anyone else really starting to resent modern internet culture/slang/memes?

[apple2myeye!]

i may just be getting old and cynical but i swear internet culture has taken SUCH a downturn in quality in recent years, especially after 2016 or so. i don't even like "early" internet culture that much, but i'd gladly take it over 90% of what constitutes as "internet culture" these days.

i think part of the reason why sites like reddit and twitter are so unbearable is because everyone is just constantly spouting whichever memes and slang terms are popular that week. i know reddit is the more infamous of the two in terms of having extremely unfunny memes (and being incredibly obnoxious to use), but i swear to god twitter is like a thousand times worse somehow. it's literally just reddit for people who think they're too good for reddit. it's honestly a miracle whenever you can hold a conversation on there that doesn't degenerate into unnecessarily confrontational shit-flinging and meme-spouting. it's so fucking aggravating.

a lot of modern internet memes just aren't even funny to begin with, too. i genuinely refuse to believe that anyone actually thinks shit like that will smith slapping chris rock thing from a few months ago is funny. like when it became a meme it was LITERALLY the exact same joke over and over again and nobody would shut up about it for a good 3 weeks. i specify this meme because there's just something particularly bewildering about it to me, it was so blatantly unfunny but so widespread. i've never seen anything like it.

if you have no idea what im talking about i completely understand but this is just something that i've been really annoyed by for the past few years lol

 

[IWillSmileWhenIDie]

ye feel the same mate, things are going in a really unfun and by my values wrong direction. Not like I can bother with that thing amidst my suffering, but it is true.

 

[Pluto]

This sort of thing has been happening for a long time. Trends tend to emerge and then disappear into the ether. It is unfashionable to be ahead of your time, or behind the times, resulting in mass conformity to the latest groupthink. Anyone who isn't a part of the gang is fair game for large-scale abuse. Personally, I find it insufferable.

The only thing I can add is that the internet itself is quite a vast collection of communities and ideas. You might be better off seeking less mainstream groups, or even reducing your electronic device time in favour of more meaningful pursuits.

 

[want2dienow]

I loathe text talk, especially 'ur'. 'u' all that. mostly because its well known with alex

 

[hungry_ghost]

It's all vapid, vain, crap.

The best thing one can do for their mental health is get off of social media and get into books.

 

[CTB Dream]

Human jnteraction culture bad , take good side leave bad side , all Era have toxic side now because human nature toxic toxic appear more meme social make more apparent

 

[waitingforrest]

I've been thinking about this.

It could be just nostalgia, but I somewhat miss the cluttered dated websites with wacky fonts.

 

[WhatPowerIs]

I've been thinking about this.

It could be just nostalgia, but I somewhat miss the cluttered dated websites with wacky fonts.

I miss when people made emoticons with the characters on the keyboard instead of emoji faces! It's a bit purer seeing someone use "XD" than the laughing emoji

 

[waitingforrest]

I miss when people made emoticons with the characters on the keyboard instead of emoji faces! It's a bit purer seeing someone use "XD" than the laughing emoji

Agreed! Emojis have been ruined for me because I associate them with the Emoji Movie every time unsubconscoiusly. I don't know why, I never even watched the Emoji Movie.

 

[WhatPowerIs]

Agreed! Emojis have been ruined for me because I associate them with the Emoji Movie every time unsubconscoiusly. I don't know why, I never even watched the Emoji Movie.

I find them soulless... I use em sometimes but I don't know. Not the same! Let's put it that way.

 

[Hollowman]

I miss the days before the internet, much simpler times.

 

[Celerity]

I understand where you're coming from. Reddit gets on my nerves. I finally uninstalled it from my phone and only log on my computer every now and then. It doesn't help that so many (maybe most) of the posts and comments nowadays are fucking bots.

 

[𖣴 nadia 𖣴]

You don't have to be old to hate internet culture

 

[lofticries]

I just really hate stan culture on the net. I don't mind ppl being a fan and making content of whatever obsession they have. But as soon they go into this fan first human second mindset is when things turn to shit. Imagine bullying and doxing someone just because they don't like the same things you like. If the rich ass celeb that you worship isn't bothered then why should you.

If I like something I never go on twitter to talk with other fans because 98% of the time their toxic af who overuse the word icon 'ended so and so' and 'could never'.

 

[PainAndSadness]

Despise all of them

 

[StolenLife]

Some modern memes are so fucking dumb and not funny, especially those that my classmates use in our native language. And I say this as a zoomer. I don't mind the internet itself, as without it I would have never known that there are other people like me who got rejected by society. Also I never would have found this site. It's the social media aspect that I despise, it only ruined connections and relationships in the real world and made everyone narcissistic and obsessed with likes. My generation especially got conditioned to be as vain as possible. If you are a zoomer without much on social media you are basically doomed because people treat you like you don't exist. I especially hate when I watch a youtube video and the comments contain fifty variations of the same repeated, overused meme. It's like no one takes anything seriously anymore. I wasn't made for this modern era and I can't wait to leave.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

The internet as it exists right now is super concentrated around twitter, reddit, instagram, and facebook. All of these are total wank, but have become a necessary evil almost if you want to keep any sort of contact with people.

Because reddit is like a collection of many sub-forums, it killed off a lot of the smaller, niche interest sites. I remember when I was a kid, there were many forums and online games where you could meet other people, without the expectation of being a normie influencer. I would write insanely long roleplays, and turn some of them into stories for fanfiction.net if they were interesting enough. No one writes fanfics anymore.

Blogging sites like tumblr and live journal, which were huge hubs for people interested in fandom culture during that era, have also died off. Now, I think most people with those interests congregate on twitter nowadays, which is awful, toxic, and severely limits your expression by forcing you to only post in bite size chunks.

the older forms of the internet seemed to have a certain kind of magic to them. Before the internet was so widely used ( at this point, nearly everyone on the planet) it was okay to be a little weird, or ugly, or be a beginner at something (remember deviantart?) It was the only place where I could be myself because there were 0 people where I lived who were into anime, video games, cosplay, and things like that. At that time, cosplay was a weird nerd hobby, there were no Instagram models doing it.

Now the internet is a cesspool of vanity and is highly restricted due to rules imposed by the big tech platforms. There are so many algorithms that serve no purpose except to try to advertise you products and profile you. Beauty standards have been permanently warped by social media. Finding genuinely funny memes that aren't just copy pasted insanely popular normie shit is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I hate what the Internet is now. And it's even worse if you are isolated or shut in, because you will have nothing to do most of the time except use the internet because it provides access to media, games, tv, etc...

 

[Un-]

Controversial, but I think if you feel that way, it's more-or-less intentional.

I don't know. The problem doesn't lie in the culture. It lies in the consumer. I agree with the posts I've read here.. Some things are really dumb. Tweets are stupid. Politics, etcetera, I could go on and on. But when I use the Internet I avoid that shit.

I think I'm being dumb here, assuming you guys don't avoid the things that annoy you, but.. Like if you did, you wouldn't be resentful if anything. If you just focused on doing what you enjoyed, if you enjoy anything, and staying away from the shit that upsets you..

Again, I know it's so simple, and you could read this as me calling everyone here arrogant penisheads, but I'm not. Like, I hate twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and reddit. I don't go on them. So it doesn't affect me. I hate politics, so I don't participate. I hate drama, so I don't watch it play out. My internet use, literally, revolves around watching people like Markiplier or Faze Jev - people that only focus on making enjoyable content.. And because of this, I don't resent Internet culture at all.

I don't know. I think I'm misinterpreting this thread. But I'm posting this anyways because I wanted to comment on how people have somehow, someway lost their childlike innocence. I find that really sad. When I was a child, I'd do shit because it made me feel good. I didn't resent anything. I don't know why that innocence has to fade during your 20s to 50s. Older people I've talked to, somehow gained that innocence back.

 

[freedompass]

i may just be getting old and cynical but i swear internet culture has taken SUCH a downturn in quality in recent years, especially after 2016 or so. i don't even like "early" internet culture that much, but i'd gladly take it over 90% of what constitutes as "internet culture" these days.

i think part of the reason why sites like reddit and twitter are so unbearable is because everyone is just constantly spouting whichever memes and slang terms are popular that week. i know reddit is the more infamous of the two in terms of having extremely unfunny memes (and being incredibly obnoxious to use), but i swear to god twitter is like a thousand times worse somehow. it's literally just reddit for people who think they're too good for reddit. it's honestly a miracle whenever you can hold a conversation on there that doesn't degenerate into unnecessarily confrontational shit-flinging and meme-spouting. it's so fucking aggravating.

a lot of modern internet memes just aren't even funny to begin with, too. i genuinely refuse to believe that anyone actually thinks shit like that will smith slapping chris rock thing from a few months ago is funny. like when it became a meme it was LITERALLY the exact same joke over and over again and nobody would shut up about it for a good 3 weeks. i specify this meme because there's just something particularly bewildering about it to me, it was so blatantly unfunny but so widespread. i've never seen anything like it.

if you have no idea what im talking about i completely understand but this is just something that i've been really annoyed by for the past few years lol

Oh wow I could not agree more. The vast majority of memes leave me completely cold. I would happily never have to set eyes on one again. I lurk a few small subreddits where I feel somewhat at home and occasionally comment but most of Reddit is a cesspool. Like you I hate Twitter even more.

As for 'internet culture' going downhill…it's like anything else. When the mass of the populace gets on board with anything, quality suffers. Back in the noughties the internet still had a niche quality. That's disappeared as babies started imbibing its contents with their mother's milk and even elderly folk got on the bandwagon. The babies grew up and became YouTube 'content creators' and Snapchat devotees with a mania for selfies and elaborate make up routines.

They probably have no idea what we're even on about as it's all normal to them, but I have heard young people themselves say they dislike all the fakeness that is now the norm. If you get more views likes and subs by using beauty filters on your channel then I suppose you will but what does that say about your viewers? Or your content?

Enough 'grumpy old woman' ranting from me though, my world is still vastly improved by the internet and I wouldn't be without it for anything.

 

[Julgran]

Now the internet is a cesspool of vanity and is highly restricted due to rules imposed by the big tech platforms. There are so many algorithms that serve no purpose except to try to advertise you products and profile you.

I see your point, but the opposite is also true - meaning that the users of those social media platforms are the intended products themselves, and not the worthless crap that someone is trying to sell.

I don't believe that this online madness will stop untill parents of very young children band together and make a joint decision that their children won't be allowed to grow up using technoloy in the way it's used today - but, instead, to have physcial get-togethers and play, like normal children used to do. This parent initiative is important, I believe, since it's probably hard or impossible for a single child to quit using social media platforms, since there are no other children who are also not using them, so they would be stuck with themselves if parents can't arrange for physical get-togethers instead.

 

[ManicPanic2018]

I miss when people made emoticons with the characters on the keyboard instead of emoji faces! It's a bit purer seeing someone use "XD" than the laughing emoji

This! I miss those days. Back when it cost 10 pence to send a text. What a time to be alive :P

 

[whatevs]

Hey, I get the legend in your posts! It's from that Gnostic-like song of Current 93.

Now, in terms of the thread, I think 'all things viral' are signs that people are getting ready to be assimilated into something, and that technology will be the bridge to get the masses to give themselves to the 'Alex Jones interdimensional elves'. Trends and virality offer a glimpse into how people are either atcual NPCs or they're been engineered to be ones. Or at the very least they are becoming unthinking vessels for what's coming from the screens.

Though, to counter my own conspiracist agenda in the thread, it doesn't seem like in most periods of History people thought for themselves. What can be safely said about the modern world is that creativity is dying for whatever reason.

 

[WhatPowerIs]

Controversial, but I think if you feel that way, it's more-or-less intentional.

I don't know. The problem doesn't lie in the culture. It lies in the consumer. I agree with the posts I've read here.. Some things are really dumb. Tweets are stupid. Politics, etcetera, I could go on and on. But when I use the Internet I avoid that shit.

Ignoring/avoiding things doesn't make problems go away.

 

[Another Day Empty]

i may just be getting old and cynical but i swear internet culture has taken SUCH a downturn in quality in recent years, especially after 2016 or so. i don't even like "early" internet culture that much, but i'd gladly take it over 90% of what constitutes as "internet culture" these days.

i think part of the reason why sites like reddit and twitter are so unbearable is because everyone is just constantly spouting whichever memes and slang terms are popular that week. i know reddit is the more infamous of the two in terms of having extremely unfunny memes (and being incredibly obnoxious to use), but i swear to god twitter is like a thousand times worse somehow. it's literally just reddit for people who think they're too good for reddit. it's honestly a miracle whenever you can hold a conversation on there that doesn't degenerate into unnecessarily confrontational shit-flinging and meme-spouting. it's so fucking aggravating.

a lot of modern internet memes just aren't even funny to begin with, too. i genuinely refuse to believe that anyone actually thinks shit like that will smith slapping chris rock thing from a few months ago is funny. like when it became a meme it was LITERALLY the exact same joke over and over again and nobody would shut up about it for a good 3 weeks. i specify this meme because there's just something particularly bewildering about it to me, it was so blatantly unfunny but so widespread. i've never seen anything like it.

if you have no idea what im talking about i completely understand but this is just something that i've been really annoyed by for the past few years lol

Yeah the whole situation is pretty bleak at this point. I use the social media platforms as a rough guideline for determining in the first 5 minutes of talking with someone, mostly likely what that person is like in general. And I really hate having to be reductive in the attempt to figure a person out, but in this day and age, who really can afford any precious time to do so effectively? Almost like I have to be a pre-judgemental dick to navigate the waters.... But, such is the condition for the current time I suppose?
The level of superficiality in some people is astonishing. The toxicity levels of "humor" and what is socially acceptable has contributed to me deleting Facebook and reddit. Instagram is a fucking cesspool of narcissistic sociopath makeup tutorials and don't even get me going about TikTok. They should just rename the site, The Darwin awards. Tide pod eating, trampoline backflipping, prank your girlfriend in Walmart while doing the drink 5 gallons of milk challenge fcking retards.... Okay, yeah. I'm done. I agree with you wholeheartedly on the state of affairs concerning the internet culture.
Wow, I kinda went off over TikTok... But it's not without warrant. LoL Well, at least I think so.

 

[freedompass]

Hmmm makeup tutorials drive me insaaaane. Not that I watch em. I'm a true crime junkie. One of the popular youtubers in that genre applies makeup to her face for the duration of the video!!! So yeah, while talking about notorious murders etc (don't forget the victims and their families) she is putting her face on! These are young attractive women, how can it take that long (and so many products) to 'glow themselves up'? I can't stand it, I avoid her videos like the fucking plague and I doubt I'd get along with her audience.

Quite a lot I could vent about. Snapchat tiktok Facebook Twitter Instagram fuck em all! I still love the internet tho, maybe coz I lived the first 30 plus years of my life without it.

 

[Message In A Bottle]

Which is exactly why I don't have facebutt, instaturd, and da tweeters. In a nutshell, it's basically a hoard of "comedians" trying to 1up the other for popularity points - even using you as the butt of their jokes if that means getting higher on that social pedestal.

I mean sadly I can't avoid them entirely but removing these three and tik tok? (I guess the chinese like kesha) is a good start.