Is anyone else kind of scared by the internet?
I don't mean that I'm scared by some terrible content on the internet, or that I'm actually afraid of using it. What I mean is the same feeling I often get from open-world games: FOMO, a sense of chaos, being lost and lacking direction.
Internet is inherently like an open-world game. There's so much content available. In your entire life, you won't see even 0.001% of it. This very post will probably be seen by like 100 people at most, which is such a tiny share of all internet users.
I get very anxious thinking about this. People often talk about how they miss "the old internet", which consisted of small websites and had to be explored. To me, that sounds like hell. I don't want to explore internet. I want to know where something is and how to find it. Information is on Wikipedia. Opinions are on Reddit. Et cetera. But the internet doesn't work like that - there's so much stuff that I don't even know how to grasp it.
I recently discovered https://are.na because someone mentioned it here on Tildes. I signed up, and immediately got that feeling. There's a huge amount of content, and I'm supposed to just explore in until I stumble upon something?
Tildes is one of the few websites where I don't feel that, because the amount of content is relatively small so I have a feeling of keeping it under control. But it also makes me think about how there are countless other small communities like Tildes, and ones that I'll never be aware of - and that's also pretty scary.
Does anyone else feel something similar? I've seen many people talk about similar feelings regarding keeping up with social media, but that doesn't actually bother me, but the amount of communities that can be explored does
It's the opposite. I've been on the internet for 30 years and I was never bothered by the exploration thing. What scares me now is the realization that the internet allows plain stupidity to fester by giving evil bastards and idiots a platform to spread their nonsense. Ideas can now be disseminated even if they're easily disproved lies or make no rational sense, because a lot of people are really bad at testing ideas, or seem to select personal authoritative sources of truth that are extremely flimsy or compromised by biases ("my drinking mates", "this one newspaper run by a billionaire", "my racist father in law", "this cult leader I'm expecting to make money from", etc.) I'm worried that the internet as it currently is may actually be a net negative for the enlightenment of the human race.
But if you think about it that way, then all that stuff you're missing? It's mostly crap. So don't worry! Who needs crap anyway? Flush it down the toilet and move on with your day!
Just when I thought Eternal September would just chill we get LLMs amplifying propaganda & stupidity. The pursuit of money has corrupted discourse, the internet, society, and government to a point it's actively undermining its own foundations.
I'm hopeful seeing communities like Tildes as a cleaner signal. Genuine discourse with largely mutual respect. I'm also hopeful seeing Activitypub-based systems starting to scale with limited concern for their economic viability. They feel 'old internet' and are helpful for skimming the noise while maintaining the life-style improvements of aggregators from the 00s-10s.
It's even worse - anything that incites rage or other emotion is more likely to have more interaction (comments, likes, etc) which boosts visibility for "the algorithm" and everyone subjected to it.
One way to test this theory (somewhat) is to access YouTube in the most anonymous way possible (browser without existing cookies, ideally a vpn or other IP address that isn't used just by you). The "recommended" videos are flooded with far-right propaganda and obvious clickbait.
I generally avoid algorithm-driven sites and stick with Tildes, Mastodon, and sometimes Lemmy. I also actively participate in a small discord server. But I do feel a sense of emptiness since leaving reddit. Ultimately I hope it leads me to be more productive, but I do feel some of that FOMO.
I have this "problem" with reddit. If I go there on my phone the r/popular for my country seems heavily biased in favor of xenophobia.
Of course it's also possible there's some kind of broad fingerprint at play even if you aren't logged in. For example, maybe your vpn+node is used by a bunch of neonazis!
I've noticed that too, and I'm almost certain it's because of the changes they made to the algorithm in the wake of the third-party app ban shitshow. It seems like they're hellbent on turning into every other social media site. Maybe they feel slighted they didn't manage to become billionaires from it a la Zuckerburg.
This has been my experience as well. I have a work phone I never use except for calls. On rare occasion I'll check out YouTube on it and the difference between it's recommended videos and my main account are stark. The default is very right wing and reactionary.
I also monitor my 10yr old's usage and it's different again. They largely consume reaction content and shorts to my chagrin, despite regular discussions about attention spans, the algorithm, and moderation.
When I tried TikTok for a weekend it threw so much at me in an attempt to figure me out. It was jarring to have quote unquote woke content sandwiched between clips of people whining about trans people or how immigrants are ruining our country.
Out of curiosity, is your 10yr old using "YouTube Kids" or just regular YouTube? I've heard the kids version is plagued with all kinds of other issues (unboxing videos heavily trying to sell products, "Elsagate", AI generated slop), etc.) so I'm wondering if one is much better than the other.
Regarding TikTok, I've always been the type of person to prefer reading to videos. Even in my online classes, I seek out transcripts. I do watch a few YouTube channels where I feel the visual element is necessary (Technology Connections, LGR, and Techmoan mostly), but I've never been a fan of short-form videos.
I used to use YouTube kids but quickly moved away from it for the reasons you described. It's not necessarily YouTube's fault, it's simply that the amount of content that is broadly accepted as "for children" is relatively small, with unfettered consumerism being one of the few accepted ideals in our late-stage capitalistic hellscape (possibly being a bit dramatic).
The Elsagate thing isn't really a thing anymore that I know of, it was more of a short term exploitation of the popular genre at the time by some bad actors who managed to get their videos included in the kids app. I think it was much worse for kids not on the kids app who would see an Elsagate video and be dragged down that rabbit hole.
I uninstalled (we're an Android family if that makes a difference) YouTube kids from my kid's phone and instead installed Khan Academy Kids, PBS kids, Duolingo ABC, Epic and others. They didn't seem to mind much, screen time is still better than none, and I'm happier if they can learn something in the process.
Now at 10 it's just full YouTube with their own account (premium plan for no ads). I use Family Link (free and built in to Android) to control screen time on the phone, which also requires they ask for permission before installing apps. They also have my old gaming rig to watch and play games, with their own Steam account added to my Steam family to access all my games. The PC is password protected so access is requested after chores etc.
I use a hands off approach to the Internet, with education and modeling good behaviour. I explained the dangers of doxxing and rabbit holes, the importance of moderation and balancing content like short form vs long, guilty pleasures vs educational, and screen time limits. Most importantly I explained how it's designed to capture you and I still as an adult struggle with these things too, that it's like a muscle to exercise and it'll be for life.
Thanks for the details. As a maybe-one-day-parent, I've contemplated how to provide access to the internet in a safe way. Your last paragraph aligns pretty well with my thoughts.
I've been on the internet nearly as long, and I wonder if there are harms that were happening before it was more popular and if so what they are/were. I don't think there's one single problem, but if we ask, what is it about the internet that is scary or dangerous, even if we focus on what you mentioned such as allowing plain stupidity to fester, wasn't that possible for the last 30 years? So was it always harmful, just on a smaller scale, or what other factors are there?
One thing I've been thinking is that the modern smartphone is basically hailed as this revolutionary product, a PC in our pockets, but arguably to me the timeline of the smartphone marked the beginning of where it seemed greater internet radicalization began. Of course the smartphone itself didn't cause that, in this context we're saying the internet caused it but the smartphone gave everyone constant access to the internet whenever and wherever they are. It seems to me that many of us who remember the 'old internet' or such might peg the decline of the internet to be shortly after the smartphone's rise as well.
Surely more people on the internet created a market for all kinds of things, disinformation, scamming etc. so that could be argued to be why the internet now is seen as more harmful than it was in the past, but if it's all relative, yeah there's less of that before the smartphone boom, but there were surely your evil doers before then too. Was it the case that people using the internet before then were generally more resistant to those types of influences?
I'm asking in part because I see how people today and the past decade or so have been negatively influenced by constant access to their phones and the internet, but I wonder if I myself wasn't impacted well before then too but I can't see it clearly.
It feels inevitable to me. As you said, at first people were more resistant, because they were more grounded in information sources from outside the internet. Nowadays it takes more work to ascertain truth - even if those pre-internet narratives weren't always the truth, they were usually not as malevolent as some of what I see online. Even if bad actors may have sped things along, it doesn't feel like anything has been "broken", just possibly "abused" - but if the internet was abusable in this way, that was always going to happen sooner or later. It's a design flaw in the system, or possibly even in how we function as a species.
I think speed, algorithms, the amount of people and constant being online are the biggest factors. The early internet was mostly populated by techie people, which had a big influence on what kind of content was even there. It was also slower, as you had to built your own website yourself to even get stuff on the web. And when the first forums or basic social media sites appeared, it was still rather slow and manageable in the amount of stuff added, and it wasn't filtered by algorithms (other than sorting algorithms) as everything is today. Add to that, you weren't online constantly, but had to sit down at your computer, ring your modem to the internet, be online for a limited time and then log off. Having the option to be constantly online with a smartphone in your pocket drastically changed that, and I think that plays a huge factor in how many online interactions are made with less thought as you are able to very quickly react to things. Which of course the rise of algorithms accelerated so the most "engaging" content flew to the top.
Do you feel this way about anything else? There's also more good television than one could ever reasonably watch, or books to read, or games to play. Every city has festivals and clubs and museums you're missing out on. And while the internet doesn't have quite the same level of quality-filtering as book clubs or NYT bestseller lists, I find following select trusted aggregators like Tildes or MetaFilter serves the same role.
This! I used to feel the same but not about the internet, about missing some good movies, tv shows, books, etc. For me the secret was just giving up. Try to understand why you feel like this, why you feel the need of "keeping it under control" as you said OP. Remember you're not a robot and enjoy things as they come and go. If some
movieinformation you think you're missing is really that important, it'll show up multiple times, not just some obscure blog from 2006.While I don't share your anxiety of internet fomo, I do understand it in a broader sense in life itself. Like missing out on important stuff like, having a validating job or a happy marriage.
I don't think we as humans are meant to gobble up all this information and other stuff that's out there. And I think it's somewhat healthy to not having to know everything if that makes sense? It's for that reason I skipped over TikTok, I didn't see the appeal and now with all the negativity surrounding algorithms just sucking up all your attention I have a feeling I'm kinda done with Instagram as well. Where my FOMO comes into play is the connection I wouldn't have with the people on those platforms. In that sense it feels more like a hostage situation. There's a lot of psychological things that interplay on all of this and much smarter people than me have probably figured this all out.
To further dive into your categorization bit. I also don't think it is healthy if things are as neatly managed, although from an OCD point of view I would understand it. Imagine if only discussions could take place on Reddit or that only images could be displayed on Imgur. This would give them a defacto monopoly on their niche on the web and we all know how healthy that has been with Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon.
I like the hostage analogy here. This feels the opposite of the mid-2000s geek-fomented migration to Firefox from IE; nowadays, my less-technical friends and family have stopped taking my advice on which platforms to use online, and they've been taken in by the evil Meta, which wraps them in a bubble of laser-targeted inflammatory content and ads.
When I suggest we move to Mastodon -- and even offer to self-host without any external monetary support or thanks -- even my techy friends aren't interested. Some of the most techy people actually object because they feel like the Mastodon community is half anarchist, half aggressively liberal.
Every time Meta ups the ad density and suggested content load or redesigns, I hope people will drop off. But it turns out that a lot of my older relatives would probably still use Facebook and Instagram to talk to their high school friends and family if it delivered electric shocks directly to your groin.
So the internet does scare me, but for entirely different reasons. I fear that it can be manipulated in ways to distort people's perception of reality. Musk manipulating Twitter to back Trump in the election is a good example of that. I'm really freaked out by generative AI and the potential it has to fabricate pictures and videos and think that it's gonna cause huge trouble for every world government.
To interact with your points more, I don't really get anxious about the vastness of the internet because I mostly view things on the internet as content to be consumed, and I can only consume so much before I get sick of it. I'm fine with missing out on things that I know will be annoying, or boring, or generally uninspired. Yes I'm losing out on some snippets of pure beauty and joy, but I'm also dodging mountains of mediocrity. (though I don't wish to disclose how much time I do dedicate to all the nonsense out there)
I think the scary part of the internet is the bad actors that are on it. You mention Musk, and propaganda and misinformation are definitely harming society in terrible ways. I also think about all the malware and hackers and scammers. Maybe you are in your nice comfortable house, and your neighborhood has little crime. But your computer is exposed to some of the most evil people imaginable, full of those who would assault little kids and take all of grandma's money. And they work 24x7 to do those things. Your computer is basically walking down the darkest scariest alleyway of all time, and has limited protection.
This week I watched an anime called Dead Dead Demon’s Dedededestruction. It features a bunch of aliens who just suddenly appeared and although they didn’t come there to attack humans, an unfortunate accident when they arrived caused people to think they were - even though they had been there years without aggression.
In it the most terrifying character is a conspiracy theorist. He’s scary because he actually does know more than most. He is a violent anarchist who eventually establishes his own government. But there is a point midway through the series where he says something like “from this point on I will only accept information that is convenient to me.”
That line is why he is terrifying. It’s because he’s mundane, and this is how I think the majority of people think about things. People don’t see misinformation and change their minds; people seek out misinformation because it confirms their pre-existing world view.
That’s the scary thing about internet society. It’s so big it can accommodate every view, even if it’s objectively bad for humankind.
This is pretty close to my "fear of the internet". I've seen the very real culture shift between my generation (born in 1980s) and my wife's (born in 1990s).
The constant sense of urgency and anxiety that she and her like-age friends live with constantly is my idea of hell. If they miss whatever is big on social media then it's as though life in it's entirety has passed them by. Not talking about memes necessarily, at least not in the sense the word is used online, but fads, art, music, events, icons (liking the "right" influencer or parroting the "right" take from some podcaster), fashion, and damn near all the preferences that, I feel, make up a personality - - the tiktok/instagram/snapchat hegemon has decided for them what the correct preferences and opinions are, and if you're not in then you're either out full-stop, or at the very least missing out on something "important" .
I feel like the small joys of building and maintaining your real life have been replaced by building and maintaining the ideal online facade. One of these lasts from each day to thr next, but the other could vanish at any moment. I see it manifest in myriad anxieties and other social/personality struggles, and that shit truly scares me.
The old internet was small communities of experts. You had to search them out, but they were excited to meet other enthusiasts. Now those circles have gotten enormously large. You can find enthusiasts about literally anything, which is a double edged sword. Tildes is nice because of the smaller reach.
The return to the old internet seems like something great, but you're right that the exploration has changed from "How do I find the experts" to "How do I avoid the charlatains and AI masquerading as humans". When the dead internet theory became real, it became important to maintain more real connections.
I don't share your feeling/fear on this (I do miss the "old internet" very much), but your comparison to open world games got me thinking. I have seen/known many people that strongly disliked "open" games, my wife being one, for exactly that reason and it would not surprise me at all if that is why these people cling to walled garden sites that provide content in a feed. These sites provide a linear supply of content that is easy to anticipate what is coming up with few surprises. My wife told me that as a child playing the Legend of Zelda gave her incredible anxiety and she disliked even watching others play it, but Super Mario Brothers with its left to right linear levels or Tetris with its straight forward format were her favorites.
I think this is an issue of the Internet obscuring the scale you're operating at. One thing that is important to remember is that the Internet is a worldwide network. I see attempting to "keep up" with the Internet as a whole as being akin to, say, trying to keep up with the local happening of every city, towns and other populated settlements on the entire planet, so I'm not worried about not being able to experience it all in either case.
Picking your specific example of this post probably being seen by a hundred people at most, it's true that this is effectively an unnoticeable blip at the scale of the whole Internet. However, hosting a conference attended by a hundred-ish people is similarly an unnoticeable blip at the scale of everything that's happening on Earth, yet no one will claim that such an event isn't a meaningful experience or that you should be expected to keep up with every physical conferences happening on Earth. It is, however, a lot easier to share your thoughts with a "small" sized community on the Internet than to organize a conference that will reach the same order of magnitude of people.
In 2022 and 2023, I was one of the people acting as representatives for a community on Reddit's /r/place, a sort of MMO pixel art canvas allowing people to place one pixel from a given color palette every 5 minutes over a few days before the canvas eventually locks up, meaning any meaningful impact on the canvas had to be organized by groups of people. A lot of people participated, and I could probably spend dozens of hours talking about what I saw during that event, but even that was fairly minor as far as the Internet was concerned. Most people are only vaguely aware of Reddit outside of its users, and even fewer know about /r/place specifically. On my end, though? I was actively leading calls to coordinates actions where more than a hundred people were directly listening to me, and in turn were relaying plans to a thousand more, on a space where hundreds of thousands if not millions were watching, organizing and/or acting on plans of their own. I would almost certainly never have had the opportunity to do something at such a large scale without the Internet making it possible, even if it was just for something as mundane as a canvas game whose only lasting trace is a PNG file.
Don't think of the unimaginably large breadth of content available as something to be afraid to be missing out on, think of it as a gateway to an infinite diversity of experiences you wouldn't have had access to otherwise. Sure, there's no way you could possibly see all of it, but the same is true of Earth as a whole, and the Internet is nothing less than the digital counterpart to our entire physical world.
For me it's the exact opposite. I enjoyed the vastness and breadth of the internet, it made me feel like anything is possible and I can discover so many unique things and great people.
But sadly I feel that less and less nowadays. Early internet was a lot broader. Now it's very centralized and "samey" - almost all content and people are on a handful of social media websites. And even within those websites it's extremely repetitive.
I wish I felt FOMO about, say, missing something interesting on the gaming parts of reddit, because that would mean there's something great to discover if I put in the time.. but in reality I know it's gonna be the same few circlejerks about how all AAA games suck, how all studios are evil (except FromSoft) and so on. And well, there are only so many times I can read "EA bad!" until I start rolling my eyes and realize I'm wasting my time.
I can understand the feeling, but I guess whatever fomo I used to experience disappeared as I made my way through the layers of the machine. While sure, new stuff happens all the time, there's an element of sameness because it's all people, in the end. The bots do weird shit but they are derived from People Things, there's a knowable sort of intent somewhere in them. Even in the deepest reaches of the non-indexed parts you'll find the same old shit - this guy thinks this other guy sucks so he's screwing with him, this guy is addicted to attention and melting down, another state actor is compiling info and going after folks, people made a market out of stuff and got too competitive/it's booming and busting, so on and so forth. It's silly to say "it's always been like this" but there's some bits and pieces where that's just true. The Internet is a social space, a realm where people do people things and while the tech enables expressions and activities we've not seen before, underneath that layer are feelings and ideas that are often very old/played out. Because there is a sort of permanence to everything that happens there, the same ideas can go through cycles like the boom and bust of markets (some deep shit in that lol), they cycle and change over spans of time and there isn't necessarily a sense of that continuity on the part of the participants. What's new and fresh to you might to me (or someone else) be just another ride in an old car. Imo, it's a used car lot, none of them are new, not really, but that's a whole other thing to talk about.
The more I roam around and see what I can see, the more I see the internet like a train going faster at another train, like Crash at Crush but we're all on the trains instead of spectators, it takes years for the crash to actually complete, and if you try to leave one train you just end up being on the other train. Even if you get yourself out of the network you are forced to deal with a world where the network is an integral piece of its functioning, the panopticon can see you even if you aren't in its direct view (and there never was a warden, just a committee that fights with itself). So whether you want it or not your destiny is in some way tied to what happens with the internet. Could be as simple as having to talk to folks immersed in memes and bullshit, could be as complex as having to outcompete a robot to make a living, it's not really your choice and that I suppose is where my fears of it begin. Even the folks positioned to leverage its power are constrained by the network's structure, movements, etc. We can disconnect, create distance, but the network is too large and too entwined to be wholly escaped. It's with us and of us and we will have to live through the ramifications. Lots of ramifications, big ones, gnarly shit.
I'm verging on rambles so I'll cut it there. I can't say I get much FOMO out of what's out there, because I try to keep up only engaging with intent and otherwise disconnecting. My worries come from how that act of disconnecting has seemed to mean less over time, and the collisions between zeitgeists formed in realms that aren't totally compatible with each other, if that makes any sense. Appreciate the topic, got my gears turning while I finished off the coffee.