I feel in a similar boat. For a long time I wondered if it was external forces reducing the amount of time I could reasonably spend online, and that may partially be it (it's hard to just zone out to an Internet browse when three kids are charging about). But I think the main reason is a strong sense that the Internet just isn't for me any more.
Reddit forces more and more changes that prioritise engagement with the platform, and not communities (I hate the default sort by Best). Instagram and YouTube push reels and shorts hard to keep you sucked in for longer. But also the creators whose content I enjoy seem to be moving on to other things. CGP Grey has all but disappeared from the Internet. Abigail Thorn is doing more acting and less philosophy. The Film Reroll seems to be losing steam. Tom Nicholas is doing nigh-daily news content over his typical video essays. Bingeing with Babish seems to have run out of interesting recipes and has been putting out longer and longer videos. There are still creators that put things out, but it all seems like an endless content mill. Maximise eyeball time with more digestible content, sack off the higher-quality, harder to produce stuff.
I don't subscribe to Dead Internet Theory; I think it's a convenient excuse for people to dehumanise their fellow Sapiens to claim that the commenters and posters are bots. I'm sure there is a lot of that around, but I think it's far less than the Theory would imply. I think the issue is that the business model is collapsing in a totally saturated set of industries. There is simply too much content, and too many people vying for not enough pie. The tech beasts continue to increase their cut, leaving creatives with fractions of pennies on the pound. They have to diversify; here's my Patreon, here's my Discord, here's my merch, here's a sponsorship. It is no longer possible to make a living solely out of revenue from these platforms unless you are mega mega big.
And so, in a climate where the cost of living is absolutely skyrocketing, the creatives are forced to diversify, appeal to a broader audience, or simply stop and do something else. I don't know a single person who isn't struggling with money, the cost of food, fuel, housing, and so on. I know zero people who make their living through content creation, but I do know that those who do are more like me than we sometimes think. There's this perception that influencers and content creators are rolling in wealth, but the vast, vast majority are just... normal people like us. And so it becomes this endless feedback loop. YouTube needs to keep posting higher and higher profits, so they tweak their algorithm and increase their percentage cut. This affects the creators who need to adapt their content to stay relevant, and diversify into other revenue streams.
And in the end, it just serves to turn the Internet into a big shopping mall. It used to feel curious, exciting, fresh, and like a refuge from the drudgery of real life, but it's increasingly a shiny marketplace for people to try and sell their wares. Everyone and everything is yelling for you to "buy now!" or "subscribe! or "pay to browse without ads!" and it's exhausting. I don't have the capacity any more to filter that stuff out, and I can't unsee just how much the whole thing is a rickety scaffold for companies to extract value while barely creating anything themselves. I don't blame the creators, they're doing their best in an environment that feels increasingly hostile to their successes. But I no longer want to be in another place where everything has a price.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I think you've largely missed the mark here
I don't subscribe to Dead Internet Theory; I think it's a convenient excuse for people to dehumanise their fellow Sapiens to claim that the commenters and posters are bots. I'm sure there is a lot of that around, but I think it's far less than the Theory would imply.
I don't think that hyperbole sums up what an average believer of the Dead Internet Theory is trying to do, although I accept there are a few definitions of it. I think that the majority of people don't want a state of affairs like this to occur, and aren't writing off content as bot-generated on a whim. Statistically, bot traffic is now believed to have overtaken human traffic online. That combined with the proliferation of AI shorts and even longer-form content has only made this more salient.
Over the last few years it has become obvious on Reddit how many pseudo-accounts or bot-accounts are on the platform. This is matching up with how Facebook and Twitter have been for a while - the tell-tale signs of brand-new accounts, provocative comments, exclusively posting on divisive topics, the word-for-word repetition of other bot comments etc.
The Dead Internet Theory isn't in full-swing and I suspect will take several more decades to play out without any noticeable change in online behaviour, but we are clearly tumbling head-first towards it.
And so, in a climate where the cost of living is absolutely skyrocketing, the creatives are forced to diversify, appeal to a broader audience, or simply stop and do something else. I don't know a single person who isn't struggling with money, the cost of food, fuel, housing, and so on. I know zero people who make their living through content creation, but I do know that those who do are more like me than we sometimes think.
We've also been through so many "once in a generation" crises that life has become exhausting.
We have been through multiple recessions, political crises, wars, waves of mass migration, a pandemic resulting in several global lockdowns, an AI-driven squeeze on electrical components, a super El Nino which has cooked Europe, and two ongoing wars which are currently disrupting global oil and fertiliser supplies.
Yeah! Life has become exhausting, hasn't it? One bad thing after another. Even with a mindful effort to rise above it and "don't let things you can't control stress you", it's hard. These bad things seep into every day life even when you avoid browsing news, social media, etc. The bad things are no longer only in a faraway land. They are here, next door. Lately I just keep thinking, is the very concept of "happiness" even useful anymore? It seem unattainable. Perhaps a better thing to aim for is "calm". If somehow I can just remain calm rather than get angry at the bad things, maybe it's enough.
I do want to add one small relief - The Film Reroll are still active, but they seem to be posting exclusively on Patreon now. It's not great that their new releases aren't accessible without a paywall ATM, but they are still releasing episodes, just in case it might've looked like they fell off the face of the Earth!
I don't subscribe to Dead Internet Theory; I think it's a convenient excuse for people to dehumanise their fellow Sapiens to claim that the commenters and posters are bots. I'm sure there is a lot of that around, but I think it's far less than the Theory would imply.
This is something I've seen a lot but never really seen someone put into words. Like you, I'm sure there's a fair bit of bots talking to bots, but (especially on reddit, after the API thing), the site became untenable because the suspicion was enough that anything that a person didn't like was obviously bot activity.
There is obvious bot activity, but it's that dismissiveness that I find kills my desire to engage in any form of commenting or conversation on sites bigger than Tildes.
Two examples spring to mind because they caused such a strong reaction in me.
One, just after the Reddit API disaster, I was on a subreddit about a game I play. It had mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed it. Someone was saying a certain mechanic didn't work properly so the game was broken. I am aware that, not only can I sound like a dick in writing, on Reddit, everyone assumes the person replying is a dick anyway. So I wrote a very nice, considered response explaining how the mechanic worked, and that it wasn't broken. I said maybe the game makers could explain it better, but I'd found success with it. I got downvoted below the threshold because the person I was replying to said 'Obvious dev bot account.'
I was trying to help them enjoy the game I liked! Argh!
The second was here, which was more painful because it's Tildes, not a giant social media site. I was commenting about Russian drone activity in Western Europe, and how it was good nations were starting to coordinate in NATO to counter this threat. I expressed my frustration that this hadn't been done immediately after the Ukrainian invasion, and we only seem to respond to threats reactively, rather than taking the view of 'that'll be us in a few years, let's start now.'
A Tildes user (maybe?) claimed I was either a bot, or deliberately spreading Russian disinformation. It's the only time I've used the Malice label to my memory. It made me so furious that some person I didn't know just assumed I wasn't human, and worse, that I was part of a giant network of influence to try and weaken the EU (I've got a little flag on my desk where no one can see I'm actually quite proud of it) and NATO (my NATO medal is my favorite one).
I understand the instinct to be suspicious of bot activity, as we've all encountered it. But as you said, it seems to be such an easy way to dehumanise and dismiss. I like my privacy, I'm not going to post a photo of myself with my face, the day's date, and Ask Me Anything with every comment.
So I've largely stopped commenting. The internet isn't a fun place where I can meet new people anymore, it's just hostile and mean. And there are fully state funded information operations that make commenting on serious issues that impact the world an absolute nightmare. I'm sure someone cleverer than me could make it into a pithy statement, but every interaction feels like a reverse Turing test where the assumption is 'bot until proven otherwise' and you have to prove your humanity before someone pays you courtesy. Or maybe that's the regular Turing test. I don't know, I am not a computer person.
But it sucks. Having to accept that the nice, tranquil, friendly internet I grew up with and spend my hours unwinding with as a kid and early adult is gone is really sad.
We live in a cruel world where people are disingenuous. Especially on the big social media platforms. We have been given actual proof of bots and disinformation campaigns, Russian and otherwise.
While Tildes is a kinder place where people are more sincere, it's always wise to remember that we don't live in Tildes - we come from places where we are dealing with crazy bad faith arguments and made up stories meant to manipulate us all the time. It feels like people are becoming less honest in meatspace as well.
There is no solution but to build the community you want to be in.
YT ruined their recommendation algo. It overfits like crazy. It has decided I like 3-4 specific topics and that's it, it never shows anything else. Even when I click "new to you" it's more of the same topics. But I've already seen most quality content on those topics and I'm kinda bored and want something new. But YT never brings anything new. I used to use the Subscriptions feed a lot, but with time that got ruined too. It's natural for channels to fall off, change and even completely die with time. In the past that wasn't a problem, because I'd be constantly subscribing to new channels I discover. But now the algo refuses to consistently find good new creators to subscribe to, so my Subscriptions feed got stagnant too.
Reddit got ruined by bots and extreme amounts of political propaganda. I swear, a redditor could literally poop their pants and they'll still find a way to blame it on "end-stage capitalism" or shoehorn in some Trump whining. It's insufferable. I'm 100% convinced big chunk of it is automated too.
Number 1 perfectly describes my feelings. My suggestion feed feels like 100 copies of the exact same video, and the same exact video it was the last 100 times I looked. I have to work hard to find anything new and interesting. I just don't enjoy opening youtube anymore. Nebula is better (though lacking in some UX features), but for some reason I still find myself opening the YouTube app first.
Reddit is trash now. The new UI is insufferable, old reddit is dying a slow death, and I feel dirty for even using the site. Unfortunately there's a few niche subreddits where I cannot find anything equivalent (local subreddits, device specific forums, etc), so I find myself still using it. That said, I do enjoy taking every opportunity to dunk on Trump. :)
I’ve kind of felt the same. A lot of it is that the creators of thoughtful content have moved around quite a lot in recent years. Journalism oitlets have plummeted in quality and variety of what they will publish, and perhaps more importantly aggregators are less likely to pick them up and make them viral, in part because there are less people on them.
A lot of it is likely because people are changing the kind of media they consume. Particularly in the form of short form vertical video. They are watching TikToks, instagram reels, or YouTube shorts. There is a surprising amount of content that I could describe as being “deep-like, but without depth” on those platforms. People making political points also tend to be a lot more effective in them without needing to take a lot of time or words because they can convey passion directly.
"Deep-like, but without depth" is the perfect way to describe any short-form content focused on things like wellbeing, therapy, etc. which is usually something that takes time and commitment. A reel won't fix one's depression, and for each advice reel, there are 5 more telling you the opposite thing. If anything, I bet that consuming this content worsens most mental conditions. The best way Instagram can help with mental health is by being deleted from one's phone.
Even before all the short form TikTok therapy shit there was reddit, where you could go to r/depression and muse about what magic life altering mantra you could absorb in order to cure your depression over night.
It was tragic that this belief was, and still is, actually killing people quickly and theres absolutely no way I could convince a single damn soul to just TRY eating better and maybe going for a walk for a whole entire like six months and see if they feel even 20% better. Nope, theyd rather wallow in it until it kills them.
Tell me about it! A close family member has been going through some hard times for the last 2 years or so. I kept urging them to try establishing an exercise routine. Finally in the last 3 months or so they stuck to a daily walk and fairly regular exercise. While the problems didn’t vanish, they seem in better overall spirits and more resilient in dealing with the issues.
Right its just one single step towards a healthy self care routine, I think a lot of people get stuck because they think they have to care about themselves to have self care routines, and they do not, they can just go through the motions empty as they are and eventually they will have a good day and they’ll be well prepared to actually enjoy that walk.
Tildes' "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.
The simplest way to participate is to put away your phone, close the laptop, etc.
That said, going "screenless" is not a hard rule:
"Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.
So, if someone wants to learn to crochet, and they spend the day with YouTube tutorials and Ravelry patterns on their tablet, that still "counts" for Screenless Day.
It's about stepping away from toxic tech rather than eradicating tech altogether.
I'll be putting up the topics on the First Friday of each month (so we'll officially start on this coming September 4th), with the idea that people choose a day that weekend (whichever works best for them) to participate. Of course, people are not limited to that and can take a Screenless Day whenever they like. The discussion post will be up for the month.
I’m going to put up an official announcement topic on Tuesday, September 1 to spread the word and build the notification list, but I’m happy to start taking names here too as well.
Wow, it was April 2021 when I participated. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. I just read my response and though I remembered that it wasn’t comfortable (it was uncomfortable enough that I never participated again lol), I had forgotten how uncomfortable it was. What I totally forgot was how much I learned and that I wanted to cultivate how to just be. I’m looking forward to seeing how I do this time. Thank you :)
Immediately gets me thinking about what that means to me, given I've spent so much of my life (as a shut-in nerd) in front of screens, but there was less toxicity way back when.
I'd definitely use my eReader and I feel like for myself, playing games of any kind (I don't play multiplayer) is ok, because I don't do it to excess anymore. And I'd have to use a screen to bring up some music. Seems like I'm kind of defeating the point though if I'm only just taking a step back from say, Youtube and generally surfing the internet.
I actually toyed with changing the name away from “Screenless Day” because it’s a touch misleading, but I couldn’t come up with anything that I liked (I’m open to suggestions!).
I see it as being more about intentionality than anything else. Use the tech; don’t let the tech use you — that sort of thing.
Like, if queueing up music on your phone helps you focus and do what you want to, then that’s not toxic and isn’t something you need to deliberately route around for a Screenless Day.
Or, maybe, for a Screenless Day you decide that you want to be more deliberate and focused about your music so you choose an album or two to really pay attention to and dive into, instead of shuffling songs as background for something else.
It’s all about reflecting on your individual relationship with tech (which you’re already doing!) and trying to make it better.
For most folks I think that would be a good thing, but when it's dark out, and I'm too burnt out from work to make progress on whatever home or art project I'm doing it was a really nice way to turn off my brain.
It kinda is a good thing though?
It's OK to sometimes veg out and just mess around on the internet or watch a bad TV show, but if that's the default then this could be your opportunity to change the default to something more healthy.
The famous saying "the more you do the more you want to do" is true, even for us neurospicy people. It's just finding the right thing to do.
Maybe you could try some kind of exercise? What about some nice simple puzzles like a jigsaw, crossword, sukodu?
Read some books!
Get your best friend over and watch a bad movie.
Try cooking something you've never tried before.
These are mostly simple things that are not in the high effort category and barely require leaving the house. Sitting in front of your laptop for hours and hours going down a reddit rabbit hole engages your brain, but doesn't do you any good really.
Of course, this is just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt. As I get older I realize that it's OK to sometimes engage with the brain dead content when I really need it, but I need more healthy options too.
The famous saying "the more you do the more you want to do" is true, even for us neurospicy people. It's just finding the right thing to do.
Absolutely, and the opposite holds true as well. Deleting the Instagram app means I basically don’t check it at all except every now and then on computer. Reddit blocking old.reddit.com without logging in has meant I am in the first two weeks of weaning myself off constantly checking Reddit on my phone. Sure I check it in PC, but there I get my subs without all the /r/all dross that just works me up.
Setting up projects and just doing a bit each day is starting to pay off. Just signed up for the JLPT test for Japanese language, so that will give me a boost to study each day. Make some music. Draw a picture. Read a book. Do a puzzle.
It’s also why all good habits start with a daily walk!
People give it up because it takes so long to make a difference, but before you know it you’re remembering sports you wanted to do and managing to vacuum the whole house without that being your 1 task that day.
Does it engage my brain though? Cause I don’t remember most of the shit I read on Reddit, the whole place feels like a hamster wheel of pseudo brain activity like how eating a whole bag of potato chips looks and feels like a meal but isn’t actually of any nutritional value.
..now that you're pointing it out... yes.
The internet, a long long long time ago, was a "place" where i went to see what was going on. I spent hours on geocities, forums, etc...
I had way more time when i was young... but yet... I really felt it like it was a town, with infinite roads and every road took me somewhere.
Now internet has become just a tool, a sort of huge library, a source of knowledge i can try to tap.
I have seen than i turn on the pc and go online only if i have a problem to solve.
Do i need, i dunno... to install a new OS? Do i need a guide on how to do some handy job at home? Do i need to listen to someone to speak a language i'm studying? Do i... I go to youtube and look for a video there, or i just look for a thread on reddit or, recently, i just prompt an AI and ask for the solution and the sources.
And once the solution i have found works i go back to my normal life.
The town has been demolished, mostly. Some roads are still there but not too many anymore and i think i've become tired to look for them :)
I'm in a years-long trend of the sites I once used getting enshittified one by one and giving them up. I'm getting better at catching myself in the "I'm only logging on out of habit" stage and just pulling the plug. I'm deliberately not seeking out replacements because I recognise social media is designed to be an addiction. If the addiction naturally ends, why seek out another?
A few weeks ago the game I was using to kill time, almost my last source of brain rot, started crashing every time I played it and something in my brain finally un-broke. I've read two full books in the last 12 days, a habit I've been trying to build for years, mostly sitting out on my porch after my toddler is gone to bed. Stress-wise I'm feeling better than I have in years.
I do feel the same and that we are now at the point where the Dead Internet Theory has become latent for those who have been browsing the web for a long time. A lot of content on platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok is coming from bots, which is making engagement less appetising if you can recognise what's happening.
The "Small Web" is definitely still out there which can offer you a similar experience to before, but it's more effortful trying to do this. Major search engines and social media sites don't have a vested interest in promoting this form of Internet, so you need to rely on traditional forums, obscurer search engines like Marginalia or Wiby, sites like Neocities etc.
Although, as you averted to, I also wonder if this is due to me simply reaching a different stage of life. I don't really enjoy the mindless scrolling of before, I don't derive enough joy from engaging with people online as I would in reality, and I prefer physically engaging with something instead of passively observing through stained glass.
I have been gearing myself up to change my lifestyle to involve significantly less Internet. I've always been kind of Terminally Online as someone who grew up starting with BBSes and IRC in the early 90s and going on to have my entire 20+ year career based on the web. I find I'm getting bored with it, for all the same reasons others are saying in this thread so I don't need to belabor it, and finding myself wishing I could spend the time more productively...except I don't know what on.
I do have offline hobbies I engage in regularly--cooking, motorcycles, martial arts--but otherwise pretty much everything I do in a day is online, from work to leisure time. Two decades ago I would tell you it wasn't wasted time--reading news articles, following or participating in really interesting forum discussions on niche topics, enjoying the many popular webcomics of the time (and producing my own for a few years), meeting new people on social media such as Livejournal many of whom I'm still IRL friends with now and talk to every day. Getting exposed to new media and new, presumably less-agenda-ed perspectives. I did feel like it was enrichment in my enclosure, that enclosure being "small shitty conservative economically-depressed Southern hometown".
Now I'm just bored. Modern social media has no appeal to me, genuinely quality news sources are hard to find, everything is condensed to the five sites we all know (and four I do not use at all) that are herding pens for ad exposure and political agendas spewed by paid bot accounts. I do use Reddit admittedly, but I use Reddit Enhancement suite with Ublock Origin and have a narrow list of focused subs and rarely bother with stuff like /r/popular, so I do still get something out of it but that narrow focus means I'm pretty much caught up on everything I care about in an hour or so.
I like video games alright but as I get older it's something I find little desire to do except maybe an hour or two a week. There are plenty of other hobbies I could get into of course and that's what I'm trying to figure out instead of doing what I usually do and go find contract work (online of course) that I don't need just to feel busy. I definitely want to read more, and have started slowly reading books again after kind of not doing that for years, even though I was a voracious reader when I was young. I recently bought a new guitar to try to goad myself into playing music again but haven't touched it yet.
It's all making me realize that my real problem is having spent years training myself to the firehose of short-attention-span-based content. I don't use TikTok or YT Shorts, I've deliberately avoided them, but I still find I don't have the ability to focus on much beyond scanning headlines and reading the top-level comments to summarize that content, or doomscrolling jokes and bad news on Bluesky.
It's driving me insane, literally. It sounds like a joke but it is not: I put myself in therapy recently in an attempt to rewire my brain into being able to figure out what to do with my time if I pull the plug on the Internet and try to live most of my day offline. Can't say I have an answer yet.
I have definitely been feeling this way. Partially due to a change in hobbies, mental health struggles, conflicts at home and this feeling that the world in general has significantly gone down the toilet since COVID-19 and is going quickly towards societal collapse. It's like tech billionaires like Elon Musk who were celebrated went full sociopath and showed their true colours.
The dead internet theory is something I believe to be 100% real, and is a huge reason why social media and online gaming isn't so engaging to me anymore. Automation and AI has enshittified the user (particularly customer support) experience a lot and Reddit is a great example of how bad this can get.
I actually received an automated account warning from Reddit on Sunday due to a reply I posted (which I don't fully remember the wording of, and can't double-check since it was immediately replaced with "[removed by reddit]" upon posting. For context, someone posted doorcam footage of a woman with a cold emotionless expression trying to bash down somebody's front door with a rifle. Someone asked about the legality of using their second amendment rights to shoot an attempted home invader in this situation and I replied with (in retrospect bad advice) to fire a warning shot to give them pause and warn them you're armed. Because I used the phrase "pew pew" (onomatopeia for gunshots) in my OG comment, I tripped their system.
Apparently that was a violation of Rule 1 and according to Reddit's own dogshit AI content detection systems, I was deemed to have incited violence and issued a warning instantly after posting my comment. Inadvertently tripping their bad word filter again could risk a full account ban. The subsequent appeal I filed was upheld within hours by what was presumably another AI-driven decision that probably used up a few more LLM tokens than the initial one, and it seems there is no way to contact an actual human at Reddit Inc to discuss exactly how my comment incited violence and was hateful.
Going back to the topic of gaming, Blizzard and Riot have outsourced and automated the crap out of their player support functions to their detriment. World of Warcraft is a particularly egregious example where cartels of gold farmers and boosters actually weaponize the report system against players who oppose them. The amount of times I've seen on r/wow and r/classicwow people being wrongly perma banned because a RWT mafia mass reported them maliciously and them being repeatedly fobbed off by the CS team is baffling.
Or how much gaming in general has been chipped away by enshittification. Xbox went through waves of mass layoffs when Phil Spencer was supposed to be the saviour that would free Activision Blizzard from Bobby Kotick. Sony outright ditched physical media and then quintupled down when facing significant backlash. Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have been particularly litigious and greedy, to the point where the upcoming GTA6 Extended Look is a timed Netflix exclusive.
I don't think things will improve unless the quality of products/services for these companies get so bad that it drives people to alternatives. And given the lack of viable alternatives to Reddit and a lot of major online games...
Automation and AI has enshittified the user (particularly customer support) experience
Hear hear. There is an old skit from Matt Lucas and David Walliams' Little Britain (YouTube), where "Customer service is a tireless profession. Carol, however, has not broken a sweat in 25 years." This is now reality. I engaged with two of our nation's biggest banks this year and had the exact same frustrating "computer says no/is there nothing else we can try/computer says no" exchange with at least a dozen different phone + in person agents. It's ridiculous they need to hire business degree people to respond with "computer says no". (The request was to raise one credit card limit from $1000 to $2000. Another of mine is auto set at $20,000. Card remains unusable.)
Gaming is particularly poorly hit because once a game is out and not making that quarter any richer it's deemed finished and players are just a cost center to them.
There's plenty of alternatives on the high seas. Or with single developer madhouses like Stardew Valley, Terraria, Vampire Survivor, Dwarf Fortress where they are still making updates / new content.
All the major platforms have coalesced into a boring network of circular references where not a single one has a recognisable medium anymore. They all host video, images, text posts, short form content and screenshots of each others posts. You'll be hard pressed to even see a difference between layouts anymore.
And the worst part is that it's not even an enjoyable experience, it's been optimized for engagement, which doesn't mean anything except something that's measured on the backend.
The circular references might not be so bad if they at least referenced eachother, but it's all self-reference. It's just the machine masturbating itself to shitty rips of content stolen from somewhere else.
And worse, you will get a friend to give you a link to something on their their shitty network and they will refuse to show you more than a sliver of the context without creating an account, consenting to their data harvesting and yielding of your rights, and downloading their invasive apps. I get friends who send instagram reels and facebook videos that I can technically view, but I can't pause them, review them in any way, or read the title or caption without going through sacrificing my first born. Attempting to do so will open up the app store before saying that there is no app to open the link I clicked on because I didn't install their spyware.
I have been feeling this way for a long time, and over several months at a time I have tried returning to one platform or another to see if anything changed, or if I can approach it differently. In fact, I just returned to Tildes after a hiatus, because it's a unique place and I missed it.
I went back to Reddit a few months ago and yes, I see what you are saying too. Take the Comics subreddit. So many posts are comics that also remind you about the Patreon account where you could unlock NSFW content if you subscribe. If i wanted NSFW content, there are plenty other places to go, and they are free. Pass! In addition, relying on the Popular page of Reddit in hopes of seeing the "latest and greatest" is downright depressing these days. The only reasonable way to use Reddit, to me, seems to be only subscribing to a few select subreddits that are very narrowly focused on a topic of interest. For example, a specific game. I created a custom feed with a few subreddits about Magic the Gathering. If I avoid the algorithm-powered sections and stick to the custom feeds, it's OK.
Instagram is trash. Seriously. Ads every 2-3 posts, aggressive algorithms that spy on my activity OUTSIDE the app... A blatant violation of privacy in exchange for what? The privilege of seeing "relevant" ads. Reels can be very addictive and yes, a good distraction when you hit some funny ones. But how much are you choosing what you see, and how much is chosen for you? I deleted my account for years, and came back to it earlier this year to confirm that nothing really changed. It only got worse. I did not delete my account, but I deleted the app from my phone, and now I only check it occasionally on the computer, and only because a close family member is very active there and I miss out on their creative work if I don't have Instagram.
I don't want to touch X with a 10 foot pole. Nope nope nope. YouTube I use very sparingly. Their removal of the dislike button really shows their true colors and didn't sit right with me at all. Like you pointed out, it's all about monetization now.
So in light of all this, yes, I'm spending less time in front of these platforms, and it's a good thing. The hard part is finding replacements for these. Other hobbies. Offline hobbies take more time, effort, willpower to stick to them over a longer period of time. That's my constant and ongoing struggle: getting to a point where the offline stuff replaces the online stuff and brings me so much joy that I don't even miss the online stuff. I'm nowhere close, but I am trying. Baby steps.
I feel the same, I'm resorting more and more to offline or non social content, like reading more books, or diving for content in the Internet Archive for old magazines.
I'm also trying to make more personal content on my blog, for example the other day I found this format for cooking recipes and I added a recipes section to my site with a similar layout.
Probably not in the strictest sense, as I am still plenty online, but definitely leaning more into "old school" web use. I read blogs, RSS feeds, my newspaper subscriptions and forums like Tildes. The only "social media" would be Letterboxd. I think there is still plenty of good stuff to engage with online, it never left, just a bit out of sight from the big platforms.
But in general I can relate to the "ick"-factor. It is hard to find genuine passion that isn't just a front for selling something. But I also think we should acknowledge that we can't expect everything for free. Good journalism still exists, and it is worth paying for. That online news sites have paywalls is not inherently a bad thing, but they should of course also earn that price they are selling for.
I'd like to feel this way. I certainly enjoy my time online less than I used to and feel like "capitalism", for lack of a better term, is catching up with the internet experience. But unfortunately, I don't really have a viable Plan B to fill the time.
Combine disability, lack of excess income, and a desire to constantly keep my mind busy, and that means I end up spending the majority of my time attempting to find things I want to read or watch that I haven't already read or watched (as I glance over at the VOD I've already seen a few times playing on my second monitor.) When I feel up to it, I keep my mind busy with intellectual games or coding with middleware, but there's still a lot of time when my hands aren't up to that, or I'm mentally stressed enough that I resort to passive internet consuming.
But I've never been one to let algorithms dictate what I choose to consume, at least to the extent that it can be helped. Which is probably why I resort to repetitive consumption, since I'm only aware of the things I've seen linked or found myself, harder to do in this post-SEO internet.
I've been able to find a great 24/7 in-person community that is a perfect fit for me (it's probably one of only a handful of such places in the world) which means I almost always have something interesting I could be doing in person rather than online.
Oooh, tantalizing! Could you share any other info?
I live in a fairly small, sleepy town and while there is a ton to do in the daytime, it pretty much shuts it's doors around 7-8pm depending on the season. A 24/7 community would be sweet!
The Other Frost -- we'll call him a disgruntled games industry philospher -- put it best when he said that happy people have all left and that's why the internet sucks.
For me, I frankly just don't have time to slog it out any longer. That, and despite trying to persuade myself that age is just a number and that what once interested me always will (so long as I have the time to pursue it), I'm also left with the nagging thought that maybe I'm too old to find relevance in today's content.
happy people have all left and that's why the internet sucks.
I definitely feel that about so many of the spaces online. The Nazi bar analogy seems to be in full swing.
I also wonder how much it's an age thing. I just had a kid and it's been an adjustment as is, but it's been jarring just how unappealing being online has become.
Same here. At some point I realized I just spent two hours on YouTube and consumed absolutely nothing of value. Likewise, most blog posts seen on Hacker News etc. are just slop, and finding the few good ones is not very rewarding. As of last year, I've turned towards reading books instead (and getting a good configurable eBook reader boosted this even more).
It just really feels like information overload, and with the advent of GenAI the information can't even be counted as useful. I never used much of the 'big name' social media even in its infancy, but these days?
Tildes
4chan (the slower blue boards themed around creative/productive hobbies aren't so bad if you filter out the acerbic trolling)
YouTube for specific channels only
AO3
A few other niche single-purpose websites
That's it. Aside from banking and other important tasks, I just don't browse around unless it's something someone made with a purpose or expression behind it. I adore personal webpages, but those are by inherent design not meant to be consumed for hours on end, without end. In an age of being able to drown in endless content on a dime, I find I actually appreciate being able to 'run out of internet' after awhile.
I used to like exploring the Internet but for over a decade now I find doing it progressively less.
Especially for the last few years the general quality of the easily findable sites dived for the bottom. The general usefulness of the search engines went the same way because they don't even pretend anymore to care about delivering relevant results.
There are still worthwhile sites available but finding them is a challenge.
I don't particularly want to have every scrap of my attention exploited by low quality content determined by blackbox or to read trash tier ai articles so the web I can access is small and hard to find.
I have for certain. With AI content flooding so many different parts of the Internet, finding (hopefully) human made content and discussion is getting rarer. I would rather see poorly made human art than AI nonsense.
I used to LOVE faceless documentaries on YouTube. They have been around a long time and essentially are just someone narrating over open source images/stock footage to discuss a certain subject. With the rise of AI, there have been so many I have been excited to watch only to realize 3 minutes in that it's all AI and the channel I am watching pumps out multiple hours long faceless docs a week.
I can't describe how disappointing it is. I'm sure you guys have also been browsing content you like only to realize it's AI. The feeling is a mix of sadness, deception, and longing for a world without this stuff. It feels like a punch to the gut. Whatever dopamine I got from scrolling to reach the content is irrelevant. Pretty much without fail I will close whatever app I am on and go offline for a while after it happens.
And it's happening more and more and more. But you know, I think it's a good sign for "small net" places like Tildes. Because this bot content is overwhelmingly existing on the big name tech sites like reddit, Facebook, insta, YouTube, etc. No one is going to waste time running bots and content farms on a small place like Tildes or other small forums.
And on top of the AI annoyance, all the major websites are focused on monetizing everything, which adds to my frustration.
So I am spending less time on the hyper-optimized-for-engagement-mega-tech sites than I have in a decade now. But I am spending more time on the small web now, and it feels so freeing.
I still have the urges, but now when I indulge it doesn't feel like an effortless dopamine hit, I feel like I'm fighting the platforms for something, anything engaging.
For lack of a better phrase, I'm just constantly feeling the "ick" being online. I'm actively trying to search out things to engage with, anything even remotely genuine or authentic, and running up against a wall.
Yes. I think for me it was more some kind of anxiety or tenseness. It felt like work. (I left Instagram 2 years ago, which I liked as "bridge" social media to make friends-- people wouldn't ask for your numbers irl, they'd ask for your Insta.)
Or maybe I'm reaching a different stage of life and no longer the target demographic. In any case I just feel myself reaching for my laptop less and less and less. For most folks I think that would be a good thing, but when it's dark out, and I'm too burnt out from work to make progress on whatever home or art project I'm doing it was a really nice way to turn off my brain.
I also agree with this. With the new Reddit, I still browse super occasionally (think <10 min a week now; niche illness subreddit for family member and local city subreddit) but it feels like I'm fighting a sense of grossness because of how shitty the UI makes me feel. And like you say, most of what I want to do with free time is exhausting with regular adult commitments in the mix. Through a mixture of intention and things being "taken away," I find myself opening up fewer and fewer sites, reading less and less of it, and caring less and less about it. I'm bored more often, which I think is good and healthy and desirable. But it is disheartening to be this bored by things I used to like.
I think the internet was more fun when the communities preexisted, if it makes sense. I liked connecting with people based on ideas and interests rather than feelings. (Maybe this is precisely the problem with a lot of social apps-- it is more about who we are and how we feel, rather than what we choose and voluntarily think about.) And then from that general forum, you'd stumble upon a community of regulars offtopic-ing. They would invite you into your circle, and you'd end up with weird fun internet friends you heard from at a less overwhelming cadence online. Everything was basically chronological, only kept alive if it were pinned or had new posts, not if it had a lot of "points" or reputation. It was a bit ephemeral in that way, in that it really did live and die, whereas I think most things never really get attention when posted (if the wild stats can be believed).
I think those communities died out, the security concerns felt more perilous, and I grew out of needing that. I had tried hard for years to become less of a "geek" and to adopt 'normie' interests and frankly it's really fucking nice being a 'normal' person. Like working out, being healthy, and trying to address everything I was ashamed of by 'being better' did shut my brain down from dwelling so hard on stuff that made me doom and gloom. On top of that, I am trying to build my offline community (and basically everything offline, because clearly everything online is a security / privacy issue). (Somewhat off-topic, but I was toying with the idea of making a meetup thread for Tildes for this reason-- though I found I mainly just wanted to meet locals, so at that point maybe I did not need a thread.)
AI has also completely ruined my ability to care about a lot of text-based stuff. Is this person really feeling this way about politics / current events / being a woman, or is it just some weird bot trying to build up karma and advertise some shit to me? Does it make sense for me to even post this message for AI to train on it and steal my voice? The influx of text and the lack of editing also makes reading more of a chore -- if it's not written incisively or deliberately in some way, I skim that much harder to gain the information faster. I can feel the anxiety of the wasted time as I do.
The news makes me feel like this too. What was once a 'hobby' now feels like a coordinated brainwashing effort to force a pop / unified and hegemonic culture that disappeared and self-torture exercise where we read about preventable tragedies. When it's not that, it feels like all I see are articles about AI (people circling the drain on topics saying "yes but code was the easy part, Y is what makes you a real Z" x infinity) and how I will have no job in 5 years. Why do I want more 'information' on that, really? It doesn't make me smarter, happier, or think harder.
Yes, I feel the same way, but I seem to feel differently about it from others here. As I've grown more cynical about the online world I've grown more excited about the real world. There's a whole realm I was not curious about because I sought escape all my life until recently. By not seeking to leave the real world I find lots to look at.
And the internet is still extremely helpful to this experience. But I don't need to live here. I can get on the network, get something out whether it's a message or a book or a song, and then engage with it in private.
For me the experience of going online is increasingly converging with the experience of boarding a plane: something once exciting that has increasingly gotten so much baggage that now the opposite is more exciting. Airports are further along that trajectory than cyberspace, but not by much. I'm not going to go permanently offline and I'm not going to stop taking planes. But the increased costs definitely cause me to look upon airports and online with suspicion. I will consider the costs carefully before boarding.
h3x | 18 hours ago
I feel in a similar boat. For a long time I wondered if it was external forces reducing the amount of time I could reasonably spend online, and that may partially be it (it's hard to just zone out to an Internet browse when three kids are charging about). But I think the main reason is a strong sense that the Internet just isn't for me any more.
Reddit forces more and more changes that prioritise engagement with the platform, and not communities (I hate the default sort by Best). Instagram and YouTube push reels and shorts hard to keep you sucked in for longer. But also the creators whose content I enjoy seem to be moving on to other things. CGP Grey has all but disappeared from the Internet. Abigail Thorn is doing more acting and less philosophy. The Film Reroll seems to be losing steam. Tom Nicholas is doing nigh-daily news content over his typical video essays. Bingeing with Babish seems to have run out of interesting recipes and has been putting out longer and longer videos. There are still creators that put things out, but it all seems like an endless content mill. Maximise eyeball time with more digestible content, sack off the higher-quality, harder to produce stuff.
I don't subscribe to Dead Internet Theory; I think it's a convenient excuse for people to dehumanise their fellow Sapiens to claim that the commenters and posters are bots. I'm sure there is a lot of that around, but I think it's far less than the Theory would imply. I think the issue is that the business model is collapsing in a totally saturated set of industries. There is simply too much content, and too many people vying for not enough pie. The tech beasts continue to increase their cut, leaving creatives with fractions of pennies on the pound. They have to diversify; here's my Patreon, here's my Discord, here's my merch, here's a sponsorship. It is no longer possible to make a living solely out of revenue from these platforms unless you are mega mega big.
And so, in a climate where the cost of living is absolutely skyrocketing, the creatives are forced to diversify, appeal to a broader audience, or simply stop and do something else. I don't know a single person who isn't struggling with money, the cost of food, fuel, housing, and so on. I know zero people who make their living through content creation, but I do know that those who do are more like me than we sometimes think. There's this perception that influencers and content creators are rolling in wealth, but the vast, vast majority are just... normal people like us. And so it becomes this endless feedback loop. YouTube needs to keep posting higher and higher profits, so they tweak their algorithm and increase their percentage cut. This affects the creators who need to adapt their content to stay relevant, and diversify into other revenue streams.
And in the end, it just serves to turn the Internet into a big shopping mall. It used to feel curious, exciting, fresh, and like a refuge from the drudgery of real life, but it's increasingly a shiny marketplace for people to try and sell their wares. Everyone and everything is yelling for you to "buy now!" or "subscribe! or "pay to browse without ads!" and it's exhausting. I don't have the capacity any more to filter that stuff out, and I can't unsee just how much the whole thing is a rickety scaffold for companies to extract value while barely creating anything themselves. I don't blame the creators, they're doing their best in an environment that feels increasingly hostile to their successes. But I no longer want to be in another place where everything has a price.
Flother | 15 hours ago
I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I think you've largely missed the mark here
I don't think that hyperbole sums up what an average believer of the Dead Internet Theory is trying to do, although I accept there are a few definitions of it. I think that the majority of people don't want a state of affairs like this to occur, and aren't writing off content as bot-generated on a whim. Statistically, bot traffic is now believed to have overtaken human traffic online. That combined with the proliferation of AI shorts and even longer-form content has only made this more salient.
Over the last few years it has become obvious on Reddit how many pseudo-accounts or bot-accounts are on the platform. This is matching up with how Facebook and Twitter have been for a while - the tell-tale signs of brand-new accounts, provocative comments, exclusively posting on divisive topics, the word-for-word repetition of other bot comments etc.
The Dead Internet Theory isn't in full-swing and I suspect will take several more decades to play out without any noticeable change in online behaviour, but we are clearly tumbling head-first towards it.
Bullmaestro | 15 hours ago
We've also been through so many "once in a generation" crises that life has become exhausting.
We have been through multiple recessions, political crises, wars, waves of mass migration, a pandemic resulting in several global lockdowns, an AI-driven squeeze on electrical components, a super El Nino which has cooked Europe, and two ongoing wars which are currently disrupting global oil and fertiliser supplies.
Paul85 | 13 hours ago
Yeah! Life has become exhausting, hasn't it? One bad thing after another. Even with a mindful effort to rise above it and "don't let things you can't control stress you", it's hard. These bad things seep into every day life even when you avoid browsing news, social media, etc. The bad things are no longer only in a faraway land. They are here, next door. Lately I just keep thinking, is the very concept of "happiness" even useful anymore? It seem unattainable. Perhaps a better thing to aim for is "calm". If somehow I can just remain calm rather than get angry at the bad things, maybe it's enough.
ColorUserPro | 9 hours ago
I do want to add one small relief - The Film Reroll are still active, but they seem to be posting exclusively on Patreon now. It's not great that their new releases aren't accessible without a paywall ATM, but they are still releasing episodes, just in case it might've looked like they fell off the face of the Earth!
IIIIIIIIII | 6 hours ago
This is something I've seen a lot but never really seen someone put into words. Like you, I'm sure there's a fair bit of bots talking to bots, but (especially on reddit, after the API thing), the site became untenable because the suspicion was enough that anything that a person didn't like was obviously bot activity.
There is obvious bot activity, but it's that dismissiveness that I find kills my desire to engage in any form of commenting or conversation on sites bigger than Tildes.
Two examples spring to mind because they caused such a strong reaction in me.
One, just after the Reddit API disaster, I was on a subreddit about a game I play. It had mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed it. Someone was saying a certain mechanic didn't work properly so the game was broken. I am aware that, not only can I sound like a dick in writing, on Reddit, everyone assumes the person replying is a dick anyway. So I wrote a very nice, considered response explaining how the mechanic worked, and that it wasn't broken. I said maybe the game makers could explain it better, but I'd found success with it. I got downvoted below the threshold because the person I was replying to said 'Obvious dev bot account.'
I was trying to help them enjoy the game I liked! Argh!
The second was here, which was more painful because it's Tildes, not a giant social media site. I was commenting about Russian drone activity in Western Europe, and how it was good nations were starting to coordinate in NATO to counter this threat. I expressed my frustration that this hadn't been done immediately after the Ukrainian invasion, and we only seem to respond to threats reactively, rather than taking the view of 'that'll be us in a few years, let's start now.'
A Tildes user (maybe?) claimed I was either a bot, or deliberately spreading Russian disinformation. It's the only time I've used the Malice label to my memory. It made me so furious that some person I didn't know just assumed I wasn't human, and worse, that I was part of a giant network of influence to try and weaken the EU (I've got a little flag on my desk where no one can see I'm actually quite proud of it) and NATO (my NATO medal is my favorite one).
I understand the instinct to be suspicious of bot activity, as we've all encountered it. But as you said, it seems to be such an easy way to dehumanise and dismiss. I like my privacy, I'm not going to post a photo of myself with my face, the day's date, and Ask Me Anything with every comment.
So I've largely stopped commenting. The internet isn't a fun place where I can meet new people anymore, it's just hostile and mean. And there are fully state funded information operations that make commenting on serious issues that impact the world an absolute nightmare. I'm sure someone cleverer than me could make it into a pithy statement, but every interaction feels like a reverse Turing test where the assumption is 'bot until proven otherwise' and you have to prove your humanity before someone pays you courtesy. Or maybe that's the regular Turing test. I don't know, I am not a computer person.
But it sucks. Having to accept that the nice, tranquil, friendly internet I grew up with and spend my hours unwinding with as a kid and early adult is gone is really sad.
Akir | 5 hours ago
We live in a cruel world where people are disingenuous. Especially on the big social media platforms. We have been given actual proof of bots and disinformation campaigns, Russian and otherwise.
While Tildes is a kinder place where people are more sincere, it's always wise to remember that we don't live in Tildes - we come from places where we are dealing with crazy bad faith arguments and made up stories meant to manipulate us all the time. It feels like people are becoming less honest in meatspace as well.
There is no solution but to build the community you want to be in.
sunset | 20 hours ago
IMO it's several separate issues.
YT ruined their recommendation algo. It overfits like crazy. It has decided I like 3-4 specific topics and that's it, it never shows anything else. Even when I click "new to you" it's more of the same topics. But I've already seen most quality content on those topics and I'm kinda bored and want something new. But YT never brings anything new. I used to use the Subscriptions feed a lot, but with time that got ruined too. It's natural for channels to fall off, change and even completely die with time. In the past that wasn't a problem, because I'd be constantly subscribing to new channels I discover. But now the algo refuses to consistently find good new creators to subscribe to, so my Subscriptions feed got stagnant too.
Reddit got ruined by bots and extreme amounts of political propaganda. I swear, a redditor could literally poop their pants and they'll still find a way to blame it on "end-stage capitalism" or shoehorn in some Trump whining. It's insufferable. I'm 100% convinced big chunk of it is automated too.
NomadicCoder | 16 hours ago
Number 1 perfectly describes my feelings. My suggestion feed feels like 100 copies of the exact same video, and the same exact video it was the last 100 times I looked. I have to work hard to find anything new and interesting. I just don't enjoy opening youtube anymore. Nebula is better (though lacking in some UX features), but for some reason I still find myself opening the YouTube app first.
Reddit is trash now. The new UI is insufferable, old reddit is dying a slow death, and I feel dirty for even using the site. Unfortunately there's a few niche subreddits where I cannot find anything equivalent (local subreddits, device specific forums, etc), so I find myself still using it. That said, I do enjoy taking every opportunity to dunk on Trump. :)
Drynyn | 12 hours ago
I recently signed up to nebula. I also go to YouTube first but then see folk I could be watching on nebula and head over there.
Wafik | 15 hours ago
The issue with YouTube is further compounded by private equity discovering it and doing what it does best. Buy up stuff and turn it into slop.
vingtcinqunvingtcinq | 4 hours ago
On 2-- I think once Trump passes, this really has to go the way of Godwin's Law lol.
Akir | 22 hours ago
I’ve kind of felt the same. A lot of it is that the creators of thoughtful content have moved around quite a lot in recent years. Journalism oitlets have plummeted in quality and variety of what they will publish, and perhaps more importantly aggregators are less likely to pick them up and make them viral, in part because there are less people on them.
A lot of it is likely because people are changing the kind of media they consume. Particularly in the form of short form vertical video. They are watching TikToks, instagram reels, or YouTube shorts. There is a surprising amount of content that I could describe as being “deep-like, but without depth” on those platforms. People making political points also tend to be a lot more effective in them without needing to take a lot of time or words because they can convey passion directly.
Paul85 | 13 hours ago
"Deep-like, but without depth" is the perfect way to describe any short-form content focused on things like wellbeing, therapy, etc. which is usually something that takes time and commitment. A reel won't fix one's depression, and for each advice reel, there are 5 more telling you the opposite thing. If anything, I bet that consuming this content worsens most mental conditions. The best way Instagram can help with mental health is by being deleted from one's phone.
snake_case | 5 hours ago
Even before all the short form TikTok therapy shit there was reddit, where you could go to r/depression and muse about what magic life altering mantra you could absorb in order to cure your depression over night.
It was tragic that this belief was, and still is, actually killing people quickly and theres absolutely no way I could convince a single damn soul to just TRY eating better and maybe going for a walk for a whole entire like six months and see if they feel even 20% better. Nope, theyd rather wallow in it until it kills them.
/rant
Paul85 | 5 hours ago
Tell me about it! A close family member has been going through some hard times for the last 2 years or so. I kept urging them to try establishing an exercise routine. Finally in the last 3 months or so they stuck to a daily walk and fairly regular exercise. While the problems didn’t vanish, they seem in better overall spirits and more resilient in dealing with the issues.
snake_case | 3 hours ago
Right its just one single step towards a healthy self care routine, I think a lot of people get stuck because they think they have to care about themselves to have self care routines, and they do not, they can just go through the motions empty as they are and eventually they will have a good day and they’ll be well prepared to actually enjoy that walk.
kfwyre | 15 hours ago
Shameless plug: I will be bringing back Screenless Days this coming month!
Big thanks to @monarda for requesting it!
For those that weren't around for them:
The simplest way to participate is to put away your phone, close the laptop, etc.
That said, going "screenless" is not a hard rule:
So, if someone wants to learn to crochet, and they spend the day with YouTube tutorials and Ravelry patterns on their tablet, that still "counts" for Screenless Day.
It's about stepping away from toxic tech rather than eradicating tech altogether.
I'll be putting up the topics on the First Friday of each month (so we'll officially start on this coming September 4th), with the idea that people choose a day that weekend (whichever works best for them) to participate. Of course, people are not limited to that and can take a Screenless Day whenever they like. The discussion post will be up for the month.
h3x | 14 hours ago
Oh cool! Could I get a ping when you do it please and thank you? :)
kfwyre | 14 hours ago
Of course!
I’m going to put up an official announcement topic on Tuesday, September 1 to spread the word and build the notification list, but I’m happy to start taking names here too as well.
monarda | 14 hours ago
Wow, it was April 2021 when I participated. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. I just read my response and though I remembered that it wasn’t comfortable (it was uncomfortable enough that I never participated again lol), I had forgotten how uncomfortable it was. What I totally forgot was how much I learned and that I wanted to cultivate how to just be. I’m looking forward to seeing how I do this time. Thank you :)
BeardyHat | 14 hours ago
Sounds pretty interesting.
Immediately gets me thinking about what that means to me, given I've spent so much of my life (as a shut-in nerd) in front of screens, but there was less toxicity way back when.
I'd definitely use my eReader and I feel like for myself, playing games of any kind (I don't play multiplayer) is ok, because I don't do it to excess anymore. And I'd have to use a screen to bring up some music. Seems like I'm kind of defeating the point though if I'm only just taking a step back from say, Youtube and generally surfing the internet.
kfwyre | 14 hours ago
I actually toyed with changing the name away from “Screenless Day” because it’s a touch misleading, but I couldn’t come up with anything that I liked (I’m open to suggestions!).
I see it as being more about intentionality than anything else. Use the tech; don’t let the tech use you — that sort of thing.
Like, if queueing up music on your phone helps you focus and do what you want to, then that’s not toxic and isn’t something you need to deliberately route around for a Screenless Day.
Or, maybe, for a Screenless Day you decide that you want to be more deliberate and focused about your music so you choose an album or two to really pay attention to and dive into, instead of shuffling songs as background for something else.
It’s all about reflecting on your individual relationship with tech (which you’re already doing!) and trying to make it better.
kaffo | 20 hours ago
It kinda is a good thing though?
It's OK to sometimes veg out and just mess around on the internet or watch a bad TV show, but if that's the default then this could be your opportunity to change the default to something more healthy.
The famous saying "the more you do the more you want to do" is true, even for us neurospicy people. It's just finding the right thing to do.
Maybe you could try some kind of exercise? What about some nice simple puzzles like a jigsaw, crossword, sukodu?
Read some books!
Get your best friend over and watch a bad movie.
Try cooking something you've never tried before.
These are mostly simple things that are not in the high effort category and barely require leaving the house. Sitting in front of your laptop for hours and hours going down a reddit rabbit hole engages your brain, but doesn't do you any good really.
Of course, this is just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt. As I get older I realize that it's OK to sometimes engage with the brain dead content when I really need it, but I need more healthy options too.
DoubleSupercool | 15 hours ago
Absolutely, and the opposite holds true as well. Deleting the Instagram app means I basically don’t check it at all except every now and then on computer. Reddit blocking old.reddit.com without logging in has meant I am in the first two weeks of weaning myself off constantly checking Reddit on my phone. Sure I check it in PC, but there I get my subs without all the /r/all dross that just works me up.
Setting up projects and just doing a bit each day is starting to pay off. Just signed up for the JLPT test for Japanese language, so that will give me a boost to study each day. Make some music. Draw a picture. Read a book. Do a puzzle.
snake_case | 5 hours ago
It’s also why all good habits start with a daily walk!
People give it up because it takes so long to make a difference, but before you know it you’re remembering sports you wanted to do and managing to vacuum the whole house without that being your 1 task that day.
snake_case | 5 hours ago
Does it engage my brain though? Cause I don’t remember most of the shit I read on Reddit, the whole place feels like a hamster wheel of pseudo brain activity like how eating a whole bag of potato chips looks and feels like a meal but isn’t actually of any nutritional value.
Loopdriver | 20 hours ago
..now that you're pointing it out... yes.
The internet, a long long long time ago, was a "place" where i went to see what was going on. I spent hours on geocities, forums, etc...
I had way more time when i was young... but yet... I really felt it like it was a town, with infinite roads and every road took me somewhere.
Now internet has become just a tool, a sort of huge library, a source of knowledge i can try to tap.
I have seen than i turn on the pc and go online only if i have a problem to solve.
Do i need, i dunno... to install a new OS? Do i need a guide on how to do some handy job at home? Do i need to listen to someone to speak a language i'm studying? Do i... I go to youtube and look for a video there, or i just look for a thread on reddit or, recently, i just prompt an AI and ask for the solution and the sources.
And once the solution i have found works i go back to my normal life.
The town has been demolished, mostly. Some roads are still there but not too many anymore and i think i've become tired to look for them :)
NomadicCoder | 16 hours ago
And, sadly, the physical towns were demolished to build that town, so we no longer have third-spaces to return to.
Fiachra | 19 hours ago
I'm in a years-long trend of the sites I once used getting enshittified one by one and giving them up. I'm getting better at catching myself in the "I'm only logging on out of habit" stage and just pulling the plug. I'm deliberately not seeking out replacements because I recognise social media is designed to be an addiction. If the addiction naturally ends, why seek out another?
A few weeks ago the game I was using to kill time, almost my last source of brain rot, started crashing every time I played it and something in my brain finally un-broke. I've read two full books in the last 12 days, a habit I've been trying to build for years, mostly sitting out on my porch after my toddler is gone to bed. Stress-wise I'm feeling better than I have in years.
Flother | 21 hours ago
I do feel the same and that we are now at the point where the Dead Internet Theory has become latent for those who have been browsing the web for a long time. A lot of content on platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok is coming from bots, which is making engagement less appetising if you can recognise what's happening.
The "Small Web" is definitely still out there which can offer you a similar experience to before, but it's more effortful trying to do this. Major search engines and social media sites don't have a vested interest in promoting this form of Internet, so you need to rely on traditional forums, obscurer search engines like Marginalia or Wiby, sites like Neocities etc.
Although, as you averted to, I also wonder if this is due to me simply reaching a different stage of life. I don't really enjoy the mindless scrolling of before, I don't derive enough joy from engaging with people online as I would in reality, and I prefer physically engaging with something instead of passively observing through stained glass.
deathinactthree | 10 hours ago
I have been gearing myself up to change my lifestyle to involve significantly less Internet. I've always been kind of Terminally Online as someone who grew up starting with BBSes and IRC in the early 90s and going on to have my entire 20+ year career based on the web. I find I'm getting bored with it, for all the same reasons others are saying in this thread so I don't need to belabor it, and finding myself wishing I could spend the time more productively...except I don't know what on.
I do have offline hobbies I engage in regularly--cooking, motorcycles, martial arts--but otherwise pretty much everything I do in a day is online, from work to leisure time. Two decades ago I would tell you it wasn't wasted time--reading news articles, following or participating in really interesting forum discussions on niche topics, enjoying the many popular webcomics of the time (and producing my own for a few years), meeting new people on social media such as Livejournal many of whom I'm still IRL friends with now and talk to every day. Getting exposed to new media and new, presumably less-agenda-ed perspectives. I did feel like it was enrichment in my enclosure, that enclosure being "small shitty conservative economically-depressed Southern hometown".
Now I'm just bored. Modern social media has no appeal to me, genuinely quality news sources are hard to find, everything is condensed to the five sites we all know (and four I do not use at all) that are herding pens for ad exposure and political agendas spewed by paid bot accounts. I do use Reddit admittedly, but I use Reddit Enhancement suite with Ublock Origin and have a narrow list of focused subs and rarely bother with stuff like /r/popular, so I do still get something out of it but that narrow focus means I'm pretty much caught up on everything I care about in an hour or so.
I like video games alright but as I get older it's something I find little desire to do except maybe an hour or two a week. There are plenty of other hobbies I could get into of course and that's what I'm trying to figure out instead of doing what I usually do and go find contract work (online of course) that I don't need just to feel busy. I definitely want to read more, and have started slowly reading books again after kind of not doing that for years, even though I was a voracious reader when I was young. I recently bought a new guitar to try to goad myself into playing music again but haven't touched it yet.
It's all making me realize that my real problem is having spent years training myself to the firehose of short-attention-span-based content. I don't use TikTok or YT Shorts, I've deliberately avoided them, but I still find I don't have the ability to focus on much beyond scanning headlines and reading the top-level comments to summarize that content, or doomscrolling jokes and bad news on Bluesky.
It's driving me insane, literally. It sounds like a joke but it is not: I put myself in therapy recently in an attempt to rewire my brain into being able to figure out what to do with my time if I pull the plug on the Internet and try to live most of my day offline. Can't say I have an answer yet.
Bullmaestro | 16 hours ago
I have definitely been feeling this way. Partially due to a change in hobbies, mental health struggles, conflicts at home and this feeling that the world in general has significantly gone down the toilet since COVID-19 and is going quickly towards societal collapse. It's like tech billionaires like Elon Musk who were celebrated went full sociopath and showed their true colours.
The dead internet theory is something I believe to be 100% real, and is a huge reason why social media and online gaming isn't so engaging to me anymore. Automation and AI has enshittified the user (particularly customer support) experience a lot and Reddit is a great example of how bad this can get.
I actually received an automated account warning from Reddit on Sunday due to a reply I posted (which I don't fully remember the wording of, and can't double-check since it was immediately replaced with "[removed by reddit]" upon posting. For context, someone posted doorcam footage of a woman with a cold emotionless expression trying to bash down somebody's front door with a rifle. Someone asked about the legality of using their second amendment rights to shoot an attempted home invader in this situation and I replied with (in retrospect bad advice) to fire a warning shot to give them pause and warn them you're armed. Because I used the phrase "pew pew" (onomatopeia for gunshots) in my OG comment, I tripped their system.
Apparently that was a violation of Rule 1 and according to Reddit's own dogshit AI content detection systems, I was deemed to have incited violence and issued a warning instantly after posting my comment. Inadvertently tripping their bad word filter again could risk a full account ban. The subsequent appeal I filed was upheld within hours by what was presumably another AI-driven decision that probably used up a few more LLM tokens than the initial one, and it seems there is no way to contact an actual human at Reddit Inc to discuss exactly how my comment incited violence and was hateful.
Going back to the topic of gaming, Blizzard and Riot have outsourced and automated the crap out of their player support functions to their detriment. World of Warcraft is a particularly egregious example where cartels of gold farmers and boosters actually weaponize the report system against players who oppose them. The amount of times I've seen on r/wow and r/classicwow people being wrongly perma banned because a RWT mafia mass reported them maliciously and them being repeatedly fobbed off by the CS team is baffling.
Or how much gaming in general has been chipped away by enshittification. Xbox went through waves of mass layoffs when Phil Spencer was supposed to be the saviour that would free Activision Blizzard from Bobby Kotick. Sony outright ditched physical media and then quintupled down when facing significant backlash. Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have been particularly litigious and greedy, to the point where the upcoming GTA6 Extended Look is a timed Netflix exclusive.
I don't think things will improve unless the quality of products/services for these companies get so bad that it drives people to alternatives. And given the lack of viable alternatives to Reddit and a lot of major online games...
chocobean | 15 hours ago
Hear hear. There is an old skit from Matt Lucas and David Walliams' Little Britain (YouTube), where "Customer service is a tireless profession. Carol, however, has not broken a sweat in 25 years." This is now reality. I engaged with two of our nation's biggest banks this year and had the exact same frustrating "computer says no/is there nothing else we can try/computer says no" exchange with at least a dozen different phone + in person agents. It's ridiculous they need to hire business degree people to respond with "computer says no". (The request was to raise one credit card limit from $1000 to $2000. Another of mine is auto set at $20,000. Card remains unusable.)
Gaming is particularly poorly hit because once a game is out and not making that quarter any richer it's deemed finished and players are just a cost center to them.
There's plenty of alternatives on the high seas. Or with single developer madhouses like Stardew Valley, Terraria, Vampire Survivor, Dwarf Fortress where they are still making updates / new content.
pete_the_paper_boat | 11 hours ago
All the major platforms have coalesced into a boring network of circular references where not a single one has a recognisable medium anymore. They all host video, images, text posts, short form content and screenshots of each others posts. You'll be hard pressed to even see a difference between layouts anymore.
And the worst part is that it's not even an enjoyable experience, it's been optimized for engagement, which doesn't mean anything except something that's measured on the backend.
So yeah, you're probably right.
Akir | 6 hours ago
The circular references might not be so bad if they at least referenced eachother, but it's all self-reference. It's just the machine masturbating itself to shitty rips of content stolen from somewhere else.
And worse, you will get a friend to give you a link to something on their their shitty network and they will refuse to show you more than a sliver of the context without creating an account, consenting to their data harvesting and yielding of your rights, and downloading their invasive apps. I get friends who send instagram reels and facebook videos that I can technically view, but I can't pause them, review them in any way, or read the title or caption without going through sacrificing my first born. Attempting to do so will open up the app store before saying that there is no app to open the link I clicked on because I didn't install their spyware.
Paul85 | 13 hours ago
I have been feeling this way for a long time, and over several months at a time I have tried returning to one platform or another to see if anything changed, or if I can approach it differently. In fact, I just returned to Tildes after a hiatus, because it's a unique place and I missed it.
I went back to Reddit a few months ago and yes, I see what you are saying too. Take the Comics subreddit. So many posts are comics that also remind you about the Patreon account where you could unlock NSFW content if you subscribe. If i wanted NSFW content, there are plenty other places to go, and they are free. Pass! In addition, relying on the Popular page of Reddit in hopes of seeing the "latest and greatest" is downright depressing these days. The only reasonable way to use Reddit, to me, seems to be only subscribing to a few select subreddits that are very narrowly focused on a topic of interest. For example, a specific game. I created a custom feed with a few subreddits about Magic the Gathering. If I avoid the algorithm-powered sections and stick to the custom feeds, it's OK.
Instagram is trash. Seriously. Ads every 2-3 posts, aggressive algorithms that spy on my activity OUTSIDE the app... A blatant violation of privacy in exchange for what? The privilege of seeing "relevant" ads. Reels can be very addictive and yes, a good distraction when you hit some funny ones. But how much are you choosing what you see, and how much is chosen for you? I deleted my account for years, and came back to it earlier this year to confirm that nothing really changed. It only got worse. I did not delete my account, but I deleted the app from my phone, and now I only check it occasionally on the computer, and only because a close family member is very active there and I miss out on their creative work if I don't have Instagram.
I don't want to touch X with a 10 foot pole. Nope nope nope. YouTube I use very sparingly. Their removal of the dislike button really shows their true colors and didn't sit right with me at all. Like you pointed out, it's all about monetization now.
So in light of all this, yes, I'm spending less time in front of these platforms, and it's a good thing. The hard part is finding replacements for these. Other hobbies. Offline hobbies take more time, effort, willpower to stick to them over a longer period of time. That's my constant and ongoing struggle: getting to a point where the offline stuff replaces the online stuff and brings me so much joy that I don't even miss the online stuff. I'm nowhere close, but I am trying. Baby steps.
marcus-aurelius | 18 hours ago
I feel the same, I'm resorting more and more to offline or non social content, like reading more books, or diving for content in the Internet Archive for old magazines.
I'm also trying to make more personal content on my blog, for example the other day I found this format for cooking recipes and I added a recipes section to my site with a similar layout.
tomf | 7 hours ago
that site is a more polished version of https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/174/Rosemary-Lamb-Chops -- pretty nice. Its so nice to follow.
winther | 18 hours ago
Probably not in the strictest sense, as I am still plenty online, but definitely leaning more into "old school" web use. I read blogs, RSS feeds, my newspaper subscriptions and forums like Tildes. The only "social media" would be Letterboxd. I think there is still plenty of good stuff to engage with online, it never left, just a bit out of sight from the big platforms.
But in general I can relate to the "ick"-factor. It is hard to find genuine passion that isn't just a front for selling something. But I also think we should acknowledge that we can't expect everything for free. Good journalism still exists, and it is worth paying for. That online news sites have paywalls is not inherently a bad thing, but they should of course also earn that price they are selling for.
vord | 18 hours ago
That's why we need taxes to fund journalism.
Xuande | 11 hours ago
I'd like to feel this way. I certainly enjoy my time online less than I used to and feel like "capitalism", for lack of a better term, is catching up with the internet experience. But unfortunately, I don't really have a viable Plan B to fill the time.
Combine disability, lack of excess income, and a desire to constantly keep my mind busy, and that means I end up spending the majority of my time attempting to find things I want to read or watch that I haven't already read or watched (as I glance over at the VOD I've already seen a few times playing on my second monitor.) When I feel up to it, I keep my mind busy with intellectual games or coding with middleware, but there's still a lot of time when my hands aren't up to that, or I'm mentally stressed enough that I resort to passive internet consuming.
But I've never been one to let algorithms dictate what I choose to consume, at least to the extent that it can be helped. Which is probably why I resort to repetitive consumption, since I'm only aware of the things I've seen linked or found myself, harder to do in this post-SEO internet.
teaearlgraycold | 9 hours ago
I've been able to find a great 24/7 in-person community that is a perfect fit for me (it's probably one of only a handful of such places in the world) which means I almost always have something interesting I could be doing in person rather than online.
[OP] rosco | 2 hours ago
Oooh, tantalizing! Could you share any other info?
I live in a fairly small, sleepy town and while there is a ton to do in the daytime, it pretty much shuts it's doors around 7-8pm depending on the season. A 24/7 community would be sweet!
chundissimo | an hour ago
Agreed on curiosity, I have no idea what a 24/7 in-person community could even be!
kingofsnake | 8 hours ago
The Other Frost -- we'll call him a disgruntled games industry philospher -- put it best when he said that happy people have all left and that's why the internet sucks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MOaKnMNVk
For me, I frankly just don't have time to slog it out any longer. That, and despite trying to persuade myself that age is just a number and that what once interested me always will (so long as I have the time to pursue it), I'm also left with the nagging thought that maybe I'm too old to find relevance in today's content.
sunset | 6 hours ago
What a great video, thank you so much for posting it!
kingofsnake | 6 hours ago
You bet. Please check out the rest of his stuff - he's excellent.
[OP] rosco | 2 hours ago
I definitely feel that about so many of the spaces online. The Nazi bar analogy seems to be in full swing.
I also wonder how much it's an age thing. I just had a kid and it's been an adjustment as is, but it's been jarring just how unappealing being online has become.
leah2 | 18 hours ago
Same here. At some point I realized I just spent two hours on YouTube and consumed absolutely nothing of value. Likewise, most blog posts seen on Hacker News etc. are just slop, and finding the few good ones is not very rewarding. As of last year, I've turned towards reading books instead (and getting a good configurable eBook reader boosted this even more).
Paul85 | 7 hours ago
What is your ebook reader of choice?
stu2b50 | 14 hours ago
Not really. I spend about the same amount of time on the internet. Feels about the same as well.
Froswald | 8 hours ago
It just really feels like information overload, and with the advent of GenAI the information can't even be counted as useful. I never used much of the 'big name' social media even in its infancy, but these days?
That's it. Aside from banking and other important tasks, I just don't browse around unless it's something someone made with a purpose or expression behind it. I adore personal webpages, but those are by inherent design not meant to be consumed for hours on end, without end. In an age of being able to drown in endless content on a dime, I find I actually appreciate being able to 'run out of internet' after awhile.
Tiraon | 8 hours ago
I used to like exploring the Internet but for over a decade now I find doing it progressively less.
Especially for the last few years the general quality of the easily findable sites dived for the bottom. The general usefulness of the search engines went the same way because they don't even pretend anymore to care about delivering relevant results.
There are still worthwhile sites available but finding them is a challenge.
I don't particularly want to have every scrap of my attention exploited by low quality content determined by blackbox or to read trash tier ai articles so the web I can access is small and hard to find.
Captcha_Code | 5 hours ago
I have for certain. With AI content flooding so many different parts of the Internet, finding (hopefully) human made content and discussion is getting rarer. I would rather see poorly made human art than AI nonsense.
I used to LOVE faceless documentaries on YouTube. They have been around a long time and essentially are just someone narrating over open source images/stock footage to discuss a certain subject. With the rise of AI, there have been so many I have been excited to watch only to realize 3 minutes in that it's all AI and the channel I am watching pumps out multiple hours long faceless docs a week.
I can't describe how disappointing it is. I'm sure you guys have also been browsing content you like only to realize it's AI. The feeling is a mix of sadness, deception, and longing for a world without this stuff. It feels like a punch to the gut. Whatever dopamine I got from scrolling to reach the content is irrelevant. Pretty much without fail I will close whatever app I am on and go offline for a while after it happens.
And it's happening more and more and more. But you know, I think it's a good sign for "small net" places like Tildes. Because this bot content is overwhelmingly existing on the big name tech sites like reddit, Facebook, insta, YouTube, etc. No one is going to waste time running bots and content farms on a small place like Tildes or other small forums.
And on top of the AI annoyance, all the major websites are focused on monetizing everything, which adds to my frustration.
So I am spending less time on the hyper-optimized-for-engagement-mega-tech sites than I have in a decade now. But I am spending more time on the small web now, and it feels so freeing.
vingtcinqunvingtcinq | 5 hours ago
Yes. I think for me it was more some kind of anxiety or tenseness. It felt like work. (I left Instagram 2 years ago, which I liked as "bridge" social media to make friends-- people wouldn't ask for your numbers irl, they'd ask for your Insta.)
I also agree with this. With the new Reddit, I still browse super occasionally (think <10 min a week now; niche illness subreddit for family member and local city subreddit) but it feels like I'm fighting a sense of grossness because of how shitty the UI makes me feel. And like you say, most of what I want to do with free time is exhausting with regular adult commitments in the mix. Through a mixture of intention and things being "taken away," I find myself opening up fewer and fewer sites, reading less and less of it, and caring less and less about it. I'm bored more often, which I think is good and healthy and desirable. But it is disheartening to be this bored by things I used to like.
I think the internet was more fun when the communities preexisted, if it makes sense. I liked connecting with people based on ideas and interests rather than feelings. (Maybe this is precisely the problem with a lot of social apps-- it is more about who we are and how we feel, rather than what we choose and voluntarily think about.) And then from that general forum, you'd stumble upon a community of regulars offtopic-ing. They would invite you into your circle, and you'd end up with weird fun internet friends you heard from at a less overwhelming cadence online. Everything was basically chronological, only kept alive if it were pinned or had new posts, not if it had a lot of "points" or reputation. It was a bit ephemeral in that way, in that it really did live and die, whereas I think most things never really get attention when posted (if the wild stats can be believed).
I think those communities died out, the security concerns felt more perilous, and I grew out of needing that. I had tried hard for years to become less of a "geek" and to adopt 'normie' interests and frankly it's really fucking nice being a 'normal' person. Like working out, being healthy, and trying to address everything I was ashamed of by 'being better' did shut my brain down from dwelling so hard on stuff that made me doom and gloom. On top of that, I am trying to build my offline community (and basically everything offline, because clearly everything online is a security / privacy issue). (Somewhat off-topic, but I was toying with the idea of making a meetup thread for Tildes for this reason-- though I found I mainly just wanted to meet locals, so at that point maybe I did not need a thread.)
AI has also completely ruined my ability to care about a lot of text-based stuff. Is this person really feeling this way about politics / current events / being a woman, or is it just some weird bot trying to build up karma and advertise some shit to me? Does it make sense for me to even post this message for AI to train on it and steal my voice? The influx of text and the lack of editing also makes reading more of a chore -- if it's not written incisively or deliberately in some way, I skim that much harder to gain the information faster. I can feel the anxiety of the wasted time as I do.
The news makes me feel like this too. What was once a 'hobby' now feels like a coordinated brainwashing effort to force a pop / unified and hegemonic culture that disappeared and self-torture exercise where we read about preventable tragedies. When it's not that, it feels like all I see are articles about AI (people circling the drain on topics saying "yes but code was the easy part, Y is what makes you a real Z" x infinity) and how I will have no job in 5 years. Why do I want more 'information' on that, really? It doesn't make me smarter, happier, or think harder.
akkartik | 59 minutes ago
Yes, I feel the same way, but I seem to feel differently about it from others here. As I've grown more cynical about the online world I've grown more excited about the real world. There's a whole realm I was not curious about because I sought escape all my life until recently. By not seeking to leave the real world I find lots to look at.
And the internet is still extremely helpful to this experience. But I don't need to live here. I can get on the network, get something out whether it's a message or a book or a song, and then engage with it in private.
For me the experience of going online is increasingly converging with the experience of boarding a plane: something once exciting that has increasingly gotten so much baggage that now the opposite is more exciting. Airports are further along that trajectory than cyberspace, but not by much. I'm not going to go permanently offline and I'm not going to stop taking planes. But the increased costs definitely cause me to look upon airports and online with suspicion. I will consider the costs carefully before boarding.