The Modern Internet is a Desolate Wasteland

I saw this video just now, which inspired me to write this blog. Ethan touched on some points that I've been thinking for a while.

Recently, I've decided to quit most sources of instant gratification: Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, alcohol, caffeine, and other stuff. I won't touch on the substance cessation, as those are pretty self-explanatory. Before I make the points I want to make, I'll just go over why I quit Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit in particular.

Instagram, like the next few social media sites I'll discuss, is a black hole of critical thinking and time. Reels, Meta's attempt at capitalizing on the success of TikTok, was the primary time-waster for me up until I deleted the app not too long ago. With all these new short-form video services comes an algorithm which learns what content keeps you on the platform for as long as possible.

Unfortunately for me, the content that was always pushed to me was right-wing ragebait, mindless brainrot memes, and otherwise normal and wholesome content where the comments were full of the most vile human scum on the planet, making pedophilic, ableist, racist, and transphobic jokes and comments. I stayed on the platform because this content kept my attention. 

The ragebait kept me on because I got to fulfill my ego because of how much more correct I am than the person making the video. The brainrot memes kept me on because they scratched an itch of borderline satirical content that I could laugh at and send to my friends, while again stroking my ego because I'm the one who actually "gets" this content. The normal videos with fascist comments kept me on because, like the ragebait, I got to observe just how incorrect and horrifying those commenters are, while stroking my ego yet again by knowing in my head that I am so much better than these people for knowing how wrong they are.

Without even getting into the quality of the content I was consuming, or the other varieties of content pushed into my feed, already there's a common thread in all this garbage: the algorithm was successful in keeping me engaged by stroking my ego over and over. I would watch this content for hours on end, sometimes to force time to go by quicker, as my current situation in life isn't very ideal, adding yet another aspect to this addiction: the algorithm was perfectly tailored to provide an outlet for my frustrations. I can guarantee that I wouldn't have a psychological "need" for this content if I lived a good and happy life outside the internet. In that sense, Instagram exploited my mental health to keep me engaged, providing an unhealthy coping mechanism to dissociate from the world around me including my own insecurities, while simultaneously stroking my ego artificially. In a sense, it was like a drug that got me to forget about everything I didn't like about my life, while working against all attempts at fixing it.

TikTok was much easier to quit than Reels, because while the algorithm was similarly suited to my preferences at the time, I noticed fairly quickly that 90% of the videos I consumed were just ads for cheap Chinese e-waste to buy on the TikTok Shop. I can't say much about TikTok because, in comparison, I barely even used it in the first place. I pretty much exclusively downloaded the app to see if there was anything there that would keep me more up-to-date with trends than on Reels.

I had quit Reddit several weeks prior to quitting Instagram for some of the same reasons. Mainly because of the ragebait and political aspects of it. Reddit doesn't have an algorithm in the same way that Instagram or TikTok does. It's not as personalized as other platforms. While you can tailor your front page by following subreddits, the algorithm which shows you content is basically universal. Because of that, you can go on r/popular or r/all and see the same content everyone else on the site will see. However, the content that was frequently elevated to the front page was uneducated political posts, ragebait from such subreddits as r/publicfreakout with often xenophobic comments, and relatively normal posts with the stereotypical redditor comments (uneducated political takes, arguments over nothing, self-righteous grandstanding, virtue signaling, etc.). 

One example that stands out to me was when I saw a white European woman (I forget which country) being harassed by a man with dark skin (I don't know where from) and every highly-voted comment spewed the most violent anti-migrant vitriol, describing all these migrants as subhuman scum who shouldn't be allowed into their pure country. In essence, pure white supremacy, being spewed by Redditors under the thin veneer of social justice. Essentially, because this man was brown and conservative, the Redditors decided it was justified to cast all the people of his country as hateful idiots, seeing it fit to deport all these undesirables and even assault them. And if these comments are just pure hateful bigotry, don't even get me started on what these Redditors have to say about the Romani people.

The function of these posts in my brain was similar to that of Instagram. I got to stroke my ego by being so much more correct than the comments I saw. The main difference is that, with Reddit being more suited to discussion in the comments with its threads, I had in the past engaged with these people to try and get my ideas to be accepted. I'm sure you can guess how many times I have changed someone's mind through these methods (0). I have deleted all my reddit accounts except for one I have just to be able to access the site through a VPN because there is often stuff I specifically want to see from Reddit that answers a question I have. Rarely, I'll browse a specific subreddit, but generally I don't access Reddit for its front page or to find new content.

So why bring all this up? I think in my experience, I have finally come to the realization that not only is the content that social media pushes to you extremely myopic and inflammatory, it's sedating. By constantly engaging with social media, I have subjected myself to countless hours of garbage that served primarily to dull my critical thinking, both towards myself and towards society in general. By creating people who lack introspection and the ability to criticize, social media companies serve an important role as essentially a Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy-style orb of confusion, but on a societal scale. I'll put it in plain English: by inundating yourself with all this mindless and hateful content, you are made to be more subservient to the status quo, both societally and in your own personal life.

Where does this leave us? Well, short of economic collapse or social revolution, the direction tech companies are going with social media will continue to be upheld. They will continue to use your soul as a source of profit by devoting yourself to the mindless consumption of myopic TikToks and ads. I am very thankful at this point that there are enough people who have gotten sick of this new iteration of the internet that sites such as spacehey and neocities are gaining popularity, not only among nostalgic millenials, but zoomers and even gen alphas who don't want to keep consuming mindlessly.

Societal change is extremely difficult, and as of yet there doesn't seem to be any kind of movement to remove the monstrous power tech companies have. As of yet, the only possible short-term change you can make right now is in your individual consumption habits. I highly encourage you to delete these social media applications from your phone or otherwise make it much more difficult to access them mindlessly, and instead try to set yourself up to consume social media more actively, negating the algorithm-driven nonsense pushed to you by datacenters.

Here's a short list of websites and YouTube videos you may be interested in checking out if you resonated with the last paragraph. Shoutout Jade Raccoon for sharing the cooler internet video :3