3 ms·

It's 22 years later. The presentation is infinitely better. The content is infinitely worse... or at least the content that greets the average net user. You re

by api 8y ago

It's 22 years later. The presentation is infinitely better. The content is infinitely worse... or at least the content that greets the average net user. You really have to dig for good quality content today.

graphitezepp 8y ago
It's disgusting how bad its gotten. It's assuredly partially nostalgia, but I think also partially truth, but the internet of my younger years I remember as being filled with labors of love, pasionately created content most places you look. Now it's difficult to find much that isn't lowest common denominator pandering or essentially white noise.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- api 8y ago
  I don't think it's just nostalgia and survivorship bias. The median quality of content on the Internet has become objectively much worse, mostly due to a race to the bottom and a race to make the most "viral" thing to cash in quick. Media has always been a bit of a deflationary race to the bottom but this is quite extreme.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Some survival bias maybe, but I agree, content was better, and I believe mostly because there was more work put into the content. Today a lot of work goes into presentation, into using words in common enough dictionary ( see https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/09/22/a-thing-explainer-word-checker/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/09/22/a-thing-explainer-word-chec... ) But don't forget that there was less content, and soon the era of blogs rose, for which I read a fascinating description lately: "Everyone said too much and said it poorly. It was incredibly entertaining." / http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/05/i-dont-know-how-to-waste-time-on-the-internet-anymore.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/05/i-dont-know-how-to-waste-... /
- pucke 8y ago
  There are still plenty of labors of love all over the place, but my own personal experience is that if you create something as a sincere act of self expression or love for [x], people don't bother with it. I think a lot of what the internet has turned into has also primed us as users to seek that sort of stuff out. I've been trying to distance myself from a lot of services and the meme-o-sphere in favor of occupying the types of sites that used to matter to me (personal web pages, no social media, a couple blogs, rss from a few news sites, SLSK). I have partly HN to thank for this, after reading everyone's disgusting unsympathetic responses to Seattle's "homeless problem," I've distanced myself from the site and don't regret it one bit. Edit: it really did feel like we were on the verge of the future, but the rise of communications technologies has hobbled all of us, and Idiocracy may be the only future that's possible if we don't slow the ocean currents to a halt first.
miobrien 8y ago
As to the presentation, I wouldn't go so far as saying it's "infinitely better." I think there's a lot of over-designing these days. Many websites are too flashy, distracting, complex. As to the content, there's the good and the bad. First, the bad: I feel like the websites on the Internet of yore were akin to the counter-cultural zines of the pre-digital era. They were made by passionate, creative, intelligent individuals and consumed by the same. Modern websites are more like mainstream magazine-tabloids: a strange blend of glossy, clickbaity journalism that prioritize going viral - or, at the least, being provocative - over everything. E.g., even as a liberal, I find myself groaning whenever I read slate.com. The good is that there are places like HN, through which we can find thousands of high-quality sites - many of them created by individuals like the creators of those old school zines. (There are also places like reddit, which foster all types of communities, but I'm a bit conflicted on that website.) Anyway, if anything, the good content is out there, we just need places like HN to help us find it!

by api 8y ago

graphitezepp 8y ago

It's disgusting how bad its gotten. It's assuredly partially nostalgia, but I think also partially truth, but the internet of my younger years I remember as being filled with labors of love, pasionately created content most places you look. Now it's difficult to find much that isn't lowest common denominator pandering or essentially white noise.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
api 8y ago
I don't think it's just nostalgia and survivorship bias. The median quality of content on the Internet has become objectively much worse, mostly due to a race to the bottom and a race to make the most "viral" thing to cash in quick. Media has always been a bit of a deflationary race to the bottom but this is quite extreme.
pmlnr 8y ago
Some survival bias maybe, but I agree, content was better, and I believe mostly because there was more work put into the content. Today a lot of work goes into presentation, into using words in common enough dictionary ( see https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/09/22/a-thing-explainer-word-checker/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/09/22/a-thing-explainer-word-chec... ) But don't forget that there was less content, and soon the era of blogs rose, for which I read a fascinating description lately: "Everyone said too much and said it poorly. It was incredibly entertaining." / http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/05/i-dont-know-how-to-waste-time-on-the-internet-anymore.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/05/i-dont-know-how-to-waste-... /
pucke 8y ago
There are still plenty of labors of love all over the place, but my own personal experience is that if you create something as a sincere act of self expression or love for [x], people don't bother with it. I think a lot of what the internet has turned into has also primed us as users to seek that sort of stuff out. I've been trying to distance myself from a lot of services and the meme-o-sphere in favor of occupying the types of sites that used to matter to me (personal web pages, no social media, a couple blogs, rss from a few news sites, SLSK). I have partly HN to thank for this, after reading everyone's disgusting unsympathetic responses to Seattle's "homeless problem," I've distanced myself from the site and don't regret it one bit. Edit: it really did feel like we were on the verge of the future, but the rise of communications technologies has hobbled all of us, and Idiocracy may be the only future that's possible if we don't slow the ocean currents to a halt first.

miobrien 8y ago

As to the presentation, I wouldn't go so far as saying it's "infinitely better." I think there's a lot of over-designing these days. Many websites are too flashy, distracting, complex. As to the content, there's the good and the bad. First, the bad: I feel like the websites on the Internet of yore were akin to the counter-cultural zines of the pre-digital era. They were made by passionate, creative, intelligent individuals and consumed by the same. Modern websites are more like mainstream magazine-tabloids: a strange blend of glossy, clickbaity journalism that prioritize going viral - or, at the least, being provocative - over everything. E.g., even as a liberal, I find myself groaning whenever I read slate.com. The good is that there are places like HN, through which we can find thousands of high-quality sites - many of them created by individuals like the creators of those old school zines. (There are also places like reddit, which foster all types of communities, but I'm a bit conflicted on that website.) Anyway, if anything, the good content is out there, we just need places like HN to help us find it!