The Internet has turned on us.
When the Internet first became popular, it seemed the possibilities were endless. We would have all the data from the history of mankind at our fingertips. A new "information age" would be launched and we all would be smarter and better for it. It seems the opposite has happened, however - a new online dark ages has emerged, where the world is flat, vaccines cause autism, and dictatorship is freedom. We haven't seen shit like this since the 1500's.
But beyond that, it seems the bloom is off the rose. The Internet promised us "e-commerce" where things would be cheaper than "brick and mortar" and the selection greater. We could download or stream video and tell those evil cable companies to go to hell. And we could stay in touch with family and friends through social media. How's that working out?
Recently, however, a number of events have occurred simultaneously - or nearly so - that seem to indicate an orchestrated campaign to make the Internet, well, as shitty as cable tee-vee. What am I talking about? Well consider this:
1. Chrome is updating in January to ban ad blockers: The rumor is, the next release of chrome in December or January will disable all ad blocking software. If you have ever used the Internet without an ad blocker, you know what a nightmare of pop-ups, pop-unders, sidebar ads, banner ads, and whatnot, it can be. Some sites are so deranged with ads as to be unreadable. Most news sites, for example. Adblock plus was fun while it lasted, but of course, "they" couldn't let us off the leash for long, could they?
2. The suckiness of Amazon: Amazon prices are skyrocketing with the rest of the market due to inflation, but also, I think because they have reached a "critical mass" and figure people are too lazy to shop around. I get more and more solicitations from manufacturers to go directly to their own sites and get 30% off, rather than use Amazon or other e-commerce sites. Amazon, of course, still plays "Prime" games - telling me I can get free shipping when it is already available without Prime - and then adding on shipping charges unless I decline them. That is just shifty bullshit and I find myself using Amazon less and less. No wonder they are closing distribution centers and laying off people - while donating money to charity at the same time!
3. eBay: It used to be a place to buy and sell things. Now it is just an online marketplace to buy things. They have made it so difficult to sell things on their site that most people - myself included - have simply given up. If you do sell something, expect to hear from a host of crackpots and scammers, but at least it is not as bad as...
4. Craigslist is dead: At this point, anything advertised on Craigslist is pretty much a scam. And if you advertise on Craigslist, you will likely get scammed. You'll get the "Is the item still available?" e-mails, of course, and then weird requests to sell your $1500 item for fifty bucks. Or you get dreamers who want you to "hold" the item for them while they decide whether or not to buy it. It just sucks. Facebook Marketplace seemed like a better alternative, but the horror stories I am reading online seem to say otherwise.
5. Streaming Services Suck: When it was just Netflix for a few dollars a month - and no ads - and they had the entire STARZ catalog to stream, it was cool. Then came the rate increases, the "Netflix Original Series" (about 3/4 of which are not worth watching) and now advertisements. Oddly enough (or not so oddly) the plethora of other streaming services are also announcing rate increases and advertising tiers). Conspiracy? Price-Fixing? Perhaps. Even Youtube is in the gag - offering to "buy or rent" movies and making the "suggested" videos nothing but crappy clickbait. "You'll never believe what happens..." Yes, I will. I will have no trouble believing. And of course, YouTube is desperately trying to be like Tick-Tock and that sucks as well.
6. This Page Looks Better in the App! I have noticed a lot of sites, when you try to access them by phone, will pester you with pop-ups and banner ads (often covering the functional features of the site!) exhorting you to load the "app" instead. Why? So they can track you online and understand what you are doing. Sure, you can clear your "cookies" in Chrome (for the time being anyway) but an app is forever, and many run in the background, silently listening and watching everything you do. And they can sell this information to advertisers. So they make the online experience SUCK so you will load the app. I would rather just not use the site, period.
7. The death of social media? Facebook is laying off people and losing subscribers as Zuckerberg goes "all in" on the metaverse. A new headset ($1500) is now available - to very mixed reviews. Is anyone actually buying into this, other than dweebs and early adapters? Twitter - do we need to even talk about this? Tick-Tock is just stupid - people gyrating to asinine music and the DoD thinks the whole thing is a Chinese Trojan horse. Maybe something else will come to take the place of these platforms - maybe. Meanwhile, the crazies and loonies are insisting that privately run websites have to host their toxic ideas as "free speech" - completely missing the point of the first amendment.
Of course, as with any form of commerce (and the Internet is commerce) there is always the choice of consume less. The price of food is skyrocketing, but then again, when I go to the wholesale club and see people with Type-II diabetes, with a leg missing, in an electric scooter, loading up the basket with cases of orange pop and chips, I have to wonder, "Maybe high food prices aren't such a bad thing - maybe it will induce us all to eat less and lose weight!"
And the same is true with gasoline. The guy in the monster truck with a ridiculous lift and cheap Chinese-made bend-o-matic rims and crappy low-profile tires (which means the truck can no longer actually haul anything as a truck) whines about the price of gas, but at the same time insisting he has a "right" to drive 5,000+ lbs of metal around, just to get to work - by himself. We do have choices and choice #1 is to consume less.
And so it goes with the Internet. I resisted buying a "smart phone" for years because I saw what it did to people - and what it eventually did to me. Like a small child who can't help touching himself, we can't help touching those stupid smart phones. Maybe Zuckerberg is right - we all want to live in a virtual reality, as the real reality is too scary and anxiety-inducing.
But maybe, just maybe, making the Internet SUCK so badly will cause more and more people to turn away from it - or at least use it less. Just as the cable companies made Cable Tee-Vee suck so badly that people pulled the plug, Internet providers are making their sites suck as well - thinking that we have no options but to consume their content.
But content is cheap. We go to campgrounds and people have book and CD and DVD exchanges - yes the old "hard format" - but it is free. I chuckle when I see a streaming site like YouTube offer to sell or rent or "free with ads" a movie that I picked up for free at a campground or bought for a dollar at Goodwill. And there are always books to read - there are so many "little libraries" as well as regular ones out there with mountains of content, all at the low, low price of free.
So, maybe less screen time and more book time. It can't hurt, can it? And besides, I don't think I can stand reading even one more clickbait title before I throw my phone against a wall...