05 ‣ Are you tired of the Internet?; The nostalgia and fatigue of everything digital
Lately (and I have to add, ironically) all my algos (tiktok, yt, insta) have been recommending me content about how offline is the new sexy. A luxury only some of us can afford – a status/class indicator.
Having been just as old as the mainstreamization of the internet / consumer web (1995), I feel like I'm watching the rise and fall of the internet * okay, this sounds a bit dramatic *. The memories of my first encounters with digital stuff in late 90s/early 00s are resurfacing nowadays when I see so much internet/tech nostalgia content. Suddenly we muse over custom winamp skins, DVD menus, flip-phones. Was design/tech better two-three decades ago?
And the internet/tech scene now? People are still creative of course. I still see amazing projects out there. But the web and all the good stuff in it feels... polluted (some studies call it digital plastic – check out this video for a summary).
"Digital plastic is, like its physical counterpart, synthetic, ubiquitous, helpful and potentially toxic." (Roe et al., 2025 (arXiv:2502.08249))
Non-sensical slop videos (with a subway-surfer gameplay on the side, because our attention spans have gotten so bad), polarizing rage-bait debate videos, mass migrations from once popular apps, humans getting into parasocial relationships with AIs as lovers or therapists (hey, a new take on attachment theory). It feels tiring to be on the internet. *Wow, even writing this made me feel annoyed and I literally moved my phone to the other side of the room.* The enshittification of products and services is so bad, Norway's government made an infomercial about it.
...Even though we optimised everything. As the good designers/developers we are, we made everything easier to use, we removed friction. More UX, because we should be user-centric. Easier than ever for people to pay, subscribe, engage with any product. But did it help, if we ended up at where we are now?
So, what's the vibe now? I see myself reaching for less convenient tech (wired headphones, dumbing down my phone, getting into slow media, prioritizing using AI for learning and not for finding shortcuts). I crave creating art that looks a bit otherworldly and imperfect/ugly-ish, instead of something that looks polished and palatable. I see my friends, who work in tech, dream about farm life, wanting to be more disconnected.
Can indie web alternatives offer the meaningful connections we're looking for, without selling us out? For now, I found Cara, a portfolio & artist social media platform that are very strict on their boundaries on genAI:
"1) We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation.
2.) In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily."
I have been struggling to finish this article for multiple days now. How to conclude all of this? It's not healthy to go all doomsday-y, but neither it is to ignore what's going on. Maybe the best thing to do at this moment is to look into more alternatives to big tech, and more cozy spaces on the web. I'll look into that in the next edition of the newsletter ❤️
I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition – drop me a line and let's chat. Got a friend who you know would geek out on content like this? Consider forwarding this article to them 💌
design vibes,
Kinga ✻