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Very interesting video series. I've watched the first episode, and it seems like it has some good insights on the current day internet.
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From what I have read and watched, I think it is an interesting theory an in principle, it makes sense to me.
I do feel the World Wide Web has become very "curated" and the search algorithms herd people into little corrals where it becomes impossible to find anything beyond your own preferences. I miss the thrill of discovering a site and then working from that site's link page to discover even more. Prior to Web 2.0 (early 2000s) it seemed like an open world as to what you might stumble on to. That was rewarding, as far as dopamine goes, because you might find something cool...or not. Now, everything is geared toward hijacking and frying the dopamine system and keeping you locked in so they can gather and monetize data. It totally goes against the original spirit and intent of the WWW.
Outside of shopping and bill-paying, there are probably less than 10 websites that I check on a weekly basis. This is the lone message board for me and I used to be active on a few going back to the old BBS. What's weird is that it changed so incrementally that it took a long time for me to remember, "Hey! This used to be a lot more fun." -
The idea that the internet has changed and coalesced around a handful of major sites is absolutely true. I think that is a topic worth discussing. Unfortunately, all of the other stuff about this all being a massive hidden conspiracy to control the public through A.I.-generated content is complete B.S... which makes me unable to take these videos seriously.
Or perhaps I am just a bot trying to talk the rest of you out of learning the truth. (Spoiler alert: I'm not)Comment
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You said most of what I believe in fewer words. I like people that can do that!
I will say I like this theory being out there and I would love for as many people as possible to see it. That's not to say I believe it, but....it might open some eyes as to how weird it all is now and lead to some discussion about where we are and how we got here.
And while I don't believe "everyone is a bot".....the bot thing has been a reality for a long time. Heck, this board has a user count at the bottom of the board that is largely an artifact of days gone by and "Most users ever online was 6,191, May 4, '21 at 1:35 AM" is kind of indicative of weirdness. Used to be for link building (web crawling). Now there is creepy AI behind it that actually leaves comments when it can.Comment
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EMCE Hammer has been dead for years.
The other day I was having bandwidth issues on my wireless network at home. I was scrolling through FB Marketplace and was clicking on a Barbie listing right as the scroll function skipped forward and I actually clicked a listing for a prom dress instead. Now I'm getting a steady diet of prom dress listings when I open Marketplace. It's creepy. And I don't know what the heck I did on Pinterest, but this morning my suggestions were all Mermaids - not joking.Comment
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^Exactly!
I have never been on Fbcebook or Twjtter, but I was noticing that kind of thing circa 2009 (-ish?) with a Guugle Account and some things it seemed to parse from emails.Comment
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