All of the google results are articles that were obviously written by a machine and recommend the same ten most popular products. There are communities for every conceivable type of product on reddit, but they are all full of people saying things like "this $ 500 toaster is a pretty good starter, but you'll soon want to upgrade to this $ 1200 one, it has a much fuller set of features." I've had to resort to watching youtube videos, but even those are unreliable because they benefit from calling each product the best or worst ever.

I feel like it wasn't like this just five or ten years ago. Did things actually change, or am I just misremembering?

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The internet as a tool for information in general is barely functional. Ratings astroturfed into meaninglessness, articles entirely obscured by advertising to the point of site non-functionality, search engine optimization bending toward ad sales, destructive social media algorithms, automated IP and copyright systems designed to be abused, and on and on.

    If anyone needs me I'll be in the woods growing my beard and writing manifestos.

      • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I didn't know we had that emoji. Maybe the internet isn't completely worthless after all.

      • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Which is why both the capital and political classes have been trying to eradicate public libraries entirely for almost 50 years and the internet was the final great excuse - who needs a local library when they can just go on line!?

    • Janked [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      You are completely right, and it feels like it's happening with everything. Late Capitalism is running out of monopolies and avenues of profit, which is making things more condensed, weirder and more artificial, while also still completely failing to produce anything new.

      Numa numa and hamster dance are popular memes on TikTok right now. Hauntology is real.