A quick thought about the internet

Remember when the internet felt like it was for you, and not at you?

I remember signing up for Facebook at my friend Madison’s house.

The complete novelty of throwing your real life onto the internet where jokes (kinda pre-meme), random thoughts, writing on peoples’ ‘walls’ and ‘pokes’ were all about having more fun, quicker, because even if you couldn’t be in the same room with those people, this got you there.

The internet stopped behaving this way a long time ago.

There were glory days of Web 2.0 where social was fun. Where the currency wasn’t attention, but sharing.

You could watch videos on stupidvideos.com with your friends — being in the same room was even more fun — like Evil Penguin 2. Or number 48 on the most watched list, BMX Jump which just has the caption, “Don't try this at home. I have know idea why this guy is doing.”

Why is he doing I wonder?

This was an internet for you.

You could enjoy its spoils and participate in it. Of course, it had wild stuff like Chatroulette and Omegle, but that’s kinda beside the point.

If 85% of the internet was this kind of stuff (the lulz), 15% of it was trying to sell stuff to you.

It wouldn’t have occurred to me that the internet was an advertising platform waiting in the wings when I opened my computer back then.

Stuff was bought on eBay, but that was also still part of the joke of it all somehow. Or where you could get fake Steven Gerrard Liverpool jerseys for $12 + $8 shipping.

This internet doesn’t exist anymore. It’s on its head.

The internet we have - the Fast Internet - is not for you.

It is at you.

At least 85% is selling you stuff.

Through algorithmic optimization beamed from on-high, you now enjoy ads selling you solutions to problems you don’t have, or that isn’t a big deal, instead of watching Farting Preacher or posting on your friends’ walls.

You now get ads for courses on how to grow your brand (to which you think, “Am I supposed to be having a brand right now?”). Or ads on how you can increase your top-of-funnel warm leads by 900% with this proven method (to which you think “I don’t have a funnel even a little bit”).

Or why you should subscribe to Better Help.

It’s not all that bad I guess. But, how much crap are you wading through every day to find one little gem? One laugh. One thoughtful post. One thing interesting. Even if you do, your brain is probably toast.

It is, at the very least, a bummer that this Fast Internet is at us, instead of for us.

It changes the way we do post on social media when we come around to it — instead of just watching the viral folks on our For You pages.

We know what the algorithm likes and we’re conditioned to think about that first.

It is, at the very least, a bummer.

I don’t know exactly what it would be yet, but I’d love to see a Slow Internet emerge from all of this.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and am finding people, on X/Twitter at least, who are also thinking about it.

That encourages me.

This switch — the new difference — would be going back to people in different communities online posting and sharing for one another again, instead of just for the algorithm.

Blogs about their ideas, videos, or art that they’re experimenting with, learning from, or just having fun with.

Let me point something out that seems obvious to me.

You may think: “So what?”

To this, I would concede, “I’m not sure yet. Or maybe ever.”

It’s just fun to think about.