> I get so curious about people’s financial situations when they’re able to make such asymmetrical moves like that. He lives in a rural town near Pittsburgh, does selling $10 zines afford that lifestyle? What about healthcare? Does he have a trust fund? A recent inheritance? Bitcoin? Years of an early retirement strategy paying off? I shouldn’t ruin the anti-capitalistic vibe with such trivial capitalistic questions but I love it and my brain jumps to trying to make the math work for myself.
peoples' true natures/intentions make more sense when you remove "because money" from the equation
but it's hard to see through it when your own life revolves around "because money"
It’s really kind of a pervasive attitude, akin to fish and the concept of water.
“But why would you do that if you can’t make any money from it?”
It’s so difficult to overcome this tendency to dismiss ideas because they don’t lead to income, especially if you aren’t financially secure/have years of savings in the bank.
Yes. This. It extends further to thoughts like, "but you can't expect someone to do <obviously moral thing> because it's less profitable, so how do you incentivize it?"
I propose "incentivize" be a 2026 front runner for curse word. It's just a gross concept these days.
I barely interact with people online. It’s here and email. And that’s it. I don’t have a web site, don’t have a blog and don’t have any interest in social media. 99% of the time I don't even have a brower open if I'm using the computer.
Turns out when you live that life there’s a lot of people out there who do the same. It’s easy to forget there is a completely offline world if you’re online all the time. I spend most of my time with them. In fact I’m about to go out to lunch with four people (age range 29-55) who are similarly offline. We arranged lunch over the phone.
I’d go as far as saying that the online world, past essentials, is actually the minority.
But weirdly you are on hackernews, an online community.
I also don't see how the phone can be better than online apps. Phone calls are really intrusive, it forces you to talk with someone when they want as opposed to being an asynchronous method of communication like Whatsapp.
I'm generally introverted but somehow prefer phone calls over the alternatives. I don't want to play the "lets discuss where to have lunch over the next two days, waiting for the person to reply / remember to reply" game many people using IM seems to like to play.
Instead, we do a two minute call, hear each other's voice, say everything that needs to be said, save the rest for when we meet. Done and done, then move on with the rest of life.
I don't see it as intrusive at all, even though again I'm introverted, instead I see it as something personal and efficient. Yes, it forces both of us to take time to talk to the other person, I don't necessarily see this as something negative, either way.
Reading this article I couldn't help but think of a fantastic talk I found quite motivating by Andrew Kelley, Don't Take The Black Pill.
In it he talks about staying in the game, keeping strong voices advocating for good and positive change, and how stepping back, while a valid protection mechanism concedes the victory to whatever it is that's exhausting us.
We're going through a phase. It'll die. It'll die, because the previous phases died, or at least evolved into something else. We're not in the Dotcom era because the market dealt with that suckiness. We're not in Eternal September because Usenet was killed by other platforms because Usenet sucked as a UX. We're not in Web 2.0 because the market decided the semantic web was a noisy hot sucky mess. We aren't all just using AOL or (OMG, do you remember this?), MSN, because, well, they sucked.
If I look around me today, I see stuff that sucks. I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
And it's natural to not want to try and build that, and instead just accept that [waves hands] all this is a sucky mess, and it's burning us out, and you go fix it, because I'm out.
But the best way to fix this is to roll up your sleeves and fix it. Maybe going and writing a religion zine is part of that, maybe it isn't. Maybe going and becoming a farmer fixes it, but it almost certainly doesn't.
We need more talented people building the future they want to see, not running away from the one they're being handed by a roomful of billionaire morons (who consider themselves geniuses).
Take it back. We've done it before. It's not easy, but the journey is where the stories are.
> I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
This. AI has helped me realize some really engrossing and satisfying coding projects I may have otherwise not done. The flip side is that they wouldn't have worked if business-as-usual / do-same-but-faster-with-AI was imposed upon me.
Use of AI can be highly personal and symbiotic, just as it can also be dehumanizing and parasitic.
I look forward to new ways of working both individually and structurally that yet may emerge, and it will require creative elbow grease to materialize.
I also empathize with, and support, those that feel the experience has shifted beyond something they care about, enjoy, or want to participate in. As I'm sure we all do, I have very good friends who lead very different lives from me. AI can be seen negatively as a wedge, or perhaps more positively as a tech/pasttime/activity that we yield in unique ways, making (keeping!) unique in the process.
It will be web 7 - no .0 needed 'cause it'll be the final episode. Why? Well, 7 is a special number, holy some would say, at least prime and - important - the day of rest. It took 6 symbolic days to build the earth and sky and all that moves in, on and over it and with all that done the 7th day is declared a day of rest. It'll take 6 webs with all that crawl and crap under, in and over them until the 7th iteration when someone says "leave well enough alone" and walks off to water his tomatoes or floss the cat. Others will wake up from the hypno-daze induced by the latest addition to Web 6.666, notice there's a world out there full of tomatoes in need off watering and cats due flossing and find they much prefer life there over being caught in that web. When the tomatoes' and cats' needs have been satisfied they let their friends and kin know through something eerily resembling Web 0.1 - their Web.6.666 kit doesn't work anymore since they missed a few upgrades during their absence - about their exploits and suddenly their eyes are opened wide. This is what it is all for, a means of communication. Web 7, the final frontier which looks strangely familiar.
> We're going through a phase. It'll die. It'll die, because the previous phases died, or at least evolved into something else. We're not in the Dotcom era because the market dealt with that suckiness. We're not in Eternal September because Usenet was killed by other platforms because Usenet sucked as a UX. We're not in Web 2.0 because the market decided the semantic web was a noisy hot sucky mess. We aren't all just using AOL or (OMG, do you remember this?), MSN, because, well, they sucked.
That's just nonsense. They sucked at only one thing: they couldn't extract money from users on an industrial scale. I'll take "suck" UX over modern social/ad-driven crap any time of the day.
I think generative content will get good enough that people simply don’t trust what they read online. Humans might still generate content, but I predict over time they will be crowded out and worse blatantly copied to the point of discouragement. AI-powered miscreants will outpace enforcement efforts.
Personally I’m betting that we will see a major comeback in local radio and print media, as global network effects regress local with collective trust.
What else is possible in our personal lives other than to eventually let the internet go? I'm almost certain that 90% of the content I read is AI slop. Software in general is horrible, advertisements and dark patterns are everywhere. Even offline, it ruined movies, series, books and games. Now I have to research an author before buying a book to make sure that they are real and they don't mass produce AI slop.
Sure, I will still use internet and AI professionally, because they are paying me to do it, but it will be just a tool.
I just read HN comments and that's all I do, and it works for me. Nobody cares about anything I make now because you used to have an innate marketing boost by the sheer fact that you put in the time to make something, but now everyone makes things so nobody cares.
Still, it works for me. I use the things I make and I just don't really share them any more, and that's enough for me. I don't feel like throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quitting "the Internet".
If you cast your gaze way down the road, circa 2064 AD, one of the multitude of permutations that might play out is that the promise of bona fide AGI and automation has been achieved. La dolce vita becomes the standard in the age of abundance, and freed from the tyranny of making a living, we are then fully unplugged, or at least have the option to be.
The internet is decentralized, which is another way to say lacking in meta-incentive capabilities (e.g. cannot resist incentives for long, unable to influence or modify the set of incentives being applied to it), which means it will always fall prey to the dumbest race-to-the-bottom traps.
This is more like shouting to everyone in a restaurant that's mainly filled with people you've never met that you're done with your meal and are leaving
It is nothing like that. No one is forcing you to read or pay attention to those blog posts if you don’t want to, they’re there so the people who have come to expect something of those people know not to expect it anymore and don’t get worried or go looking.
peoples' true natures/intentions make more sense when you remove "because money" from the equation
but it's hard to see through it when your own life revolves around "because money"
“But why would you do that if you can’t make any money from it?”
It’s so difficult to overcome this tendency to dismiss ideas because they don’t lead to income, especially if you aren’t financially secure/have years of savings in the bank.
I propose "incentivize" be a 2026 front runner for curse word. It's just a gross concept these days.
Turns out when you live that life there’s a lot of people out there who do the same. It’s easy to forget there is a completely offline world if you’re online all the time. I spend most of my time with them. In fact I’m about to go out to lunch with four people (age range 29-55) who are similarly offline. We arranged lunch over the phone.
I’d go as far as saying that the online world, past essentials, is actually the minority.
Going offline is returning to normality.
I'm generally introverted but somehow prefer phone calls over the alternatives. I don't want to play the "lets discuss where to have lunch over the next two days, waiting for the person to reply / remember to reply" game many people using IM seems to like to play.
Instead, we do a two minute call, hear each other's voice, say everything that needs to be said, save the rest for when we meet. Done and done, then move on with the rest of life.
I don't see it as intrusive at all, even though again I'm introverted, instead I see it as something personal and efficient. Yes, it forces both of us to take time to talk to the other person, I don't necessarily see this as something negative, either way.
In it he talks about staying in the game, keeping strong voices advocating for good and positive change, and how stepping back, while a valid protection mechanism concedes the victory to whatever it is that's exhausting us.
https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4
You could code, go and run an Alpaca Farm for 10 years, give that up and probably within 6 months of study be ready to work as a coder again.
If I look around me today, I see stuff that sucks. I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
And it's natural to not want to try and build that, and instead just accept that [waves hands] all this is a sucky mess, and it's burning us out, and you go fix it, because I'm out.
But the best way to fix this is to roll up your sleeves and fix it. Maybe going and writing a religion zine is part of that, maybe it isn't. Maybe going and becoming a farmer fixes it, but it almost certainly doesn't.
We need more talented people building the future they want to see, not running away from the one they're being handed by a roomful of billionaire morons (who consider themselves geniuses).
Take it back. We've done it before. It's not easy, but the journey is where the stories are.
> I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.
This. AI has helped me realize some really engrossing and satisfying coding projects I may have otherwise not done. The flip side is that they wouldn't have worked if business-as-usual / do-same-but-faster-with-AI was imposed upon me.
Use of AI can be highly personal and symbiotic, just as it can also be dehumanizing and parasitic.
I look forward to new ways of working both individually and structurally that yet may emerge, and it will require creative elbow grease to materialize.
I also empathize with, and support, those that feel the experience has shifted beyond something they care about, enjoy, or want to participate in. As I'm sure we all do, I have very good friends who lead very different lives from me. AI can be seen negatively as a wedge, or perhaps more positively as a tech/pasttime/activity that we yield in unique ways, making (keeping!) unique in the process.
That's just nonsense. They sucked at only one thing: they couldn't extract money from users on an industrial scale. I'll take "suck" UX over modern social/ad-driven crap any time of the day.
Protocols going to keep on trucking regardless of whether Twitter, IG, Facebook go up/down/sideways.
Personally I’m betting that we will see a major comeback in local radio and print media, as global network effects regress local with collective trust.
Sure, I will still use internet and AI professionally, because they are paying me to do it, but it will be just a tool.
Still, it works for me. I use the things I make and I just don't really share them any more, and that's enough for me. I don't feel like throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quitting "the Internet".
If you look you can even find research arriving at the conclusion that non-anonymous posts tend to be more toxic.