The Other Internet
robinrendle.com
robinrendle.com
But it's a tough, tough sell. For a business owner who sees the internet as just a tool their business uses, the state of the internet isn't their concern. It can even feel a bit like a black box to some people, with online customers being about as sentient as NPCs in their minds. I once had a client who was sending an email list marketing emails -twice a day-. Every time he did it, he saw a handful of sales, so he would just do it again, get a handful more. How people felt about the emails didn't even cross his mind.
I [briefly] worked with an entrepreneur like your client. It was all about collecting his leads and getting a fraction of them to pay. To him, the Internet was nothing but a "channel" full of human wallets that you suck money through. He even had all these physical euphemisms he used to describe his actions against his customers. We'll hit them with a popup and then convert them. Our backend will blast them with E-mail marketing and harvest some more through our partners. Oh, no! Regulation! I guess we need to consent them now so we can blast them more and hit them with another newsletter. Same "the Internet is full of NPCs to exploit" mindset. I didn't last and felt like I needed a week-long bleach shower after parting ways.
Or if you do it'll just change their tack from “we think you might want X, have a look at our X” to “we hear you don't want X, but let us tell you about our X and see if we can't change your mind”.
Me: How was your weekend?
Her: Really annoying. I want out to the neighborhood bar with my girlfriend and this guy kept hitting on me.
Me: Did you tell him that the girl you were with is your girlfriend and that you're not interested in guys?
Her: Oh hell no! If I do that, then it becomes a challenge for them and they want to prove to me they can convert me to being straight.
Me: ...
I mean has this ever worked in the history of humanity?
That's the internet, that freedom includes a lot of people being free to do what they want with their site. It was that way in the "good old days" too. Just that then eCommerce and other tools were not as available.
Often in other discussions where I hear folks bemoan how "not everything has to be an app". I agree, but it's also rando company who paid for their site, their app... to be an app. They're really not interested in the rando guy's opinion on how his site should be devolved who isn't buying from him anyway.
I do what I can to shepherd people I work with away from annoying things, but in the end it is their site.
I'd be more interested if the author gave clear examples of where this works in today's internet, because saying you are part of the Geocities or Neopets forums side of the internet is like the old man yelling on his lawn lamenting how much better things were when he was young.
I have no interest in using the internet for that; I bought a dead tree specifically to avoid my computer for a minute.
(Of course adblocker is a must... But living without adblocker on today's web is like walking barefoot in NY)
> Whenever I tell civilians that I’m a web designer I get the sense that they place me in that other category
It's hurtful when institutions, ideals and identities that you've aligned yourself with turn rotten, and sully you by implication. I went through a patch of never telling anyone I once worked at BBC, even though it's a great institution and I loved my work and colleagues there, because who would leave you alone with their kids!? Recently I've stopped saying I'm a "computer" scientist/techie except to other techies. Random strangers at parties just assume you're up to something nefarious. A writer maybe, who happens to be a computer guy. I get most warmth and connection from identifying as a "hacker". Most people then immediately raise the ethical question of whose "side" I am on. The good guys, of course. I feel for web designers, because I don't see much good left about the modern "web" to stand up for.
1. I'm a web dev (I say programmer unless they ask specifics).
2. I went to a bootcamp.
3. My age.
Even technical folks, other programmers, make too many assumptions.
Even other web devs who work at company X and can't imagine doing anything outside their processes are a pain to talk to.
Can't hide that. I have noticeably gray hair, and a few sags and bags. I look my age.
That brings on a huge prejudice, from my fellow travelers in tech. Despite being very respectful of women, people of color, gender identification, etc., they have absolutely no hesitation in calling me "OK boomer," and assuming that I don't have any idea of what I'm doing, in today's tech scene.
It used to absolutely infuriate me, but I've learned to accept it, as I am no longer looking for work, and have come to realize that I'm just not wanted. I won't go, where I'm not wanted. I stopped attending meetups, because I was getting tired of the "circle of avoidance," and people (even other "boomers") avoiding eye contact, etc.
Just for the record, I work harder, these days, than I ever did, and I learn something new every day.
Otherwise, I have plenty of hooks for others to sneer at, and I've had them all my career (I started as a self-taught EE, and have been self-taught for over 30 years, in software -that is "even worse" than a bootcamp; I'm also very open, friendly, and non-competitive, which elicits contempt).
Also, for the record, I believe in Integrity, Honor, Honesty, Kindness, and Open-mindedness, which also elicits contempt. People think Honorable folks are stupid and naive.
They don't assume that. They fear that you do. Today's "tech scene" is very much "just keep moving and don't ask any awkward questions." Old people bring inconveniences like wisdom, depth of knowledge and experience of how things can go wrong, caution and so on. That's not welcome at the kids party.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a...
"...disgusted with the values then and what it meant to be a man - a successful man - but where else was I going to go? ... The rage I felt over what was being extolled as success."
Tones of Palahniuk maybe. Inside every Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman is a painfully socialised, sublimated Zuckerberg that could burst out in moment of weakness.
Say what you will about the banks, at least they're the evil people know, I guess.
I remember staring in disbelief as the same Canter & Siegel spam showed up in every single Usenet newsgroup to which I was subscribed, and I remember the firestorm of repercussions, little realizing at the time that the spam was the new normal, and the outrage would over time get lost in the noise.
I remember enthusiastically making my own personal web site, my own little contribution to the "old" internet, and how happy I was to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a single static banner ad - at the top of my site.
I remember Facebook being mostly about friends keeping in touch, and posting life events and cute pictures of the kids.
The "old" internet went away in stages. Or more correctly, got drowned out. It was maybe 1% of the size of the current internet, and if you look hard enough it's probably mostly still there... just drowned out by 99% that is noise.
This is something that I really forgot, but now that you mention...
Worth reading 'What is the Small Web?'[0]
It's worth having your own little corner of the Internet that isn't social media, but a site you own and maintain with care, a labor of love, so to speak. And you have full control over it. You can't get 'suspended' for sharing an edgy meme.
I was talking about Facebook's dreaded 'Community Standards' here, to be specific. I've had content censored that I acquired from Facebook itself, and the original post where I got it from wasn't taken down from Facebook. Such hypocrisy.
I've done this enough times that Facebook threatened to permaban me from their platform. So I run my little corner of the net where I can post what I want (within reason). By 'Edgy meme' I mean something that a behemoth like Facebook deems censorable.
You could host via IP only and then control a separate, static domain that has your most recent IP. Not sure ISPs are allowed to drop customers for edgy chat. I would hope they are seen as a utility in that instance.
Then you just buy a domain for 10 years in advance and you're set. 10 years is a long time in tech and is plenty of time to produce meaningful content that makes a dent.
[1] https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-s...
But traditionally your statement is why common carrier status has existed.
Even without the stronger protection of common carrier laws providers further down the stack are much less likely to take action against you. The difference in probabilities matters even though when it isn't as strong as clear protection under the law.
With hundreds of millions of websites, you absolutely need search capabilities like Google (at least how it was in its early days) in order to find relevant information. The problem of course, is that the search sites are run by algorithms that attempt to direct your search based on criteria that is often the opposite of what you desire.
It is definitely a 'Centralized vs Decentralized' situation. The Internet was originally designed to be a decentralized structure where every site was a pure 'peer-to-peer' connection where it was so easy to jump from place to place without being re-routed to the central players. Now all the big sites like Facebook are designed to be walled-gardens that want to control everything you see.
I don’t think most people even know how to search for websites anymore that are not blessed by algorithms. Manual search skills have atrophied. The concept of websites having a dedicated section of links to similar sites of interest is extinct, perhaps even penalized by big search engines. Only a small subset of users still share hidden gems amongst themselves, speaking in hushed tones. Purveyors of the old web.
There was a ton of crap. There are many, many more tons of crap today. Tik Tok will practically mainline it into your veins. Instagram and other social media sites exist for any other media types you might want. You don't need to search for it; the feeds will hand it to you. But I don't think of that as any worse than "link rings".
The big aggregators may be those "same popular web sites" but the content is provided by the users, same as on any geocities site. They've just abstracted out the content management parts, so that the creators of that random crap can create random crap.
I hear this a lot on Hacker News, and I can't help but wonder how much of it is "I loved the days when everybody on the Internet had to create their own web site, so their tastes were similar to mine because I'm also the sort of person with the skills and interest in creating my own web site." And if so, I understand why people on Hacker News might find that appealing, though I personally appreciate the greater breadth of available content now.
Search is ultimately the tool that ties the internet together; after all, you can't consume content that you can't find in the first place. But in the modern, corporation-first internet, Google is highly incentivized to not surface independent websites, for a variety of reasons:
* Websites run Google ads, so they don't punish sites that run tons of ads, as a user-focused search engine might.
* Large, well-known websites are safe to surface to the top. Surfacing the "wrong" site for a highly political topic could get Google in trouble.[0]
* ... and frankly, most users are looking for these sites anyway. There's way more teenagers and non-techies using Google for a quick answer on a cell phone than there are people trying to find interesting independent blogs.
* For-profit sites are more likely to invest in SEO than a small, for-passion website.
All this adds up to an independent internet that's there, but mostly hidden.
I honestly think in the too-near future we'll see the independent internet relegated to Usenet status. Major websites and other businesses (who are willing to pay a fee/have legal contact info) can opt-in to be part of an ISP's internet package, and anything outside will be inaccessible. The recent KiwiFarms debacle makes me think this is coming sooner than we think, as this is a very easy way to keep "harmful" content inaccessible.
[0] This is why Google image search is so incredibly useless now; there was a media blitz a few years after its release where journalists found it would give racist responses with certain pictures of Black people. It's safer for Google to just make it so general that it's basically worthless.
You have to use something else entirely (like Wiby) to find the perfectly usable, valuable work that isn’t on a major platform. It /may as well/ be Usenet for how available it is.
Also really doubtful the people who leave using the webring were going to stay around anyway. It's probably better to work on building a compelling website than to turn it into a maze with no exits. Making people feel trapped is not going to make them want to come back.
The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g AirBnB) but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.). Do you get cash for your time? Sure. But the opportunity costs are large.
I apologize I don't have a clear reference, the research project was reported through JPMC Institute[1] but my memory is coming from conversations with Fiona Grieg and Chris Wheat who were working on this topic at the JPMCI.
[1] https://thebusinessjournal.com/why-the-gig-economy-may-not-b...
Looks like a large unemployment/underemployment (of people) problem.
You can still find the old weird Web. You just have to steer left when the road sign says "Big Corporate Web, this way ===>"
The bit where he breaks down how these ghost writers actually need to write 1000 an hour to make a living shows how absurd and broken it all is.
The constant inundation with scams coupled with a mix of kayfabe personalities who claim to believe in something while playing the game of trying to hype up stuff for their "marks" is absolutely incredible.
I'm not watching an hour-long YouTube video if he hook is some flavor of "Yep, right there a half step above chattel slavery, we have... writing 1,000 words a day."
Does this aggressive mindset help when the hustling targets the very core of human nature? Instead of bringing back the old, why not start looking for something new that thrives in that environment?
If everything is wholesome, it's meaningless. All that hustling gives value to 'the other' internet. Now, people who participate have chosen to do so.
that would be progress. right now they see the web as an "infinite source of knowledge" and proceed to google something and click an amazon link on the page purporting to have the answer.
[0] https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/in-praise-of-shadows/
I’m aware that the author is engaged in a project that is sort of like an alternative face for the web. It’s a nice step forward.