Current Events > Why did the internet stop being good after the 2010s

(+) Yeah! (+)

what happened exactly?

Internet traffic all went towards the big sites like Facebook and YouTube so all the small fun sites basically died out or got absorbed by the huge sites.

Chuds and squares filled up the internet

Social media became way more mainstream, and people stopped using anonymity online in general, so they're less likely to post goofy fun shit and started posting more narcissistic bullshit

Facebook became a source of false news manipulating peoples views, Twitter users gained power over starting rumors and ruining lives, Twitch influenced kids to spend more on their favorites and opened up more than gaming to their audience, and YouTube became as important as cable.

The meta game for maximizing power, influence and revenue started to come about.

--Zero- posted...

Facebook became a source of false news manipulating peoples views, Twitter users gained power over starting rumors and ruining lives, Twitch influenced kids to spend more on their favorites and opened up more than gaming to their audience, and YouTube became as important as cable.

yep

NeonOctopus posted...

Social media became way more mainstream, and people stopped using anonymity online in general, so they're less likely to post goofy fun shit and started posting more narcissistic bullshit

good fucking answer

As others have said, the prevalence of Social media.

I remember when I first started to see memes like Bad Luck Brian, and Scumbag Steve start appearing on Facebook. Then "memes" went from a running joke to "a picture with words". After that the amount of content being created rapidly multiplied to where we are today, sifting through trash to find rare quality content.

Facebook killed off the individualistically nerdy wallflowers from MySpace and replaced them with a billion narcisstic ingrates.

HudGard posted...

The meta game for maximizing power, influence and revenue started to come about.

This too.

I think in some ways it has become better, but in others worse. I see a lot of people mentioning social media. Unless I'm promoting a project I've worked hard on I have no excuse to be on it.

frozenstar posted...

what happened exactly?

The rise of social media... and it's corresponding destruction of a person's ability to distinguish between fact and falsehood. (IE: My friend said it on Facebook, so it must be true!"

SergeantGander posted...

Then "memes" went from a running joke to "a picture with words".

This... has annoyed the ever-living shit out of me.

frozenstar posted...

good fucking answer

Thanks

Gatekeeping, on some level, is a good thing. Was a good thing, at least. I never thought kids would go back to not knowing how to use a fucking directory.

The rise of smartphones and everyone having quick and easy access to the internet in their pocket. Without that, social media doesn't take off and fuck the rest of the internet.

So yeah, I'm blaming smartphones becoming widely adopted as the key root cause

ffmasterjose posted...

The rise of smartphones and everyone having quick and easy access to the internet in their pocket. Without that, social media doesn't take off and fuck the rest of the internet.

So yeah, I'm blaming smartphones becoming widely adopted as the key root cause

This too.

Its one thing to be sitting in your chair typing away on your keyboard and cruising the forums.

Quite another to be shit posting from your iPhone.

Smartphones primarily

Also the centralization of the internet, with everything getting concentrated onto Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and smaller websites disappearing

Message boards are better than ever!

But yeah basically it happened when the normies took over.

MedeaLysistrata posted...

Message boards are better than ever!

Chat rooms made a comeback with Discord. And I've had nothing but good experiences with Discord as well

The normies came in, websights started to care about their profitability and marketing potential to investors, and they started making all the bigots go away and started weighing down on all the racists and misogynists.

--Zero- posted...

Facebook became a source of false news manipulating peoples views, Twitter users gained power over starting rumors and ruining lives, Twitch influenced kids to spend more on their favorites and opened up more than gaming to their audience, and YouTube became as important as cable.

I wish we could permanently tag this somewhere as the correct answer.

The internet was a place for losers with no friends to post about their common interests and have chats online with similar losers from all walks of life.

But because of Facebook and social media, the cool people started using it and so there was no place for the rest of us anymore if we couldn't fit in to the mold (which is why we gravitated towards the internet in the first place)

i blame skype -- once it became much easier for shitty people to congregate out of view where they'd be safe, they started networking.

think about the options they had before that -- before skype took msn messenger and vent out of the equation. back when all they had were shitty backwoods chan boards.

these days, discord fills that role.

Corporations consolidated most of the internet people use.

there used to be so many options for nearly everything but now there's only a few.

NeonOctopus posted...

Social media became way more mainstream, and people stopped using anonymity online in general, so they're less likely to post goofy fun shit and started posting more narcissistic bullshit

--Zero- posted...

Facebook became a source of false news manipulating peoples views, Twitter users gained power over starting rumors and ruining lives, Twitch influenced kids to spend more on their favorites and opened up more than gaming to their audience, and YouTube became as important as cable.

These.

I'd also add it's more accurate to say the internet started going bad after 2010, rather than THE 2010s.

CreekCo posted...

I wish we could permanently tag this somewhere as the correct answer.

Agreed. Needs to be a limit on how many twitter links you can post per minute, here.

Facebook Likes and Twitter Retweets came out around that time too.

Capitalists taking over, aggressively motivated Nazis and conservatives not being censored, and fake news. These are all connected.

the net was where the anti social could push their fears and insecurities away and have fun, then the normal people barreled in and claimed it all for themselves too because everything in this world belongs to them and pushed them out now they live on 4chan and that place bans people on the reg for stuff they used to be able to get away with even IP bans so the ones who don't know how to ban evade are now on the outside looking in even on that site.

I think the absolute worse is now the net is a tool for people to spread fake nonsense to advance hateful and overall self profiting schemes and ambitions for corporate and political gains through the use of bots and troll farms because the average person really does believe everything they see on the net despite claiming to have some degree of skepticism and now we have social media professionals people who don't make their content for the sake of themselves or for fun but rather to turn a profit, command an audience, create their cult like fanbases and so on

HudGard posted...

The meta game for maximizing power, influence and revenue started to come about.

this basically

also walled gardens filled with phoneposters consuming the entire internet

geocities and other places went down.

blogger and blogs became less popular. I used to check 8-12 blogs regularly.

all the traffic in the hands of a few!

This thread just depressed the hell out of me, grats.

Like everything else, it was commercialized. I don't think the internet is just sooooo terrible, but it is less fun.

There's very little new, unique websites. There used to be a huge rabbit hole where you would google random stuff and you'd find something interesting or a fansite for a video game. Now everything is just curated on news websites or social media. Wikis are still cool though.

It's just too streamlined now. A lot of websites look the same now. The internet used to be a wide ocean where you can discover all kinds of unique and interesting things. I do miss that.

Jagr_68 posted...

Facebook killed off the individualistically nerdy wallflowers from MySpace and replaced them with a billion narcisstic ingrates.

This is the real answer. Its not any one site though, or social media in general. Its who's using the internet now (Ie, everybody). Its sad, because it used to be a great and fun place. It could be harsh and negative but there was also more community

There are still random blogs out there, at least. Old ones, last updated in 2013, but they're there. Also: Ancient university pages with no direct links.

https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/MiscPoemsPonge.htm

Cancel culture started to be widely used and anyone guilty of wrongthink found themselves harrassed and doxxed.

VitalGetPrank posted...

Cancel culture started to be used against guilty of wrongthink.

Trump? How did you get on gamefaqs?