How it feels finishing a half-hour long social media session that in 2022 would have been a minimum of 5 hours
>>12057
I'm not sure that it is. I'm not a NEET anymore so obviously it's nice not feeling like the whole day went to social media, but I was drawn to these places precisely because I found what they had to offer so rewarding. I never understood people who said they didn't like these platforms; there were obviously negative doomer algorithm spirals on occasion, but overall, I enjoyed spending time on most of the major platforms: 4chan, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
These days the only sites I even bother checking are petrarchan, Hacker News, and YouTube. Everything else is behind a hard login wall or not interesting enough to bother with.
I'm not sure that it is. I'm not a NEET anymore so obviously it's nice not feeling like the whole day went to social media, but I was drawn to these places precisely because I found what they had to offer so rewarding. I never understood people who said they didn't like these platforms; there were obviously negative doomer algorithm spirals on occasion, but overall, I enjoyed spending time on most of the major platforms: 4chan, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
These days the only sites I even bother checking are petrarchan, Hacker News, and YouTube. Everything else is behind a hard login wall or not interesting enough to bother with.
Everybody complains about how a forum or board used to be better some years ago, then a longer lived poster says it was even better than that even further back in time. I believe it’s that more and more people are online, it has not abated, and so the internet has done nothing but get worse through the decades. If you go back just a couple years it is much better. Go back further it’s post quality increases still.
All the posts look and sound the same. As for anything, they say you have to sort through the crap to get to the good stuff. Finding a post of mild quality or seeing something on the internet that you wouldn’t see elsewhere is a small reward for demeaning and injuring yourself and and your mind by the endless spew of internet insult. It’s all socializing now, no learning. Nothing even new. The more people added online the less diverse it gets.
All the posts look and sound the same. As for anything, they say you have to sort through the crap to get to the good stuff. Finding a post of mild quality or seeing something on the internet that you wouldn’t see elsewhere is a small reward for demeaning and injuring yourself and and your mind by the endless spew of internet insult. It’s all socializing now, no learning. Nothing even new. The more people added online the less diverse it gets.
No.12074
Anonymous
2026-09-07 13:12:20
Notable that in retrospect even though everything was accessible in 2022, 2020 is the year that I remember most of these platforms declining. I suspect that what killed it for me is that commercialization introduces an additional selection filter that is obscured from a pure recommendation algorithm, so that even if YouTube is showing you content that you should theoretically like, nearly all of the content you end up seeing first has to pass through a filter of "Will this perform well enough to produce a commercial return?" which makes everything feel inorganic and the same.
Spontaneous networks that emerge just for fun seem to be going away. I was just a kid when YouTube first came out. I met a ton of other kids who were making their own videos just because they enjoyed making them. We all wanted to get more views but none of us were thinking about money at all. I just don't see that on the internet anymore. I've heard a lot of it happens on Discord now but I don't have any interest in the platform; maybe I've gotten old.
Spontaneous networks that emerge just for fun seem to be going away. I was just a kid when YouTube first came out. I met a ton of other kids who were making their own videos just because they enjoyed making them. We all wanted to get more views but none of us were thinking about money at all. I just don't see that on the internet anymore. I've heard a lot of it happens on Discord now but I don't have any interest in the platform; maybe I've gotten old.
>>12073
>Everybody complains about how a forum or board used to be better some years ago, then a longer lived poster says it was even better than that even further back in time. I believe it’s that more and more people are online, it has not abated, and so the internet has done nothing but get worse through the decades. If you go back just a couple years it is much better. Go back further it’s post quality increases still.
I've noticed the same thing, and I am definitely one of those people who always complains that things were better when I started and worse now that other people have joined. I think there's probably something to be said for the quality of the median poster declining as access to the internet has become more accessible globally and more affordable financially, but a theory I've played with is that when you join a new platform, the content is novel, and by the time you've been around for a few years, it no longer is; it seemed like a playground of geniuses with a never-ending source of new ideas and perspectives, but after you spend a few years around those geniuses, you realize that the world has changed but their ideas haven't, and soon enough they start sounding like boomers talking about Woodstock, unaware that the world has moved on and that the things that made them cool when they were young no longer do. A lot of the people who moved to Williamsburg and subsequently started posting on /r/redscarepod were like this.
>The more people added online the less diverse it gets.
Very true.
>Everybody complains about how a forum or board used to be better some years ago, then a longer lived poster says it was even better than that even further back in time. I believe it’s that more and more people are online, it has not abated, and so the internet has done nothing but get worse through the decades. If you go back just a couple years it is much better. Go back further it’s post quality increases still.
I've noticed the same thing, and I am definitely one of those people who always complains that things were better when I started and worse now that other people have joined. I think there's probably something to be said for the quality of the median poster declining as access to the internet has become more accessible globally and more affordable financially, but a theory I've played with is that when you join a new platform, the content is novel, and by the time you've been around for a few years, it no longer is; it seemed like a playground of geniuses with a never-ending source of new ideas and perspectives, but after you spend a few years around those geniuses, you realize that the world has changed but their ideas haven't, and soon enough they start sounding like boomers talking about Woodstock, unaware that the world has moved on and that the things that made them cool when they were young no longer do. A lot of the people who moved to Williamsburg and subsequently started posting on /r/redscarepod were like this.
>The more people added online the less diverse it gets.
Very true.
No.12076
Anonymous
2026-09-07 13:25:16
stick to music and college lectures on youtube in "_____ situation is crazy" times. if you go on rs subs don't read new posts but search for posts on topics that interest you. same for reddit. stay away from instagram and discord and twitter and you're good.
>>12072
Wow, that is also my daily routine of sites, HN /pt/ and Youtube. I would add Rateyourmusic to that and that's all I do online that involves interacting with others. Everything else is reading or research...
I enjoyed my time on some of the social media platforms you listed. But I think it's okay to accept that those happened at a certain time and place and you can't recapture moments of the past. All good moments on the internet are in a way lightning in a bottle in terms of the way culture and technology have to come together in a congruent way. Even though the platforms may still be active, there is a certain something missing once the moment passes.
I have always thought the thinking along the lines of >>12073 is missing the mark in explaining why such things come and go. It draws too heavily from real world political discourse especially surrounding population change and migration. It's an echo of anti-immigration (and sometimes overtly so when they start going on about "the American internet" and the endless witch-hunting about "ESLs" and "thirdies"). I think it misses a lot by being so one-sided. For example, consider the fact that in order for an online space to die, people have to actively choose to stop using it. Be honest with yourself, you have definitely aged out of acting online a certain way. Have you ever actually gone back and looked at what went on during "the good days on $platform"? I did, I have a bunch of archives from that time, including a full dump of 10+ years of Facebook usage (back when it allowed you to download it in bulk). I enjoyed my time but it's not something I would go back to. I've changed, you've changed, we've all grown up. That's okay. It's natural. I think now is a time for rest, for gathering our thoughts and finding out what we really want from the internet; this time, with intentionality and experience.
Otherwise everyone's just sitting around and pouting about how The Good Ol Days of the internet are dead and pouting how big bad tech is enshittifying everything. Well you're letting them do that by giving up.
Wow, that is also my daily routine of sites, HN /pt/ and Youtube. I would add Rateyourmusic to that and that's all I do online that involves interacting with others. Everything else is reading or research...
I enjoyed my time on some of the social media platforms you listed. But I think it's okay to accept that those happened at a certain time and place and you can't recapture moments of the past. All good moments on the internet are in a way lightning in a bottle in terms of the way culture and technology have to come together in a congruent way. Even though the platforms may still be active, there is a certain something missing once the moment passes.
I have always thought the thinking along the lines of >>12073 is missing the mark in explaining why such things come and go. It draws too heavily from real world political discourse especially surrounding population change and migration. It's an echo of anti-immigration (and sometimes overtly so when they start going on about "the American internet" and the endless witch-hunting about "ESLs" and "thirdies"). I think it misses a lot by being so one-sided. For example, consider the fact that in order for an online space to die, people have to actively choose to stop using it. Be honest with yourself, you have definitely aged out of acting online a certain way. Have you ever actually gone back and looked at what went on during "the good days on $platform"? I did, I have a bunch of archives from that time, including a full dump of 10+ years of Facebook usage (back when it allowed you to download it in bulk). I enjoyed my time but it's not something I would go back to. I've changed, you've changed, we've all grown up. That's okay. It's natural. I think now is a time for rest, for gathering our thoughts and finding out what we really want from the internet; this time, with intentionality and experience.
Otherwise everyone's just sitting around and pouting about how The Good Ol Days of the internet are dead and pouting how big bad tech is enshittifying everything. Well you're letting them do that by giving up.
No.12078
Anonymous
2026-09-07 13:38:36
>>12075
>but a theory I've played with is that when you join a new platform, the content is novel, and by the time you've been around for a few years, it no longer is
I have theory called “getting old”. You see this in places other than internet forums as well.
Reading through archives the average post quality has definitely gotten worse. There a fewer effort posts such image edits and longer form comments. New memes aren’t being created nearly as often as they used to. The “language” of boards and forums have gotten at lot easier to understand as there is less of a character to different internet dwelling. I attribute this largely to interminable mass migration of internet foreigners onto ethnically pure shitposting soil. The “Eternal September” occurring not just unabated but increasing in intensity for decades.
>but a theory I've played with is that when you join a new platform, the content is novel, and by the time you've been around for a few years, it no longer is
I have theory called “getting old”. You see this in places other than internet forums as well.
Reading through archives the average post quality has definitely gotten worse. There a fewer effort posts such image edits and longer form comments. New memes aren’t being created nearly as often as they used to. The “language” of boards and forums have gotten at lot easier to understand as there is less of a character to different internet dwelling. I attribute this largely to interminable mass migration of internet foreigners onto ethnically pure shitposting soil. The “Eternal September” occurring not just unabated but increasing in intensity for decades.
No.12080
Anonymous
2026-09-07 13:45:51
>>12077
>But I think it's okay to accept that those happened at a certain time and place and you can't recapture moments of the past.
I was really upset by the loss of some of my favorite places online. I don't really know what I was expecting when I was younger; I guess I figured that since the Reddit-Google cyborg had solved most of the obvious problems I had with social media that it would go on forever. I became very conservative in my 20s but I suppose I never did away with a progressive view of history that things improve over time instead of going through cycles of ebbs and flows.
>It's an echo of anti-immigration (and sometimes overtly so when they start going on about "the American internet" and the endless witch-hunting about "ESLs" and "thirdies"). I think it misses a lot by being so one-sided.
I broadly agreed with everything else you wrote but don't understand how this ties into it. Almost all of the platforms I've used WERE made actively worse by people who joined later on. Third-worlders on /r/redscarepod was bad I guess and easy to make fun of due to the obvious giveaways, but there have been far more egregious cases; the worst was probably American boomers finding 4chan (2017) and Twitter (2019), followed by women who enjoy reality TV finding Reddit (started in 2019 and has gotten worse every year), and then Redditors finding Hacker News (2023, though obviously the target demographic has always overlapped a lot).
>But I think it's okay to accept that those happened at a certain time and place and you can't recapture moments of the past.
I was really upset by the loss of some of my favorite places online. I don't really know what I was expecting when I was younger; I guess I figured that since the Reddit-Google cyborg had solved most of the obvious problems I had with social media that it would go on forever. I became very conservative in my 20s but I suppose I never did away with a progressive view of history that things improve over time instead of going through cycles of ebbs and flows.
>It's an echo of anti-immigration (and sometimes overtly so when they start going on about "the American internet" and the endless witch-hunting about "ESLs" and "thirdies"). I think it misses a lot by being so one-sided.
I broadly agreed with everything else you wrote but don't understand how this ties into it. Almost all of the platforms I've used WERE made actively worse by people who joined later on. Third-worlders on /r/redscarepod was bad I guess and easy to make fun of due to the obvious giveaways, but there have been far more egregious cases; the worst was probably American boomers finding 4chan (2017) and Twitter (2019), followed by women who enjoy reality TV finding Reddit (started in 2019 and has gotten worse every year), and then Redditors finding Hacker News (2023, though obviously the target demographic has always overlapped a lot).
Since the conversation is already going here, I'll copy another comment I was already writing:
>When I first started browsing 4chan in 2012 I thought no one knew about it. Then after a few years I thought it was the most culturally significant website on the internet (i.e. all culture is n-years downstream from 4chan). Then by 2020 I started thinking people had overstated its relevance. Now I go into YouTube comment sections and see people who make earnest comments on Family Guy videos talking about hypergamy or whatever other culture war issue I had already seen discussed to death five to ten years ago.
>I don't post on 4chan anymore because of the captchas, but whenever I visit I don't get the sense that there's anything important going on there anymore. I don't know where that energy went or if it even exists anymore; YouTube had it from about 2007 to 2011, 4chan had it from about 2007 to 2017, Twitter from about 2016 to 2020, even Reddit managed to be reasonably interesting from 2014 to 2018.
>I found petrarchan about a year ago and have been browsing its catalog regularly for the last three months. I'm optimistic about the future of the site in that I think a lot of good conversations will take place here, but pessimistic in that I don't see how the site can solve this problem. I suspect that platforms like these have life cycles, and that those seeking to find the next big thing will always end up having to find or build new ones.
>When I first started browsing 4chan in 2012 I thought no one knew about it. Then after a few years I thought it was the most culturally significant website on the internet (i.e. all culture is n-years downstream from 4chan). Then by 2020 I started thinking people had overstated its relevance. Now I go into YouTube comment sections and see people who make earnest comments on Family Guy videos talking about hypergamy or whatever other culture war issue I had already seen discussed to death five to ten years ago.
>I don't post on 4chan anymore because of the captchas, but whenever I visit I don't get the sense that there's anything important going on there anymore. I don't know where that energy went or if it even exists anymore; YouTube had it from about 2007 to 2011, 4chan had it from about 2007 to 2017, Twitter from about 2016 to 2020, even Reddit managed to be reasonably interesting from 2014 to 2018.
>I found petrarchan about a year ago and have been browsing its catalog regularly for the last three months. I'm optimistic about the future of the site in that I think a lot of good conversations will take place here, but pessimistic in that I don't see how the site can solve this problem. I suspect that platforms like these have life cycles, and that those seeking to find the next big thing will always end up having to find or build new ones.
I do not understand how people think volume of posters is the problem when volume of posts has so measurably dropped. It seems obvious to me that young people have mostly abandoned the public-facing text-based internet. Look at the interactions on r/ApplyingToCollege pre-COVID vs. now. /fa/ is in the worst state I've ever seen a board. A story about something that happened at college used to be a mainstay of the RSP front page. But whenever the state of the pftb net gets discussed many of the replies are people approaching 30 saying they're being drowned out by stupid teenagers.
>>12082
>I do not understand how people think volume of posters is the problem when volume of posts has so measurably dropped.
I’ve seen someone claim this about 4chan and have noticed it with engagement on other platforms (e.g. A-list celebrities with millions of followers who can barely reach 1% of those followers). Anecdotally I am in the older demographic (30) and this is exactly how my usage has gone; I don’t post anywhere publicly besides here anymore. Everything else is through WhatsApp. I always hated Discord but I know a lot of people in my age bracket and younger who use it, and I always suspected that this is where the activity went. Notable on e.g. Instagram, most people under the age of 25 I meet have 0 posts, even though they’re on the platform everyday.
>pftb net
What is this?
>I do not understand how people think volume of posters is the problem when volume of posts has so measurably dropped.
I’ve seen someone claim this about 4chan and have noticed it with engagement on other platforms (e.g. A-list celebrities with millions of followers who can barely reach 1% of those followers). Anecdotally I am in the older demographic (30) and this is exactly how my usage has gone; I don’t post anywhere publicly besides here anymore. Everything else is through WhatsApp. I always hated Discord but I know a lot of people in my age bracket and younger who use it, and I always suspected that this is where the activity went. Notable on e.g. Instagram, most people under the age of 25 I meet have 0 posts, even though they’re on the platform everyday.
>pftb net
What is this?
>>12084
Yep you can graph it out on 4stats.io. Reddit stats are locked down now obviously but sorting top all-time vs. top last year is a good way to get a pulse. Activity has moved to Discord and other private platforms but I think it has more to do with the primary medium of the internet shifting to video. Memes are sounds now, not pictures.
Public-facing text-based. Should've just said public text twice.
Yep you can graph it out on 4stats.io. Reddit stats are locked down now obviously but sorting top all-time vs. top last year is a good way to get a pulse. Activity has moved to Discord and other private platforms but I think it has more to do with the primary medium of the internet shifting to video. Memes are sounds now, not pictures.
Public-facing text-based. Should've just said public text twice.
No.12087
Anonymous
2026-09-07 15:00:18
>>12086
>4stats.io
Fascinating. I always thought you might be able to put a project like this together using timestamps from archives. The decline isn't as extreme as I thought it would be but you can definitely see it across most boards. Interesting to see how much /pol/ dominated the site's traffic.
>4stats.io
Fascinating. I always thought you might be able to put a project like this together using timestamps from archives. The decline isn't as extreme as I thought it would be but you can definitely see it across most boards. Interesting to see how much /pol/ dominated the site's traffic.
No.12088
Anonymous
2026-09-07 18:08:18
>>12057
Sometimes I miss posting funny images for my anonymous friens to laugh at and commiserating about loneliness, but then I go outside and look at trees, and find I prefer that more.
Sometimes I miss posting funny images for my anonymous friens to laugh at and commiserating about loneliness, but then I go outside and look at trees, and find I prefer that more.
No.12119
Anonymous
2026-09-08 07:29:22
>>12054 (OP)
Are you refencing the lack of original content? Because that is the biggest shock to me these days. It's like people used to bring stuff to the internet, but now it is people reference things on the internet on the internet, for lack of better phrasing.
Are you refencing the lack of original content? Because that is the biggest shock to me these days. It's like people used to bring stuff to the internet, but now it is people reference things on the internet on the internet, for lack of better phrasing.
No.12158
Anonymous
2026-09-08 20:30:16
>>12081
Essentially literally me. I realize I was fortunate to exist as a new technology allowed a new "art" form to develop, and get to participate in it. I imagine I feel like an artist after the 20s in Paris felt like, after the energy began to leave the room. Its like a massive spiritual hangover or something.
But, I think we are going to experience an incredible renaissance in reality, as people largely return to an almost pre-internet mode of living, but with everything learned from the past few decades. It could be actually incredible.
Essentially literally me. I realize I was fortunate to exist as a new technology allowed a new "art" form to develop, and get to participate in it. I imagine I feel like an artist after the 20s in Paris felt like, after the energy began to leave the room. Its like a massive spiritual hangover or something.
But, I think we are going to experience an incredible renaissance in reality, as people largely return to an almost pre-internet mode of living, but with everything learned from the past few decades. It could be actually incredible.
No.12233
Anonymous
2026-09-10 07:25:16
>>12054 (OP)
I feel like this is a good thing, although there is a sense of being denied what used to exist. I blame myself. I have become very boring in recent years.
I feel like this is a good thing, although there is a sense of being denied what used to exist. I blame myself. I have become very boring in recent years.