The_Internet

"No matter where you are, we are all connected."

I have a lot of thoughts on the internet. Some good. Mostly bad. In the case of much of the "mainstream internet (social media, web 3.0), I have nothing but loathing for it. I am a firm believer in the concept of "Enshittification", wherein the internet, under the thumbs of corporate entities, has progressively become more and more of a shadow of itself. In fact, it has become such a terrible place to roam, many have reverted to old-style websites like Neocities in order to experience a more wholesome, genuine experience of what the internet could and should be. Yet the internet also provides a major paradigm shift in the human experience. The internet has become a sort of artificial collective uncounsciousness (Why yes, I have seen Lain, how could you tell?), and it is only the beginning. Because of this, corporations and governments are racing to stake their claim on this so that they can control this. Censorship runs rampant across the enshittified wasteland of much of the surface internet, and bots and AI accounts continue to multiply and infest these spaces; continuing to make what was once a vector for human expression, less and less human. Additionally, valuable information becomes more and more gatekept by corporations, demanding you pay up for information which should be given to all. It is commonplace for one to search for an interesting article, click on it, read about 5% into it, and then be confronted by a paywall notification, demanding you pay an exorbitant fee to read their likely mediochre articles. It doesn't help that Google, a horrid amalgamation of an awful search engine and interesting things that they bought and ruined (See: Youtube), promotes these while sidelining actually useful sources for information.

The internet could be something drastically different. My dream for the internet is that of John Perry Barlow, when he penned The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. The internet should be an autonomous entity, separate from the governments of the world and their agendas, uniting us as a people. Corporations and governments have tried to stifle this; to kill the dream that is the true internet. They want to use the internet as a method for control. Don't let them. Break free from your algorithm, go outside, see the stars.

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