Blog Entry #1 - 2025-06-13
The Dying Internet.
There’s a lot of talk about the internet dying. If you are unfamiliar, the
Dead Internet theory suggests that the internet died
sometime around 2016. Among other things, it suggests that the internet is now
mainly made up of bots posting for other bots and corporate crafted algorithms
fill peoples ‘feeds’ with narratives and misinformation. It states that what
made the internet special died when that happened. And to be fair, much of that
is true. Our feeds are filled with AI slop and bot content… big
corporations control what we see and hear in ways that the average person can’t
begin to understand, let alone explain. So especially for those who
experienced the internet as it was in the 2000s, it really does feel like the
internet is dying.
But I’m here today to tell you the internet isn’t dead.
Yes… The internet used to be a wild place with lots of smart and
interesting people taking the time to learn and express themselves in new and
exciting ways. It used to be a place where you never knew what you were going
to find… but you could always find someone, somewhere who was just as into
whatever weird thing you were into… and you could genuinely connect and have
authentic human to human experiences mediated by this weird internet thing.
It seems, now, that that is all gone and it’s nothing but vapid posing for
likes, and corporations making huge amounts of money by getting users (and now
bots) to create content. Spending even a few minutes poking around on
‘the internet’ now will bombard you with ads, ‘suggestions’ and affiliate
links… Tons and Tons of content… but very little connection or
meaning, in spite of having hundreds or thousands of ‘followers’.
The funny thing about the internet…
There’s a funny thing about the internet… and that is that it really is incredibly
resilient. If you don’t know, the internet was originally a military project
designed to keep military bases and outposts able to communicate when
individual communication lines or even sections of the country were shut down.
The people who designed it did an amazing job.
Because of this it’s actually astoundingly difficult to kill the internet.
You can drop links, or block networks… but the infrastructure itself really
tries hard to stay connected.. and even when it’s disconnected from other parts
of the network, you can still do quite a bit on the part that you have access
to.
You know what doesn’t work when the network is blocked?
The CorpoNet. The huge centralized ad-driven bot-populated mess that we have
been calling the internet doesn’t work if you can’t reach
their server. And boy-oh-boy do they want you to believe that if you
can’t reach their server, the internet is down. It isn’t.<
ok… so….
Ok. So… what does that mean? What’s my goddamn point?
Fair question.
It’s a little bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, when she realizes
she could have gone home at any time. The LIVE internet is still there.
The same weird, unique and human powered world wide web is still there, we just
need to stop doomscrolling long enough to seek it out. It’s tempting to think
it’s a bit thin nowadays, but the truth is there is already a ton of stuff
out there. I’ll share some links to it in a minute, but there’s something
else we need to talk about first.
The thing we forgot about The Internet.
The Internet we want… the non-corporate, weird and wonderful place we
thought we lost… it’s not free. That Internet requires something of you.
That Internet requires some effort.
The Real Internet is not TV. It’s not a subscription service… it’s not a
spectator sport. You need to be willing to spend a little time finding
what you want. You need to spend some time building what you want.
If you ever had your own personal website, now is the time to resurrect it.
If you didn’t, now is a great time to make one.
If you’re more technical minded…
It’s time to start working on the New Internet. I’ll post more
about this in future blog posts… but we need people who are interested in
building alternatives to the CorpoNet systems. People who want to help realize
the original promise of the internet, distributing information and decentralized
power. Tools for real people to solve real problems. To connect and communicate
with like-minded individuals.
If YOU are one of these people, please Contact me,
we have much to discuss.
As promised…
Here are some links for places to explore the real internet:
- Neocities - a huge network of personal sites.
- Nekoweb - a free static site hosting service with tons of users.
- Marginalia Search - a search engine that favors non-corporate and content-rich sites.
- Wiby Search Engine - another old-school search engine that favors independent sites