I need to write a zoology paper on bugs

All search results are for pest control businesses or are AI generated garbage that have wrong information.

Yes, the internet always had problems, but I cannot stress how much worse it has gotten for information over the last ten years.

I used to be able to search a species and get scientific papers or at least articles that referenced scientific papers in the results. None of that anymore. All search results are for someone trying to sell you something, and articles are regurgitated AI monstrosities that waffle on with no real information and no references. If your search even manages to direct you to news articles every news site will have identical, poorly written tabloid hidden behind a paywall. All of it useless for even the most basic academic research.

I literally can't do my job if every search result for species identification is behind a paywall, or an AI generated image of a bug that doesn't really exist.

It's no longer the information age. But not because of Trumpism and other things liberal whine about, it's because capitalism has hollowed out the internet into a husk of what it was meant to be.

I literally had to go and buy an expensive field guide from a museum to finish this paper. I haven't had to do that before.

  • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Yes. I too feel this every day, as someone who witnessed the birth, growth, and apparently the zenith of the internet, i know it in my bones that you are right. I know I'm waxing poetic, but i can't help it when i remember the early days. i ran through its fields and loved them all, the weird corners you could find. I knew my way like a child knows the woods behind their house, and it is different. Gone. It's just a gut sensation, impossible to express in words to those who didn't experience it. It's beyond my ability to encapsulate the feeling i have of loss from it's passing, and of knowing just how much has been lost.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
      ·
      7 months ago

      i ran through its fields and loved them all,

      Everywhere is concrete suburbia now and we're lucky to see a tree or a patch of greenery.

      • Dessa [she/her]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Look up historical maps of your city and compare the beforw and after of when the interstate highway got built. This has ruined my life