I Suddenly Lost My Enthusiasm for Interneting

As someone who has spent years contributing to the digital noise (via blogging), working in the IT sector, and existing long enough to remember when “going online” meant hearing the tortured screams of a dial-up modem, I have to admit – I’ve lost my enthusiasm for interneting. And by interneting, I don’t mean in the technical arcane wizardry of network protocols, but in the old-school sense of surfing the web, discovering new ideas, and engaging in actual human interactions.

Something feels off. I don’t know if the Internet has always been this dystopian back alley of grifters and wannabe thought leaders, and I’m just now noticing, or if something fundamentally broke along the way.

I’m betting on the latter.

You see, the online promise used to be simple: meet strangers, stumble upon fascinating, handcrafted content made to inform – not squeeze you into a marketing funnel – engage in forums with people who actually responded like human beings, and get lost in beautifully written blog posts that didn’t feel like they were regurgitated from some clickbait sorcery content factory in a dark alley of the web.

And if you had your own website, the game plan was relatively clear: write great content, sprinkle it with some SEO fairy dust, and keep going till the right people found it.

Things drastically changed.

Now the Internet is a frenzied hellscape of video content optimized to harvest engagement metrics, where every interaction is a performance. Everything is short-form, because apparently, reading anything longer than a tweet is now considered an extreme sport.

Everyone online is either a self-declared millionaire guru hawking their 10-step success course, or a professional oversharer cataloging their psychological baggage in real time for validation points.

Discussions are decreasing. Fewer and fewer real people are commenting online. Apparently, everyone is too busy doomscrolling through their daily selection of 500 short-form videos.

Plus, blogs are unread and undiscoverable. Why? Because 1) the masses have their collective attention locked onto algorithmically juiced video content, and 2) good luck stumbling upon an independent blog that isn’t buried under an avalanche of AI-generated slop.

My theory is that the early internet pioneers – the geeks, the hobbyists, the people who built weird little corners of the web – grew up, got jobs, had kids, and simply walked away. What’s left is a new wave of hyper-ambitious hustlers, clout chasers, and digital snake oil salesmen who think “authenticity” is something you sell in an online course.

I left social media in 2019, but I never stopped using these platforms. I kept a few accounts to interact with people, exchange ideas, and stay connected with the creatively unhinged minds that made the Internet exciting. But now? Those people are either gone, or they’ve rebranded themselves as “experts” trying to sell me something.

And just when you think it can’t get worse, we are now aggressively ushering in the age of AI content generation, where the Internet will soon be an endless soup of machine-generated sludge.

Not only are people using AI to mass-produce a solid mediocre-type content. But soon, autonomous AI agents will be churning out their own blog posts, videos, or in plain words “content” that will be aimed at keeping us glued to the screen for as long as possible. All of this without a single human ever touching the keyboard.

What does this mean?

A once-thriving space built by real people, for real people, is turning into an AI-powered hall of mirrors, where chatbots converse with other chatbots. Where AI-generated influencers sell AI-generated products, and the rest of us are nothing more than spectators in a machine-run carnival.

Honestly, I don’t think we are ready for how depressing that’s all going to be. But the sad part is that it’s already depressing.

Here are my observations about why I think the Internet is broken. Not only for the people who use the Internet, but for people who actively participate in the production of content for the Internet.

Why Does The Internet Sucks?

I have a gnawing sense of apathy and resentment towards the current state of the Internet. All of it makes me want to scream, “I hate it!” But that’s just how I generally feel. Let me tell you why I feel like this…

1. The Flood of How-To Experts

First, we have the “oh, it is so easy” oasis run by the how-to experts.

Let me explain…

You have a vision about how you want your life to unfold? You have a particular problem you’re trying to solve in your life?

Worry not, there are a dozen experts standing in line, ready to sell you a premium package for your desired paradise.

And if you think that it’s going to be a lot of hard work, it won’t!

The self-proclaimed genius took the time to neatly package how you’ll get from miserable to joyful in a 27+ hour-long cinematography that is wrapped in a story-telling format. All of this giving you the feeling as if you are learning and doing something, while you’re actually being redirected to more and more resources that leave you more confused.

And what if you have questions? Or, if you don’t think that this is enough for the price of $1997 a year? Again, don’t worry. There is always a “community” of like-minded people that is an additional value add. A network of folks who have the same problems as you and are all regularly discussing how, despite their best effort using the supposedly magical ingredients provided by the expert, they can’t seem to find a way out of their chamber of misery. But since you’re now not alone in this bus of angst, the chat has turned into a contest of who has the biggest issues.

But there is even more!

You are introduced to a variety of ways to 11x your productivity through routines and checklists.

Experts tend to give us all sorts of rituals that will help us fix our broken lives. We typically have: daily morning routines, evening routines, night routines, cuddling routines, and routines about making routines.

If you think that this is way too overwhelming, it isn’t! The included checklists that typically sell $97 a pop are included for free and will dry out your printer and prime you to sit all day and fill boxes while thinking that you are making some sort of progress in your life.

I’ll explain why we keep falling for such types of nonsense below. But man, I am so freaking tired of entrepreneur gurus telling me how I can build a 7-figure business by working only 2 hours 20 minutes a day.

And this is not even the worst part. The worst part is that there are other people actually believing that what these “authority” figures say is feasible.

But if this was really so easy, why aren’t we all making millions of dollars a day?

The expertise of these online sages lies not in building businesses, but in toying with your emotions.

Modern gurus are nothing more than con artists who know how to manipulate emotions. How to use your problems as a selling point to give you a sense that you are moving closer to your desired lifestyle, while you are actually just getting pressured to buy even more content produced by them.

But that’s probably our fault. The people who get these programs. As the saying goes: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game!”

2. The Growth Hackers and Soon AI Domination

Next up, we have the growth hackers. Technically, they are part of the how-to experts camp above. Yet, they deserve independent treatment.

As a person creating content – not my preferred way to describe what I post on my site, but let’s roll with it – I’m quite familiar with the growth hackers and the SEO industry.

How could I not be!

For those of you who have never attempted to start a site, let me hit you up with the basics:

The Internet is nothing more than one giant landfill of stuff people post. Videos, articles, pictures, etc. It doesn’t matter. The general idea is that the content you’ll find online is created by actual people – people like you and me.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the word content for everything online. But when I say content, don’t just imagine written words on a page. Think of everything you see online – clips, PDFs, pictures, services, torrents, products, games, slideshows, etc.

So, online, creating content is relatively seamless. There are huge corporations that allow you to create content fast and easy.

For example, Shopify lets you launch an e-commerce website with the press of a few buttons. WordPress allows you to create a blog (and much more, but let’s stick to that). Instagram provides a stage for your narcissism.

Plainly, creating a digital garden that stores your content is relatively easy. Sure, obviously, there are things you need to learn, but overall it’s not that hard.

What is hard is other people finding your content.

A soccer mom with 3 kids can start a website in the afternoon thanks to the newest site builder apps. You can too – even if your closest interaction with code is standing next to a guy who knows JavaScript. But none of that matters if nobody finds your site, store, social media page, or whatever you’ve created.

Here’s where the growth bros enter the scene.

These people spend 10% of their time creating content and 90% figuring out how to shove it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

While this method is gradually fading (thanks to the ever-shifting whims of search engines), the core principle remains:

1. Step one: Optimize your content for Google.
2. Step two: Drown the Internet in paid ads.
3. Step three: Capture “leads” by tricking people into giving you their email in exchange for a low-effort PDF that tells them nothing they couldn’t have googled themselves.
4. Step four: Funnel them into a relentless barrage of “exclusive offers” designed to make them feel frustrated about their current life, so they can persuade themselves that what you sell can help them get closer to their dream state.

But what’s the result of all of this?

While people who actually care about writing, filmmaking, or photography put effort into their craft, their work gets buried under an avalanche of algorithm-friendly, soulless clickbait. The content of the real artists is left largely unnoticed because the growth hackers are the ones at the top of the searches due to their endless optimization efforts. The ones that appear on every search because that’s their main aim.

In other words, growth hackers don’t focus on producing something of significance, but on producing something that captures a significant part of the online population.

The end result is masses of people consuming mediocre content because that’s the only thing that reaches the surface. After all, who has the nerves to dig deeper. The patience to click past page one of Google.

But that’s not all!

I don’t know if you’re following the latest trends, but I have a feeling that you’ve heard about AI. About how AI is taking control over everything.

I’m both excited and horrified about how the Internet will look in the next few years.

To illustrate my thoughts, let me just mention two things:

First, an ad that keeps stalking me across the Internet. An advertisement produced by a company that is promising instant authorhood via their AI-powered book generator.

Here’s their pitch: “Just type a prompt – like, How to make money online – and our AI will generate a full-fledged bona fide book for you. Complete with a table of content, images, and length based on your preferences.”

Yes, in under 10 minutes, you can now have your own book and start proudly declaring on LinkedIn that you are an author.

Exciting? Or probably not.

I’m leaning towards the probably not part. Because if everyone can generate a book in 5-10 minutes, what do you think happens next?

The net will be flooded with mediocre, at best, content that is just a rephrases of the already rephrased content created by the growth hackers.

Sounds “fantastic”, doesn’t it?

Secondly, searching for content is getting slowly but surely replaced by a simple chatbox.

Soon, you won’t even find sites created by humans because every question you’ll have online will be answered by the AI.

The content created by humans is only going to be used as fuel for AI models that aim to answer your questions and give you a bland, regurgitated summary wrapped in artificial wisdom.

Apparently, human-generated content is getting sidelined. Getting outcast. Stuck somewhere in a box, reduced to raw material for the AI overlord.

3. The 24/7 Conveyor Belt of Entertainment

While there are other things, as a third point, I’ll say this: the endless rivers of entertainment.

I don’t know if you remember, but once upon a time, when our only source of home entertainment was the chubby, slightly radioactive TV box, programs actually ended. Yep, that’s right. Around 10:00 PM, the station would just go kaput. No more shows. Time for bed.

Now?

There is never an ending.

There is always another episode. Always another “must-watch” clip. Always “one more video” with more information “in the bio” or “in the description.”

Not entirely a bad thing. Thanks to this bottomless buffet of content, we can reshape our lives. Learn new skills, land better jobs, make more money, and improve our lifestyle for ourselves and our families.

But is this what we choose to do with the endless information?

We, humans, are genetically wired to take the path of least resistance. When something feels too hard, too demanding, or requires an ounce of patience, we default to easier, shinier distractions. And lucky for us (or maybe not), there’s a never-ending stream of digital pacifiers that demand zero effort – just a mindless swipe.

Humanity went to the moon and back. We built self-driving cars. You can send an instant message to someone halfway across the planet. A package from another continent takes just a couple of days to arrive at your doorstep…

In other words, the technology has advanced in insane, reality-bending ways.

But what do we choose to do with this miracle progress?

We sit in front of a screen and numb ourselves by watching strangers unbox stuff or perform the latest recycled TikTok dance.

Sure, I get it. It is fun.

I don’t want to sound like we should aim towards eradicating joyful activities from our lives. But aren’t we a bit too obsessed with amusement?

Every week, someone in my surroundings will ask me something like: “Have you seen that new show about X doing Y?” And when I say that I haven’t, that I don’t watch TV shows, they’ll say: “Why? It’s so entertaining!”

I bet it is. In fact, I know it is. TV shows, the viral short clips, the video games. All these entertainments are fun and often amusing to do/watch. I really mean that. After all, technology advanced so much. Behavioral scientists, data analysts, and UX designers spend their careers figuring out how to make this video, app, scroll, whatever playful and exciting to consume.

There are books, courses, and whole academies dedicated to hacking your attention span.

Yet, should that be our aim?

Should 14,000 people – the number of employees at Netflix at the moment – wake up every day laser-focused on how to keep us glued to their content?

Should 7,000 people – the number of TikTok employees in the U.S. – dedicate their lives to making sure we never look away?

The primary purpose of these people. The people who work in the two of the biggest apps in the world right now – Netflix and TikTok – is to “entertain the world” and “bring joy” – their words, not mine.¹, ² Apparently, without a pause and without considering your mental, emotional, or physical well-being.

As the cofounder of Netflix once said, “Our biggest competitor is sleep!”³

Which means they are careless of your other needs – like, talking to real people and potentially stepping outside to experience the wonder of nature.

Their only priority is keeping you engaged for as long as humanly possible.

But should this be our aim? To be entertained all the time?

How Did We Get Here?

I think that the modern world has lowered the bar for what humanity as a whole can achieve.

The great thinkers of the past aspired to uncover the meaning of existence. To explore the depths of the conscious and unconscious mind. To understand the nature of reality. To establish a universal and rational basis for morality.

In contrast, the existence of modern people is reduced to three S’s:

• Scrolling on our phones.
• Shopping for stuff.
• Shallow entertainment.

We don’t have the ambition to improve our communities or advance humanity as a whole. Instead, we are fixated on maximizing personal comfort and advancing our own fleeting pleasures.

More scrolling. More apps. More games. More shows. More search for new experiences. More stuff. More ways to show off.

Like that clip. Google more because what you are already reading and watching is not enough to silence your sense of inner dissatisfaction.

All of this is a never-ending cycle of stimulation, yet it never quite satisfies. We consume, only to find ourselves emptier than before.

People used to be led by their personal values, principles, and a sense of purpose. Now? Algorithms and trending hashtags tell us what to care about.

How did we get here?

The endless pursuit of “Fun Now!”

If I had to summarize modern desires in two words, it would be this: Fun Now.

You think you want a better job? Not exactly. You want a job that pays enough so you can buy more stuff that unlocks more Fun Now.

You think you want to buy a new book even when you haven’t finished the current one because you consider yourself a skilled reader? Not really. You crave the thrill of buying because the act of reading is tedious and monotonous.

You abandon your book project just a couple of days after you enthusiastically started because you regard the book industry as corrupted. But what’s the real reason? The thought about doing the boring work for a year (or years) without instant feedback is unbearable because you’re addicted to getting Fun Now.

We’ve reached a point where anything that delays instant pleasure is considered a waste of time.

And Fun Now It’s something like an elixir. Electrifying tonic for your senses, which gives temporary distraction from the agonizing feeling of emptiness steaming from a lack of meaningful pursuit in your life. As long as you consume Fun Now, you are freed from thinking about doing something meaningful with your life.

And this substance comes in a variety of forms and shapes. Which is exactly the problem because you no longer have to wait. Instant gratification is always within reach, just a swipe away.

The reason we can’t stop ourselves from using is largely dependent on the ongoing focus on optimization. Corporations are relentlessly optimizing for the following: reducing the time between desire and reward.

They understand how humans can be manipulated. They know our two biggest vulnerabilities:

1. Immediate gratification: We crave instant rewards.
2. Novelty: We’re wired to seek out what’s new and exciting.

As long as we get something new, fast – i.e., Fun Now – we stay content. We won’t question the system. We won’t complain.

If we break this cycle down, it revolves around three key components:

1. User: That’s you.
2. Delay: The time between wanting something and getting it.
3. Reward: The thing that satisfies your craving.

And here’s how corporations optimize the system:

• Reduce the delay between desire and reward.
• Make the reward bigger, shinier, and more socially desirable.
• Rewire the brain of the user to want more.

Here’s how we looked before:

Here how it looks now:

All of this plays out the following way:

You don’t need to search for a new show once the current one ends. No. The algorithm autoplays another episode based on your own preferences.

You no longer have to browse different sources to find an answer to your question. No. The AI chatbot does the searching for you – and hand-feeds you a neatly packaged response.

You no longer have to save money to purchase a brand-new watch, phone, jeans, car, whatever. No. At the checkout page, you’re given the “Buy Now, Pay Later” option. Instant gratification, zero friction.

The world is getting better and better at optimizing for Fun Now.

But is this a good long-term strategy?

Sure, everybody will prefer to have their package delivered the same day or within 24-48 hours. But what happens to our brains when we expect everything to happen instantly?

A couple of things:

• Obsessive consumption: The more we get, the more we crave.
• Superficial rewards: Our goals shrink to buying, watching, and scrolling.
• Mediocre content: Speed over quality. Clickbait over depth.
• Results now: We want instant success. That’s why we are pulled towards content that tells us that we can get rich fast.
• Absence of commitment: Nothing holds our attention for long.
• Lack of meaningful progress: We distract ourselves from real, lasting achievements.

Delaying a reward is considered odd nowadays.

You tell your friends that you’d prefer not to spend $200 on a trendy night out, and they’ll do their best to make you feel ashamed, as if you’re depriving yourself of life’s greatest pleasures. They’ll go into full YOLO mode, insisting that we only live once.⁴ Explain that it’s almost pointless to save money and feel bored when you could be indulging in fun right now.

The majority of the conversations online revolve around two things:

1. Consuming stuff.
2. Talking about our experience when consuming stuff.

Why?

Because getting something is far easier than creating something.

Buying, watching, scrolling – all of it requires little to no effort. But building, writing, learning? That demands time, patience, and the willingness to distance yourself from experiencing Fun Now – something we’ve been conditioned to avoid at all costs.

And because society is locked in this endless cycle of consumption, the people, and corporations behind the content (once again, I use content loosely to describe anything available online) are forced to churn out new material at breakneck speed. The result? Mediocre cinematography, five-second TikTok clips, self-proclaimed gurus selling us a dream life, and mind-numbing distractions designed to keep us hooked.

We’ve turned into hollow vessels. Empty shells, drifting through life with no real sense of meaning or purpose, yet outwardly appearing as if we’ve got it all figured out.

Nice clothes, nice pics, nice vacations, but no solid reason to exist.

What Can We Do About It?

I wish I had an answer. I wish I could state that I’ve found a way to reignite my enthusiasm and give you “steps” to do it yourself – if you found any of the above relatable.

Maybe you’re more optimistic than I am. Maybe you don’t see it how I see it. Maybe you see the current online world as a powerful tool that can advance the human race.

I don’t!

I used to look forward to exploring the Internet, engaging with others, and seeing what the brightest creators were up to. And while there are still gems online, much of the digital space has degenerated into a marketplace where “experts” sell you “easy” steps that can supposedly help you a “become a better version of yourself.”

Thus, instead of going online and taking pieces of content and using it as fuel to make our offline lives better, we take the reverse approach. We optimize our offline lives towards consuming more online content.

I find this “fascinating!”

We structured our lives around the moment when we can finally sink into the couch, binge a show, scroll endlessly, or play a mind-numbing game. Our entire routine revolves around anticipating screen time.

That’s what the online world has accomplished in the last few years.

Not fostering real human connections. Not deepening our understanding of ourselves or the world. But nurturing disconnection, adrift in a hazardous ocean of content designed for one thing: immediate gratification.

And as the bar for online content creation keeps lowering, the Internet becomes increasingly flooded with stuff lacking quality, meaning, and depth.

What can we do to improve?

The way I see it is focusing on creating content you’re genuinely proud of. Content that can withstand the test of time.

Several times before, I considered starting a blog or a YouTube channel with a main focus on trendy topics meant to get me more views. Yes, I’m not a saint. I, too, want to make money with the work I do online. The reason I didn’t pursue this path motivated solely on making money and I keep writing articles has to do with something basic and yet idealistic.

I want my website to be something I’m proud of. Something that lights me up. Something that is true today but also true 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Sadly, we live in a world that glorifies meaningless work. A world where it’s more profitable to entertain and distract than to challenge people to think critically.

Don’t believe me?

Think of how many subscribers/followers celebrities like Kim Kardashian (350M+) and Mr. Beast (360M+) have. The ones selling vanity, focused on maximizing engagement and virality compared to channels dedicated to intellectual growth – e.g., The School of Life (9M+) or Pursuit of Wonder (3M+). The difference is staggering.

Complex topics, the ones that require patience and deep thought – like philosophy, psychology, self-discipline, or sound decision-making – are often ignored because they don’t provide an instant reward. Meanwhile, the content that dominates the Internet is about achieving success now, looking attractive now, feeling good now.

When observed from this angle, I think I’ve lost my enthusiasm because the Internet has turned into an apparatus for capturing the attention of the viewer in order to increase profits, rather than to inspire and build character.

But the sad part here is this: The Internet is what it is because that’s what people want it to be.

Audiences demand Fun Now, and the creators are doing just that – giving the masses what they want.

The question that emerges here is the following:

Have we always been impatient consumers, or have we become this way? Did the Internet simply expose our worst tendencies, or has it actively rewired our brains to crave instant gratification?

I believe both are true.

We are compulsive hoarders. That was always the case. But instead of helping us tame our negative traits, the Internet has amplified them. It has made us more impatient. More addicted to quick dopamine hits. More resistant to delayed rewards.

Personally, I refuse to accept that the majority of the online world is like a digital casino where mind-numbing content just captures your gaze and never allows you to leave.

We collectively make the world together. That also stands for the online world. And if the majority of the people are satisfied with churning out junk just to capture attention and generate revenue, then I want my site to be a form of resistance. A form of rebellion.

A place where I don’t sell cotton candy for the brain. A place where I don’t focus on sensationalism or offer an easy formula for riches. Rather, something closer to a bookshelf. A library-like place designed to challenge your thinking. Focused on topics with a lasting appeal. Aimed at molding your perspective and help you stop endlessly chasing the allure of Fun Now.

If that sounds too idealistic for a small blog, you are probably right.

But I’d rather write about something that is important – something that makes you think – than craft content that is aimed to numb your mind.

Some Closing Thoughts

The online world has been reduced to followers, likes, and engagement.

Success now largely depends on how fast you deliver the perception of value. How quickly can the viewer or reader feel entertained.

The end result is whole flocks of creators reducing their content to bite-sized, easily digestible snippets. If something makes me think too hard or doesn’t feel instantly rewarding, it’s over. I’m gone. I’m clicking away. After all, I only have 15 minutes while I’m riding on the bus. I don’t want to “waste” them watching something that requires thinking.

And that, I think, is a classic chicken-or-egg dilemma.

Is the Internet shallow because people prefer bite-sized, low-effort content? Or have people become this way because the major platforms we use are optimized for creating meaningless short-form clips?

If we look at the basic supply and demand theory, the verdict is that the Internet is what it is because we, the people, desire meaningless content. We crave instant gratification. We don’t want to delay pleasure. We want Fun Now! Thus, the people creating content are delivering just that. A soup of superficial content that erodes the public realm.

But what if the Internet had evolved differently?

Imagine how the Internet would have looked if social media was different.

If the Internet was more focused on solving important societal problems, not obsessing over fleeting trends.

If the Internet was about helping people who are in need, not about endless debates discussing what celebrities said or did this weekend.

What if the Internet was more about depth, not about distraction?

Thus, if we look at the power of defaults based on behavioral economics theory, we can blame it on the people who created the apps we use nowadays – i.e., the creators of Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, etc.⁵

Default options are pre-set settings from the manufacturer of a thing. Defaults are everywhere, and we rely on them every day. Imagine default mobile ringtones, default time screen savers on computers, the auto-renewal on your subscriptions, etc.

So, if the default way of spending your time online is watching clips, if your phone comes preinstalled with all the social media accounts, if when you search you find short clips, then guess what you’re going to do?

Yep, you’re going to default to consuming brain-decaying junk.

Since it takes effort to find information that aims to upend your thinking, most people won’t do it.

But what if the defaults were different?

What if your phone reported causes you can support? Local charities you can donate to? Connected you with people who needed help – and allowed you to ask for help?

If the Internet was focused on things that matter, not on things that don’t.

Because what have the recent updates of the Internet accomplished?

• More films.
• More products.
• More rich people becoming richer.
• More ways to waste your already scarce resources.

Sure, there are a ton of benefits… Online banking. Easy navigation across town. Messaging platforms. Ways to express yourself.

But imagine if the Internet was prioritizing ways to advance humanity rather than to addict humanity. If it were designed to uplift rather than exploit. It could have been way better, not just for a selected few, but for the majority of the online and offline citizens.

Vanity, greed, lust, envy – these things cannot be eradicated. That’s in our nature. But at least we can put more focus on things that matter. Probably then I’d be once again excited about the online world.

Footnotes:

1. About Netflix – about page. Available at: https://about.netflix.com/en
2. About | Tiktok – real short videos. Available at: https://www.tiktok.com/about
3. Netflix’s biggest competitor? sleep. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/netflix-competitor-sleep-uber-facebook
4. The psychology of yolo. Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-big-questions/201309/the-psychology-yolo
5. Government, Australian ‘Harnessing the power of defaults’. pmc.gov.au/beta. Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government. Available at: https://behaviouraleconomics.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resources/harnessing-power-defaults.pdf