9 ms·

The Other Internet

131 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

jhoelzel 4y ago
I like this but the internet can give you at leas as much as it can take from you and a solution to all our problems is the same as on the streets: "be the change you want to be"
sh4un 4y ago
moolcool 4y ago
The video referenced by this article is fantastic, well worth the watch.
- Brajeshwar 4y ago
  I subscribed to Folding Ideas, ever since his NFT video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- shrewdcomputer 4y ago
  I write a fair amount for work, mostly dev related content. The idea of 1000 high-quality words a day for a month is terrifying. The bit where he breaks down how these ghost writers actually need to write 1000 an hour to make a living shows how absurd and broken it all is.
- Macha 4y ago
  The title really lets it down. YouTube has been putting it in my suggestions since it came out and I've been ignoring it since it just seemed like a promo video of some business guru type. Now I know it's Dan Olsen it's on my list to watch for sure when I have time (see also his videos "In Search of a Flat Earth" on conspiracy theorists and "Line Goes Up" on NFTs and cryptocurrencies).
beauHD 4y ago
> I am on the side of Neopets forums and Geocities and uploading mp3s of shitty songs onto your iWeb website. I’m on the side of blogging and learning about ARIA roles and finding a small circle of nerds Worth reading 'What is the Small Web?'[0] It's worth having your own little corner of the Internet that isn't social media, but a site you own and maintain with care, a labor of love, so to speak. And you have full control over it. You can't get 'suspended' for sharing an edgy meme. [0] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
- rrdharan 4y ago
  You definitely can still get suspended, no matter where you are or how you’re hosting, depending on how edgy you are and how much attention it gets.
  - alexb_ 4y ago
    If you live in a country with strong free speech rights such as the US, not really.
    - hellojesus 4y ago
      Domain registrars go so far as to drop clients. See the DailyStormer as an example. You could host via IP only and then control a separate, static domain that has your most recent IP. Not sure ISPs are allowed to drop customers for edgy chat. I would hope they are seen as a utility in that instance.
      - alangibson 4y ago
        For anything controversial, getting dropped by Cloudflare is a bunch larger concern than getting dropped by your registrar. You'll be DDOSed offline immediately and there's no Cloudflare.ag alternative to turn to. Just look at what happened to the scumbags at Kiwi Farms.
        4y ago
draw_down 4y ago
tomrod 4y ago
Referring to the mention of the gig economy: The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g AirBnB) but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.). Do you get cash for your time? Sure. But the opportunity costs are large. I apologize I don't have a clear reference, the research project was reported through JPMC Institute[1] but my memory is coming from conversations with Fiona Grieg and Chris Wheat who were working on this topic at the JPMCI. [1] https://thebusinessjournal.com/why-the-gig-economy-may-not-be-the-workforce-of-the-future/ https://thebusinessjournal.com/why-the-gig-economy-may-not-b...
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g AirBnB) but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.). Looks like a large unemployment/underemployment (of people) problem.
Jimajesty 4y ago
I really like the author's sentiment, but for an article published in 2022 it seems to not really consider the last twenty years or so. Their references to a better, less exploitative internet seem to exist in a 2000-bubble. Today, videogames are right smack dab in the middle of what he perceives as the big grift, and I'm sure books would be too if only publishers had an easy to implement model for doing so. I'd be more interested if the author gave clear examples of where this works in today's internet, because saying you are part of the Geocities or Neopets forums side of the internet is like the old man yelling on his lawn lamenting how much better things were when he was young.
- noobermin 4y ago
  Just because they uses old examples doesn't invalidate their point, although yes, following the rise of Gacha games in Japan and Asian markets essentially a lot of games today key in some gacha like elements.
- tsm 4y ago
  I haven't seen it happen with novels (yet), but I was a little outraged to buy a weekly planner that featured mindfulness exercises and such to focus on each week…and find it laden with advertisements for the author's website, companion videos, etc. I have no interest in using the internet for that; I bought a dead tree specifically to avoid my computer for a minute.
- theamk 4y ago
  Most of the pages on the internet I visit is non-grifty, non-explitative type. Start from something like hackaday.com, and then subscribe to RSS feeds of the small websites you like. (Of course adblocker is a must... But living without adblocker on today's web is like walking barefoot in NY)
mjr00 4y ago
The independent internet that's driven by passion and a desire to build is still out there, it's just getting increasingly hard to find. Search is ultimately the tool that ties the internet together; after all, you can't consume content that you can't find in the first place. But in the modern, corporation-first internet, Google is highly incentivized to not surface independent websites, for a variety of reasons: * Websites run Google ads, so they don't punish sites that run tons of ads, as a user-focused search engine might. * Large, well-known websites are safe to surface to the top. Surfacing the "wrong" site for a highly political topic could get Google in trouble.[0] * ... and frankly, most users are looking for these sites anyway. There's way more teenagers and non-techies using Google for a quick answer on a cell phone than there are people trying to find interesting independent blogs. * For-profit sites are more likely to invest in SEO than a small, for-passion website. All this adds up to an independent internet that's there, but mostly hidden. I honestly think in the too-near future we'll see the independent internet relegated to Usenet status. Major websites and other businesses (who are willing to pay a fee/have legal contact info) can opt-in to be part of an ISP's internet package, and anything outside will be inaccessible. The recent KiwiFarms debacle makes me think this is coming sooner than we think, as this is a very easy way to keep "harmful" content inaccessible. [0] This is why Google image search is so incredibly useless now; there was a media blitz a few years after its release where journalists found it would give racist responses with certain pictures of Black people. It's safer for Google to just make it so general that it's basically worthless.
- jmbwell 4y ago
  The relegation is already underway. Google has already decided that HTTP-only sites without recent updates don’t belong in top results. Lots of great work from just a few years ago is invisible to most internet users, while “content aggregators” and monolithic platforms soak up all the eyeballs. You have to use something else entirely (like Wiby) to find the perfectly usable, valuable work that isn’t on a major platform. It /may as well/ be Usenet for how available it is.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    eg https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu ; ymmv
smm11 4y ago
1000 words a day? The former newspaper reporter in me would have loved such a cushy gig.
- gwbrooks 4y ago
  Right?!? I'm not watching an hour-long YouTube video if he hook is some flavor of "Yep, right there a half step above chattel slavery, we have... writing 1,000 words a day."
atemerev 4y ago
What they are even talking about? Internet has raised me out of poverty.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
This resonates for me: > Whenever I tell civilians that I’m a web designer I get the sense that they place me in that other category It's hurtful when institutions, ideals and identities that you've aligned yourself with turn rotten, and sully you by implication. I went through a patch of never telling anyone I once worked at BBC, even though it's a great institution and I loved my work and colleagues there, because who would leave you alone with their kids!? Recently I've stopped saying I'm a "computer" scientist/techie except to other techies. Random strangers at parties just assume you're up to something nefarious. A writer maybe, who happens to be a computer guy. I get most warmth and connection from identifying as a "hacker". Most people then immediately raise the ethical question of whose "side" I am on. The good guys, of course. I feel for web designers, because I don't see much good left about the modern "web" to stand up for.
- amelius 4y ago
  "Programmer" is the new "banker".
  - NoGravitas 4y ago
    :s/b/w/
  - xmonkee 4y ago
    I left banking to become a programmer because it was so smutty. FML my life.
    - mths 4y ago
      RIP in peace my dude.
    - andirk 4y ago
      From working with to working on ATM teller machines.
  - cyberbanjo 4y ago
    I think that if I had written the book in the past decade, perhaps Bateman would have been working in Silicon Valley, living in Cupertino with excursions into San Francisco or down to Big Sur to the Post Ranch Inn and palling around with Zuckerberg and dining at the French Laundry, or lunching with Reed Hastings at Manresa in Los Gatos, wearing a Yeezy hoodie and teasing girls on Tinder. -- Bret Easton Ellis (2016) https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a4954/american-psycho-today/ https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a...
ehnto 4y ago
I've tried to influence eCommerce to have a little bit less grift where I have influence. You can absolutely have a solid shopping website without the newsletter signups, re-targeting and tracking, sneaky cart items and whatnot. Commerce is a core part of our society, and it doesn't have to be a grift just because it's online. But it's a tough, tough sell. For a business owner who sees the internet as just a tool their business uses, the state of the internet isn't their concern. It can even feel a bit like a black box to some people, with online customers being about as sentient as NPCs in their minds. I once had a client who was sending an email list marketing emails -twice a day-. Every time he did it, he saw a handful of sales, so he would just do it again, get a handful more. How people felt about the emails didn't even cross his mind.
- duxup 4y ago
  And in the end... it is their site to be horrible with if they want. That's the internet, that freedom includes a lot of people being free to do what they want with their site. It was that way in the "good old days" too. Just that then eCommerce and other tools were not as available. Often in other discussions where I hear folks bemoan how "not everything has to be an app". I agree, but it's also rando company who paid for their site, their app... to be an app. They're really not interested in the rando guy's opinion on how his site should be devolved who isn't buying from him anyway. I do what I can to shepherd people I work with away from annoying things, but in the end it is their site.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  If only I could convince web shops (and their web connections) that I buy every six months or so a box of batteries (for hearing aids) since a few years and that I would actually appreciate to receive a sort of periodical reminder for them, but that I do not need (hopefully) too soon another TV set and washer (that I just bought), it would be a little step in the right direction.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    You'll never convince them of that. Or if you do it'll just change their tack from “we think you might want X, have a look at our X” to “we hear you don't want X, but let us tell you about our X and see if we can't change your mind”.
NoGravitas 4y ago
Posted on website dedicated to raising money for mile-high teetering tower of grifts.
noobermin 4y ago
I happened to read this cat's article on shadows[0]. Fantastic stuff, he seems like a real interesting fellow. [0] https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/in-praise-of-shadows/ https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/in-praise-of-shadows/
the-printer 4y ago
The post-COVID lament over the internet in comparison of the author’s experience with it during their youth is becoming a regular thing. I’m aware that the author is engaged in a project that is sort of like an alternative face for the web. It’s a nice step forward.
lxe 4y ago
I've dove relatively deep into the world of NFTs in the last few months. Not the tech side, but the selling/buying side of it. The culture can easily one-up the grift ideology of the "passive income" content production world or even the MLM niches. The constant inundation with scams coupled with a mix of kayfabe personalities who claim to believe in something while playing the game of trying to hype up stuff for their "marks" is absolutely incredible.
didgetmaster 4y ago
Just like huge public libraries or our 200 channel, 24/7 television systems; there are some real 'gems' out there on the Internet but they are drowned out by the 95%+ of worthless drivel. The task is finding meaningful content in a world of mostly pablum, scams, and other harmful content. With hundreds of millions of websites, you absolutely need search capabilities like Google (at least how it was in its early days) in order to find relevant information. The problem of course, is that the search sites are run by algorithms that attempt to direct your search based on criteria that is often the opposite of what you desire. It is definitely a 'Centralized vs Decentralized' situation. The Internet was originally designed to be a decentralized structure where every site was a pure 'peer-to-peer' connection where it was so easy to jump from place to place without being re-routed to the central players. Now all the big sites like Facebook are designed to be walled-gardens that want to control everything you see.
- xwdv 4y ago
  Although we have more websites now than ever it feels like the internet of today is much smaller, since people are increasingly funneled into the same popular websites that control most of the market share. I used to visit new websites daily in the old days, now I just loop between a few big destinations. I don’t think most people even know how to search for websites anymore that are not blessed by algorithms. Manual search skills have atrophied. The concept of websites having a dedicated section of links to similar sites of interest is extinct, perhaps even penalized by big search engines. Only a small subset of users still share hidden gems amongst themselves, speaking in hushed tones. Purveyors of the old web.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    I do not get the fondness for "the old web". There was a ton of crap. There are many, many more tons of crap today. Tik Tok will practically mainline it into your veins. Instagram and other social media sites exist for any other media types you might want. You don't need to search for it; the feeds will hand it to you. But I don't think of that as any worse than "link rings". The big aggregators may be those "same popular web sites" but the content is provided by the users, same as on any geocities site. They've just abstracted out the content management parts, so that the creators of that random crap can create random crap. I hear this a lot on Hacker News, and I can't help but wonder how much of it is "I loved the days when everybody on the Internet had to create their own web site, so their tastes were similar to mine because I'm also the sort of person with the skills and interest in creating my own web site." And if so, I understand why people on Hacker News might find that appealing, though I personally appreciate the greater breadth of available content now.
AlbertCory 4y ago
This isn't about the internet at all, but about music: Greil Marcus, one of the deans of rock criticism, treasures all the oddball stuff like this guy is talking about. He calls it "the old weird America." You can still find the old weird Web. You just have to steer left when the road sign says "Big Corporate Web, this way ===>"
- pessimizer 4y ago
  We rely on Big Corporate Web to provide the signage.
MarkusWandel 4y ago
Sigh, I remember this other internet and I wasn't even a kid any more then. I remember half of it going down because of the Morris worm. Actually noticing that things had become unresponsive, before the news of the worm broke. And that was a big deal, a program abusing the wide-open, trusted nature of the internet then, and yet, the Morris worm was more part of the culture than an attack on it. I remember staring in disbelief as the same Canter & Siegel spam showed up in every single Usenet newsgroup to which I was subscribed, and I remember the firestorm of repercussions, little realizing at the time that the spam was the new normal, and the outrage would over time get lost in the noise. I remember enthusiastically making my own personal web site, my own little contribution to the "old" internet, and how happy I was to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a single static banner ad - at the top of my site. I remember Facebook being mostly about friends keeping in touch, and posting life events and cute pictures of the kids. The "old" internet went away in stages. Or more correctly, got drowned out. It was maybe 1% of the size of the current internet, and if you look hard enough it's probably mostly still there... just drowned out by 99% that is noise.
- rambambram 4y ago
  > to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a single static banner ad - at the top of my site. This is something that I really forgot, but now that you mention...
  - systems_glitch 4y ago
    Didn't everyone have a 1px frame at the top to catch that? :P
    - rambambram 4y ago
      Ooh, smart hack! I just accepted the ads back then, I guess.
- 0x445442 4y ago
  And if I’m not mistaken RTM wrote a sizable portion of this site you’re posting to; which is immensely ironic.
openfuture 4y ago
I think it's interesting he had this take from young. As I've grown up I've seen the internet change from whatever it was to whatever it is and the delta is definitely very grift-y. However I don't think it is fair to say it was always this way and I am glad that he realized that the web will be whatever we want it to be. Same with the earth.
- systems_glitch 4y ago
  Probably depends a lot on age.
- asdff 4y ago
  All these "golden days" internet articles forgot about how predatory the environment was back then with how many websites were serving viruses or popups that would open faster than you can close them. It felt like a minefield. There were good spots of refuge of course but they were almost an if you know you know situation, some websites I would learn about through word of mouth in real life alone. For mainstream non techie folks, the internet was legitimately risky. You'd think you were installing the yahoo toolbar and it would just be malware. "It got a bunch of viruses and got slow" was a common reason to abandon ship and just buy a new PC.
ynbl_ 4y ago
> Whenever I tell civilians that I’m a web designer I get the sense that they place me in that other category, that other internet I noticed as a kid. I can see it in their eyes: Ah, so you’re one of those spammers, huh? that would be progress. right now they see the web as an "infinite source of knowledge" and proceed to google something and click an amazon link on the page purporting to have the answer.
closedloop129 4y ago
> And so, for the record, if I may, disrespectfully, unkindly, repeat myself once more: fuck this con, fuck this exploitation and lazy hustle, and fuck this enormous Jenga of grifts. Does this aggressive mindset help when the hustling targets the very core of human nature? Instead of bringing back the old, why not start looking for something new that thrives in that environment? If everything is wholesome, it's meaningless. All that hustling gives value to 'the other' internet. Now, people who participate have chosen to do so.

131 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

I like this but the internet can give you at leas as much as it can take from you and a solution to all our problems is the same as on the streets: "be the change you want to be"

sh4un 4y ago

moolcool 4y ago

The video referenced by this article is fantastic, well worth the watch.

Brajeshwar 4y ago
I subscribed to Folding Ideas, ever since his NFT video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
shrewdcomputer 4y ago
I write a fair amount for work, mostly dev related content. The idea of 1000 high-quality words a day for a month is terrifying. The bit where he breaks down how these ghost writers actually need to write 1000 an hour to make a living shows how absurd and broken it all is.
Macha 4y ago
The title really lets it down. YouTube has been putting it in my suggestions since it came out and I've been ignoring it since it just seemed like a promo video of some business guru type. Now I know it's Dan Olsen it's on my list to watch for sure when I have time (see also his videos "In Search of a Flat Earth" on conspiracy theorists and "Line Goes Up" on NFTs and cryptocurrencies).

beauHD 4y ago

> I am on the side of Neopets forums and Geocities and uploading mp3s of shitty songs onto your iWeb website. I’m on the side of blogging and learning about ARIA roles and finding a small circle of nerds Worth reading 'What is the Small Web?'[0] It's worth having your own little corner of the Internet that isn't social media, but a site you own and maintain with care, a labor of love, so to speak. And you have full control over it. You can't get 'suspended' for sharing an edgy meme. [0] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

rrdharan 4y ago
You definitely can still get suspended, no matter where you are or how you’re hosting, depending on how edgy you are and how much attention it gets.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  If you live in a country with strong free speech rights such as the US, not really.
  - hellojesus 4y ago
    Domain registrars go so far as to drop clients. See the DailyStormer as an example. You could host via IP only and then control a separate, static domain that has your most recent IP. Not sure ISPs are allowed to drop customers for edgy chat. I would hope they are seen as a utility in that instance.
    - alangibson 4y ago
      For anything controversial, getting dropped by Cloudflare is a bunch larger concern than getting dropped by your registrar. You'll be DDOSed offline immediately and there's no Cloudflare.ag alternative to turn to. Just look at what happened to the scumbags at Kiwi Farms.
      - 4y ago

draw_down 4y ago

tomrod 4y ago

Referring to the mention of the gig economy: The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g AirBnB) but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.). Do you get cash for your time? Sure. But the opportunity costs are large. I apologize I don't have a clear reference, the research project was reported through JPMC Institute[1] but my memory is coming from conversations with Fiona Grieg and Chris Wheat who were working on this topic at the JPMCI. [1] https://thebusinessjournal.com/why-the-gig-economy-may-not-be-the-workforce-of-the-future/ https://thebusinessjournal.com/why-the-gig-economy-may-not-b...

marcosdumay 4y ago
> The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g AirBnB) but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.). Looks like a large unemployment/underemployment (of people) problem.

Jimajesty 4y ago

I really like the author's sentiment, but for an article published in 2022 it seems to not really consider the last twenty years or so. Their references to a better, less exploitative internet seem to exist in a 2000-bubble. Today, videogames are right smack dab in the middle of what he perceives as the big grift, and I'm sure books would be too if only publishers had an easy to implement model for doing so. I'd be more interested if the author gave clear examples of where this works in today's internet, because saying you are part of the Geocities or Neopets forums side of the internet is like the old man yelling on his lawn lamenting how much better things were when he was young.

noobermin 4y ago
Just because they uses old examples doesn't invalidate their point, although yes, following the rise of Gacha games in Japan and Asian markets essentially a lot of games today key in some gacha like elements.
tsm 4y ago
I haven't seen it happen with novels (yet), but I was a little outraged to buy a weekly planner that featured mindfulness exercises and such to focus on each week…and find it laden with advertisements for the author's website, companion videos, etc. I have no interest in using the internet for that; I bought a dead tree specifically to avoid my computer for a minute.
theamk 4y ago
Most of the pages on the internet I visit is non-grifty, non-explitative type. Start from something like hackaday.com, and then subscribe to RSS feeds of the small websites you like. (Of course adblocker is a must... But living without adblocker on today's web is like walking barefoot in NY)

mjr00 4y ago

The independent internet that's driven by passion and a desire to build is still out there, it's just getting increasingly hard to find. Search is ultimately the tool that ties the internet together; after all, you can't consume content that you can't find in the first place. But in the modern, corporation-first internet, Google is highly incentivized to not surface independent websites, for a variety of reasons: * Websites run Google ads, so they don't punish sites that run tons of ads, as a user-focused search engine might. * Large, well-known websites are safe to surface to the top. Surfacing the "wrong" site for a highly political topic could get Google in trouble.[0] * ... and frankly, most users are looking for these sites anyway. There's way more teenagers and non-techies using Google for a quick answer on a cell phone than there are people trying to find interesting independent blogs. * For-profit sites are more likely to invest in SEO than a small, for-passion website. All this adds up to an independent internet that's there, but mostly hidden. I honestly think in the too-near future we'll see the independent internet relegated to Usenet status. Major websites and other businesses (who are willing to pay a fee/have legal contact info) can opt-in to be part of an ISP's internet package, and anything outside will be inaccessible. The recent KiwiFarms debacle makes me think this is coming sooner than we think, as this is a very easy way to keep "harmful" content inaccessible. [0] This is why Google image search is so incredibly useless now; there was a media blitz a few years after its release where journalists found it would give racist responses with certain pictures of Black people. It's safer for Google to just make it so general that it's basically worthless.

jmbwell 4y ago
The relegation is already underway. Google has already decided that HTTP-only sites without recent updates don’t belong in top results. Lots of great work from just a few years ago is invisible to most internet users, while “content aggregators” and monolithic platforms soak up all the eyeballs. You have to use something else entirely (like Wiby) to find the perfectly usable, valuable work that isn’t on a major platform. It /may as well/ be Usenet for how available it is.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  eg https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu ; ymmv

smm11 4y ago

1000 words a day? The former newspaper reporter in me would have loved such a cushy gig.

gwbrooks 4y ago
Right?!? I'm not watching an hour-long YouTube video if he hook is some flavor of "Yep, right there a half step above chattel slavery, we have... writing 1,000 words a day."

atemerev 4y ago

What they are even talking about? Internet has raised me out of poverty.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

This resonates for me: > Whenever I tell civilians that I’m a web designer I get the sense that they place me in that other category It's hurtful when institutions, ideals and identities that you've aligned yourself with turn rotten, and sully you by implication. I went through a patch of never telling anyone I once worked at BBC, even though it's a great institution and I loved my work and colleagues there, because who would leave you alone with their kids!? Recently I've stopped saying I'm a "computer" scientist/techie except to other techies. Random strangers at parties just assume you're up to something nefarious. A writer maybe, who happens to be a computer guy. I get most warmth and connection from identifying as a "hacker". Most people then immediately raise the ethical question of whose "side" I am on. The good guys, of course. I feel for web designers, because I don't see much good left about the modern "web" to stand up for.

amelius 4y ago
"Programmer" is the new "banker".
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  :s/b/w/
- xmonkee 4y ago
  I left banking to become a programmer because it was so smutty. FML my life.
  - mths 4y ago
    RIP in peace my dude.
  - andirk 4y ago
    From working with to working on ATM teller machines.
- cyberbanjo 4y ago
  I think that if I had written the book in the past decade, perhaps Bateman would have been working in Silicon Valley, living in Cupertino with excursions into San Francisco or down to Big Sur to the Post Ranch Inn and palling around with Zuckerberg and dining at the French Laundry, or lunching with Reed Hastings at Manresa in Los Gatos, wearing a Yeezy hoodie and teasing girls on Tinder. -- Bret Easton Ellis (2016) https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a4954/american-psycho-today/ https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a...

ehnto 4y ago

I've tried to influence eCommerce to have a little bit less grift where I have influence. You can absolutely have a solid shopping website without the newsletter signups, re-targeting and tracking, sneaky cart items and whatnot. Commerce is a core part of our society, and it doesn't have to be a grift just because it's online. But it's a tough, tough sell. For a business owner who sees the internet as just a tool their business uses, the state of the internet isn't their concern. It can even feel a bit like a black box to some people, with online customers being about as sentient as NPCs in their minds. I once had a client who was sending an email list marketing emails -twice a day-. Every time he did it, he saw a handful of sales, so he would just do it again, get a handful more. How people felt about the emails didn't even cross his mind.

duxup 4y ago
And in the end... it is their site to be horrible with if they want. That's the internet, that freedom includes a lot of people being free to do what they want with their site. It was that way in the "good old days" too. Just that then eCommerce and other tools were not as available. Often in other discussions where I hear folks bemoan how "not everything has to be an app". I agree, but it's also rando company who paid for their site, their app... to be an app. They're really not interested in the rando guy's opinion on how his site should be devolved who isn't buying from him anyway. I do what I can to shepherd people I work with away from annoying things, but in the end it is their site.
jaclaz 4y ago
If only I could convince web shops (and their web connections) that I buy every six months or so a box of batteries (for hearing aids) since a few years and that I would actually appreciate to receive a sort of periodical reminder for them, but that I do not need (hopefully) too soon another TV set and washer (that I just bought), it would be a little step in the right direction.
- dspillett 4y ago
  You'll never convince them of that. Or if you do it'll just change their tack from “we think you might want X, have a look at our X” to “we hear you don't want X, but let us tell you about our X and see if we can't change your mind”.

NoGravitas 4y ago

Posted on website dedicated to raising money for mile-high teetering tower of grifts.

noobermin 4y ago

I happened to read this cat's article on shadows[0]. Fantastic stuff, he seems like a real interesting fellow. [0] https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/in-praise-of-shadows/ https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/in-praise-of-shadows/

the-printer 4y ago

The post-COVID lament over the internet in comparison of the author’s experience with it during their youth is becoming a regular thing. I’m aware that the author is engaged in a project that is sort of like an alternative face for the web. It’s a nice step forward.

lxe 4y ago

I've dove relatively deep into the world of NFTs in the last few months. Not the tech side, but the selling/buying side of it. The culture can easily one-up the grift ideology of the "passive income" content production world or even the MLM niches. The constant inundation with scams coupled with a mix of kayfabe personalities who claim to believe in something while playing the game of trying to hype up stuff for their "marks" is absolutely incredible.

didgetmaster 4y ago

Just like huge public libraries or our 200 channel, 24/7 television systems; there are some real 'gems' out there on the Internet but they are drowned out by the 95%+ of worthless drivel. The task is finding meaningful content in a world of mostly pablum, scams, and other harmful content. With hundreds of millions of websites, you absolutely need search capabilities like Google (at least how it was in its early days) in order to find relevant information. The problem of course, is that the search sites are run by algorithms that attempt to direct your search based on criteria that is often the opposite of what you desire. It is definitely a 'Centralized vs Decentralized' situation. The Internet was originally designed to be a decentralized structure where every site was a pure 'peer-to-peer' connection where it was so easy to jump from place to place without being re-routed to the central players. Now all the big sites like Facebook are designed to be walled-gardens that want to control everything you see.

xwdv 4y ago
Although we have more websites now than ever it feels like the internet of today is much smaller, since people are increasingly funneled into the same popular websites that control most of the market share. I used to visit new websites daily in the old days, now I just loop between a few big destinations. I don’t think most people even know how to search for websites anymore that are not blessed by algorithms. Manual search skills have atrophied. The concept of websites having a dedicated section of links to similar sites of interest is extinct, perhaps even penalized by big search engines. Only a small subset of users still share hidden gems amongst themselves, speaking in hushed tones. Purveyors of the old web.
- jfengel 4y ago
  I do not get the fondness for "the old web". There was a ton of crap. There are many, many more tons of crap today. Tik Tok will practically mainline it into your veins. Instagram and other social media sites exist for any other media types you might want. You don't need to search for it; the feeds will hand it to you. But I don't think of that as any worse than "link rings". The big aggregators may be those "same popular web sites" but the content is provided by the users, same as on any geocities site. They've just abstracted out the content management parts, so that the creators of that random crap can create random crap. I hear this a lot on Hacker News, and I can't help but wonder how much of it is "I loved the days when everybody on the Internet had to create their own web site, so their tastes were similar to mine because I'm also the sort of person with the skills and interest in creating my own web site." And if so, I understand why people on Hacker News might find that appealing, though I personally appreciate the greater breadth of available content now.

AlbertCory 4y ago

This isn't about the internet at all, but about music: Greil Marcus, one of the deans of rock criticism, treasures all the oddball stuff like this guy is talking about. He calls it "the old weird America." You can still find the old weird Web. You just have to steer left when the road sign says "Big Corporate Web, this way ===>"

pessimizer 4y ago
We rely on Big Corporate Web to provide the signage.

MarkusWandel 4y ago

Sigh, I remember this other internet and I wasn't even a kid any more then. I remember half of it going down because of the Morris worm. Actually noticing that things had become unresponsive, before the news of the worm broke. And that was a big deal, a program abusing the wide-open, trusted nature of the internet then, and yet, the Morris worm was more part of the culture than an attack on it. I remember staring in disbelief as the same Canter & Siegel spam showed up in every single Usenet newsgroup to which I was subscribed, and I remember the firestorm of repercussions, little realizing at the time that the spam was the new normal, and the outrage would over time get lost in the noise. I remember enthusiastically making my own personal web site, my own little contribution to the "old" internet, and how happy I was to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a single static banner ad - at the top of my site. I remember Facebook being mostly about friends keeping in touch, and posting life events and cute pictures of the kids. The "old" internet went away in stages. Or more correctly, got drowned out. It was maybe 1% of the size of the current internet, and if you look hard enough it's probably mostly still there... just drowned out by 99% that is noise.

rambambram 4y ago
> to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a single static banner ad - at the top of my site. This is something that I really forgot, but now that you mention...
- systems_glitch 4y ago
  Didn't everyone have a 1px frame at the top to catch that? :P
  - rambambram 4y ago
    Ooh, smart hack! I just accepted the ads back then, I guess.
0x445442 4y ago
And if I’m not mistaken RTM wrote a sizable portion of this site you’re posting to; which is immensely ironic.

openfuture 4y ago

I think it's interesting he had this take from young. As I've grown up I've seen the internet change from whatever it was to whatever it is and the delta is definitely very grift-y. However I don't think it is fair to say it was always this way and I am glad that he realized that the web will be whatever we want it to be. Same with the earth.

systems_glitch 4y ago
Probably depends a lot on age.
asdff 4y ago
All these "golden days" internet articles forgot about how predatory the environment was back then with how many websites were serving viruses or popups that would open faster than you can close them. It felt like a minefield. There were good spots of refuge of course but they were almost an if you know you know situation, some websites I would learn about through word of mouth in real life alone. For mainstream non techie folks, the internet was legitimately risky. You'd think you were installing the yahoo toolbar and it would just be malware. "It got a bunch of viruses and got slow" was a common reason to abandon ship and just buy a new PC.

ynbl_ 4y ago

> Whenever I tell civilians that I’m a web designer I get the sense that they place me in that other category, that other internet I noticed as a kid. I can see it in their eyes: Ah, so you’re one of those spammers, huh? that would be progress. right now they see the web as an "infinite source of knowledge" and proceed to google something and click an amazon link on the page purporting to have the answer.

closedloop129 4y ago

> And so, for the record, if I may, disrespectfully, unkindly, repeat myself once more: fuck this con, fuck this exploitation and lazy hustle, and fuck this enormous Jenga of grifts. Does this aggressive mindset help when the hustling targets the very core of human nature? Instead of bringing back the old, why not start looking for something new that thrives in that environment? If everything is wholesome, it's meaningless. All that hustling gives value to 'the other' internet. Now, people who participate have chosen to do so.