I miss the old internet because it was a time you could meet up with old friends and connect and stay in touch with each other.

A few things changed, though. First, enshittification of services. You used to go on Facebook and just SWIM in the lives of other people. Now it's just promoted content. Second--related to the post--is rage was recruited to encourage engagement. Third, people's behavior online shifted towards tribal identification, towards rage baiting the other side, towards performativity; and I honestly don't know how much of that I can lay at the feet of Mark Zuckerberg.

I also miss the old internet because truly random things had a chance to make the rounds. Cracked.com had some of the finest writing I've ever read. Nowadays with SEO and official tie-ins (Forbes.com has a deal with Google), the only way to be seen is to spend money, and the only reason to spend money is to make money, so most everything online is now directly or indirectly an advertisement. AI only accelerated this process.

I think this is why Reddit became as huge as it did, because the weirdness still had a chance, and because people want to talk to each other. And now we have Lemmy.

We keep making and finding new islands as the waters continue to rise, but we used to roam the plains.