The internet has always been my salvation.
As a socially underdeveloped kid, I’d spend my lunch hours in the high school library on those public desktop computers, reading fandom sites about my favorite video games. Computers always made sense to me. I even owe my entire career to them.
But the internet today feels wrong. Whatever the fuck kind of psychological warfare is happening right now with this Epstein stuff is too much for my mind to handle. I can’t do it anymore.
I will love. I will vote. I will support my community and continue to oppose this fucking nightmarish system we all find ourselves in. But I need to sign off.
Imagine the door closing sound effect when logging out of AIM.
I’ll tell you right now: many of those old corners of the internet… Are still there. A lot aren’t, but a lot still are. Seek them out, it’s worth it.
what do you mean? like, not urls to your vorners, but I’d like to hear your version of the old imternet you say is still there? you mean small blogs? custom made homelages?
you inspired me to check out ytmnd. fucking front page has an epstein contest.
i’m not entirely sure if i was on a tour of an active particle accelerator if i wouldn’t take a dive just to try to get us all on a different universe. godsdamned weasels
It’s unavoidable, isn’t it?
I checked my RSS feeds once today and read that SpaceX is developing their own particle accelerator.
- No need for you to jump in, pretty sure the incoming black hole will take care of it.
- No RSS for me tomorrow.
Man, I loved YTMND back in the day. I can’t for the life of me remember how I first heard about it
the guy who introduced me to ytmnd tried and failed spectacularly to form an antigovernment militia (everyone he recruited was atf. he was such a doofus). my undergraduate experience introduced me to some interesting people who went on to commit the stupidest felonies.
Sounds like some wild folks.
After pondering it for about ten minutes I’m pretty sure I was introduced to YTMND by someone posting https://darthno.ytmnd.com/ in response to something in a forum I was on. I’ve had that URL memorized ever since and use it every now and then for similar dramatic responses of my own
i mean, every drama department is full of characters
I believe that life on the internet will reside in private, invite only communities. Public spaces will only get worse and worse.
I’ve had to put .htaccess passwords on a bunch of my pages just to try and keep the spambots and AI scrapers at bay. This world, man
Yup, I’ve gotten much more into the smolweb, niche websites and the dark web, where some parts still feel like a place I can breathe.
This is the way to do it
Lemmy is a salvation spot for me, been an internet denizen since before I was a teen, it has been sad to see it slide into popularity contest/mass consumerism garbage. But I enjoy my Minecraft videos I’ve been watching for over a decade and getting to chat about homelab/Linux stuff as an alternative.
Its not like the real world (in the us at least) is doing any better lmao
Just don’t read news. News push negative narrative because it creates strong emotional reactions and people engaged. Problem is even here on Lemmy, people share and discuss these toxic news instead of writing their own view of it that is more modest and objective.
I keep a book on my person at all times now. Instead of mindlessly grabbing my phone (internet propaganda portal), I’ll grab the book instead. Been doing it about six months now, I like it a lot. I still havnt finished a book, I jump from one to the other very often, but I’m reading much more.
Its okay to sign off. I had a panic attack two weeks ago, and basically had to sign off for a time. I’m still keeping distance from the internet though. Renewing my love of reading has been a serious positive though.
I love me a paperback book that can fit in a pocket
Man I feel you. There are so many things I want to read, so it’s hard to stay focused on one thing sometimes. I have like five or six books right now in various stages of completion next to my couch. I probably need to get some ADHD meds.
I’ve given up on the super-corporate side of the Internet.
99% of my Internet use is Mastodon and Lemmy, both of which don’t really represent “the Internet”. I sail the high seas occasionally to help meet my other needs.
Yes, multiplayer gaming is toxic as hell. If I’m doing that, I have chat turned off, but mostly I’ve managed to finagle the Internet into my own personal, cozy little Hobbiton derivative, so it doesn’t feel quite so toxic to me as it might to the population at large.
AI is the thing thats close to pushing me off. I’ve loved it less and less every day since it turned into a popularity contest, but it still had a lot of great stuff. Now its not even people pretending to be something they’re not, its a computer program pretending to be somebody pretending to be somebody theyre not in the vain hopes that you’ll LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE.
I’m not talented or special-skilled or super-interested enough in anything to warrant joining any niche forums. This right here is the last of my Internet I think. Once Lemmy is overrun by thots and bots I might be done.
I bet you have some cool talents even if they don’t drive you to forums
Set up your own website if you haven’t already, the indie web/smallnet/etc movement lately has been really cool to see and has made the internet fun again for me. Neocities is a great place to start if you need simple hosting, completely free and without ads
My most recent lil obsession/project has been to see how doable getting the start of a community mesh network going would be. I want the internet to live up to its decentralised promise but that means actually decentralising it.
I’ve been seeing a lot about this stuff and I really want to get into it, seems really cool
Wasn’t there just a thing with search engines de-indexing neocities and the like so no one could find them from search engines?
Search engines are the achilles heel of the internet. The enshitification bottleneck. We need ways to access information around these large for profit companies, as they no longer are doing an honest, honorable job, but maximizing profit in a plutocracy governed by dictators and corrupt soon to fall to fascism liberal democracies.
as far as i know, it was a bug with bing
How are people finding these types or sites? I love the idea of it but I don’t understand how any of it gets discovered.
how did anyone find zombo.com back in the day
I think everyone’s friend just told them about it one day.
Here’s one place https://neocities.org/browse
I just tell people to go visit https://soulism.net/ as often as I get the chance
this search engine finds smaller unique sites, lots of them happen to be neocities sites. Just refresh the page and see whats out there: https://old-search.marginalia.nu/search?query=browse%3Arandom
Neat, but this only makes me miss StumbleUpon. It was so freaking good for discovering niche websites. I have no idea why it shut down.
Oh StumbleUpon…thou shalt be remembered
The Internet as a whole isn’t the problem. Specific sites are. Steer clear from those sites, and you’ll be just fine. Take notice of which sites and services result in negative emotions, and find alternatives to those places.
spoiler
All the popular sites will be on that list. Anything made by one of the big companies is permanently contaminated. If it involves Meta, Xitter, Reddit in any way, you’re better off without it. Also, many popular news are built on the idea of spreading fear and anxiety. Avoid those sites too.
I’m ready to give up on most things.
Already have. Continued existence is mainly just for the benefit of the spouse who actually has things worse than I.
Inertia is really the only thing keeping me alive at this point…
I am not giving up on the internet, but I have slowed down quite a lot in the past 5 years. I check very few sites anymore, I no longer game on multiplayer. In fact, I was even content being on a 50MBps internet plan. But, my ISP stupidly got rid of that plan so I find 100MBps too much for someone who isn’t going to utilize all of its speed. I don’t need anything beyond 100MB anyways.
Been online for over three decades, the internet has helped me in many ways, but it also has made me feel the worst of ways. Like having incredulous bouts of depression that yearns for yesteryear’s internet because today’s internet is all noise. It’s just noise and nothing truly innovative has been made that is interesting. Everything that gets made, all serve means to increase advantages for those that cause problems.
If it hasn’t happened already yet but I predict within the next 5 years, all I’m going to care about is just streaming and e-mail checking. I’ll just join the old crowd.
I almost feel the same, too much USA doomnews about Trump and Epstein. Here, people break rules too, just to spam USA news 24/7.
My solution to combat this, was to block keywords(Lemmy) and access website I only need(forums, websites etc).The Internet sucks now. There’s just not “things” on it anymore. When I was a teenager, there was always something new and interesting to do online. Modern Internet is social media, streaming, and shopping. It’s just not the same.
Yep, it was a trove of discovery, now its all data gleaning and AI marketing slop, and other garbage.
The library of Alexandria, burns again.
