Post #726507
2026-03-23 00:58 UTC
Replies (30)
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@bweller@mstdn.social 2026-03-23 11:30
@ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone speaking of cutting up good paper to sell back as pulp... you think you're making a joke, but this is how International Paper gets the recycled percentage they claim. they send pallets of new reams by the truckload to be broken open and rebaled as consumer waste, which is then sold back to them for a small fee.
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@nebula@beach.city 2026-03-23 01:01
@ilovecomputers yeah
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@josh@hactivedirectory.com 2026-03-23 02:35
@ilovecomputers @JoshuaACNewman I see you, Gen X. I am one of us.
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@violetmadder@kolektiva.social 2026-03-23 02:51
@ilovecomputers Pulp and propaganda. Don't forget the propaganda.
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@jackyan@mastodon.social 2026-03-23 03:05
@ilovecomputers Iʼm old school. Our content is still content. Screw “SEO”, Big Tech, and the surveillance economy. I saw the peak and refused to downgrade. We even took off tracked ads.
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@original_peterm@mastodon.social 2026-03-23 03:05
@ilovecomputers I feel for you. In my case it was CB radio. Elitist rebels at first then regulated and finally destroyed from within by wilful, selfish people.
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@TheNovemberMan@bookstodon.com 2026-03-23 03:10
@ilovecomputers 👍💯👍
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@mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org 2026-03-23 03:47
@ilovecomputers yeah, totally the late-GenX experience :/
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@jargoggles@kolektiva.social 2026-03-23 04:04
@ilovecomputers Watching this vast, beautiful thing you could explore turn into like 4 websites has been really sad.
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@retrosponge@kind.social 2026-03-23 04:53
@ilovecomputers Spot on 😭
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@triptych@social.lol 2026-03-23 05:00
@ilovecomputers I feel like the core of what we loved about the internet is there - it's hiding in chat rooms, little closed member forums, hand crafted websites. It's not gone, just harder to see, but if you dig through the muck, you find yourself in a small meadow with a few other folks who might share with you something good.
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@B_Archer@tech.lgbt 2026-03-23 05:58
@ilovecomputers I'm 63 and yes to all of this
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@f_u_e_n_t_e@mastodon.social 2026-03-23 07:39
@ilovecomputers but but but Confetti! (Le Sigh)
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@aaribaud@mastodon.art 2026-03-23 08:02
@ilovecomputers This close to discovering that the real problem is, and always has been, capitalism (and, beyond it, greed).
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@anne_twain@theblower.au 2026-03-23 09:00
@ilovecomputers Same. Born 1952.
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@NatureMC@mastodon.online 2026-03-23 09:08
@ilovecomputers 🎯 I remember a #search machine developped by an university in the early 1990s (?), before #Google came up. They found the best content, even for very complicated scientific searches, they found the smallest private website on any island in the Pacific, or in Asia, Africa. The world outside the USA was still connected. They were destroyed by Google and the users prefering the #convenience of the biggest, believing their hollow promises. The biggest got the money for development.
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@gbargoud@masto.nyc 2026-03-23 11:05
@ilovecomputers I was actually talking to my cousins about this the other day, a lot of people in our generation (Millennials but also Gen X and older Gen Z) were using the Internet before all of the really bad dark patterns were added in so we got them at a trickle rate and could develop defenses for some of them as they got more refined How can we replicate that slow creep for kids now so that they can also build up their defenses instead of getting hit hard while unprepared?
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@wannabekingpin@mstdn.games 2026-03-23 11:17
@ilovecomputers we should've seen the signs when it got harder to filter chronologically, and then outright impossible. they told you algo knows better what to give you. when's the last time, outside Masto, you've seen a post with zero likes, fresh out of the poster's mind?... because I can't find any (unless among follows, sometimes) on any other damn social media. tl;dr #yeah
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@SueDiOh@mastodon.social 2026-03-23 11:27
@ilovecomputers Don't buy the pulp. Your clicks are like dollars; don't give them away for nothing. We all need to spend time away from the machines, myself included.
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@Savvyhomestead@mastodon.social 2026-03-23 11:41
@ilovecomputers It is really an old story. Money doesn't just talk it dictates. Using the propaganda model...news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media)
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@apz@some.apz.fi 2026-03-23 12:12
@ilovecomputers This hits home hard, as I for with almost anything, from programming to learning Linux and all, there was very little resources in the early 90s. After learning the first steps of Linux from a booklet that came with the Walnut Creek CDROMs, it was almost insane that 5 years later you could just use Altavista to find help for your problems and discover someone's Geocities site on how to put Linux in a certain laptop and have all the devices working. My distaste for the current state of the Internet is very hard to put in words without it being mostly swearing. I also mourn the death of actual web sites and how all the nuggets of information are nowdays social media posts, that do not get archived the same way as bare web sites were. SEO gives me the most unadulterated feelings of rage as it makes web search completely pointless chore. If things weren't bad enough, the LLM generated web sites may start as a promising lead on something, but need to be quickly scanned through first so they don't end up just being pointless suggestions that end with "if things won't work for you, buy our Wonder Repair product".
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@Illudium_Q36@woof.group 2026-03-23 13:52
@ilovecomputers - When Yahoo bought Geocities for the sole purpose of shutting it down, that's when I knew it was over.
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@light@noc.social 2026-03-23 14:24
@ilovecomputers But the library of Alexandria still exists. And social media is toxic whether it's algorithmic or not (source: fedi).
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@hawthornbunny@equestria.social 2026-03-23 15:53
@ilovecomputers Come to Project Gemini, we have ASCII art
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@yora@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-23 16:04
@ilovecomputers And the reason for all of this is "Monetization". Things used to be different because people put stuff on the internet because they wanted other people to see it, not to sell it.
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@kallisti@infosec.exchange 2026-03-23 17:16
@ilovecomputers People using their real names and faces Governments wanting to control it Corporations flooding it Just a few things from the top of my head that made it all go to shit It was certainly a group effort
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@amazing_ces@mastodon.social 2026-03-23 19:03
@ilovecomputers I feel this in every fiber of my being. I weep for every generation that has come after me that they will never know the peace of just getting to be without being tracked, monetized and fed into a perpetual rage machine.
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@ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone 2026-03-23 19:16
https://social.lol/@triptych/116276727579512933 To be less of a downer, I want to pin this reply thread on this post as it contains links to indie websites and communities that continue to live on. It’s not just nostalgia; even amongst the next generation, there’s growing enthusiasm for slow tech.
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@hell@defcon.social 2026-03-23 19:21
@ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone fr. that said - look up web revival 😍
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@tkwolf@fursuits.online 2026-03-23 23:17
@ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone This is the experience of the new "Lost Generation". What's more crazy is knowing how deeply the media we consume shapes and informs us, and thinking about what teens and 20s today are growing up with. X_X (I guess to be fair... What all of us are continuing to grow up with... But yeah, earlier formative experiences, chances to connect with people who expand your horizon, etc... dang)