A study on the internet from a member of Gen Z:
When did the internet lose its cool?
(It did, btw)
To answer that, lets go back in time. The early internet felt optimistic. It was full of blogs, hobbyists, and strange little communities. Geeks of all kinds creating things because they could. There was a quiet sense of technofuturism to it. The web felt like the beginning of something.
Over time, it became ordinary. Everything today has microtransactions, needs an app, which needs an account, which needs a password reset email you’ll never find. The web is a necessity, a piece of infrastructure. And somehow, despite being updated constantly, all this development is still inconvenient. That’s not cool.
Not to mention the state of the world, and how we’re all so hyperaware of every conflict. No one likes their phones blasting news about the end of humanity. Still everyone is addicted. The youth are cynical, wars are happening, the climate is rotting, and humanity is doomed.
I saw a short the other day that joked about how we use reality to escape the internet and not the other way around. Pretty funny, right . . .
Just think about it
The early internet:
Anonymous
Weird
A frontier (the wild west of the internet era)
Decentralized
Today's internet:
Tracked (not anonymous)
Branded and polarized
Regulated, it's been neutered
Not to mention the corporations taking over. . .
In my research on this topic, I found that a frightening amount of money goes into understanding and controlling behaviors. We are the product being sold when it comes to social media, and corporations genuinely want us addicted—it's business.
So we aren't anonymous. Algorithms are intentionally addictive. Political organizations DO want to control us through the media. There ARE powerful corporations and political bodies that track us and try to control us.
Today especially we see all sorts of insane news coming in and going out of the spotlight. It's too much to process moving too fast to understand and seems to be replaced by the next bad thing before anything can be done.
Tied to all of that bad news is psychological effects:
- Depression, anxiety, and mental illnesses are increasingly common
- Suicide rates reached an all time high in the last few years
- People become polarized via internet rabbit-holes
Going Mainstream
Furthermore, the internet stopped being counterculture and became the default. Every generation loves a little rebellion, so once something goes fully mainstream the charm fades.
The internet used to feel like a weird hidden world. Now it’s just our reality. And on it, everything is optimized, algorithmic, and a little bit MrBeastified. We see bigger thumbnails, louder personalities, a constant spectacle.
Then COVID accelerated the whole process. Work moved online. School moved online. Socializing moved online. News consumption spiked and screen time exploded. For a lot of people, the internet stopped being optional. It became the only place life actually happened.
A revelation
1. The internet used to be an escape from reality. Now reality is an escape from the internet.
2. People have grown to hate the rise of algorithms, the corporate takeover of platforms, and the internet’s complete move into the mainstream. What used to feel messy and personal now feels managed and tracked. The internet lost its personality, became emotionally draining, and quietly started controlling billions of lives. When something becomes that dominant, people naturally start looking for an antidote. Right now, the counterculture isn’t another website or app. It’s stepping away from the screen entirely. It’s nature, real people, and real life.
The internet has lost it's cool. Enough said?
Now comes the good part.
The natural world outside the internet never actually went anywhere. Lately it feels like culture is starting to remember that. Going outside, talking to people, doing things that don’t leave a digital trace. These are starting to feel novel again. The internet may be a necessary toxin in life, but we can redefine our relationship with it. I want to encourage you to keep thinking for yourself and pushing against the grain. Go touch some grass.
It’s a big, beautiful world out there after all :)
