Early morning and a wave of nostalgia hits.
America Online. AOL.
The good old days 😝
Seriously.
A/S/L?
Back then, we hardly had no brands to promote. We had time and energy to care and few enough choices that we knew where we wanted to be.
It feels as if the internet has split in two, the realm of the masses where only pleasing the algoirhtm and pulling eyeballs matters, and the realm of tiny clubs, stagnant pools with no fresh faces, other than those who pop their head in to see what’s up.
We have all become numb to the tendancy of others to have some kind of game they are playing. They seeking followers or viewers, or trying to hack you, or killing time but without any interest in others.
Perhaps it’s also because I’ve gone international. Back then I stuck to communities which were more local, it was easier to meet.
That’s not to say the relationships I’ve made here don’t matter. They matter a lot. I stuck around at Hive for this long because it reminds me of the good old days. But there is a sense of lethargic indifference that I feel in myself as much as I feel it in the people around me.
It’s all too much.
I long for simpler times but I wouldn’t put the cat back into the box if I could. I like that things are monetized now and that artists can self produce and that the southern hemisphere is just as connected as the northern hemisphere.
It just feels harder to move people.
I started a discord chat about 6 years ago with the hopes pf making it an online cafe for Hive bloggers who eanted to build a deeper connection without the thought of upvotes, to connect over a desire for connection. I wanted us to grow out of consensus and a pursuit of pur shared ideals.
It was great for what it was. A place for a few of us to get closer. A few people stuck around for a while but I tried to keep the doors open to new people and get enough momentum that it could survive even if most of the core 5 or 6 of us disappeared. I was hoping for it to become bigger than me, something that could be passed on to a new generation or evolve into something new.
But like most discord channels, it peaked quickly and the life slowly drying up with little droplets always present. Now it’s been over a year since there was any activity in there and I don’t have the time or energy to promise to keep it alive anymore.
Most of us have moved on.
And I guess that’s how the internet has always been. But I hope that in the future we can create more non-hierarchical communities, where it’s not all around one influencer or youtube channel, where personal gain can be left at the door and people still care.
I hope young people are finding lifelong friends from across the world and finding new interests and passions through the people they interact with online. I hope they don’t only let the algorithms dictate what they see but curate the direction they take and have an active role in the process of their own evolution.
I’m not sure what the point of saying all this was, I don’t think I have it in me to try ans rebuild the vibe of those times, but I hope we can all stay sincere and continue to care about each other just because it feels good even, even if caring becomes monetized and put attention becomes spread even thinner
Latest experiment:
If Kyoto wasn’t Kyoto…. - Home recordings
Posted Using INLEO
I look at the Internet and its 'decay' of community in a similar way to real life. We do move on eventually. We may not have grown bored and tired, but perhaps some other part of our lives just filled that space instead. Some other hobby. Some new connections with family members or loved ones, or just new friends.
I think that is what happened to me too, where the Hive community I had dried up, and I just couldn't find myself to care to work myself to the bone to revive it. After all, if others moved on, why shouldn't I accept it and also move on to something I feel is more worthy of my effort and time? Like those around me. Or the photography.
Even if we do that, it's easy to sometimes fall into the nostalgia and think of those more 'simple' and energetic times, even if they aren't too different to some other parts of our lives now.
The Internet has definitely grown more thin in some ways. It does feel like community is purely driven by algorithms and people just pursuing followers and likes. But on the other hand I think this also pushes people into wanting to find more real engagements with people, getting outside and finding those physical communities to replace it.
It’s a combination of things for sure and getting older is definitely an extra layer of complexity, especially for those of us who are trying to stay energetic and vibrant.
There is an overall sense of everyone and everything being spread thin. In some ways I think it’s a great trend because we are more aware of the world. But as dopamine addiction is so pervasive in society, it often goes overboard and has led to some pretty weird things too.
I guess if can change one thing I want to make it more intentional so that my energy isn’t wasted on things that really don’t matter and so these interests and the things we spend our time on have a natural evolution rather than just being fueled by the randomly generated algorithms and our addictions. I actually think the tools are there to make a culture that is much more positive than the cultures of the past, we just gotta figure out how we wanna do it and do it!
Hope you are enjoying your photography and the people around you ✨✨✨
Part of that is just getting older. We no longer have the near unlimited time we had back when we were in school. I enjoy hanging out on Discord when I have time. It's not quite the same, but it does have that old irc vibe, at least if you join the right channels. But "time" is the key word there. With kids, a business, all the social obligations in Japan that come with both of those things, I rarely have time to jump on Discord anymore.
But it's also capitalism. It has taken over the internet, as we always expected it eventually would. The wild west was eventually tamed, after all, and the internet as well. It doesn't help that the take over of the internet has helped push capitalism itself into a much more extreme form in many countries, the US being maybe the most extreme example of that.
Love your video! As the title alludes to: 京にても京なつかしやほとゝぎす
I often think along the same lines.
Having the time is definitely a major factor but doesn’t it feel like more things demand our time than really need to? Like do all of us really NEED to write every day? I have to push myself NOT to write sometimes because I am trying to live more authentically and with less of a lack mentality. Writing sometimes takes away from my music time which is ultimately a priority for me now. I still write often because I genuinely have a lot to say and it helps me organize my thoughts and stay connected with friends here, but what percentage of posts are written with a priority other than upvotes? Half at best I’d say, probably more like 10-20%.
There are other disingenuous motivating factors on other arenas. We could probably debate how capitalism encourages this behavior but I think it goes deeper into our faith in life, a very big conversation we could have sometime 😆
Thanks for stopping by, and for watching the video!
Before @riverflows gets here, you've seen this video, yes?
And on the same theme, @ankapolo sent me this today: which I haven't had a chance to properly check out yet.
https://neocities.org/
Both of these things might be the closest we get to the old Internet - static, built by people, not written by SEO drones or AI prompts.
Something that has a heart, and a soul, and akward-ness of all of it being different and disconnected, yet, still connected by the sense of human wonder.
The website as a piece of standalone art, or as a love letter to something, as opposed to ... whatever it is we have now as a collective "Internet".
Hive is close. But it isn't quite.
Hey, thanks for the credit, and by extension, I must credit @tibfox for making the post where I found this site.
In fact, here is the full post:
https://peakd.com/hive-197333/@tibfox/easypeasy-auto-publish-your-blog
We can make the Internet a place again :) Thanks for the share to that post, adding it to my favourites for future reference.
🤓🤘
As someone who once had a Geocities webpage, I love the look of neocities!
I already have ideas myself :)
That's the key, right there... a non-hierarchical sphere of influence. Remember ICQ? and the later 'OG of internet meme sharing' - "Something Awful"?
I was on AOL and I think that kinda took the attention off ICQ but there were similar chat rooms!
I definitely remember a few of the something awful memes though! My friends were obsessed with Troll 2 and it showed up on there a lot
😆😆 that's awesome! BTW, I just checked, it still exists. The interface is a bit different, but over all the spirit remains!
I recall spending many hours making an Angelfire website just for the hell of it. I wasn't selling anything and it took ages to get anything done but I was proud of it. The internet was selling a lot less stuff back then and now these days I wouldn't say that I have a great deal of fun on the internet because everything it seems, is a trick. Data collection frightens me as well because there is "no such thing as free."
A classmate and I made a South Park Fan site and earned $14 a month from the ad revenue hahaha
It wasn’t about the money though, we weren’t expecting that.
Data collection is another thing. Now it feels like everything you say is being watched, if not by the platforms themselves then by search engine crawlers and AI
on Angelfire? wow, you must have been one of the top revenue earners on there then. haha. I don't really recall what I used the internet for back then but it wasn't very much. This is pre video-streaming days so probably irc and just pictures of boobies.
It's like the magic of the old web was just how human it all felt. Weird and full of heart. I really hope we find our way back to that kind of sincerity again
Even though I wasn't much present online at that time, I feel much nostalgia for those times when people come online out of genuine interest to interact and explore this cyberspace. Majority now are just chugging along, doing the bear minimum, only staying within the superficial realm. Perhaps the pendulum needs to swing in the opposite direction of been less on the internet then coming back again with a fresher lens of discovery.