Is internet ruined or do we have Brainrot?

There was a time perioid when the price of a internet bill was determined by how long you were using the connection. My parents limited my time online telling it me was expensive and should be used sparingly. The change in the internet culture happened in a relatively short time. The broadband started gaining popularity between 1990s and early 2000s. By workstations and smartphones becoming more accessible and relatively affortable social medias have become the norm for everyday communications for many people. The internet culture cataloque is wider and more present than ever.

Craving nostalgia

I think the thing that changed was behaviour of regular people. “Internet is ruined” -statement is kind of snobby way of claiming superiority and authority over thing that you have spend more time on than the regular user. The stament seems to be used by people that consider themselves tech-savvy. Or by people that refer to themselves as true nerds with pride.

And by all means – be proud of your knowledge! Just consider that other people having their fun isn’t exactly exluding your possibility to behave differently from them online. It’s ok – we’re getting older and time is passing us by – wether we like it or not. I miss the IRC-chats of anime mirror sites and edgy online communities too. And punkin’ my parents that they have a virus on their PC. (I was a kid. I couldn’t resist some stupid shit.)

All the these (toxic) people

Algoritms and attention of the masses seem to be fueled with need to judge others and interest towards provocative behaviour. Triggering people gets attention. And algoritms of many popular apps and services recommend that type of content to users so people aren’t nessessary more toxic. It might just be that you’re sucked into a negative feed of content after getting triggered a few times. Many influencers and creators know this very well. They get paid more when they gain popularity online after all. Of course some of them will trigger people on purpose.

Internet is more commercial than ever..

Internet hasn’t ever been “free”. Your internet service provider is Tier 3 most of the time – it leases bandwidth from Tier 2. Tier 1 is the backbone of the internet and can connect to all networks without paying for transit. So someone always owns the networks. And “free WiFi” is usually avaible on locations that sell a product or a service. If that’s not the case the network is propably compromised and not safe to connect. If you’re not paying of the product you are the product – one way or the other. And hacking into neighbours network to borrow connection is illegal pretty much everywere around the world.

Influencers and creators that do affiliate marketing are funding their content or life expenses with commercial deals. And there has always been scamming online and offline so the phenomenon of scamming itself isn’t new. If you want to watch content that is completely free it propably has to be funded nationally. There might be some creators that publish their content online partly because they enjoy. Or think it’s important to share. It’s a wonderful gift but it’s understandable if they will have other priorities that take over in some point of their lives.

End notes & (without) AI

We all know AI produced has it’s limits. It needs the “human touch” to be interesting and most AI tools still have quite narrow “intelligence”. It will take a huge amount of money to make AI more sophisticated. No project is going to get that massive funding without a promise of benefit for the investors in the horizon. And the investors like to get their money back in some point. The payback would be far in the future after the easiest and fastest profits have been already collected. I’m quite worried about that combination considering the IT jobmarket situation.

Things that can be automized easily will be handled so – even with the cost of quality. People as an audience have to set their foot down and demand for unique and custom content. And speak so with their wallet if they want to have those quality things. That’s the small way how to attempt to make a difference – think what you consume. Support what you want to see succeed. Seek the content yourself instead of readily gathered AI feed that is easily accessible. Maybe we’ll find our corners of the internet again.

I think it’s really cool for internet culture if people create their own content. And can look for their like-minded tribes globally. At the same time I think everyone has a responsibility of their own life and actions. The only one you can control is yourself.

I hope small ripples will make some waves. I hope that people who disagree with how internet usage is integrated to our everyday life will think of how would they like to change. Have discussions about options. I hope programmers make their own startups. Would bring hope to see revolutionary changes that come outside of already well-funded corporation world.