspirations and the failings mentioned here. There's an odd dichotomy of user experiences.

Progress really has accelerated. "Big data" couldn't have been a thing without the Internet. Science through improved communication is advancing more rapidly than ever before. Just look at how quickly things change today vs. 100 years ago in all aspects of life.

Knowledge is everywhere, you just need to know where to dig to work around all of the junk. You no longer need to take up an apprenticeship to understand the basics of a given job, and knowledge as a whole is more accessible than ever before.

We really can communicate with people all over the world. The Internet is always active, because users from across the globe are always online.

The Internet has accelerated globalism. People can readily expose themselves to outside ideas and perspectives, so long as they take the effort to step outside of their algorithm-prescribed interest bubbles every once in a while. You can make friends on the other side of the planet and communicate far easier than you could ever send letters or pay for long-distance phone calls.

People still make their own websites. I'm sure there are more of them then there ever were in the '90s, they're just significantly harder to surface in the deluge of the modern Internet.

Ads, pop-ups, and modals are only experienced by people that don't know about worthwhile ad/nuisance blockers.

Ultimately, the Internet is filled with more content rather than strictly better content than ever before. Though as a consequence of more, it means there's also more great knowledge and more likeminded subcultures available than ever before, but you need a certain kind of discipline to actively work to find it. This is why I feel that information literacy is one of the most important life skills: if you can find the "good stuff", discriminate fact from fiction, and dig deeper than an AI-generated Google summary of search results, then you have the means to learn and develop talents in just about anything.

Garry used to run/host the Facepunch forums which strongly remind me of better times on the web. They were good times.

For me the start of the decline is when Netscape went under. Billy @ Microsoft threw his weight around and IE dominated (sigh). The final nail in the coffin is when mozilla suite was torn apart and the browser was renamed Seamonkey. No really. "Seamonkey" is what was decided.

I do look back at the early 90's with nostalgia. Too bad you can never go back.

I often feel this way about a lot of things where I was present during the genesis moment. Then I remind myself that I'm getting older and likely misremembering what it was really like - fun and exciting, but not very useful.

Moreover, I feel like this perspective fails to acknowledge everyone globally who benefits massively from simply having access to information I take for granted - even if it is surrounded by ads.

Lastly, I get that the proliferation of apps for tangible goods is frustrating, but there is an answer...just don't purchase that item! I've passed on loads of purchases because I don't want another app. I once went to a Mariners game and forgot I had my Leatherman in my pocket. Understandably, they wouldn't let me in, but told me I could use a nearby locker which required I install an app. I gave my ticket to someone else and walked back to work. No big deal.

they've been pushing this version of the Internet on us forever. first compuserv, then aol, yahoo, Google, FB, now x/tiktok. everything gets ruined once it goes critical mass. we loved those days because it was pure freedom. choose your own adventure. now we get force fed crap we never asked for.

we didn't need to monetize anything. you need power, a computer, and a connection, that's it. that's not too hard to pay for. they printed a bunch of money and created things we didn't need or want. .com bubble my ass. how much of those trillions over the years have actually produced value? nay, it was an easy way to build wealth and suck up printed money while they on-boarded users who will never know those times but always silently long for them. who was it that said be careful who you give your power to?

For something dead the numbers still go up a lot:

https://www.zippia.com/advice/how-many-people-use-the-intern...

also the amount of content etc. For all sorts of tastes. I was just watching a comparison test of Craftsman wrenches from 100 years ago, 50 years ago and today. You just didn't have that sort of important content in the early days. https://youtu.be/VTSGAyyLzvo

I feel everything in this article as somebody who first got online when I was 13 in 1994. In those days you got bullied for being "good at computers" (especially in the rural area I grew up in) and the communities formed on IRC and early multiplayer gaming networks were a lifesaver. Many websites were written by college students who essentially "blogged" their newly discovered free lives, which was so appealing to my teen-aged self.

It's cliche to malign mass market consumerism, but it really is a lowest common denominator phenomenon. I feel like the internet has made grifting so scalable that it's getting more and more difficult to consume.