I’ve been thinking lately, not about anything original or earth shatteringly interesting, just something that has been bothering me. Like majority of my age group, i spend a lot of my free time online. Some places i really enjoy, some are merely to pass the time, others i’ve fallen victim to the micro-doses of serotonin issued while scrolling (even if i hate the content, which is something). There are a few reasons, not unique to me, that the internet is overall, not a good time.
From the beginning of time, people have been nasty. Hiding behind a little icon and a not-so-clever display name has given people a (false) sense of anonymity. People insert their opinions when not asked, they are too quick to critique etc etc. I don’t need to describe the typical comment section to you, we’ve all seen them. I just don’t understand why people are so unhinged online. These days it feels nearly impossible to look at a comment section and not see irrelevantly inserted racism, sexism, thisism, or thatism. It’s honestly become so exhausting to look at. Yesterday, i saw a cute video of a baby monkey in a rehabilitation center, he was getting a bath and being cared for. Quite the wholesome video, good content, glad some nice humans were dedicated to caring for him even. Meanwhile, the entire comment section was FULL of negativity! Complaining saying he wasn’t a pet, needed to be in the wild, claiming animal abuse, and whatever else you can think of. Why was there a need to be so rude? It’s funny though, despite it all, i still like to believe in the good in humans (possibly to a fault). Even though i feel like most comments these days, (on that one website in particular), aren’t even human.
The internet has a spam/bot problem and it’s getting old. Again, i know none of this is new. It feels like ever since i created my first email address i’ve been solicited via my spam box for “SEXXY L❤️CALS NEAR ME” or whatever they say; You get my point. This grew, became an issue on social media, twitter has been bad about it even before it was sold to a man child who lit a match and fed several fires. This blog probably has 15 pending comments across my previous posts (all spam). That reminds me, i will be turning the comments off when i remember at the right time. I’m very tired of filtering out the nonsense and no one really comments there anyways. This sorta makes me sad because i think the option being there is kinda sweet. It opens up the opportunity for someone who found me outside of bluesky (the only place i really share) to say something. Shame that it’s likely to go because some robot wants to sell me a scam.
Speaking of selling, the biggest elephant in this post is ads. Ads ads ads. STOP with the ads. Literally nothing exists these days without them. To a tiny, minuscule, atom size degree, i sorta understand. Companies need money to run, especially small indies, but they’ve gotten out of control at this point. Some places you can pay to remove them, some places you can’t. Maybe you figured out how to use an ad blocker (for now anyways) but they make everything insufferable, these ads. Always in the way, blocking videos, disguised as real content. Let’s look at this, I like scrolling Pinterest for various reasons. It’s like a little app of compartmentalization i can organize all my little ideas into very manageable sections. Pins often lead to blogs that i hate visiting, they’re a mobile screen nightmare. Half the time you can’t seen fore than 15 relevant words on screen. Ads take over and leave literally nothing else on screen- all ads. Many have that tiny x hidden somewhere on your screen or fake ones that trick you to click into something you didn’t mean to. I haven’t experienced in a while but do you remember pop up ads with SOUND?? SHUT UP!! It seems like you can’t go anywhere without ads or someone trying to sell you something irrelevant or fake. The other day my mother tried to buy an AI generated crockpot. Even on a smaller scale, Discord, for example, changes the UI to prioritize selling features to you. It’s not quite as aggressive as ad but it’s still annoying. Like i said i almost get it, but also relax, dude. (Imagine if Discord ran ads mid chat LOL!)
Searching for anything is rough these days. I haven’t experienced (or noticed i guess) first hand AI results feeding nonsense in place of a real result but why does no one care that this isn’t helpful? Why are we being pushed bullshit all the time? If it’s not AI it’s something weird and probably not so helpful. Reddit has been a way around this in a way. You can actually see answers from real people. Wikipedia remains a saving grace of some sorta (who’s laughing now, middle school english teachers?). When i was younger, i’d find all of my reference photos for drawing on google images. I never got frustrated trying to find what i was looking for because it gave me what i searched. Maybe the internet is just too busy now but i couldn’t imagine looking for specific photos that way anymore. Pinterest is also honestly one of the best places these days to find relevant search results (Tiktok is second, i’ll come back to this) it’s getting worse though. I’m not sure what Pinterest changed about their search feature but for example, if i search “cute spring outfit” and “cozy winter outfit” results are going to be pretty similar, small variations sure but nothing like it used to be. I’m not sure if they’re changing the algorithm based on pins and interactions or something but it’s not helpful anymore. Even for art references a lot of the time i end up going in circles looking at the same photos for a bit. The way i use Tiktok these days is similar. I no longer scroll mindlessly being fed videos through its ever learning algo. I use the search feature to look at videos for specific topics and look through those. I’m sure that even then they’re prioritized by sponsored, ad, highest interactions, etc. but essentially, it’s a more useful search engine than even youtube sometimes. I have a trip planned to Chicago soon and wanted to find cute things to do for dates, so i searched “cute Chicago date” “things to do in Chicago” for fun ideas, or seeing videos of the hotel i’ll stay at helped reassure it looks as nice as the photos on the booking site. I could try this in a search engine but i’d likely get overly popular, touristy (not all bad; being a tourist is fun), or outdated suggestions. Did i just admit my search engines of choice are Reddit, Pinterest, and Tiktok? How embarrassing, what has the world come to etc etc.
There aren’t many cool places online. I’m not sure if the world of the web seemed much larger as a child because i was well, a child or if there were genuinely more places to visit. Like, i guess most everything i was doing was for children’s and perhaps these spaces do still exist just not for adults? Obviously we have social media, but they’re all largely the same thing, some better than others but really just the same. All of them are some sort of selling platform focused, they’re all owned by the same few people, they’re all stealing every ounce of personal information and selling it and they’re all full of bigots. I guess i’m not really sure what kind of space i want? I have discord but i’m not in many servers so the scenery doesn’t change much. The internet is a cool place to hang out, i’ve met a lot of cool people there, and hope to continue that.
Despite hating all these places, ads, and garbage interactions between weirdos and robots, i don’t think i’ll be leaving anything anytime soon. Most of it we need daily, our world has become very internet dependent. There is some good to be found, don’t get me wrong but i’ve been burnt out lately and have taken a step back from a couple places in the past little while (you like my measurement of time?) For the most part i haven’t though. Not sure if this is masochism, some secret form of self torture or what but i like sharing. I like posting about dinner, or upcoming plans. I like bullying RarDK64 in front of all his friends. I like seeing what others are up to and so on. Despite the internet not being so fun i remain glued to my screens. Like i said before, these are not unique thoughts on how things are going but this is something that’s been bothering me recently so i figured i’d ramble about it.
Thanks for reading,
Plant
p.s.
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