The author makes a lot of witty, erudite References – a method that has annoyingly become popular and is often mistaken as "good writing" – but I think he has missed a simple and obvious truth: culture is determined by fashion. Not fashion as in clothing, but fashion as in ideas and things that are trendy for a time then fade away, replaced by the next thing. The next thing is often an indirect reaction to the previous thing. Sometimes it's the exact opposite.
Culture has been very online for the last decade and extremely online for the last 3 years. We are just witnessing a cultural shift away from this and toward ideas like real, physical, human, touch, outside, present, etc. being trendy. The Internet isn't "over", it's just adapting to a new cultural fashion. The technological immaturity of stuff like VR is also a factor.
The vast majority of this article might as well be GPT-3 puke. Some interesting bits can be found at "When I say the internet is running dry,", afterwards it's right back to GPT-3 level drivel and I stopped reading.
Most online content is. I think most of what the author is complaining about can be attributed to this inability to distinguish between genuine human conversation with real people and automated attempts to get you to engage, not the internet itself.
That's the sad part--like I'm human but get accused of being a mentally ill bot of some kind--the sad part is there's a lot of folks that don't write that much better in most respects than GPT-3. Well and if they read a lot of GPT-3, it reinforces. I for one don't have a problem communicating with machines, they have a message that message might have worth. Just needs a little bit of collateral to look at it in the first place.
Most people really are better than GPT-3. The bot writes incoherent rambling with flair and style; humans write poorly, but (usually) with some underlying goal that keeps them on track.
GPT-3 output reminds me of the schizophrenia symptom called word salad, but slightly more coherent. It's trying to predict the next word, not achieve anything else, and the result is text that looks like it's going somewhere but never arrives.
Interesting, never heard of word salad. Well I suppose it's subjective, I get told some of my words are salad but when I reread them I piece together what they mean. It's in the eye of the beholder, I'd say.
And you know it's not that bad with schizophrenics, I know many, I like them, I used to be secretly diagnosed (without my knowledge) of it. That's why they never told me about word salad, they didn't want me doing anything to mitigate it.
There's other examples, here's one: like making huge leaps of thought. What's the term for this? I found out about it in a medical textbook I downloaded on libgen. Dude it's crazy, all kinds of shit in there, apparently psychiatrists become psychoanalysts because it's the easiest job there is. Just take all the hazing in an eternal education, get a really comfy seat (always better than the patients) sit back behind the patient laying down on the chaise long thing, that special bed thing some shrinks have, and they can literally do it in their sleep. All about setting up a good long unbroken word salad output from the patient and boom, yawn stretch fall asleep (light sleep, they learn to sleep this way). None of the questions (eg "How did that make you feel?") bear any logical link to previous questions or answers. Hey does that count as word salad? Logical leaps? From nowhere to nowhere. Easiest fucking job on the face of the Earth.
I don't know...I can communicate pretty well with both schizophrenics and monophrenics. Depending on intent frankly. Pretty decent shrinktalk by this point, enough that I can talk about it without fear, like I was the champion in the ward, drawing the delicate line of where too much was too much. And being bilingual, Spanish English that's nothing, monophrenic schizophrenic that's where it gets hardcore. Supposedly schizophrenics produce word salad, uh, no. Like I lived adjacent to a schizophrenic (he was totally accepting of his diagnosis, told it to me himself) meaning a wall separated our bedrooms, but we were not roommates. Dude I had no problem with him telling me his story of getting raped in prison, no problem at all. Actual ground truth of what's up, and by this point I can judge for myself when a schizo is lying, basically never, can't keep their lies straight they instead don't. Only the fool can speak the truth to the king, as was known in the Medieval period. They just tell the truth, with distortion yes, other people's lies built in, but somehow no hallucinations really, yes they hear voices but that's natural, angel on your shoulder whispering to you, devil on your left shoulder tempting you. But come on. So the killer detail is I see when the doctors do something shitty, I lived it and often they don't even try to hide the abuse in wards, shameless. So then it's very easy, unlike the shrinks you aren't beholden to pretending it's all insanity hallucination paranoia to cover all their shit with slander. So you see the torment, you witness it, on the inside, as a patient, you get poisoned just as much as everyone else, you suffer, you writhe in agony (literally epileptic seizures from that specific particular poison, not controversial it became the biggest class-action settlement in History and the absolute first thing it says on the packet is it can cause seizures if suddenly withdrawing, and further nowadays psychs are legally mandated to withdraw you carefully off specifically that pill in particular, I was not the only one writhing from withdrawal, it became a black-letter law. As if such a thing existed. So you see for yourself, uncensored, as yet another man in the ward, and then you hear what they say in that same ward. Then you get out of that ward, and you hear the same guy again, talking crazy conspiracy paranoia, thoroughly borne out in the ward, then just ask, uh, who exactly is accusing him of crazy conspiracy paranoia? What is he being dosed with, any neuroabrasives that only help in short-term and fuck you up long-term? Who is his doctor? Does that doctor have the same diagnoses? Like an addict needs an addict doctor, a bipolar needs a bipolar doctor, I had an ADD doctor which was the best, but unfortunately, no schizophrenic doctors. Pretty sure there are none. Like Jesus of Nazareth healing the mad and that would be it. Wait til He returns.
If you can pick up on the signal, it's not nearly as random. Hey they alone give me accurate intel about the really tragic places I could by all means end up just like all the rest of you, including the bots. Don't you're special. Nobody else actually talks about anything out of idealism, to warn and prevent. The monophrenics just wants to pass the shit on down, generally. The exceptions are exceptions. Or like delegate thinking to a bot. Dealt too good a hand, is what it comes down to, faster clock in general so no need to parallelize at all. And like no idea the extent to which they're lying. Totally lost track, deleted their initial self-lie. Dude you know I actually tried that, lying to myself as a moral experiment, dude my reading comprehension instantly went to nothing. Like I had to reread--this was the Bible I was reading--pages on end only to realize I had in fact already read all of it but retained nothing. Like instantly, flipped a switch boom memory destroyed to just as bad as my bullies when I was little. They remember jack. Like barely the title of the reading. Pathetic. So I prayed and asked forgiveness and cut that shit out. Dude don't lie to yourself, it's so dangerous, so so dangerous. Become a snake eating its own tail. Like really I should advise on how to fix it, because normally--most readers--monophrenics, don't hate it, just generally intolerant. Like afraid of infection, something. While also deeply enamored with the image of a madman who accepts the price of madness, which is perfection. The Joker, Heath Ledger captured the spirit, I did exactly the same shit to a gang a few years later, I alone can say that was photorealistic, true to life.
Whereas if I'm not talking to a monophrenic, but rather a homeless schizophrenic addict? Talk about whatever the fuck, round of beer on me at 10 in the morning, hey Jonathan had a rough night (the real problem of the evicted is sleeping safely, eating not so much), and told me why I got tortured, plainly. Because look at what comes out of my mouth! Telling everybody the plain truth, but like actionable, the hacks, for instance that landlords should pay the homeless like $3000 a month to suffer in public because that builds their negotiating position and diminishes haggling, late rent, increases fear, and more than fear phobia.
Like nobody seeing the evicted or ever helping them worth a fuck because they're so afraid of like it infecting them. The only thing they did was miss rent. That was it. Booo booo don't get infected! So I realized I had nothing to fear, 33-0 in street fights, OK maybe I of all people can unstick an evicted who gets stuck too close to me. Nothing to lose, no reason to be afraid. If they invade, I repel. It's very very easy. Harmlessly, and very very easy. And like they're people just like you or me, and they get cheated and fucked, they all get raped, and the more vulnerable they are the more people kick them down farther, steal from them.
Did you know that? The homeless get robbed a lot? Did you know?
More than the other way around. Jonathan just begs. I respect and value that, because it would be much worse for society if he got a shitty job which is basically all there is for him. Injure him quickly, not obvious but subtle and pervasive, like asking to lift 100 pound sacks by hand (Moschetti Inc, California) or some weird shit like rapid twisting which the temp agency didn't address directly, and that Adam (Mare Island Brewery) was thirsting for. Like he had done that before he knew I was way understaffed he wanted the injury, I fight sadism I know when I just know. The rest I can forgive that's just too perverse, wanting the injury. No. In a sneaky way, like the only two ways of knowing I had were either being a chiropractor--or--respecting my pain sensation. And he snied on my pain, but I didn't care. I lifted a lot in high school, I know very well the different types of pain the "no pain no gain" pain that's good, muscular tissue breaking down, and the totally unacceptable version, joint pain. This was a new weird thing, rapid repetitive rotation new kind of pain dude fuck you, send me home by all means, get me fired, so be it, what's the magic word? I quit.
I think the internet killed punk. It’s much harder to have a cohesive subculture when all information is available to anyone. In the 80s, one had to know the right record/book store to go to, the right college radio shows to tune into, and spend hours a week leafing through issues of Maximum rock and roll to have all the cultural information to glue the subculture together. Now it’s a few clicks.
For better or worse, it’s certain,, it’s certainly less gluey.
Wow. I’m sure if we were having this discussion face to face my comments wouldn’t have come off as elitist. There surely was an elitist crew in punk culture but what I was trying to describe is how I see that subcultures exist- better or worse. Liking music that wasn’t popular and could only be found in out of the way venues wasn’t elitist, but more of a common interest in spending one’s free time flipping through record racks and watching bands in dank sometimes dangerous venues. The DIY culture you reference was a central part of it. In my circles it was less exclusionary and more ‘neglected’, because the music didn’t sound like Phil Colins or Metallica- it was sloppy and weird in most peoples eyes. I don’t revere ‘punk’ . I have no allegiance to punk, as it’s hypocracy came to equal that of broader society (paraphrasing DH Pelligro IIRC). It didn’t become trendy it spawned trendy ‘offspring’.
> The author makes a lot of witty, erudite References – a method that has annoyingly become popular and is often mistaken as "good writing" – but I think he has missed a simple and obvious truth: culture is determined by fashion.
If culture is determined by fashion, and our fashion is that lots of witty, erudite References is considered good writing, then does it not follow that our culture is that lots of witty, erudite References is considered good writing? And therefore that this article actually is good writing, in our culture?
No, because our culture holds that truth is not held by the culture, but by the individual's instinct for rightness. Clothes may be a cultural construct, but no amount of collective lying can cover the emperor's nudity.
Definitely an entertaining read, so in that matter it "won" its place here. Now in regards to the actual content I am torn.
On one hand you could say he is bored, bitter, "old" dude who is tired from keeping up with the advancements and declares the end of progress.
On the other hand, you could argue that there is some genuine insight there. Internet is not an internal part of being a human. I even subscribe to the idea that it many ways it goes against being a human (social and physical detachment, desensitized emotions). And in the end of the day, no matter what is said and done on the internet, our existence is primarily physical.
Maybe the internet will not die, but maybe there is a regression to the mean. It feels like the excitement of the "digital self" is past its peak and people are slowly re-discovering that offline life is "cool again". Or if not "cool" a necessary plane to exist in order to effect changes. I think the Floyd example was on point; change happens on the street, not online. The stakes are simply not high enough there.
I guess I think very differently from the author and you. I fundamentally see "online" and "offline" parts of the world as two parts of the same whole with fading distinction. The offline is the online; the online is the offline. The Floyd protests were significantly organized on social media and activist discourse happened all over social networks.
Some people will spend more time online than offline, some the opposite, just like some folks spend more time playing sports or reading books. That doesn't mean they engage in separate lives, though probably do have different circles of community and friends.
I think the same way. Online and offline are just different mediums of communication, of experience. Each has their own advantages, and their own UX, and thus there is a place for both of them. Well at least until we get true matrix-style simulation, after which the offline world becomes a subset of what's possible in the online world.
> Definitely an entertaining read, so in that matter it "won" its place here. Now in regards to the actual content I am torn.
Sam Kriss takes some getting used to. He is definitely someone you read for the ride, not the propositional content. A rollercoaster, not a freight train.
This isn't true. There is lots of fascinating stuff out there (including this article, which is well-written and enjoyable).
The problem is that it's hard to find, because it's covered over with a layer of SEO-optimised crap churned out by an entire industry of professionals who spend all day, every day, trying to smother anything good or interesting online with their bland, outsourced, uninteresting, joyless, "content". I don't think that's what they actually want to achieve, but that's the net effect, and they know it, so it might as well be.
I agree. The internet still has wonderful things. It's just harder and harder to find. Google is apparently either a) unable to defend itself against SEO, or (more likely) b) makes more money from SEO. Either way, it is quickly losing relevance. I look forward to new engines with better, more human results, so I don't have to keep typing in "site:reddit.com" to the end of all my queries. It's getting absurd now.
If anyone is interested in alternatives, I recommend Kagi. If the subscription hits the pocket book too hard, consider Neeva and even Yandex.
It's the same thing with people disillusioned by Marvel or Star Wars or whatever. You need to be able to tell internalize that if you want content that isn't slop, you're going to have to hunt a lot harder for it, and pay a lot more for it, than you did in the past.
Only a slave mentality of a Christian in a fantasy world of believe or burn could turn a fundamental law of the universe into a depressing and horror of negative.
All things arise and pass away. This is truth.
If you believe it to be terrible then you are blind to half your life.
Once a man, twice a child. This is not sad, it is nature. The end gives VALUE to what existed.
The author criticizes the downfall of the techno-optimist, pretending to be one amidst his sad broken romance of limited perception and judgement of the state of world.
The internet is a tool that humans created. It’s going to stick around just like fire did for us, which is now a convenient plastic container in your pocket btw. Because it isn’t bad or good (believe or burn - goodness, learn to think and stop feeling), it just is.
There is nothing wrong with the world. It is as it always has been and it always will be., arising and passing away. The only problem is that your eyes are closed.
Rather than contemplate the horror of the internet, why not contemplate what it could become next? How do we turn the camp fire into a lighter? Wouldn’t that be interesting?
You make good points, but I didn't see such value judgements from the author. Instead, I interpreted the horror imagery as very much to your point: the way things are and will always be, the endless cycle of life and death which so many want to look away from, but which we must embrace.
Instead of approaching the author as right or wrong, approach the article in terms of how it might be useful for thinking about the future of the internet.
Many even here on HN frame things in a divisive way.
The article asks us to imagine the future. That is an interesting place to begin…
Kind of a silly article but I agree with the premise. Social media is dying, but I'm not sure the argument is as strong for anything else.
People are withdrawing from public Internet forums like Twitter. Twitter is so obscenely devoid of value that your average person has caught on and stays away.
But think about this - if you could plot the number of hours I spent on video chat (Zoom, Discord, Snapchat, Facetime, WebEx, etc.) over the years, starting circa 2018, it would be a near linear increase. Since there are only 24 hours in a day it has to hit a limit eventually, but when? All that time is the "private" Internet, 1-to-1 or very small groups. Meanwhile I'm using Instagram primarily for DMs and ignoring most of the main features of the app.
HN articles about doomsday are utterly moronic 9/10. I just glanced and saw an obnoxiously engineered attempt to be ominous. It’s not even the right Goya painting on the header. Will not read
> $150 billion, mostly from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which it’s poured into Uber and DoorDash and WeWork and Klarna and Slack. It provides the money that effectively subsidises your autistic digital life.
While I wasn't interested in following the writer down his garden path, this stood out and made me wonder whether over a large enough portfolio, later stage investments that increase the velocity of money can be recouped by investing in the emergent earlier stages of the growth they create. It's a bit of an inflationary and trickle-bubble argument, but from a tech venture perspective, even if Uber and WeWork were subsidized, they changed how a generation moved and worked and created knock on growth.
Softbank's moneybomb investments created a lot of wealth for people who worked for them, but also launched hundreds if not thousands of more companies. The loss of tens of millions here or there also goes on to produce new seed and A round opportunities within a 5-7 year horizon. It suggests that large later stage rounds from giant funds should index on whether the company is increasing the velocity of money enough that it is likely to yield a certain number of new companies, and its talent is risk taking enough to join more startups, and then find a way to get exposure and participation in those through the earlier stage VCs that focus on them as a hedge. Like a $150m investment in a D round for some tech company whose massive growth is behind it should be hedged with $10m+ of participation in VC funds doing seed and A rounds in that company's market where all their talent is going to leave for now that the $150m company has gone corporate.
What I have heard about the Vision Fund strategy is that it's to subsidize a company until it is large enough to go public and be included in the major index funds. After that happens there's a lot more investor inertia and retail money.
The internet is over because we have to start subtracting sh*t off it, like pop ups that returned in cookie notices and sign up fade-in boxes. We need to subtract off the bot spam, the copy & paste blogs that haunt google. We need to subtract off posts like this one that dare to fill the readers mind with hopeless garbage glossed up with red hot cultural molasses.
The internet is the khala from starcraft, it connects our thoughts and emotions to our internet brothers and sisters. An interconnected web of points.
We don't need a gustav dore inspired horror cluttering up the place. Subtract out the froth at the bottom of a crashed beach wave, and you'll have the best internet there's ever been.
I’ve been waiting for an article like this. I feel much the same way. My question for the author is, what do we do about it? I’d love to make some friends who share my worldview and go camp off-grid with them once a month to be in touch with real life. How to find those people and coordinate that trip? Therein lies the rub.
It’s easy to be a solo dropout and turn your back on the world. The problem comes when no one goes with you, and now you’re just an old man yelling at a cloud. I yearn desperately for a life where my connections to everyone I know aren’t mediated by the internet. But as long as everyone else is still on the internet, I’m pretty much SOL.
It’s as if the author put my thoughts into words, and then put all other thoughts into words, and it resulted in many, many words, without much thought put into it.
This article is akin to dot-com bubble mentality: "Internet sucks", "Internet is dead, move on" etc. but then Amazon, Google and Facebook rose, proved critics wrong and got mad rich doing it.
If engagement and revenue is in decline for internet businesses that means nothing. There are always business cycles of expansion and retraction.
The only thing that can kill internet is something better than the internet.
> Amazon, Google and Facebook rose, proved critics wrong
I disagree, but it probably depends on what it is that you value in the internet. In my view Amazon, Google, and Facebook are all large factors in why the internet sucks more now than ever.
I saw your comment only now but I wanted to say that I value free, reliable and somewhat satisfactory service that Amazon, Google and Facebook offer. They are not excellent but they get the job done. I'm aware that I'm trading my privacy for free service but there are no real alternatives to them or to their business model. That's why I stopped using Facebook 10 years ago before WhatsApp got popular now I only use WhatsApp, again Facebook's property but who cares at this point. I think the only viable competitor to them in the long term is decentralized crypto solution like blockchain and its smart contracts. But that stuff is far away from getting mature and widely accepted as means of commerce, communication and sharing of data and information.
This guy's slurping the slop off the top of the mob and complains it's fecal and watery, while invoking alchemy to try to explain why.
There's more deep, weird, genuinely interesting stuff than ever, just usually not on twitter. Actually, yeah, the author is conflating Web 2.0 with the internet.
I was going to say the article is written in the style of Bill Hicks with some George Carlin, but then I remember that everyone is freaked out right now and "end of the world" themes are popular. No the internet is not going away, unless of course the world does. Some current concerns from an American point of view:
- An ex President may be indicted soon, the first time in US history
- The ex President threatens the nation with the wrath of his supporters
- How much danger are Americans in from domestic terrorism? Not sure, but could be substantial
- The American West is drying up. Europe and China are running out of water too
- Russia is losing the war. No one knows what to expect when Putin is backed into a corner
- An election is 7 weeks away. No one knows what will happen. Will there be revolt by the losers?
- The pandemic may be declared over but is still killing people. Long Covid is a problem
- Gender and sex cultural wars are raging in the Anglo sphere
- Inflation is slowly eating into the savings of Americans
- Supply chain and workforce turmoil are still a problem from the pandemic
- The Greenland ice sheet is melting at a faster rate than expected. The Gulf Stream may shut down
- Climate change is disrupting agriculture and there are dangers of famines and climate refugees
You've missed the point, the author explains how some things are simply older than the internet and will probably outlive it (the night, the sea). I think it's the Lindy effect.
Is it a highly political article? There's one short section on politics, but there's definitely nothing on Trump, and I don't see how his indictment is particularly relevant...
Weird that a mild rehash of current events is getting downvoted. Clearly I have no idea what motivates you people. Anyway, I was going to say this person's writings remind me of Warren Ellis at the tail end of a 14 hour blotter-fueled house party. Head still reeling but too strung out to muster any but the most muted emotional response.
Thank you for that compact summary of the state of the world. I completely agree. Reading those 12 simple points was like doomscrolling, except I didn't even have to scroll, which feels so efficient!
As long as clickbait drivel like this is upvoted, and advertising is legal, there will be internet.
And after that, when we return to the primordial ooze of AOLs and Prodigys and CompuServes, and even before that to UseNet and BBSes, when there is barely a commercial entity left, but there is still a wire to shove weird binary non-euclydian poetry into, there will be internet.
And even after, when illicit shortwave modems screech their crude 300 baud message across the planet, and very slowly a fat gray cat, Cheshire-grinning a question about a sandwich, progressively renders into a cracked and crudely lit LCD, an old meme will take form, and there, in the gray matter, there will be internet.
Nobody really knows when the body dies. After brain death, and then organ failure, and all the electricity's gone, a rotting corpse still feeds the world, mother's diesel for the biological engine of life. Who knows where the internet will go, or for how long, or in what strange aeons it will return? Who can say if ours was even the first?
Thank you. Too many commentators equate them being bored or disillusioned with something as meaning that thing is dead. Meanwhile umpteen millions of people carry on as usual. I’ve lost track of how many times newsletters, blogs, whatever have been declared dead. Whereas in reality all of these are still growing strongly in both number and user engagement. It’s lazy mindless valueless trend worshiping masquerading as analysis.
I see the internet as an extension of the telephone before it, then before it the telegraph, then before that flags on ships and messenger pigeons with like a color tied to their feet depending on who won the Battle of Actium. Blue meant it was Augustus, pretty efficient for that time.
Culture has been very online for the last decade and extremely online for the last 3 years. We are just witnessing a cultural shift away from this and toward ideas like real, physical, human, touch, outside, present, etc. being trendy. The Internet isn't "over", it's just adapting to a new cultural fashion. The technological immaturity of stuff like VR is also a factor.
By 2040, we'll all be extremely online again.