Reject Modernity: Return to Forums? Dead Internet, The Dark Forest, and The Future of the Web

[Madam Mim]

So I've fallen down a hole of sorts. There's plenty of discussion on the future of AI, how it'll affect jobs, how it'll affect creative pursuits, etc. There's also been tons of discourse (and Discourse) on the effect of social media and content creation on the internet, creativity, and society. As an information professional, I could go on and on about the latter. But what I'm really interested in is how all of this combines and affects the internet as a whole, as a place, and how we use it. I'm a 30-something Millennial, and most people my age do still remember Web 1.0 even if it was on its way out, and the beginnings of Web 2.0. I pine for the fjords, ya'll. Anyway. As an anticapitalist quasi-Neoluddite who has de-FAANG'd completely (and I do mean completely), who uses Linux so as to remove myself from Microsoft, who finds FOSS alternatives wherever possible, who avoids social media like the plague, and is also now side-eyeing even Reddit after their API kerfuffle and their deal with Google to help them train LLMs, I think my experience of the internet (and technology in general) is a bit different from most. If nothing else, it's far less convenient than most. Thinking in meta terms about the capital-I Internet as a place, how we use it, and the role of corporations in all of this is somewhat of a hobby of mine.

Which brings me to the Dead Internet Theory. Dead Internet Theory started out as a conspiracy theory that all or most content on the internet was created by and interacted with by bots, something something the US government gaslighting the entire world. I don't go in on that last bit, with the government getting involved in things. Sure, some conspiracy theories have been proven true (Operation Paperclip, MK Ultra, etc.), but those typically involved small teams of people. I worked for the US government and something as big as replacing the entire internet with bots and also keeping foreign governments and corporations in the dark about it? There's zero chance that something like that a) would be possible to coordinate through that bureaucratic nightmare and b) would have no leaks whatsoever. That's not what I want to talk about. The thing that I'm interested in is the idea that most of the internet is being created by and interacted with by bots. There was a report in 2016 that 51% of all web traffic is, in fact, bots and I've seen some predictions that between traffic and content creation 99-99.9% of the internet will be bots and AI by the end of the decade. I mean, we can already see ourselves, anecdotally, that a lot of things like tweets and whatnot out there are created by bots, and are largely interacted with by other bots.

Just today I stumbled across the Dark Forest Theory Of The Internet, which is an adaptation of The Three Body Problem author Liu Cixin's Dark Forest theory of the universe:

Imagine a dark forest at night. It's deathly quiet. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs. This could lead one to assume that the forest is devoid of life. But of course, it's not. The dark forest is full of life. It's quiet because night is when the predators come out. To survive, the animals stay silent. Is our universe an empty forest or a dark one? If it's a dark forest, then only Earth is foolish enough to ping the heavens and announce its presence. The rest of the universe already knows the real reason why the forest stays dark. It's only a matter of time before the Earth learns as well.

The way this is applied to the Internet is that to avoid bots, AI, nonconsensual data collection, and constant advertisement that we see on social media platforms, users are retreating more and more to closed communities like Discord and Slack servers. This leaves the forest of the clearweb full of "predators," with most human users burrowing underground to engage in community elsewhere. Understandable, I think. The author of that article also coined the term the Bowling Alley Theory of the Internet: "that people are online purely to meet each other, and in the long run the venues where we congregate are an unimportant background compared to the interactions themselves." So it doesn't matter if you met on Facebook or Snapchat, it just matters than you met.

Personally, I think Dead Internet and Dark Forest theory dovetail to create and exacerbate the same problem: more and more of the internet is bots and data harvesters, driving more and more people to private servers, which in turn means there's fewer and fewer real people on the clearweb. Repeat ad nauseam until the Internet is provably dead.

All this is to put a question to you all, as users of a forum: what do you think the future of the internet looks like? I mean, from a user experience. Most people say forums are dead, but I mean...here we are? And I, personally, never left the forums. There's also a growing movement called the Web Revival which is returning to the "small internet." They even have gone so far as to create Neocities, an independent web hosting platform like (and patterned after) Geocities. (Sidenote: If you, like me, pine for the days of the open internet where you could just...surf, I highly recommend checking out those links. The art of surfing is lost, imo.) So we've got niche forums like BMR and other roleplaying sites (and like...permies.com and stuff), we've got the Web Revival movement, and we've got more and more people getting sick of social media, of advertising, of division. Do you think the Internet can be saved? Do you see a future where forums return to popularity, or some similar system comes to the fore? Or are we doomed to a dark forest of bots and social media?

~M

P.S.

If you like me are also tired of division fueled by social media highly recommend giving this a watch. Kinda gives me hope.

(Yes it's Youtube, which is owned by Google. But Invidious doesn't appear to be supported by the media player embed on BMR, and Youtube is by far the hardest Google product to replace. I did say my internet experience tends to be less convenient. -_-)

 

[Inkybus]

I am a simple person, with very simple thoughts that dip into way too many things to be an expert in any of them.

I think it's a moot point, though this is just my opinion. People will interact with whatever they feel like interacting and, at the end of the day, communicating with humans is what the highest percentage of people want anyway, even subconsciously.

Eventually, they will get tired of the bloated, artificial stuff that clogs the top and dig deeper. It's also how relationships work: everyone is normal, until you get to know them. Or so I have been told. A friendship is when two 'normal' people interact longer and stay to interact more despite finding out flaws and compatibility with their opposite.

 

[Ryees]

everyone is normal, until you get to know them

This is kind of an interesting take. "Everyone is ordinary, until you find out what makes them extraordinary." Except, I don't find that to be the case, and I think there are absolutely plenty of people in the world who will wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and then die, having only ever done that loop and never even had the consideration to do anything higher with their lives.

the Bowling Alley Theory of the Internet: "that people are online purely to meet each other, and in the long run the venues where we congregate are an unimportant background compared to the interactions themselves." So it doesn't matter if you met on Facebook or Snapchat, it just matters than you met.

This hit me like a sack of bricks the moment I read it. That is absolutely the case. Two of my very serious relationships over the last ten years have been long-distance internet-based relationships, and explaining to people (especially older folks) that you can absolutely have genuine, powerful interactions with people who are not seated across from you was always exhausting and difficult.

Do I think the Internet can be saved? No. I think it's going to fragment further, actually. But I think those who exist from the Newgrounds, AlbinoBlackSheep, NeoPets, MySpace days of the internet will always be able to find what they're looking for on the Underground Railnet, no matter what ends up happening out there in the public, digital world.

 

[Madam Mim]

I am a simple person, with very simple thoughts that dip into way too many things to be an expert in any of them.

I think it's a moot point, though this is just my opinion. People will interact with whatever they feel like interacting and, at the end of the day, communicating with humans is what the highest percentage of people want anyway, even subconsciously.

Eventually, they will get tired of the bloated, artificial stuff that clogs the top and dig deeper. It's also how relationships work: everyone is normal, until you get to know them. Or so I have been told. A friendship is when two 'normal' people interact longer and stay to interact more despite finding out flaws and compatibility with their opposite.

Well, yeah. My point wasn't about what friendship is. People will always interact with whatever they feel like interacting with and communicate with who they want to communicate with. The question I was interested in exploring is how? What does that look like in a future where we all, as you put it, get tired of the bloated and artificial stuff that clogs the top? Before the takeover of social media that looked like forums and IRCs. Then Facebook and Twitter came about and everything was a public forum at all times. Social media changed the way we interact with people online, and often in real life. So now that people are tiring of the division sown by social media and frustrated with how increasingly difficult it is to find something real on the massively popular sites--even Reddit is starting to get overrun by bots--what do you think people will turn to next? Do they stay in Discord servers? Do they return to forums? Some secret third thing? You and I, clearly, have chosen forums as our method of choice for digging deeper. What do you think other people will choose?

 

[Madam Mim]

Do I think the Internet can be saved? No. I think it's going to fragment further, actually. But I think those who exist from the Newgrounds, AlbinoBlackSheep, NeoPets, MySpace days of the internet will always be able to find what they're looking for on the Underground Railnet, no matter what ends up happening out there in the public, digital world.

So...the old folks find a way lol What do you think about the Kids These Days? Do they return to meatspace? Do they learn from their elders and wind up reinventing forums and Geocities? Some mysterious third thing? Coz I agree that the Internet--at least as it exists today--absolutely cannot be saved. But you know how I insulate myself from that anyway. I also agree that things will fragment further, I'm just interested to see how. If you couldn't tell, I personally am routing for a return to forums. Because if it ain't broke don't fix it. Discord servers are great but are private and blocked off enough, with a high enough barrier to entry, that I think we risk a truly dead internet/forest if that's our only alternative.

 

[Inkybus]

The question I was interested in exploring is how? What does that look like in a future where we all, as you put it, get tired of the bloated and artificial stuff that clogs the top?

Not all, not at the same time and not at the same rate. Because older people will move on while younger people first enter the space, then the cycle repeats. The old go, the new come in and fill their place and eventually they will also go, though they may lag behind their peers or maybe they are a few steps in front of them.

Your forest metaphor is apt: I imagine the web is going to expand, shrink, burn and regrow. The underground of the forest will get bigger, as the hunting grounds of the big Five expand, then some of them will fail and get replaced by something else, more niche sites will pop up, many will come and go when people inevitably move on, they will get replaced and so on.

I think there will be more private networks for sure, though, where people don't connect their devices to the wider web or do that only on different, disposable devices that they don't much care for. I want to do something like that myself, because I would feel that much safer from all the malware floating around on the internet.

 

[Dr Bellwright]

Most people say forums are dead, but I mean...here we are? And I, personally, never left the forums.

Commercially speaking – forums are dead. It's hard to make money from them, and most interesting forums require a supply of user donations, founders who are willing to part with their cash or most likely both.

Forums and closed chat groups such as Slack channels and WhatsApp groups are my preferred social networks.

But that's kind of expected. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are like international food chains. Mcdonald's, Starbucks, etc need to create a globally available menu, which is just a huge network of compromises. In the end, they kind of suck. Starbucks still has nice toilets…so I guess it's a pass?

But frankly speaking, forums were always financially unviable, and that could be why they are great. Because behind each one – there is real passion.

 

[MysteriousD]

I’m reminded of what someone said on this. They believe that an AI bubble burst soon. But beyond that, this will have quite the domino effect:

"Dot-Com Crash II will probably start not long after the AI bubble bursts, with social media being not far behind as investors start dumping stock in tech companies that can't turn a profit and keep asking for money.

There's a chance this will kick off a housing crash, as banks try to sell off homes from their landlord subsidiaries to make up for the losses in the tech sector, only to find there are no buyers at the current market price. Those assets as a tradable security will crash out, particularly as the boomers try to sell off their homes in a panic so close to retirement

The Market Crash of 2026 or 2027 will make 2008 look like a minor correction. The Fed will lower interest rates to try and arrest the crisis, but investor capital will be gone, so no relaunch of venture-backed businesses like social media.

Webrings & private sites will be all that's left."

 

[Inkybus]

Except, I don't find that to be the case, and I think there are absolutely plenty of people in the world who will wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and then die, having only ever done that loop and never even had the consideration to do anything higher with their lives.

I should also address this: I did not intend to talk about a human's individual talents and gifts for any single or multiple skills or endeavors.

In the past, I worked with delivery people, bringing mail and packages to places and stuff like that, I've struck up a rapport with a few colleagues and found it interesting that one of them was an avid traveller and competitive swimmer, while another was more sedentary, but gave me an account of how they overcame drug addiction and got their life back together after that whole ordeal. YMMV, but I find that interesting, even if I am not someone who travels a lot or swims often as a sport- I also don't have experience with drugs like that. I feel that, were I to say that their life or past is boring, it would be callous of me and somewhat misanthropic.

My last opinion is that ambitious people are, more often than not, less likely to be as happy as content folk and not as trustworthy when one doesn't align themselves with them.

 

[Madam Mim]

Commercially speaking – forums are dead. It's hard to make money from them, and most interesting forums require a supply of user donations, founders who are willing to part with their cash or most likely both.
...
But frankly speaking, forums were always financially unviable, and that could be why they are great. Because behind each one – there is real passion.

So here's the question: do they have to be profitable? Not sure how old everyone else on this thread is, but I remember the Wild West of the Internet and it was imo a far more beautiful place without being monetized. There have definitely been some improvements in the intervening years--10-year-old me thankfully never stumbled upon a beheading video but some of my friends did--but by and large I think a lot of the internet has been enshittified. You're right that the larger sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have a globally accessible "menu" which makes them kinda shitty. I think there's definitely room for commercial video and image hosting sites like Youtube and Imgur for the express purpose of serving the rest of the internet. But if you've got a good forum that provides a good service for its people, and the webmaster comes in and says "hey guys I can't afford this on my own anymore can everyone chip in $5 to save the site," they're gonna do it. I mean, you yourself are a site supporter for BMR because it provides a service you think is worth keeping around even if it's not commercially viable or creating profits for shareholders. People find value in communities they feel a part of and I doubt anyone's gonna be giving Zuck their $5 to keep FB afloat.

The Internet never used to be commercially viable and honestly, I hope to see that become the case again. I'm tired of the internet being five websites and a couple of scattered message boards.

"Dot-Com Crash II will probably start not long after the AI bubble bursts, with social media being not far behind as investors start dumping stock in tech companies that can't turn a profit and keep asking for money.

There's a chance this will kick off a housing crash...
...
The Market Crash of 2026 or 2027 will make 2008 look like a minor correction. The Fed will lower interest rates to try and arrest the crisis, but investor capital will be gone, so no relaunch of venture-backed businesses like social media.

Webrings & private sites will be all that's left."

The secret Doomer in me is very excited at this prospect, tbh. I try not to feed her, because when stuff like this happens a lot of people suffer and get hurt. Obviously I don't want that; my own parents were victims of the 2008 housing crash. I'm privileged enough after a decade of depressed grinding to be a DINK homeowner with a VA mortgage, no plans on moving, and a future-proof job so obviously I would be more insulated from the worst effects of such a future, but I know that that's not everyone's situation. But looking at where we are now...something's gotta give, y'know? Economically, technologically, it all just seems so fucked. And affordable homes, landlords that aren't giant conglomerates, no AI, no social media? My body is ready. It's probably obvious that I miss the Old Internet and feel that it was a less commercialized and more creative place and some sort of reset is needed. Incidentally, do you have a source on this quote or was it a private conversation? Because if it's part of a written work or video essay I'd love to explore further.

 

[MysteriousD]

The secret Doomer in me is very excited at this prospect, tbh. I try not to feed her, because when stuff like this happens a lot of people suffer and get hurt. Obviously I don't want that; my own parents were victims of the 2008 housing crash. I'm privileged enough after a decade of depressed grinding to be a DINK homeowner with a VA mortgage, no plans on moving, and a future-proof job so obviously I would be more insulated from the worst effects of such a future, but I know that that's not everyone's situation. But looking at where we are now...something's gotta give, y'know? Economically, technologically, it all just seems so fucked. And affordable homes, landlords that aren't giant conglomerates, no AI, no social media? My body is ready. It's probably obvious that I miss the Old Internet and feel that it was a less commercialized and more creative place and some sort of reset is needed. Incidentally, do you have a source on this quote or was it a private conversation? Because if it's part of a written work or video essay I'd love to explore further.

Honestly, I don't buy it completely, if mainly because it does seem like some social media is too big to fail. Like I could see Twitter and Facebook potentially biting it, though it'd be a massive shock. I don't see YouTube going away and could see some smaller sites surviving there. I do miss some of the older Internet stuff, but at the same time, the newer things that came made things alot easier and trying to come up with viable alternates and maintaining the larget networks we have will be tricky,

 

[Madam Mim]

Honestly, I don't buy it completely, if mainly because it does seem like some social media is too big to fail. Like I could see Twitter and Facebook potentially biting it, though it'd be a massive shock. I don't see YouTube going away and could see some smaller sites surviving there. I do miss some of the older Internet stuff, but at the same time, the newer things that came made things alot easier and trying to come up with viable alternates and maintaining the larget networks we have will be tricky,

I definitely don't think social media is too big to fail. Case in point: MySpace. Twitter already seems on its way out due to poor management and Facebook seems to be under threat as well though I don't think either of them will be a sudden fall but a slow decline. YouTube definitely isn't going away. Some of the newer things that have come along have made things easier...but also less private, less secure. You're the product. Which is how you get constant advertisement and bots flooding the internet trying to sell you shit. I'd love to see a move toward FOSS products in the main stream but I don't see that happening.

When you say "maintaining the largest networks we have," what do you mean by that? Like, the largest networks "we" as individuals have socially and professionally (ie via LinkedIn and Facebook)? Or large social networks "we" as a society have, the companies that facilitate these things?

 

[MysteriousD]

I definitely don't think social media is too big to fail. Case in point: MySpace. Twitter already seems on its way out due to poor management and Facebook seems to be under threat as well though I don't think either of them will be a sudden fall but a slow decline. YouTube definitely isn't going away. Some of the newer things that have come along have made things easier...but also less private, less secure. You're the product. Which is how you get constant advertisement and bots flooding the internet trying to sell you shit. I'd love to see a move toward FOSS products in the main stream but I don't see that happening.

That is a good point. That said, both did create their own niche and it’ll be a struggle to fill that (Twitter for example was a good place to show off some art with get some
news in real time).

Free and open source software would be nice here, but how do we maintain the server infrastructure I guess is the question.

But yeah, AI is definitely approaching its doom and I wonder what will follow.

When you say "maintaining the largest networks we have," what do you mean by that? Like, the largest networks "we" as individuals have socially and professionally (ie via LinkedIn and Facebook)? Or large social networks "we" as a society have, the companies that facilitate these things?

I guess like online communities and being able to communicate and connect with people we’ve made through there. You do also make some good points there as well.

 

[Revelations]

This is an incredibly interesting topic and has been a neat read. And a lot of stuff that's being discussed has been on my mind for internet stuff.

As a millennial who grew up when the internet was just hitting its 'available to the mass market' stage (IE: Late 90s I would say), seeing the internet change has been both fascinating and slightly scary. I remember my mom and sister both having their online chatroom communities - mom liked music stuff and sis liked anime and RP stuff! I got into some forums when I was in my early teens (No adult forums. Things like Gamefaqs, a few odd fandom forums, etc). And Seeing these small communities grow, stabilize for a while, and then eventually drift downwards was interesting. back in the day it feels like there were a thousand sites to go to and each had their own reasons to go to them. Oh, I miss the sites like RPGshrine where nerds collected communal knowledge of jrpgs, or the various gamefaqs message boards where people argued a real way to play the game vs cheating, or even just used the site to socialize with people who shared interests.

I was going to start another paragraph about Myspace starting the decline of the internet btu I can't say if I feel that is true or if it's just how I feel. Either way, back in the day, when I was a teen, it felt like I could be a part of 20+ online communities, each of them unique in their own way and dedicated to various niches! In 2024, the amount of sites I regularly go to, can be counted on two hands at most. And, the amount of online communities I'm a part of are even fewer.

I can't say much about if I know AI is gonna pop, but I do know that the internet was one fragmented and now it is not as much anymore and I miss that fragmentation. I don't feel Reddit is equitable to forums and I hate having to use discord in the place of what forums once were - it's much harder to search a game's discord for a problem I am having with it or at least searching for general information as opposed to a forum. But it is what it is, and what it is is grim to me!

I don't really have much of a point with this post, moreso just me being nostalgic for those small communities.

 

[Madam Mim]

I don't really have much of a point with this post, moreso just me being nostalgic for those small communities.

I mean, same. lol Sounds like I may be slightly younger than you but I had a similar experience on the early Internet.

And Seeing these small communities grow, stabilize for a while, and then eventually drift downwards was interesting. back in the day it feels like there were a thousand sites to go to and each had their own reasons to go to them.
...
Either way, back in the day, when I was a teen, it felt like I could be a part of 20+ online communities, each of them unique in their own way and dedicated to various niches! In 2024, the amount of sites I regularly go to, can be counted on two hands at most. And, the amount of online communities I'm a part of are even fewer.

Again, same. There were different websites for different things and online third spaces. Third spaces in general are something I'm really interested in, and I'm not sure if real life is reflecting the internet or the other way around with the disappearance of third spaces. That is: a place to go that has a low barrier to entry and low or no cost, where a person can go to be a part of their community. I was never super social online back when I had the chance but I did have a handful of websites I went to regularly, participated on message boards, etc. And yeah they each had their own unique vibe and style according to the sorts of people who were drawn to that place. These days the Internet at large is like...three social media sites, Youtube, and Wikipedia.

I think I'm beginning to develop my own theory of the internet. Call it Supermarket Theory, if you will. So I'm blessed to live in a relatively small, rural town. There's a farmer's market every Saturday morning year round, rain or shine. There's several CSAs, and we've just discovered an authentic Polish bakery very close by. It's all within biking distance. So I can go to the farmers market or an actual farm for produce, meat, and dairy and to the bakery for bread. These are all small, locally owned businesses so I'm putting money back into my community and building relationships with the people who own those businesses as well as the other regulars. While I'm downtown at the farmers market (or before/after work since I also work on Main Street) I can go to the independent used book store, the locally-owned health food store for organics and bulk, the herbal shop next door to my work's temporary HQ, and the fabric store next to the health food store. The existence of small and independent outlets for essentials (food) encourages shopping small and local for nonessentials (craft supplies, books, etc.). Again, all of the money stays in my community and I build relationships and networks with all of the people I run into with any regularity. Sure, it means making multiple stops but when I can park my car or bike in one spot and just walk up and down Main Street that's not a huge deal. And it means I can look at the different sorts of shops and window displays, enjoy the weather...enrichment in my enclosure. The businesses are small but healthy and I feel part of something bigger than myself, something which affects my day-to-day life and encourages/inspires me to contribute to it. Or...I can go to Walmart or Giant supermarket or whatever. Get my mass produced bread, industrially farmed produce, unethically farmed corn-fed milk, and my consumer goods produced by child and/or slave labor on the other side of the world. I can be one face in a sea of hundreds of thousands, millions if you count their chains all over the country. I can shop alone without talking to or making connections with anyone and in fact resent my fellow shoppers for steering their carts like insane people. But I can get groceries, electronics, cat food, and clothes all in one place so it's more convenient for me to just park in the sea of asphalt and deal with the hoards. (Can you tell I wish we didn't have such car-dependent infrastructure?

Bringing it back around to the internet, I think I see how it's evolved to be similar: we used to be a bunch of small communities. Yeah you had to go to different websites because each was dedicated to a different area of interest, but that's what bookmarks are for. The bookmarks bar is Main Street and you can mosy on down to whatever shop you need to. Now with the handful of large websites we've got you only need to make a few stops. (Reddit, in particular, I see as a sort of merging of many different message boards and forums under one umbrella, which isn't as good an idea as it may seem because yeah you have a variety of offerings but they're all subject to the same TOS and the same corporate decisions regardless of what community you're part of.) It may not have exactly what you're looking for, and you don't really build a sense of community, but anything to block out the relentless onslaught of reality, right? They've replaced our physical lives instead of enhancing them the way the old forums did. A little bit of everything all of the time, and you wind up numb instead of enriched.

I was going to start another paragraph about Myspace starting the decline of the internet btu I can't say if I feel that is true or if it's just how I feel.

I pin it to Facebook personally, so I think maybe it just depends on what the big thing was during your formative years. lol I would be really interested to find if someone's made like...a map of the internet. One node per website with size corresponding to userbase, cluster them via type (forum, image hosting, news, etc.), link them to parent sites if any. Do this for every five years like 1995 to present just to see how the landscape of the internet has changed, how much biodiversity has been lost. And yeah, figure out whose fault it is. lmao I'd also say Google has no small hand in that.

But it is what it is, and what it is is grim to me!

Agreed! I'm hoping we see some sort of evolution soon. Failing that I'm hoping for a mass retreat into the Web Revival and Neocities lol

 

[Devils Temptation]

Ayo, resident zoomer peeking in! This thread is some solid content, kudos to the OP.

I am from a distinctly different generation but also a guy that gives a real nasty look to the state of modern social media, enough so that I almost entirely disconnect from it like OP does despite having a tech background myself. Lotta good points brought up here, but here's a couple places I wanted to touch on since this topic hits the back of my brain like a ton of bricks every now and then -

I definitely don't think social media is too big to fail. Case in point: MySpace. Twitter already seems on its way out due to poor management and Facebook seems to be under threat as well though I don't think either of them will be a sudden fall but a slow decline. YouTube definitely isn't going away. Some of the newer things that have come along have made things easier...but also less private, less secure. You're the product. Which is how you get constant advertisement and bots flooding the internet trying to sell you shit. I'd love to see a move toward FOSS products in the main stream but I don't see that happening.

In my humble opinion, a lot of these tech giants that are seemingly just train engines with a limitless appetite for fuel have started to reach their end games. There is no more space for growth. No more share of the Internet to attain. Too much saturation without much innovation, which is leading to something I have increasingly noticed along a lot of the content that is dished out to Internet-goers -- and that is the homogenization of social media. Ever notice how every platform has its own crummy 30-second brain rot scrolling feed nowadays? TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Same shit, different paint job. We have headed towards an increasingly more similar type of content where it is easily monetized and exceptionally friendly to funneling ads down your throat for one and only one reason - an utterly unrealistic approach to the growth of these industries. There was a point in time that those companies were on an upwards bus to God knows where, but I think they've begun to hit the ceiling.

The natural next step? Get your horsies ready for the AI race to see who wins it all! Anecdotally, I had a brief career in designing and developing LLMs before moving to more data oriented engineering and so while I don't necessarily think this point -

There was a report in 2016 that 51% of all web traffic is, in fact, bots and I've seen some predictions that between traffic and content creation 99-99.9% of the internet will be bots and AI by the end of the decade.

- will ever come to fruition to the expectations that you mentioned, I think that is actually inevitable. From my experience, AI is exceedingly used as some hot garbage patch slapped onto products that, quite frankly, utilize it like complete garbage and/or to pretty terrible or misused extents. A shiny new thing to pitch to shareholders for the point stated above, making it seem like innovation is currently ongoing. Is ten years enough to iron out those kinks and have it utilized in a way it absolutely cannibalizes everything we consume? Maybe. I don't think it is though. Not with the level of incompetence floating around about its uses in a variety of applications.

Regardless of who wins this rat race, it is anyone's guess as to what happens in this late stage of our tech giant overlords having completely matured. I can only really see one of two outcomes - the first being that they just pop from the stagnation. That hyper-consumerism mindset just runs such high customer fatigue that the models that were once operation just cease to be and you see an entire crumble of an antiquated system... or the much more unpleasant and realistic outcome that nothing will really happen and we can just shut our brains off to enjoy whatever slop is served to us on a plate in a stagnant, uninspired conveyer belt of content delivery!

Now, let me just get off my doom and gloom soap box over here and mention a few more things since I tend to err a lot more on the side of optimism than I do doom and gloom... (mostly because I grew up in the country and will run away to there if the AI overlords take over)

Do you think the Internet can be saved? Do you see a future where forums return to popularity, or some similar system comes to the fore? Or are we doomed to a dark forest of bots and social media?

Yes. Or, at the very least, I think the hegemony of AI and large corporations will not come to pass as easily as corpo might be hoping for it to do so but I might just be biased in the notion that I fully support and believe in a variety of decentralization and community-run software solutions including but not limited to - decentralized financing which cuts out the middleman of large banks, mesh Internet networks which can be built and maintained to serve communities for a lower localized pool cost than shelling money out to larger corporations, Dat protocols and IPFS which support increasingly more decentralized media sharing that is out of the hands of larger corporations -- and now while it might seem like I am yapping away about all this, I think the combining thread I have seen backing all of these is the most important part of this point.

Communities. Human communities that are interested in connecting with and helping other people as well as pulling away from that profit-driven narrative. Does this infrastructure still require capital to keep it going? Absolutely. All this infrastructure doesn't spawn out the air, servers don't spontaneously come into existence, etc. etc. but for every person that enters this human driven network and community - the price just continues to go increasingly more and more down for all of this. In a lot of ways, I adore that parallel about the supermarket theory you had going there, M. I think that there is a growing push for those smaller, more local communities after we have largely come to realize that unity is strength in this changing landscape of the ever-growing and changing Internet.

Anyways, this turned out to be a lot more long-winded than I originally anticipated lol. Solid discussion all around. It might be a poor bet, but I will gamble on human ingenuity and the craving to connect with like-minded folk that have some edge of altruism in serving their community over a slow decay into being spoonfed by massive AI LLMs for everything we consume.

Solid discussion all around and some great points were raised. Fingers crossed for the future

 

[VagrantPrincess]

Okay, I'm going to reiterate a lot of the points made in this thread, but I wanted to share my point of view as someone who has returned to the site after a decade or so long hiatus. Part of the reason that I came back to this site was being tired with the hegemony of social media. Just like @Devils Temptation and @Madam Mim stated, every social media site is trying to be everything to everybody. This fucking sucks and for anyone with a point of reference of the good ol' days where we had purpose built communities around specific interests, can feel just how hollow and empty the communities within those sites are.

Sure, you can get a cool algo going on Tiktok, join Facebook groups based around your interests, and Reddit has a community for just about everyone, but each of those communities have the same radically unfocused group of users: literally everybody. That means that every mean spirited troll can just post their shitty comments wherever they want, or companies can come in and astroturf away all while facing little to no moderation (outside of the really vile shit that companies know they need to keep off their servers). Compare that to a site like BMR, that caters to a very specific niche, requires you know what you're looking for, go out and find it, create a profile, and be part of a tighter community that's less likely to put up with bullshit.

Ad for the future of the Internet, what I can say as someone who works in marketing is that these tech giants are on borrowed time, and I think that once they're done cannibalizing each other and left with new ideas, the rots going to start settling in and they're going to lose more and more users. Business' are fucking tired of Googles bullshit, the bot and spam traffic has been getting worse, and as the last bastions of Boomer and Gen X management ages out, I don't think people are going to have the patience for a service that doesn't fucking deliver.

I don't know much about the proliferation of AI, but I can see it infecting sites wherever I go, and people hate it (myself included). There's this even in Cyberpunk where the internet gets taken over by a virus that makes it unusable... and while I don't see that happening, I could see a parralel developping where in a place of a virus, it's just a cesspit of garbage "AI"'s vying for your attention, completely devoid of the human connection that we're looking for. Hopefully, people will pass down the knowledge necessary for communities like this to thrive in a post Google-able environment, link trees will get more popular again, sites will start developping organically through word of mouth, and we can get that crunchy, tasty, raw internet of the early 2000s going again.

(I also intended this to be a short post, but ho shit did I have some thoughts apparently)

 

[Revelations]

This is all making me wish enshittification had a better name. As I feel enshittification of the internet is a real, valid, and very much in progress thing but man the name enshittification is so not good even if it's succinct. It's kinda hard to talk about it with some friends because the term itself is kinda silly. Platform decay is slightly better I would say.

Either way, this does make me feel a bit funny. I'm part of a closed garden web 1.0ish internet forum elsewhere and I wonder how many communities like that are out there?

And don't take this as doom and gloom on BMR's part, but I do wonder how the remaining open forums like BMR can handle AI in the future. BMR is a cozy internet community that isn't so large as to become flooded with AI/bots for the most part, but the more prolific it becomes the more we'll have to keep a vigil out for it.

 

[Madam Mim]

Yes hi hello it's ya girl and she is back with the spoons!

In my humble opinion, a lot of these tech giants that are seemingly just train engines with a limitless appetite for fuel have started to reach their end games. There is no more space for growth. No more share of the Internet to attain. Too much saturation without much innovation, which is leading to something I have increasingly noticed along a lot of the content that is dished out to Internet-goers -- and that is the homogenization of social media.

Almost like...capitalism is not a sustainable economic model? Like limitless growth is impossible and a free market does not in fact breed innovation? The hell you say! I personally view the state of the modern internet as the direct result of and end point for modern capitalism. As you say, saturation without innovation, and an increasing demand of the market share when there's nothing left to be gained. Any time there's even the tiniest bit of innovation on one platform, such as the 30 second video brainrot scroll, everyone immediately adopts it and forces it to become the next big thing. (It wasn't even that innovative; Vine did it first.)

And that's kinda the thing that I resent. "The next big thing." Like...traditionally, the way that goes is a thing is invented, it gets popular, it's declared the "next big thing," then all the other platforms jump on it. But now the businesses coming up with these things are forcing their next big thing onto us. Nobody wants AI assisted search but they're forcing it onto us. Very few people seem to want the 30 second brainrot scroll, but it's being forced onto platforms and "now you have to do this thing too or else you'll be punished by the Algorithm." Alongside the frankly sinister techniques they use to hijack the reward centers of our brains and keep us scrolling.

so while I don't necessarily think this point -
[the predictions that 99-99.9% of internet traffic will be bots by the end of the decade]
- will ever come to fruition to the expectations that you mentioned, I think that is actually inevitable.

I'm confused on this point. You say you don't think it will come to fruition but also that it's inevitable? I agree with your assessment that AI is usually hot garbage slapped onto a product to make it look like there's innovation. My husband works in computer vision and there definitely is a future for that, neural networks, other sort of predictive and analytical AI. But it seems these days like if you're trying to make number go up and you've got nothing actually innovative, generative AI and LLMs are the panacea to get the shareholders the value they want. Squeeze a little more blood out of that stone. My hope is that the tech giants will crumble, creation stops being "content," and we return to the Wild West of the beforetimes. (Somewhat. I've said before that I think the increase in moderation that we've seen is a good thing, until of course it starts being used against marginalized voices.) I've seen enough people online calling generative AI "slop," and getting tired of constant advertisements, lower quality content, and knowing that their brains are being hijacked by social media to be slightly optimistic that the market just won't carry in the future. People will stop using services they don't like.

Communities. Human communities that are interested in connecting with and helping other people as well as pulling away from that profit-driven narrative. Does this infrastructure still require capital to keep it going? Absolutely. [...]but for every person that enters this human driven network and community - the price just continues to go increasingly more and more down for all of this. [...]I think that there is a growing push for those smaller, more local communities after we have largely come to realize that unity is strength in this changing landscape of the ever-growing and changing Internet.

This is what I'm hoping for. Not sure if you read the spoiler in my original post but it's an embed of a Kurzgesagt video about basically how we can heal the deep divides in our larger community by creating smaller communities. Infrastructure for places like this do cost money, but I imagine substantially less than something like Facebook or Youtube. And when people feel connected to the community or it provides a service you really, truly love and value, you're gonna be more willing to help keep it going rather than just move on to a similar platform that offers the same service. Like, sure there's other RP forums but each one offers a different vibe and a different niche depending on what you're looking for. You may have some crossover between communities but you're not going to get the exact same experience the way you do across, for example, subreddits. Which speaking of,

each of those communities have the same radically unfocused group of users: literally everybody. That means that every mean spirited troll can just post their shitty comments wherever they want, or companies can come in and astroturf away all while facing little to no moderation [...]Compare that to a site...[that] requires you know what you're looking for, go out and find it, create a profile, and be part of a tighter community that's less likely to put up with bullshit.

This is an excellent point. The huge social media companies these days are absolutely enormous. Going back to my supermarket vs. local grocery example, you've got a lot more people coming in for a lot of different items in a Walmart, and some folks even make a game of putting weird things in the wrong department just because. Because it's trying to be everything to everyone and when you have such a variety of stuff it's gonna attract bad actors looking to wreck shit and people creating disturbances just because they think it's funny (even if it's only funny to them). Sure you can find what you're looking for, but is it a pleasant experience? Do you feel connected to the other shoppers? Or in the case of something like Reddit it's less a Walmart and more like a mall: individual specialized shops but someone can just wander in and out and loiter in places that aren't meant for them, niche specialty shops where people need to feel safe to be able to go, and then you've got that one guy in the back with a Chick Tract in his hand, judging everyone for being here even though nobody made him come here. Smaller websites where you need to know what you're looking for then create an account to interact not only builds community and feels nicer and closer, it also keeps the citizens of that community safe. I mean, can you imagine BMR as a subreddit where just anyone could wander in, deface RP threads, derail public conversations? It'd be a nightmare.

what I can say as someone who works in marketing is that these tech giants are on borrowed time, and I think that once they're done cannibalizing each other and left with new ideas, the rots going to start settling in and they're going to lose more and more users.

This is a relief, tbh, and I sincerely hope you're right. I don't think the big tech companies will ever truly die--MySpace is still around, after all, even if it's not what it used to be--but I really hope to see their influence on the world outside of the Series Of Tubes wane significantly or even disappear entirely. I share your hope that link trees get more popular again, word of mouth spreads about the little part of the internet without Google and the other tech giants, return of RSS feeds. I'd like to see the primary role of websites go back to hosting (Youtube, imgur, giffy, etc.), slow social (forums, message boards), factual and moderated information (Wikipedia, the various dictionary and translation websites), and shopping. Make it a utility and a tool rather than a replacement for real life. Also the internet of the early 2000s is definitely crunchy and tastes like Frankenberry cereal milk.

This is all making me wish enshittification had a better name. As I feel enshittification of the internet is a real, valid, and very much in progress thing but man the name enshittification is so not good even if it's succinct. It's kinda hard to talk about it with some friends because the term itself is kinda silly. Platform decay is slightly better I would say.

Either way, this does make me feel a bit funny. I'm part of a closed garden web 1.0ish internet forum elsewhere and I wonder how many communities like that are out there?

And don't take this as doom and gloom on BMR's part, but I do wonder how the remaining open forums like BMR can handle AI in the future. BMR is a cozy internet community that isn't so large as to become flooded with AI/bots for the most part, but the more prolific it becomes the more we'll have to keep a vigil out for it.

Yeah unfortunately "enshittification" is what happens when one dude with a blog makes a funny word. But also "platform decay" while more professional and serious sounds a bit...corporate? So I'm not sure what the balance between those two are.

As staff have you seen any sort of threat from AI? Bots creating accounts I can see as becoming a problem but I honestly don't see what sort of application generative AI has on a site like this. I was also wondering: KOSA's been defeated thankfully, but you just know some iteration of it will be back in the future. Would BMR be able to stay safe from something like that?

 

[Revelations]

As staff have you seen any sort of threat from AI? Bots creating accounts I can see as becoming a problem but I honestly don't see what sort of application generative AI has on a site like this. I was also wondering: KOSA's been defeated thankfully, but you just know some iteration of it will be back in the future. Would BMR be able to stay safe from something like that?

There are definitely bots that get caught in our (pretty good) filters for forum spam and whatnot that most users don't see. There's the odd one that slips out but users do a very good job of reporting them and then we handle them.

I'm afraid that while I am an admin I mostly handle the user side of this site over technical or delicate affairs like all of that - I think that would be a Vekseid question. What I will say so far is BMR doesn't feel like it's in dire danger from the AI issue, but since we are an 'open' community, there's still a chance that they could creep in and muck up the place in the way that AI does.