Net thoughts

[rustywire]

I remember "getting the internet" in the mid 90s as an adolescent, when the WWW was new and while frontierish, the average median user intelligence/maturity seemed to be far higher than what I witness in the present day. I had an external dialup modem, a 14.4kbps. Getting online felt very underground and subversive, as did being a part of the diverse communities that began to spring up...as (only) less than 20% of households had a desktop pc, let alone one with connectivity.

The real sea change happened with the rise of blogs and web 2.0, which gave way to social media. This coincided with the media's shift toward reality tv where *everyone can be a star by showing up* and making a fool of themselves, the more extreme the better the odds of *success*.
Suddenly everyone who logged on could have a platform to whore for attention, voice *their* nescient opinions and thoughts...and construct a shrine to themselves of "it's me it's me it's me!" "look how important and individual I am!" and so on...pursuing desire to pioneer memes/viral content which became a focus and even identity for so many copycats. And every available surface became space for paid advertising, and everything got really....shameless and corporate. And competitive.

To coin a (wordy) phrase, the internet evolved from an atlas-meets-encyclopedia, connecting the world with diverse information and ideas in a digital melting pot....to entertainment scandal rags where complete strangers go out of their way to be offensive, get offended and argue with people they'll never know while making everything about themselves.
Now so many (seems like everyone) people think they're "the funny guy" by parroting and regurgitating low-hanging fruit and stock material, between masquerading as "the expert" on whatever the moment's topic of conversation happens to be...thanks to broadband ISP and that one dominant search engine. It's douche-chill inducing. Same goes for the "witch-hunt agenda" users who prowl the internet acting as PC cops and taking everything personally; basically anything they disagree with. Meaningless 1upsmanship and Being right over getting it right.

I've been part of the problem and try to avoid posting longwinded shit anymore under the guise of "someone may find this useful or interesting". Nobody actually cares until something said can be cherry picked, taken out of context and then used to define/lead a crusade against you to further an underhanded agenda. Casting pearls before swine. Fuck that.