Sync and Async communication. [1]
Forums makes use of async communication, meaning that I can post something today and people may read and reply to my post 3 years from now.
Sync communication, on the other hand, means that I post something today, everyone replies today. If no one replies today, maybe people will reply 3 years from now but this is not seen as desirable and it is also rare.
Sync communication contributes to the 'fear of missing out' that social media sites profit from. I will add an [1] here, this will be important later.
The internet has grown vertically. [2]
Think of the internet like a village, with buildings spanning across the land. Buildings may be tall or short, wide or thin, but regardless of this they lay as far as the eyes can see. That is the old internet, a million of sites of all shapes and forms spanning across the land.
The new internet on the other hand is like a few skyscrappers, very tall and in a fixed place, one besides the other. Exploring the whole skyscrapper is impossible because it is very, very tall, however everything inside follows a certain standard. Maybe the content of the rooms varies, and the people, but there is only so much you can realistically change about a room in a skyscrapper. I will add a [2] here, this will be important later.
For about two years now I have been experimenting with the concepts of the 'new' and 'old' internet. I first spent a year with no internet connection to 'reset' my brain, then I reintroduced the internet to my life but limiting myself to the 'small' internet.
My browser of choice was palemoon and I forbid myself from using any site that won't load in the browser or won't work in my windows 7 Thinkpad T400. This includes google, yandex and every mainstream search engine, and most of the 'obscure' ones, for my search engines I exclusively used wiby.me, marginalia, and maybe searx. The point of this was to simulate what old-web browsing was like. This was by no means a perfect simulation, but it served its purpose.
I spent about a year using this setup, it was this year that I found out about my forum, too. After a certain time, I left the internet again, this time for a few months, again to 'reset' my brain.
After X months of no internet, I came back, but this time I would not limit myself to wiby, marginalia and the 'small' web, but instead I would embrace the 'new' (normal) internet. It's worth noting that despite calling it 'new', I forbid myself from using popular social media, shorts, and tiktok.
I have been using this internet for about two months now and the results of this experiment are really interesting:
Old internet usage symptoms:
New internet usage symptoms:
After these experiences, I think I finally figured-out the reason as to why the 'new internet' is so hazardous for the mental health of it's users, and the reason for this is cabin fever.
When an user is confined to 4 or 5 'mega sites' with a 'mega community', the user will never fulfill a desire to explore and find something new. The content of each room in the new Internet's skyscraper can vary, but the layout of each room will remain the same with little to no change, because there is only so much one can change about a room in a skyscraper. In other words, users will be exposed to text formatted more or less in the same way as every other piece of text on the website and with a tone that mimics the tone of the site in general; Users attempting to find 'something new' in a skyscraper will find themselves failing to fulfill that desire of exploration without even realizing it. Besides this, the sync method of communication of the new internet [1] contributes to the feeling that 'if something fun is going to show up, it is going to show up either now or in the future'. This encourages users to 'mindlessly scroll' through pages or hop through pages rather than perform any sort of real exploration.
Besides this, this sync method of communication [1] makes it harder to explore, because people will hardly ever link to another site, rather users 'jump in the bandwagon' as soon as possible to leave a single comment and leave the conversation. This method of communication and of interaction with a certain piece of content leads to a very long chain of comments with surface-level engagement that can be read quickly and discarded just as fast.
In other VERY fucking worrying words: 'Shorts' are not only short videos on social media, every comment under a post is following the 'short' format. [3]
Shorts can be experienced 'fast' and discarded just as fast, hence why people would rather read a single phrase than 2 paragraphs of text, they have been conditioned to treat comments under a post, chat messages and other such interactions as 'shorts', rather than comments.
Ironically, it would seem that the new internet mentions real life much more than the 'old' internet did, but only in a bad light. Wanting it or not I have been exposed to news of pain and suffering on the new net, which is something that I have not at all seen when browsing the old one; It would seem that the new net cannot avoid mentioning how terrible real life is, meanwhile the old net barely mentions real life and when it does, it may be in a positive, negative, neutral or silly way.
In both the old and the new internet, I eventually grew bored. The biggest difference is that when bored on the old internet, I know what my options are:
Hope through links to find something interesting, find something new to watch on some site like newgrounds or one of the channels I am subscribed to in youtube (no algo for me thx). Or just do something unrelated to the internet like IRL activities.
Meanwhile when growing bored on the new internet, somehow my options become a mystery:
Check my forum? Check reddit? Check Tumblr? Check Youtube? Check Steam? Wait did you check the forum yet?
After looping through the 'checklist', I may find myself going back to the book I was reading, anxiously checking the list of links again, and then again go back to the book I'm reading or one of the other activities. It is almost as if this environment led me to emulate an attention-disorder.
I think the biggest factor at play here is not the dopamine system[3] nor the fear of missing out, but as I have said earlier, cabin fever. The old internet lets you stretch your legs, hop through links to your heart's desire until you find something that you like. The new internet, forcing you to stay in one of the few skyscrapers runs out of content very fast, and once you have ran out of content, there is nowhere to look for new content, there are only shorts[3] to read.
There is also the issue that the new internet somehow convinces the user that real life is not an option. As I am writing this, the thought of leaving the computer is daunting, as if I am going to become very bored and die if I dare to leave the machine.
On the other hand, I remember happily spending quite a lot of time away from the computer when using the old internet, due to the fact that the computer was more or less the combination of a DVD-player and a book, it played no major role in my life or entertainment.
My mental health has severely deteriorated in these two months too, it's something worth noting. Since real life activities take a second place in my life (due to the need of being constantly online), a lot of things I should do are left to be done when they reach a critical point, such as cooking, doing the laundry, or just basic tasks a normal human being would do on their every day. This situation quickly becomes hopeless and makes me feel like I am 'failing' at being a human being, which quickly leads to a deep sadness that can quickly spiral into desperation, anxiety and depression. Despite this, I feel no drive to change this situation. I find this highly interesting, one would think being on fire would prompt a person to run, however it's as if the person is burning in silence, wanting it to magically stop.
The feelings of hopelessness, depression and desperation quickly evolve into self-doubt, anxiety, escapism and self-diagnosed mental illnesses.
Ah and since the new internet is full of people that are completely fabricated, it really clouds what real life is even supposed to be, this last part is so dangerous, I cannot stress this point enough.
The internet seems to present two things to the user:
A. The worst reality has to offer
B. Someone with 500$ worth of makeup taking a selfie with a 1000$ camera, pretending this is 'normal'. Or someone doing something 'quirky' as if that is their everyday.
This is catastrophic for the human mind, no one wants to suffer 24/7, if they did, they'd devolve into a depressive mess. But the only other option the internet offers you (unless you want to go offline, and no one wants to do that) is to embrace a false reality. It is just so easy to lose a grasp on reality thanks to this system that one would think this trap was set-up on purpose.
All in all these are my observations after this experiment. With this, I conclude my experiment.
I will slowly cut my internet usage for the following months until I am able to 'detox' again by leaving the internet for a considerable amount of time, after which I will proceed to go back to the 'old internet' way of surfing the web (turning the computer into a mix of a book and a DVD, and only relying on ASYNC communication[1]).
I would recommend anyone suffering from internet addiction to do the same, the internet is catastrophic for the mind, I would go as far as to say this is probably the worst drug humankind has created to date. It is both sweet, rewarding, and devastating.
And that's the end of my experiment.