Yesterday, 03:20 AM
I had a disturbing realization the other day.
I'm becoming one of those miserable old bastards who thinks everything was better twenty years ago.
And the worst part? I might actually be fucking right.
I used to spend hours on the internet reading the unhinged ramblings of complete strangers. People wrote about their shitty jobs, failed relationships, questionable sexual encounters, crippling alcoholism, and whatever bizarre philosophical revelation they'd experienced while taking a dump at 3 AM.
And somehow, it was entertaining.
Nobody was building a personal brand. Nobody was trying to become an influencer. Nobody gave a flying fuck about engagement metrics or whether their opinions were advertiser-friendly.
You just logged on, called somebody an idiot, got called an even bigger idiot, and occasionally stumbled into a genuinely interesting conversation.
Now the entire internet feels like a giant fucking shopping mall where every third person is trying to sell me something.
Everybody's a content creator. Everybody's a thought leader. Everybody's got a podcast.
Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up.
I don't need another 26-year-old entrepreneur explaining how waking up at 4:30 AM and drinking mushroom coffee changed his life.
I want to read a 2,000-word diary entry from some unemployed lunatic in Ohio explaining why he believes his neighbor is secretly communicating with squirrels.
THAT'S THE INTERNET I SIGNED UP FOR.
Maybe that's why I miss places like Kuro5hin.
Not because everybody was brilliant. Quite the opposite. Half the people were fucking insufferable.
But they were *authentically* insufferable.
They weren't performing for an algorithm. They weren't desperately trying to monetize their personality. They were just weird human beings dumping their thoughts into the digital void.
And I miss that.
Anyway, I spent twenty minutes yesterday getting irrationally angry at a self-checkout machine because it kept telling me there was an unexpected item in the bagging area.
The unexpected item was my rapidly deteriorating mental stability.
So yeah.
I'm officially becoming an old man yelling at clouds.
Except the clouds are hosted on Amazon Web Services, they're collecting my personal information, and somehow they want $9.99 a month.
**Anybody else feel like the internet got progressively shittier while we were all busy getting older, or am I just turning into a bitter old cunt?**
I'm becoming one of those miserable old bastards who thinks everything was better twenty years ago.
And the worst part? I might actually be fucking right.
I used to spend hours on the internet reading the unhinged ramblings of complete strangers. People wrote about their shitty jobs, failed relationships, questionable sexual encounters, crippling alcoholism, and whatever bizarre philosophical revelation they'd experienced while taking a dump at 3 AM.
And somehow, it was entertaining.
Nobody was building a personal brand. Nobody was trying to become an influencer. Nobody gave a flying fuck about engagement metrics or whether their opinions were advertiser-friendly.
You just logged on, called somebody an idiot, got called an even bigger idiot, and occasionally stumbled into a genuinely interesting conversation.
Now the entire internet feels like a giant fucking shopping mall where every third person is trying to sell me something.
Everybody's a content creator. Everybody's a thought leader. Everybody's got a podcast.
Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up.
I don't need another 26-year-old entrepreneur explaining how waking up at 4:30 AM and drinking mushroom coffee changed his life.
I want to read a 2,000-word diary entry from some unemployed lunatic in Ohio explaining why he believes his neighbor is secretly communicating with squirrels.
THAT'S THE INTERNET I SIGNED UP FOR.
Maybe that's why I miss places like Kuro5hin.
Not because everybody was brilliant. Quite the opposite. Half the people were fucking insufferable.
But they were *authentically* insufferable.
They weren't performing for an algorithm. They weren't desperately trying to monetize their personality. They were just weird human beings dumping their thoughts into the digital void.
And I miss that.
Anyway, I spent twenty minutes yesterday getting irrationally angry at a self-checkout machine because it kept telling me there was an unexpected item in the bagging area.
The unexpected item was my rapidly deteriorating mental stability.
So yeah.
I'm officially becoming an old man yelling at clouds.
Except the clouds are hosted on Amazon Web Services, they're collecting my personal information, and somehow they want $9.99 a month.
**Anybody else feel like the internet got progressively shittier while we were all busy getting older, or am I just turning into a bitter old cunt?**