the internet has been dead since the mid 2010s but 2022 really feels like the last year before the bloating and decomposition set in. a lot can be blamed on lockdown and genAI oneshotting normies, but it was inevitable for the whole thing to start rotting anyway. the saddest part is that it was inevitable and we cant do anything about it. cant just return back to old timey forum formats or walling yourself its never really worked
3 posts omitted.All good things come to an end
a fundamental principle that applies to the internet as a whole (but unlike imageboards specifically, cannot really be implemented) is that moderation is essential but its function isn't to enforce rules, it's to enforce taste and novelty. since mods eventually lose their touch, there should also be churn in sites.
most of the worst slop on the internet is, sadly, demand-lead. it is not that evil capitalists sit down and think "how can i manipulate people with the worst crap imaginable", it is that some people want the worst crap imaginable and so capitalists (and even people who aren't making a penny and just want attention) act to meet that demand absent any suppressing force. you can draw an analogy to drinking too much coke, i suppose: capitalists didn't put a taste for sugar in people's mouths, they just found people like sugar and catered to that want. similarly, indians didn't create idiot rightism or boomer taste in AI slop, the underlying vulnerability was always there, it's just that pre-internet it was restricted by what media elites could live with themselves (And with other people in their industry) while producing.
i am not sure what the solution to this is, but it spills over into real-world politics with the rise of the extreme right, which is mostly nastly people finally discovering that politics can be fun and meet their worst impulses and desires rather than ignoring it and voting based on whether the economy is getting better or worse.
>>802648This.
People always wanna blame social media for all social-personal problems that have been going on long before MySpace was made.
Conservatives like to say “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Yet they turn around accuse video games of influencing a super small minority of deranged young men who go on shooting sprees