The old internet was weird. You found a forum about tractors, fountain pens, obscure Roman aqueducts, or repairing old diesel engines. You got to know the regulars. The point wasn’t about reach. The point was that Bob from Nebraska knew more about injector pumps than anybody else alive. The internet gave you access to Bob.
These days platforms optimize for time on site, but the game is different. A platform does not make any cash if you’re talking to some longwinded “expert” about a widget that went out of production in 1975.
Communities accumulated knowledge. A good forum thread from 2008 can still solve your problem today. But, like Woody from Toy Story, they’re discarded. People gathered around a thing. The “thing” mattered more than an individual’s opinion. Today the exercise is more performative.
In the old days people had an identity, not a follower count. The guy who knew irrigation systems, the woman who knew roses, the bloke who rebuilt old mustangs; those people became known for competence. YouTube was the video based “make & Do” channel, not a reactions portal. Blogs were written by people, not just Chat GPT.
People are not leaving social media because they dislike being social. They’re leaving because they’re hungry for context. The old tractor forum had context. The amateur radio club had context. A cycling group has context. You know why everyone is there.
Now people are thrown into algorithmic soup. A waste management expert, a celebrity, a political activist, a bot farm, an AI account, a cryptocurrency evangelist and a bloke arguing about ancient aqueducts all occupy the same feed.
Before you think this post is just about “old” stuff, the point is different. The AI could be the best thing to happen to the internet, ever. It is unmatched at filtering, sifting and reading data in real-time. It understands nuance and can translate an entire encyclopedia in seconds, bridging gaps between languages, cultures and races. But, instead it is used as a “chat bot,” to simulate the social interactions that brought value to the cyber space in the first place.
The human brain wasn’t built for that.
