Somehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture.
1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet.
2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong)
The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
The "follower" internet has somehow instilled the notion that making a comment is the same as "doing something". It is not.
Someone has done something here. If you want to comment, try to develop the thought, not critique. Help build something.
> The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
Yes, and no. I think a problem is critique in the form of action. There are movements such as the indie web (e.g. Neocities, Nekoweb, Agoraroad) that long for the old web in their nostalgia and form a counter-movement to the current state of the web. The websites and communities that emerge from this are more or less an imitation of the websites of the late 90s and early 2000s. My problem with this is that the indie web primarily defines itself by simply being the opposite of the web 2.0. It exists primarily as a counterculture, in which “counter” is more important part than "culture". This movement is cynical in that a better future for the internet and the web no longer seems possible, and the only way out is to escape into a nostalgically romanticized past. For me, this is more of a confirmation of the Dead Internet Theory than of the Alive Internet Theory.
I think Indiweb is more a cultural way of building tech and not only an opposition to current trends. As a dev I see indiweb in similar veins as "selfhosted vs cloud" or "Microservices vs Monolith"
I completely agree. This is cool and fun and interesting, and dares to be unique. That’s what the Internet should be. It’s legitimately dangerous how reliant so many people are on computers and the Internet for entertainment, information, and their livelihoods almost entirely as passive consumers or users.
We need to bring back something like the MySpace era, I think.
I think it’s underrated how much devices, tools, and a handful of companies contribute to the current stage. Everybody wants to monetize consumers’ inability to do things on their own, developers’ potential to make money with their product and get locked in ($$$), and funnel people into things. But at the same time, that’s pretty much the only way anybody has been able to consistently get paid and keep up with technology by making software. It’s just very hard to get unstuck when your primary computer is a phone that is basically impossible to use as anything but a pacifier for the mind, and every platform wants to keep you from discovering anything outside of it.
I’m hopeful that better tools, AI, open source, and normalizing rewarding helpful people and things on the Internet will bring us back to what it could have been. Why is there literally nowhere to go anymore that doesn’t feel abandoned or like marketing slop? Maybe we’ll have to login with real names to access what comes after that, but maybe it won’t be so bad if we get to decide for ourselves how/what we do with it.
One interesting thing from the arts is that new works are often part of an ongoing generational argument. Two examples which come to mind are Notes from Underground and the hilarious Duchamp urinal.
I think this form of critique - active, costly, valuable in itself, and barely even a critique at all - is really nice.
> You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
Go back to internet in 1999... There weren't a lot of text boxes to type into that got your content out. It required a bit of work (html, so not a lot) to get something out there!
Much like an amusement park with a sign that says "You must be at least this tall ----" the old internet was "You must be at least this smart/motivated".
Discoverability was also harder. Much much harder. Even if you did publish it might not ever be found, or seen, or used.
Today typing in a text box, and adding to a conversation (like this one) that someone else is going to read changed where the bar is.
To that end there are still plenty of focused communities that are less tribal, less emotional, than your average social media post. These remain great sources of not only information but community as well.
I find the places focused around work (like HN) and my hobbies to be the most interesting and engaging -- less "critical" and more thoughtful.
> The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique.
I don't see the connection. Critiques are also content.
The issue is not related to the type of content, but to what is producing it. Dead Internet is the (proven) idea that most content on the internet is produced and consumed by machines, not humans.
Although being stuck at loading something was reminiscent of my early internet experience in a way, the site’s backend seems to be rate-limited and unable to serve. Will check back later!
I thought it was cool, the UIs of the past evoke lost memories of past eras. But sadly, the images glitched out and stopped displaying after I manually changed the date. Probably due to my internet connection haha
I managed to brave the cruel and punishing color changes long enough to click the button and was rewarded with an interesting session of nostalgia and exploration.
> alive internet theory is a séance with this living internet. Resurrecting tens of millions of digital artifacts from the Internet Archive, visitors are immersed in a relentless barrage of human expression as they travel through the life of the web as we created it—every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
I like this a lot. It sort of turns internet history into a lava lamp.
For those struggling with the styling on the splash page, the slider at the top lets you pick an era and stick with it.
I agree that "the internet will always be filled with real people: looking for each other". The question is will they be able to successfully find each other, and how can they be sure they have?
Presumably, the value in finding each other will be the key to determining you have found someone real. If you literally can't tell the difference, then what does it matter? But many of us believe that there are important differences, that do matter, and that the dead internet can never truly provide.
by using the internet or by using a website? if we included digital telephone would the answer be getting their phone number? i wish hosting a website was as easy as hosting a phone call.
Isn't the fact that most of the material comes from the Internet Archive somewhat a refutation of the Alive Internet Theory, which is that the internet is alive now, as opposed to some past archived point in time? (yes, I know the IA archives contemporary materials, but the purpose and majority of the content are from the past)
I like the sentiment but how will you know as time goes on that the things were uploaded or created by real humans? The early things yes, but as I got closer to now I was less sure, which kind of disproves the alive internet theory.
Uh, definitely NSFW. Did not expect to see porn and other questionable graphic material. I mean, that is what I remember from the "alive internet", so it's not wrong perhaps, but maybe should be flagged as such.
Awful site, this is just a strawman. The dead Internet theory does not claim that real people do not upload things to the Internet, there was never any doubt about that.
The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory" is or what it claims.
>every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos. Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims.
Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that most users of the Internet are consumers who mostly read discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who are actively participating are then engaged by "bots", supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating infighting.
If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by any amount of uploaded archive material.
people forget that even before LLMs, the Internet was already shit. a third was SEO slop by ESL thirdworlders, another third - a kulturkampf battlefield. looking for the good parts had never been easy.
Somehow, reading the comments made something CLICK for me about how passive and reactive we have all become in this culture.
1. The issue is real. Not sure it is articulated but I related to live vs dead internet.
2. The comments (only 10 as of now) are mostly critiques. (no javascript, call to action, style, theory is wrong)
The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
The "follower" internet has somehow instilled the notion that making a comment is the same as "doing something". It is not.
Someone has done something here. If you want to comment, try to develop the thought, not critique. Help build something.
> The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
Yes, and no. I think a problem is critique in the form of action. There are movements such as the indie web (e.g. Neocities, Nekoweb, Agoraroad) that long for the old web in their nostalgia and form a counter-movement to the current state of the web. The websites and communities that emerge from this are more or less an imitation of the websites of the late 90s and early 2000s. My problem with this is that the indie web primarily defines itself by simply being the opposite of the web 2.0. It exists primarily as a counterculture, in which “counter” is more important part than "culture". This movement is cynical in that a better future for the internet and the web no longer seems possible, and the only way out is to escape into a nostalgically romanticized past. For me, this is more of a confirmation of the Dead Internet Theory than of the Alive Internet Theory.
I think Indiweb is more a cultural way of building tech and not only an opposition to current trends. As a dev I see indiweb in similar veins as "selfhosted vs cloud" or "Microservices vs Monolith"
Good critique to the comments!
I completely agree. This is cool and fun and interesting, and dares to be unique. That’s what the Internet should be. It’s legitimately dangerous how reliant so many people are on computers and the Internet for entertainment, information, and their livelihoods almost entirely as passive consumers or users.
We need to bring back something like the MySpace era, I think.
I think it’s underrated how much devices, tools, and a handful of companies contribute to the current stage. Everybody wants to monetize consumers’ inability to do things on their own, developers’ potential to make money with their product and get locked in ($$$), and funnel people into things. But at the same time, that’s pretty much the only way anybody has been able to consistently get paid and keep up with technology by making software. It’s just very hard to get unstuck when your primary computer is a phone that is basically impossible to use as anything but a pacifier for the mind, and every platform wants to keep you from discovering anything outside of it.
I’m hopeful that better tools, AI, open source, and normalizing rewarding helpful people and things on the Internet will bring us back to what it could have been. Why is there literally nowhere to go anymore that doesn’t feel abandoned or like marketing slop? Maybe we’ll have to login with real names to access what comes after that, but maybe it won’t be so bad if we get to decide for ourselves how/what we do with it.
One interesting thing from the arts is that new works are often part of an ongoing generational argument. Two examples which come to mind are Notes from Underground and the hilarious Duchamp urinal.
I think this form of critique - active, costly, valuable in itself, and barely even a critique at all - is really nice.
> You want a live internet? Don't critique. If you want a no javascript version make one. If you have a better solution do it. If you have insight into the problem share it.
Go back to internet in 1999... There weren't a lot of text boxes to type into that got your content out. It required a bit of work (html, so not a lot) to get something out there!
Much like an amusement park with a sign that says "You must be at least this tall ----" the old internet was "You must be at least this smart/motivated".
Discoverability was also harder. Much much harder. Even if you did publish it might not ever be found, or seen, or used.
Today typing in a text box, and adding to a conversation (like this one) that someone else is going to read changed where the bar is.
To that end there are still plenty of focused communities that are less tribal, less emotional, than your average social media post. These remain great sources of not only information but community as well.
I find the places focused around work (like HN) and my hobbies to be the most interesting and engaging -- less "critical" and more thoughtful.
Allow me to criticise your criticism...
> The CLICK: "Critiques kill". You want a live internet? Don't critique.
I don't see the connection. Critiques are also content.
The issue is not related to the type of content, but to what is producing it. Dead Internet is the (proven) idea that most content on the internet is produced and consumed by machines, not humans.
Yes.
Critiques, discourse, discussion..these are all things that make the internet "real".
> This website has been temporarily rate limited
Although being stuck at loading something was reminiscent of my early internet experience in a way, the site’s backend seems to be rate-limited and unable to serve. Will check back later!
The constant re-styling of the page was annoying enough to make me close the tab and not come back.
I thought it was cool, the UIs of the past evoke lost memories of past eras. But sadly, the images glitched out and stopped displaying after I manually changed the date. Probably due to my internet connection haha
I managed to brave the cruel and punishing color changes long enough to click the button and was rewarded with an interesting session of nostalgia and exploration.
i didn't even realise there was a button link to click. I thought the landing page was it. Let me go back..
Ahh yeah, the button is below the fold on mobile! Bad design, there.
I liked the idea but it made it impossible to read the explanation of the experience.
I did the same and did not even think about it until i read this!
> alive internet theory is a séance with this living internet. Resurrecting tens of millions of digital artifacts from the Internet Archive, visitors are immersed in a relentless barrage of human expression as they travel through the life of the web as we created it—every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
I like this a lot. It sort of turns internet history into a lava lamp.
For those struggling with the styling on the splash page, the slider at the top lets you pick an era and stick with it.
Seems more 'undead' than alive given the methodology.
I agree that "the internet will always be filled with real people: looking for each other". The question is will they be able to successfully find each other, and how can they be sure they have?
Presumably, the value in finding each other will be the key to determining you have found someone real. If you literally can't tell the difference, then what does it matter? But many of us believe that there are important differences, that do matter, and that the dead internet can never truly provide.
it depends if you want real connection. imagine if this reply was a video call. wave emoji
by using the internet or by using a website? if we included digital telephone would the answer be getting their phone number? i wish hosting a website was as easy as hosting a phone call.
I'm open to and interested in the thesis and discourse this website supposedly offers, but the medium forcefully expels me.
Perhaps there could be a static 1.0 version we can read or listen to?
edit: Okay, I get it now. It's an automatic aggregator! Only the style auto-change is egregious then, but the actual webapp is great!
another edit, sorry: The call-to-action button should be at the top, not the bottom. On mobile you have to scroll to see it and it can be missed.
Its a cool idea, just beware. Saw some dead kids and some NSFW among the otherwise interesting content.
Isn't the fact that most of the material comes from the Internet Archive somewhat a refutation of the Alive Internet Theory, which is that the internet is alive now, as opposed to some past archived point in time? (yes, I know the IA archives contemporary materials, but the purpose and majority of the content are from the past)
Algorithmic internet can be eventually filled with bots and AI. But when you curate your own follow list you are pretty much immune.
Not sure what it's meant to be, it grinds to a halt on my M2 -- if there was a message, it's lost.
Haven't read the rest of the site but I really enjoyed the way you present it using the slider with the prevalent styles of certain periods
That's exactly my kind of humor: the page "aliveitheorie" remains black because I'm not allowing a Java script.
Read my post history here (the fist post).
I like this, makes me wonder what a curated internet by a benevolent dictator could offer.
I like the sentiment but how will you know as time goes on that the things were uploaded or created by real humans? The early things yes, but as I got closer to now I was less sure, which kind of disproves the alive internet theory.
https://archive.org/details/TikTok-7272243823504313642
Uh, definitely NSFW. Did not expect to see porn and other questionable graphic material. I mean, that is what I remember from the "alive internet", so it's not wrong perhaps, but maybe should be flagged as such.
Pretty sure it reacts to your cookies.
Is it even more proof that the Internet is dead, that we are now in the Nostalgia Phase. Looking back fondly at what it once was.
This must be labeled NSFW.
Awful site, this is just a strawman. The dead Internet theory does not claim that real people do not upload things to the Internet, there was never any doubt about that.
The site has absolutely no grasp on what "dead Internet theory" is or what it claims.
>every image, video, song, and text uploaded by a real person on the web.
Which is then followed by a barage of mostly historical photos. Which is very weird, since these historical photos are certainly automatically uploaded from archives and are not some authentic individual expressions by individual Internet users, which makes the whole thing fully orthogonal to both claims.
Dead Internet theory in its original statement is the claim, that most users of the Internet are consumers who mostly read discussions, but do not participate. The small part of users who are actively participating are then engaged by "bots", supposedly to further certain agendas by the creators of the bots, like manufacturing a consensus or deliberately creating infighting.
If you just skim through the linked Wikipedia article you will immediately understand that this thesis can not be disproven by any amount of uploaded archive material.
people forget that even before LLMs, the Internet was already shit. a third was SEO slop by ESL thirdworlders, another third - a kulturkampf battlefield. looking for the good parts had never been easy.