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Alive internet theory
- theandrewbailey 11mo agoThe constant re-styling of the page was annoying enough to make me close the tab and not come back.
- brulard 11mo agoI did the same and did not even think about it until i read this!
- stavros 11mo agoI managed to brave the cruel and punishing color changes long enough to click the button and was rewarded with an interesting session of nostalgia and exploration.
- inquirerGeneral 11mo ago[dead]
- faidit 11mo agoI thought it was cool, the UIs of the past evoke lost memories of past eras. But sadly, the images glitched out and stopped displaying after I manually changed the date. Probably due to my internet connection haha
- al_borland 11mo agoI thought it was cool, but the changing text sizing/wrapping made it difficult to read. I kept having to re-find my spot. But I read slow and was too lazy to just click on the era I wanted to set it back while I kept reading. Keeping the text layout consistent with the changing theme would have been a nice touch, and maybe a good future enhancement.
- yakattak 11mo agoI liked the idea but it made it impossible to read the explanation of the experience.
- arcfour 11mo agoI loved it. Don't be a wet blanket.
- BonitaPersona 11mo agoI'm open to and interested in the thesis and discourse this website supposedly offers, but the medium forcefully expels me. Perhaps there could be a static 1.0 version we can read or listen to? edit: Okay, I get it now. It's an automatic aggregator! Only the style auto-change is egregious then, but the actual webapp is great! another edit, sorry: The call-to-action button should be at the top, not the bottom. On mobile you have to scroll to see it and it can be missed.
- gryfft 11mo ago> alive internet theory is a séance with this living internet. Resurrecting tens of millions of digital artifacts from the Internet Archive, visitors are immersed in a relentless barrage of human expression as they travel through the life of the web as we created it—every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web. I like this a lot. It sort of turns internet history into a lava lamp. For those struggling with the styling on the splash page, the slider at the top lets you pick an era and stick with it.
- spencerc99 11mo agolove the lava lamp comparison!! i might borrow that for describing it thanks for trying it :)
- Mistletoe 11mo agoI like the sentiment but how will you know as time goes on that the things were uploaded or created by real humans? The early things yes, but as I got closer to now I was less sure, which kind of disproves the alive internet theory. https://archive.org/details/TikTok-7272243823504313642 https://archive.org/details/TikTok-7272243823504313642
- ySteeK 11mo agoThat's exactly my kind of humor: the page "aliveitheorie" remains black because I'm not allowing a Java script.
- van_lizard 11mo ago[flagged]
- bryceneal 11mo agoI agree that "the internet will always be filled with real people: looking for each other". The question is will they be able to successfully find each other, and how can they be sure they have?
- koolala 11mo agoby using the internet or by using a website? if we included digital telephone would the answer be getting their phone number? i wish hosting a website was as easy as hosting a phone call.
- schwartzworld 11mo agoHosting a website might be easier now. Services like netlify make it pretty simple
- quantummagic 11mo agoPresumably, the value in finding each other will be the key to determining you have found someone real. If you literally can't tell the difference, then what does it matter? But many of us believe that there are important differences, that do matter, and that the dead internet can never truly provide.
- koolala 11mo agoit depends if you want real connection. imagine if this reply was a video call. wave emoji
- al_borland 11mo agoIf the connection is real, one would think the people would eventually want to meet. We've all seen the stories of people being catfished and how devastating it is for some people. How long is an acceptable amount of time for someone to engage in an online relationship (of any kind, not necessarily romantic), before finding out it's been a chatbot the whole time? I just met someone, I think last year, who I've known via forums and chat for over 20 years now. I was looking for a place to watch the eclipse and totality was going right through his backyard. Imagine if I drove down there it was just some random address that an AI gave me after 20 years of talking. I'd lose my mind. Some people's only friends are people they know online, through games or forums. Imagine finding out your only friend in the world isn't even real. That's very dark. This seems like something the bots should have to disclose upfront. I hate not knowing if I'm talking to a real person or not. Imagine spending hours in an online debate with what is ultimately a chatbot... what a waste. If I want to talk to a chatbot, I'd go to a chatbot. There is a reason we are here in the comments instead of just pasting the link into ChatGPT and going back and forth with it.
- batch12 11mo agoIts a cool idea, just beware. Saw some dead kids and some NSFW among the otherwise interesting content.
- spencerc99 11mo agoreally sorry you had to experience that! i added a NSFW flag - i'm just pulling content randomly by date and didn't know the Archive had that kind of graphic content :(
- haykuro 11mo ago[dead]
- csomar 11mo agoThis must be labeled NSFW.
- talkingtab 11mo agoSomehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture. 1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet. 2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong) The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it. The "follower" internet has somehow instilled the notion that making a comment is the same as "doing something". It is not. Someone has done something here. If you want to comment, try to develop the thought, not critique. Help build something.
- torben-friis 11mo agoGood critique to the comments!
- plastic-enjoyer 11mo ago> The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it. Yes, and no. I think a problem is critique in the form of action. There are movements such as the indie web (e.g. Neocities, Nekoweb, Agoraroad) that long for the old web in their nostalgia and form a counter-movement to the current state of the web. The websites and communities that emerge from this are more or less an imitation of the websites of the late 90s and early 2000s. My problem with this is that the indie web primarily defines itself by simply being the opposite of the web 2.0. It exists primarily as a counterculture, in which “counter” is more important part than "culture". This movement is cynical in that a better future for the internet and the web no longer seems possible, and the only way out is to escape into a nostalgically romanticized past. For me, this is more of a confirmation of the Dead Internet Theory than of the Alive Internet Theory.
- ktpsns 11mo agoI think Indiweb is more a cultural way of building tech and not only an opposition to current trends. As a dev I see indiweb in similar veins as "selfhosted vs cloud" or "Microservices vs Monolith"
- Alex2037 11mo agopeople forget that even before LLMs, the Internet was already shit. a third was SEO slop by ESL thirdworlders, another third - a kulturkampf battlefield. looking for the good parts had never been easy.
- FrustratedMonky 11mo agoIs it even more proof that the Internet is dead, that we are now in the Nostalgia Phase. Looking back fondly at what it once was.
- constantcrying 11mo agoAwful site, this is just a strawman. The dead Internet theory does not claim that real people do not upload things to the Internet, there was never any doubt about that. The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory" is or what it claims. >every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web. Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos. Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims. Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that most users of the Internet are consumers who mostly read discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who are actively participating are then engaged by "bots", supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating infighting. If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by any amount of uploaded archive material.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- crims0n 11mo agoI like this, makes me wonder what a curated internet by a benevolent dictator could offer.
- throw10920 11mo agoIsn't the fact that most of the material comes from the Internet Archive somewhat a refutation of the Alive Internet Theory, which is that the internet is alive now, as opposed to some past archived point in time? (yes, I know the IA archives contemporary materials, but the purpose and majority of the content are from the past)
- spencerc99 11mo agothey still add over 10-15 TB of data every day! so even though there's a lot of archive content it doesn't mean there's not modern content either
- philipwhiuk 11mo agoSeems more 'undead' than alive given the methodology.
- jaapz 11mo agoHaven't read the rest of the site but I really enjoyed the way you present it using the slider with the prevalent styles of certain periods
- yoz-y 11mo agoAlgorithmic internet can be eventually filled with bots and AI. But when you curate your own follow list you are pretty much immune.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ansc 11mo agoUh, definitely NSFW. Did not expect to see porn and other questionable graphic material. I mean, that is what I remember from the "alive internet", so it's not wrong perhaps, but maybe should be flagged as such.
- paulwilsondev 11mo agoPretty sure it reacts to your cookies.
- koolala 11mo agoI think it's just pulling random stuff from archive.org on a given date.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- btbuildem 11mo agoNot sure what it's meant to be, it grinds to a halt on my M2 -- if there was a message, it's lost.
- drowntoge 11mo ago> This website has been temporarily rate limited Although being stuck at loading something was reminiscent of my early internet experience in a way, the site’s backend seems to be rate-limited and unable to serve. Will check back later!
- spencerc99 11mo agogot hit by the HN death hug - it's back now!
- bilsbie 11mo agoSomeone should just make a no bots forum. I’m against requiring ID but there must be a way to do it.
- al_borland 11mo agoDigg is in the process of being relaunched. I still haven't received an invite, but the marketing around it seems to be positioning it as a human-first platform. I guess it remains to be seen how it plays out.
- moritzwarhier 11mo agoagreed about the point that this has nothing to do with dead internet theory. A similar idea, but without the timeline idea and with YouTube videos instead of archive.org was this: YouTube videos that have almost zero previous views (astronaut.io) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432772 1362 points by monort on July 14, 2019 | 239 comments I still like that one, maybe it appeals to more people here because the UI is more polished, and the video selection criteria work really well. Although it also has the feel of seeing stuff that you're not meant to see sometimes. It has an almost meditative feel to me, I like it. Last time I opened it, for example, I saw a video of an old man playing a guitar, lots of hobby sports matches, and videos of private celebrations etc Didn't encounter any NSFW stuff, but it's probably possible as far as YouTube can't prevent it, so if you must be 100% sure, you probably shouldn't open it.
- Venkatesh10 11mo agoShouldn't have clicked the website while I was on a bus. Now I had to see some ss cheeks in public
- spencerc99 11mo agohey everyone - creator here thanks for engaging with this project & all the feedback and thoughts! i know this isn't the "solution" to dead internet theory but i felt compelled to make this piece in response. i wanted to feel "overwhelmed" with human content in the same way i feel overwhelmed by AI content these days. More thoughts in the precursor post linked on the site (https://news.spencer.place/p/alive-internet-theory https://news.spencer.place/p/alive-internet-theory). if this sparks new ideas for you on how to engage with this topic id love to see. and sorry for the unexpected NSFW - i'll add a warning to the site p.s. site should be working again! & you can also add it to your home screen as a PWA
- abetusk 11mo agoI've felt that people who espouse the dead internet theory have a much different experience of the internet than I do. For me, browsing the web, reading articles, watching YouTube videos, consuming Twitter/X/Bsky/Mastodon feeds, is all very active. There's interesting information that I engage with. I learn new things. I get to experience new art forms that I didn't think existed. I think for people who gravitate to dead internet theory, the internet is more akin to flipping through thousands of channels on network TV, searching for a 5 minute segment of a show they like hidden in an ocean of ads, syndicated slop and reality TV. They use the internet in a passive way to entertain and so can't imagine anyone else would be consuming information in a different way. It's nice to see people actively pushing back against what I consider a cynical attitude.
- nickpsecurity 11mo agoWhat sites they're using is a big part of it. My sites are content from people I know, aggregators like HN that pool together quality content, educational resources, sub-Reddits, and entertainment. The entertainment can be fake and I don't really care if it's good. The sub-Reddits vary considerably in content quality. So, my sites are mostly living people. It's also how we spend our time. Popular culture encourages people to only do it through devices. I spend most of my time away from devices or only passively using them (eg listening). I mostly focus on people all day at two jobs. My intuition is built on human experiences. There's a lot of variety in that in our area. On specific topics, they mostly converge towards talking points due to media, Hollywood, educational system, views in their physical area, and their religion. Maybe in that order.
- raudette 11mo agoFunny to have read this today - I read this this morning, and just happened to go to a small gallery in Guelph (small town near Toronto) presenting similar ideas: https://artgalleryofguelph.ca/exhibition/soft-internet-theory/ https://artgalleryofguelph.ca/exhibition/soft-internet-theor...
- spencerc99 11mo agowoah this is very cool thanks for sharing!
- LennyHenrysNuts 11mo agoNSFW.
- Architrixs 11mo agodo we need a NSFW flair here on hn as well..
- incomingpain 11mo agoAHHH volume control! It's of no surprise that bots and now even ai powered ones are on the internet. I think OP misunderstands the problem. It's not so much that bots/ai/synth will outnumber. Quantity is unimportant because 1 bot with thousands of accounts is able to manipulate and change what's being discussed. It's that it makes you think there's human activity when there is not. 1 bot has the power to censor online speech on some platforms. Which is how you end up with the dead internet because real people whose speech is censored wont keep trying to talk about it on that platform. A platform that's declining, will hesitate to ban bots or may even have their own synthetic engagement to justify that it 'looks like' they are still as popular as ever even though people have moved on. Having experienced the internet on forums, then social medias, then this nearly entirely synthetic era. It's very clear we are living in the dead internet era.