The Internet Isn't Fun Anymore

[AshleyAshes]

This is the thread where Ashley admit's that she's old and actually struggles with dumb first world existential things..

This thing that we call the internet, I've been on it a long time, near the end days of Netscape mostly.  I remember a time when 'The Internet' was the thing that tied up the phone line and it wasn't 'always on' like it is today.  It was also something else once though; It was miles and miles and miles of rough undiscovered country.  The internet was once something I could explore and find fascinating nooks and crannies that each contained unique information.  Everything was scattered everywhere.  I could spend hours on going ten pages deep into Infoseek or Webcrawler and later Google while discovering neat things.  Webrings and listing sites like the Anime Turnpike were the place to go.  You could discover unique fansites that held information and rare scans of your favorite show.  There was a sense of discovery on the internet.  My first 'anime chat' was bouncing to the 'Anime Server' on Napster's chatrooms using the 'Napigator' program.  There we're many 'city state' sized forums you could join with rousing communities.  For many years I spent a lot of time in anime roleplay chat at 'WebChat' style websites, a concept that's long dead now.   I had entire circles of friends online that I forged in these places but people slowly faded away into nowhere and anywhere.  Anime was something you had to get tipped off on by friends or other people 'in the now'.  You sometimes had to trade access or physical media.

Now it's kinda all gone.  You don't need to crawl though small sites for information, every fandom has it's own dedicated Wikia with every item of trivia that you could imagine.  Crunchyroll and Funimation present an uncontrolled fire hose of anime.  Kotaku or Anime News Network present to you everything you could want 'TV Guide' style for each season.   Everything you could want is in the first five search results of Google.  Don't get me wrong, I believe that at it's core this is great.  Information is more accessible than it has ever been and that is good.  ...But it has also taken all of the fun out of it.  Even this forum here is a copy of another forum and both this and the original are shells of their former selves as things move to social media.

In real life I have what is likely the best and strongest social circle I've had maybe ever.  I wouldn't trade that for anything for sure.  We talk about shallow and deep stuff.  We geek out.  We're comfortable with each other  I love it, but there was an entire social sphere I had online that, when I stopped to look back recently, I've realized is gone.  So many of my online friends are gone because they disconnected from the places we knew each other and I disconnected to.  The 'social world' I knew on the internet is gone and I didn't even realize that it disappeared until lately.  I honestly feel lonely online when the internet now and my socialization on it has become pretty lite.  It's more of an 'information terminal' now with access to neatly organized systems who's search algorithms are at least as intelligent as my own ability to formulate written sentences.

I once used the internet as a replacement for real life socialization.  I have that real life socialization now and I'd never give it up, but I want both and I don't think that's possible anymore because the online changed so much.

[Vallium]

[Falaffel]

The "Social World" you remember is still there. 
You just have yet to adapt to its changes.

[Vae]

Oh yeah, I totally miss being kicked off my internet connection every time someone in the house needed to make a call, and waiting 10 minutes for a page to load up just because it had images on it.

Except I don't.
That time period was terribly inconvenient and annoying.

If you don't know how to socialize outside of anime chatrooms, that's not the internet's fault. That's you. We have more applications to keep in contact with other people than ever.
Hell, I can run Discord at all times (and often do) on my phone, and talk to people whenever the fuck I want on there.

If you can't move on from that initial circle of friends you had, that's also on you.

It doesn't mean that socialization is "dead" on the internet. This is a personal problem.
 

[AshleyAshes]

13 minutes ago, Vae said:

Oh yeah, I totally miss being kicked off my internet connection every time someone in the house needed to make a call, and waiting 10 minutes for a page to load up just because it had images on it.

Except I don't.
That time period was terribly inconvenient and annoying.

If you don't know how to socialize outside of anime chatrooms, that's not the internet's fault. That's you. We have more applications to keep in contact with other people than ever.
Hell, I can run Discord at all times (and often do) on my phone, and talk to people whenever the fuck I want on there.

If you can't move on from that initial circle of friends you had, that's also on you.

It doesn't mean that socialization is "dead" on the internet. This is a personal problem.
 

How exactly does this Discord buisness work?  Cause from the best I've seen, everything is invite only, so it doesn't seem fesable to 'stumble in and explore' you kinda have to be hooked up to start with.  Or am I not understanding that?

[Toshabi]

15 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

How exactly does this Discord buisness work?  Cause from the best I've seen, everything is invite only, so it doesn't seem fesable to 'stumble in and explore' you kinda have to be hooked up to start with.  Or am I not understanding that?

You have to be invited. That's going to be the hard part for you. 

[Vae]

15 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

How exactly does this Discord buisness work?  Cause from the best I've seen, everything is invite only, so it doesn't seem fesable to 'stumble in and explore' you kinda have to be hooked up to start with.  Or am I not understanding that?

They're invite-only, but some have infinite invite systems and allow anyone basically.
You'd have to look up a list of public Discord servers or something.

It just depends on how the owner decides to run it.

[Victor-933]

1 hour ago, Toshabi said:

You have to be invited. That's going to be the hard part for you. 

[Tsuujou]

Ever think maybe YOU'RE not fun anymore?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because I had to face that fact myself. :c

[Falaffel]

56 minutes ago, Tsuujou said:

Ever think maybe YOU'RE not fun anymore?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because I had to face that fact myself. :c

time to grow old alone and die

[WileyWarWeasel]

@AshleyAshesThere's still plenty of treasure troves of info and people to talk to, you just need to look a bit beyond the convenient search results.

Besides, you've still got the fenecsed furrumz ;333333333

[Red Lion]

I've had similar experiences with not finding online socialization, or the internet as a whole, as much fun anymore. I don't think it's fair to say the internet is devoid of new discoveries or meaningful interactions, but yeah, the internet is not a substitute for real life socialization and as I get older I want that more and I want online socialization less. I used to spend a lot of time on dollmaker avatar sites, rping, talking about anime and just generally being satisfied to mass hang out with other teenagers. Meeting new people is a lot harder now than it was at 16, integrating into a community is harder and I don't make connections as quick as I did back then.  Back when I was a teenager I had tons of free time to fart around on forums and get excited about new anime stuff because anime was still all foreign and exotic. None of that has actually gone away. If I were to wander back to one of the old avatar sites I used to be on I'd find similar experiences. The internet got bigger and faster but what actually changed was me, once I hit my twenties I started developing different standards for online interactions. That's basically how I ended up wandering onto FurAffinity and Phoenix. I outgrew the avatar sites and moved to sites with a more adult crowd. I also can't just do things for the fuck of it anymore. I can't afford to make the internet or a forum my "hobby" because that would require more time and energy than I can spare. I prefer to spend my free time with my long established friends, stick to forums that relate to things and people I know I like, in the evenings I eat dinner with Gator and we stream a movie or tv show. The internet is not as exciting to adult me as it was to teenager me. But as an adult I spend more of my offline time actually doing things. I go on trips, I try new things in real life, I don't just look at or read about things. So I can't say I miss the old days, if anything life is rolling along and it gets a little better every year. Things change, tastes change, relationships change, and if none of it did then you're doing something wrong. 

[AshleyAshes]

5 hours ago, Red Lion said:

I don't think it's fair to say the internet is devoid of new discoveries

Hrm, when it comes to what was once the 'adventure' of discovering information online, the best way to put it is 'The internet is now mapped'.  What was once an elaborate cave system that few had explored before now has maps, tour guides, an Android app, and a t-shirt store.  There is certainly new information to be found on a mass of topics and it is now exceptionally easy to access that.  Wikipedia, fandom specific Wikia, genre blog sites, and you can find 50 different video tutorials for hair dying to changing the oil in your car in one search on YouTube.  Not that I think this is BAD.  Easy access to information is great and it allows individuals to boost their skill sets with not much more than a Google search. (And I do exactly this all the time.  "I wonder how I blank?"  *Googles how to blank* "I now know how to blank!")  But at the same time, the sense of exploration and the fun of that is gone.

[QT Melon]

I don't socialize the same way I did years ago online with IMs, and even on Discord I idle....but I'm also playing games or going off to draw/read/relax or do other things. I socialize the most on PSN chat.

I will say internet design feels more horrible than before in terms of looking and reading articles, I mean I get that sites need to make money but articles feel so cluttered with clickbait, autoplaying videos and 50 thousand social sharing/comment type buttons it you kinda just disassociate yourself from the experience...I mean it feels like the opposite of being social. 

Process of getting older, you've shared so much you feel things become redundant sharing again so your mindset changes a bit. I don't know about the internet not being fun, it's certainly changed and I have to find different spots to enjoy before they become filled with clickbait garbage (lol). but I don't feel the need to be on the usual ways as much (for better or for worse...).

 

[Jtrekkie]

Webrings... I remember those. I also remember having to memorize the dialup password because I wasn'tsupposed to be on the internet in the first place. 

There is still a measure of mystery and discovery, but certain players (Google) do a lot of hand holding. And it's easy to sick to social media instead of making something new. 

[WileyWarWeasel]

3 hours ago, QT Melon said:

I will say internet design feels more horrible than before in terms of looking and reading articles, I mean I get that sites need to make money but articles feel so cluttered with clickbait, autoplaying videos and 50 thousand social sharing/comment type buttons it you kinda just disassociate yourself from the experience...I mean it feels like the opposite of being social. 

I'll let you in on a little secret: it makes no significant difference what you do / whether you watch the ads or not so just use Firefox with NoScript and uBlock Origin. Of course if everyone did this then online ad revenue would go to nil but the vast majority of people are suckers so you don't have to worry about that.

Not only are the majority of people suckers they simply don't learn, they're like mules that keep banging into the ad wall no matter how many times you try to explain how to circumvent it or why they would want to avoid ads in the first place (hint: it's because businesses want to psychologically manipulate and deceive you into buying garbage you don't want or need).

Don't watch TV, listen to commercial radio or bother with the newspaper either for that matter. Just more bullshit with ads on top of it.

[AshleyAshes]

6 hours ago, Jtrekkie said:

Webrings... I remember those. I also remember having to memorize the dialup password because I wasn'tsupposed to be on the internet in the first place. 

There is still a measure of mystery and discovery, but certain players (Google) do a lot of hand holding. And it's easy to sick to social media instead of making something new. 

Back in my day websites asked you if you wanted frames or no frames! D:

[QT Melon]

5 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

I'll let you in on a little secret: it makes no significant difference what you do / whether you watch the ads or not so just use Firefox with NoScript and uBlock Origin. Of course if everyone did this then online ad revenue would go to nil but the vast majority of people are suckers so you don't have to worry about that.

Don't watch TV, listen to commercial radio or bother with the newspaper either for that matter. Just more bullshit with ads on top of it.

I have both of those, still sometimes you get a site that has obnoxious shit on it, I also use multiple browsers.

[WileyWarWeasel]

4 hours ago, QT Melon said:

I have both of those, still sometimes you get a site that has obnoxious shit on it, I also use multiple browsers.

Then don't go to those sites ^___^

Also uBlock Origin allows you to block specific elements on a page.

[Socketosis]

I've felt that this applies to life in general. The longer you live, the more you get to watch the stuff you loved die. :V

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, Socketosis said:

I've felt that this applies to life in general. The longer you live, the more you get to watch the stuff you loved die. :V

I dunno, I feel like TV and my access to it is better than ever.  Ditto with video games.   The best Sonic The Hedgehog game came out just last month afterall!

[Wolflich]

I don't really miss any of that outside of a nostalgic sort of sense, although I do get the feeling that interaction online has become a much more fleeting thing than it used to be. I meet a lot more people now, but we don't tend to be stuck in the same few specialized communities together anymore and consequently I know much less about them. I'm not entirely sure whether I mind.

[Red Lion]

8 hours ago, Wolflich said:

I don't really miss any of that outside of a nostalgic sort of sense, although I do get the feeling that interaction online has become a much more fleeting thing than it used to be. I meet a lot more people now, but we don't tend to be stuck in the same few specialized communities together anymore and consequently I know much less about them. I'm not entirely sure whether I mind.

Yeah I kind of feel the same way. The internet has gotten bigger and there's more out there and I feel less and less committed to joining and sticking with communities I find. 

[Zaraphayx]

The internet is great I don't relate with the rest of you.

:post:

[Endless/Nameless]

[Conker]

Hmm. I maybe agree with you that the internet has lost some fun/charm, but for different reasons. Convenience is fucking nice and I"ll never not knock that. Like Vae said, it's cool being able to load a page with pictures and not have to wait ten minutes. Hell, I don't mind that discovery is somewhat gone because I have less time for discovery. Day job, hobby jobs, etc. If I want something now, it's nice to get it now.

I mean, if I type a question into Google the answer is typically on the front page. That's awesome. I'm glad I don't have to scour the ass end of the internet to find out what this error code means or what projects that actor worked on.

That being said, tonally the internet feels way more...unfun. Everything is either 4chan toxic or tumblr, PC toxic, and I kind of miss the days where it was right in the middle. I post a lot less because things are more complicated and I have less to say, and also because I don't want to piss anyone off by using a word that is now off limits and no one told me. It's a strange time to be alive.

In general, I think things are better; I"m also just older. Times have changed and I still haven't. I'm the only one at fault.

[AshleyAshes]

50 minutes ago, Conker said:

Hmm. I maybe agree with you that the internet has lost some fun/charm, but for different reasons. Convenience is fucking nice and I"ll never not knock that. Like Vae said, it's cool being able to load a page with pictures and not have to wait ten minutes. Hell, I don't mind that discovery is somewhat gone because I have less time for discovery. Day job, hobby jobs, etc. If I want something now, it's nice to get it now.

I mean, if I type a question into Google the answer is typically on the front page. That's awesome. I'm glad I don't have to scour the ass end of the internet to find out what this error code means or what projects that actor worked on.

That being said, tonally the internet feels way more...unfun. Everything is either 4chan toxic or tumblr, PC toxic, and I kind of miss the days where it was right in the middle. I post a lot less because things are more complicated and I have less to say, and also because I don't want to piss anyone off by using a word that is now off limits and no one told me. It's a strange time to be alive.

In general, I think things are better; I"m also just older. Times have changed and I still haven't. I'm the only one at fault.

I certainly can't deny that there have been some huge improvements in the internet.

I can buy almost anything I want online, even from other countries.  I bought a 1/2 scale novelty Japanese capsule vending machine from a Japanese site that offered English and accepted my credit card.  Or Amazon, my god, Amazon.  Steam lets me access tones of games, cloud saving, and I never need a disc.  FaceBook let's me connect with IRL friends, arrange events and keep everyone to date.  Access to media is brain dead.  The anime fandom was my little niche when I first got into anime and while some 'fun' of that is lost, I'd be insane ignore that Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon and NetFlix offer near bottomless and legit access to anime from Japan and you don't have to explain how to 'torrent' or use IRC DCC bots or anything for laymen to access it.  And while I say it's not 'fun' to have every detail I want on something in Wikipedia or a Wikia site, I still use those services cause even I'm spoiled by the 'less fun' ease of access to that information.  I'm 10 seconds away from knowing which episode of Sailor Moon Crystal has the first appearance of Sailor Uranus.  I'm totally going to use the unfun 10 second route to that answer if given the choice.

[Conker]

6 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

I certainly can't deny that there have been some huge improvements in the internet.

I can buy almost anything I want online, even from other countries.  I bought a 1/2 scale novelty Japanese capsule vending machine from a Japanese site that offered English and accepted my credit card.  Or Amazon, my god, Amazon.  Steam lets me access tones of games, cloud saving, and I never need a disc.  FaceBook let's me connect with IRL friends, arrange events and keep everyone to date.  Access to media is brain dead.  The anime fandom was my little niche when I first got into anime and while some 'fun' of that is lost, I'd be insane ignore that Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon and NetFlix offer near bottomless and legit access to anime from Japan and you don't have to explain how to 'torrent' or use IRC DCC bots or anything for laymen to access it.  And while I say it's not 'fun' to have every detail I want on something in Wikipedia or a Wikia site, I still use those services cause even I'm spoiled by the 'less fun' ease of access to that information.  I'm 10 seconds away from knowing which episode of Sailor Moon Crystal has the first appearance of Sailor Uranus.  I'm totally going to use the unfun 10 second route to that answer if given the choice.

Man, Crunchyroll is great. I took a huge break from anime because it was hard to find, and now I'm watching a ton of it because it's right there! I've watched so many shows over the last year and a half.

And then I hit up TVTropes to find out all the goofy shit about them, because hey, that's in one spot too!

[QT Melon]

Shopping is so convenient, I even order my groceries off Amazon. I can't always travel to the store,and items are kinda heavy. It's worth getting Amazon Fresh for me.