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Once upon a time, neat/surprising/weird/amazing sites were part of the currency of the internet. "Check out this link" was a welcome message. Sites full of li

Once upon a time, neat/surprising/weird/amazing sites were part of the currency of the internet. "Check out this link" was a welcome message. Sites full of links to neat stuff were really popular. You tried to fill your chat app with friends who consistently linked you to neat stuff. Now, no more. "Check out this link" is not an enticing offer, it's assigning homework. I don't know if it's because neat stuff is no longer rare and we've collectively had our fill, or because everything got so co-opted and corrupted that we go in to every new site with one wary eye watching for the dark patterns. But one way or the other, people don't share links. They share memes instead, which ask far less of us, and are much harder to monetize.

zucked 5y ago
The decline of welcome "Check out this link" messages is at least partly because everyone is getting the same links from the same sources at any given moment. If you found it on a surface-level subreddit, a major Instagram account, a major news site, or a big podcast chances are decent that the content in question has already been seen by a fair number of people, and to them, seeing it again has no additional value. I see this play out hundreds of times in real life where the conversations start with "Did you see...? and "I was listening to a podcast about..."
benjaminjosephw 5y ago
Maybe its also because good content is more frustrating to actually get to. Compared to a decade ago there's a lot more friction on a first visit to a site. All the marketing pop-ups, paywalls and surveillance consent boxes are a hassle and page load times seemed to have gotten worse. Maybe we've been gradually conditioned to avoid those frustrations unless its really worth it.
mdoms 5y ago
Part of it is that most links, even when the content is good, come with some amount of pain in accessing it. Cookie banners, in-line ads re-flowing the content, pop-over ads, "subscribe to my mailing list" popups, donation begging popups, long-winded articles needlessly stuffed full of SEO keywords, auto playing videos, and most websites so full of all this stuff they jank out my phone and make it heat up. I remember the web as fondly as you do. I spent hours on StumbleUpon just finding cool websites. But nowadays even if the content is just as good (it rarely is), the websites are just so bad.

zucked 5y ago

The decline of welcome "Check out this link" messages is at least partly because everyone is getting the same links from the same sources at any given moment. If you found it on a surface-level subreddit, a major Instagram account, a major news site, or a big podcast chances are decent that the content in question has already been seen by a fair number of people, and to them, seeing it again has no additional value. I see this play out hundreds of times in real life where the conversations start with "Did you see...? and "I was listening to a podcast about..."

benjaminjosephw 5y ago

Maybe its also because good content is more frustrating to actually get to. Compared to a decade ago there's a lot more friction on a first visit to a site. All the marketing pop-ups, paywalls and surveillance consent boxes are a hassle and page load times seemed to have gotten worse. Maybe we've been gradually conditioned to avoid those frustrations unless its really worth it.

mdoms 5y ago

Part of it is that most links, even when the content is good, come with some amount of pain in accessing it. Cookie banners, in-line ads re-flowing the content, pop-over ads, "subscribe to my mailing list" popups, donation begging popups, long-winded articles needlessly stuffed full of SEO keywords, auto playing videos, and most websites so full of all this stuff they jank out my phone and make it heat up. I remember the web as fondly as you do. I spent hours on StumbleUpon just finding cool websites. But nowadays even if the content is just as good (it rarely is), the websites are just so bad.