--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |INFO: | |This article was not edited; I just typed out my thoughts and posted it without | |getting someone else to read it. It most likely contains several factual | |errors, but it is entirely my original thoughts | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This happened a long time ago; before I was on the internet, I hear grand stories of people creating their own websites, interacting together on IRC and forums, and generally just having fun.
Now, the charm and freedom are gone from all but the remote corners of the internet.
They've been replaced by the mechanical, monstrously addicting algorithms of most social media, designed to keep you on the platform as you waste more of your life watching ads; having the shallow conversations that lead nowhere and help no-one except the platform.
Where did the vibrant freedom of the old internet go?
Well, when capitalism discovered the internet, it wouldn't die; it couldn't die.
It was instead forced into the far reaches of the internet, away from the general public; invisible to most, but still there, if you knew where to look for it.
This over-generalized, of course.
Social media is one of the major factors that caused the internet to take off in the first place; the ability to talk to your friends without calling or texting them was revolutionary at the time and changed the way we communicate.
But, as you have no doubt noticed, everything consolidates in social media, and this leads to the death of expression.
Everyone gravitates to the social media platform most used by their communities, or, more often, several platforms.
This leads to everyone having the same, bland, text-only profile.
Even personal websites have fallen victim to this; what used to be independent websites migrated to Geocities, which then migrated to the corporate sterilized likes of Wix and Squarespace.
The only people who still care are the ones who exist mostly isolated from the rest; the people who still use IRC and forums, and, more recently, most of fedi.
This creativity still exists, but most don't find it.
I doubt that anyone that doesn't fall into those categories will ever discover this page, but if you're reading this and that's you: branch out, explore, discover.
The internet is more magnificent than most give it credit for, because most haven't seen the true beauty of it.
$ find -name author
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Programmer, hacker, BSD user, FOSS believer