The modern browsing experience. #
(MILD DRAMATIZATION)
You come across a link on the internet. You foolishly click it in the hopes of gaining some insight into the subject of said article.
- This site is best viewed in our app.
- For the best experience, let our app run on startup.
- Please give us access to all your contacts.
- We need microphone/camera access for reasons.
- Please allow notifications.
- Your privacy is important to us and our 1001 partners.
- Accept these tracking cookies, or pay.
- Please log in or create an account.
- Create an account using a different service, for ease of use.
- Read this, and check a box promising you read it.
- Sign up for our newsletter.
- Can we use your email-adress for non-newsletter purposes?
- Did you like our content? Please review us!
- Share our content on your socials.
- Ads, ads, ads.
You then start reading said article and slowly see signs of the text being AI-generated, and containing quotes that do not exist. So you search for another article on the topic and get an AI-generated synopsis from the AI-generated article you came from above all other search results. You scroll past it and try to scroll past the SEO-crap that are the first 10 results of your query. You find an article on the subject on a respected (read: used to be respected, but got enshitified to appease shareholders of the moneybags that bought the site.) You click the link.
- This site is best viewed in our app.
- For the best experience, let our app run on startup.
- Please give us access to all your contacts.
- We need microphone/camera access for reasons.
- Please allow notifications.
- Your privacy is important to us and our 1001 partners.
- Accept these tracking cookies, or pay.
- Please log in or create an account.
- Create an account using a different service, for ease of use.
- Read this, and check a box promising you read it.
- Sign up for our newsletter.
- Can we use your email-adress for non-newsletter purposes?
- Did you like our content? Please review us!
- Share our content on your socials.
- Ads, ads, ads.
You realise the article is just a long winded stretched out body of text based on a single social media post. You click the social media post. You fool. YOU DON’T HAVE AN ACCOUNT YOU ABSOLUTE PLEBIAN TRASH.
You shut down your computer. In the reflection of your screen you see the shell of a man, staring blankly into the void. A single tear rolls down his cheek.
The old web #
I do not wish to go back to the old web, it was almost equally as shitty as it was awesome, but i do believe we were slighted on a better web somewhere along the way.
- You used to be able to subscribe to rss-feeds that didn’t track your interests.
- Talk on IRC without someone collecting your connections.
- There was no algorithm deciding what you see next.
- Articles in service of the reader, in stead of the search engine / ad-provider.
I hate the FOMO-powered, chronically-online modern day internet. I don’t want to be constantly in the know about everything, but i am. I’m a casualty of a dopamine addicted brain. I try to be better. I’ve sworn off big tech attention-sinkholes. (I’ve blocked facebook, instagram, x, tik-tok,… on a DNS level, not because I can’t trust myself to not visit them, but because I can’t trust them to not track me.). I get most (if not all) of my reading done through a carefully curated self-hosted RSS-feed. I pay for news-sources I respect, because nothing is free. I dabbled with federated social media but only Lemmy stood the test of time, i check it casually . The modern web is fucked, but i found a niche corner of yet to be fucked (sometimes) like-minded souls and I’m happy there. For now.
PS. ADBLOCK EVERYTHING. If they can use every possible method that comes into their money-rotted braincell to claim just a sliver of your attention, then it is your duty to block any and all of their attempts to do so. The same counts for offline ads. Modern advertisements are a scourge on society, and need to be burned down. There is one exception to the rule.
Photos by Tima Miroshnichenko & Brett Sayles
