4 ms·

Let's put it this way, imagine going to the doctor, complaining about how you’re putting on a little extra weight, your legs are getting tired, and you’re short

Let's put it this way, imagine going to the doctor, complaining about how you’re putting on a little extra weight, your legs are getting tired, and you’re short of breath. The doctor, instead of suggesting the radical idea of a diet or exercise, goes, “Aha! What you need, my friend, is a super-fast, mechanized, all-terrain wheelchair that can drift corners at 60 mph. That’ll get you to the fridge and back in record time, ensuring your problematic lifestyle remains unscathed by reality!” When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Construct an intricate, high-speed, international lemon delivery system, ensuring everyone gets to share in your citrusy misery, QUICly. So here’s to QUIC, the glorious facilitator of our cybernetic decadence, ensuring that the digital freight train of unnecessary features, exhaustive trackers, and bandwidth-gulping page elements gets to you so fast, you won’t have time to realize you didn’t need any of it in the first place. Buckle up, folks, because the future of web browsing is here and it’s screaming down the information superhighway like a minivan packed with screaming toddlers, on fire, yet somehow, inexplicably, punctual.

pdimitar 3y ago
While I partially sympathize and agree with your pessimism, you underestimate the impact of regular users disengaging from various places of the internet exactly because it gets more and more meaningless, watered down, and doesn't provide any value over super brief validation. And while that super brief validation is still a very strong hook for metric tons of people out there, people do start to disengage. The sense of novelty and wonder is wearing off for many. I'm seeing it among my acquaintances at least (and they are not the least bit technical and don't want to be). That the future of the internet looks very grim is unequivocally true though. But there's a lot that can and will be done still.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > While I partially sympathize and agree with your pessimism, you underestimate the impact of regular users disengaging from various places of the internet exactly because it gets more and more meaningless, watered down, and doesn't provide any value over super brief validation. Thank fuck. Burn it down. Take us all the way back to vBulletin, MSN Messenger and Limewire. I have seen the future and it sucks. The past sucked too but at least my grandparents weren't getting radicalized by HillaryForJail2024 on Facebook.
lazide 3y ago
The market for electric wheelchairs/mobility scooters is doing really well, now that you mention it!
epeus 3y ago
That reminds me of this classic 1990s internet description http://stuartcheshire.org/rants/InfoHighway.html http://stuartcheshire.org/rants/InfoHighway.html
- dmbche 3y ago
  You made my week, I think this is my favorite piece of writing in a while. "A little kid on a tricycle with a squirtgun filled with HYDROCHLORIC ACID. "
- yetanotherloss 3y ago
  That pitch for the most metal Mad Max sequel was pure molten gold and still holds up.
xorcist 3y ago
I was going to write something along the lines how happy I am that someone solved the problem of the time to first byte when at least two javascript frameworks and three telemetry packages, each including a dozen of resources, are required for just about any page. But you put it so much more eloquently.

pdimitar 3y ago

While I partially sympathize and agree with your pessimism, you underestimate the impact of regular users disengaging from various places of the internet exactly because it gets more and more meaningless, watered down, and doesn't provide any value over super brief validation. And while that super brief validation is still a very strong hook for metric tons of people out there, people do start to disengage. The sense of novelty and wonder is wearing off for many. I'm seeing it among my acquaintances at least (and they are not the least bit technical and don't want to be). That the future of the internet looks very grim is unequivocally true though. But there's a lot that can and will be done still.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> While I partially sympathize and agree with your pessimism, you underestimate the impact of regular users disengaging from various places of the internet exactly because it gets more and more meaningless, watered down, and doesn't provide any value over super brief validation. Thank fuck. Burn it down. Take us all the way back to vBulletin, MSN Messenger and Limewire. I have seen the future and it sucks. The past sucked too but at least my grandparents weren't getting radicalized by HillaryForJail2024 on Facebook.

lazide 3y ago

The market for electric wheelchairs/mobility scooters is doing really well, now that you mention it!

epeus 3y ago

That reminds me of this classic 1990s internet description http://stuartcheshire.org/rants/InfoHighway.html http://stuartcheshire.org/rants/InfoHighway.html

dmbche 3y ago
You made my week, I think this is my favorite piece of writing in a while. "A little kid on a tricycle with a squirtgun filled with HYDROCHLORIC ACID. "
yetanotherloss 3y ago
That pitch for the most metal Mad Max sequel was pure molten gold and still holds up.

xorcist 3y ago

I was going to write something along the lines how happy I am that someone solved the problem of the time to first byte when at least two javascript frameworks and three telemetry packages, each including a dozen of resources, are required for just about any page. But you put it so much more eloquently.