i hate the internet

i hate the internet. or, at least, i hate what the internet has become.

on a road trip with some friends a few months ago, we got onto the topic of what the internet used to feel like. not just the things you would do on the internet but how you would do them. i don't know how the conversation started. probably one of us thought of a memory of some obscure actor or song and then googled it on our phones to figure out who or what we were trying to conjure up. it probably took four and a half seconds.

and i think that sucks.

we talked about what i believe is the golden age of the internet. the time when the internet still felt dangerous in a fun way (for the most part) and if you wanted to find something, you had to actually do some work. it felt like a treasure hunt at times.

i place this around 1998-2001.

i don't think this is just nostalgia speaking. i don't think it's yearning for the simple times before going away to college when there were very few cares in the world. i really, truly do not think that's what it is.

i think it's more than that, and i think it's a real thing.

we joked, in that conversation on that car ride, about how frustrating it could be to download thirty rar files for an episode of a television show only to find out one of the files was corrupted. but, if you knew where to look you could find some piece of software that would, somehow, repair the rar file so you could unpack everything without issue. i didn't know how that worked, but it did. i still don't know how it worked.

but part of that frustration was also, i guess, some kind of excitement. some feeling of accomplishment when you, first of all, found the thing you were looking for and were able to successfully download it. then the feeling of frustration when the files were corrupted. then, again, the joy coming from fixing the corruption and getting those sweet sweet files.

this time period was the last time the internet felt like a treasure hunt. there was no guarantee that you could find what you wanted. there was no guarantee that the mp3s you were downloading were going to be in good quality or even the right song. i still have an mp3 of "the martyr" by cursive where the song title in the file name is "the marty" and i'm never going to fucking fix it because it makes me laugh every time. i'm laughing right now thinking about it.

now, everything is just immediately available. any memory you have, any song you think of, any movie or show that comes to mind – within moments you can find it on your phone and experience it again. i think that sucks and i think it's not the way the internet should be used, at least not for daily bullshit recreational fun.

in that conversation on that car ride, i started to think about how complacent and lazy and instantly gratified we'd all become. any impulse is instantly answered. no journey along the way searching for the thing, really. just a few clicks or taps and there you go.

these weren't startling revelations. and they weren't thoughts nobody had ever had before. but, they were thoughts i was having after continuing to think about how much i hated the stupid computer in my pocket and wishing that i could just get rid of it. so, for me, it just was another reminder of how far away i was from the way i used to use this thing that i loved.

when i was a kid, i was (shockingly) a nerd. i built websites and ran fantasy wrestling leagues on the internet and taught myself how to code, make websites, and just get up to no good on the internet. it was great!

whenever i was on the computer, it was for a reason. everything for a reason. sitting down to write out wrestling shows or wrestling promos from my deeply angsty characters. sitting down to build some stupid angelfire or geocities website (or build websites on my own domains once i was old enough to be buying things online). or just chatting with friends over icq or aim or in some chat room or forum. because we didn't have phones that were always on and ready to text each other 24 hours a day.

the other day i watched this video on youtube called "the internet used to be a place" and, no hyperbole, it fucking made me cry. i didn't expect it to i didn't expect to get emotional thinking about the fucking internet. but there i sat, eating leftover pizza wiping stupid tears from my stupid eyes thinking about how rotted we (myself included) had all become. how we had ruined this thing that i used to love so much. a thing that felt like an escape and felt like a place i belonged because i had built the spaces in which to belong.

and the internet doesn't feel like that anymore. at least, not to me. it just feels like nothing. it's a void while, at the same time, it's overflowing. there is everything and nothing in the internet and we made it that way.

while watching that video i was already in the process of dumbing down my iphone. i've wanted to just get rid of the thing all together and get a flip phone or something like that, but that feels like such a huge leap to make. and the middle ground apps like dumb phone don't feel like enough because you can just work around them.

so, instead, i backed up my phone and then deleted all of the time-wasting apps off of it. i was already off of social media except for bluesky, and i only have facebook around so i can scour marketplace for deals on vhs tapes and woodworking tools.

but i got rid of those and every shopping app and every game and everything else that wasn't just a simple utility. i kept basic apps: camera, messages, stuff for banking or paying bills, apps that control the air conditioners in our house. apps that do one job and then you're out. nothing frilly.

since doing this, i've started keeping track of how many times i absent mindedly reach for my phone when there's even a half-second of downtime. the first day i counted 18 times. the next day was fewer and the next fewer still.

but it's getting easier. and i'm attempting to change the way i use the internet so that, if i want to use it, i have to consciously make the effort to get my computer and sit down. no more googling inane trivia on my phone the second i think about it. i want to live like i don't have a computer in my pocket. so i'll take notes or have to simply remember something until i can get on the computer later.

and it's working so far. not only am i looking at my phone far less (my daily screen time dropped from 4 hours a day to under 45 minutes a day on average) but i'm definitely not on my computer 4 hours a day to compensate. some days i'm on the computer (outside of work) for less than an hour a day.

and if i don't get to visit the websites and forums and whatever else i would normally have scrolled through on my phone that day? well, then maybe i'll look at them tomorrow. they'll probably still be there and it's not that important anyway. it's all just bullshit – and it's fun bullshit but it's fun bullshit i want to have to actively engage in, not mindlessly scroll through while a tv show plays on the other screen in my room.

i don't know that, for me, the internet will ever be a place again – and that's fine. that's just a change in the form factor of computers. but i know that, now, i'm going to try and be far more intentional about the way i use the internet.

i want to have fun on the internet again. i want to make stupid websites that don't need to exist. when i was 13 or so around 1996 or 1997, i made a deep purple fan website as my first website. a very normal thing for a cool 13-year-old to do in 1996 or 1997, i'm sure.

on that website, i didn't break any new ground. i had a biography of the band and discographies and who knows what else. maybe some pictures i had stolen from other websites. but it was a thing i made and then people looked at it and it seemed like some old guys on the internet were surprised and happy that some kid had, for some reason, made a deep purple fansite.

that's what i want the internet to feel like again, for me. if i have a whim, maybe i'll make a subdomain on this site and make some stupid little website. maybe i'll make the webring i keep thinking about using onionring.js.

and maybe you can join my webring.

x