The internet would not exist if it consisted of people just putting stuff out there, happy that it's released into the wilds of the overall consciousness, and nothing more. People are willing to put the time and effort into posting stuff for other reasons. Building community, gaining recognition, making money. Even on a website like HN we post under consistent usernames with the vague sense that these words are ours. If posts had no usernames, no one would comment on this site.

It's completely disingenuous to say that everyone who creates content -- blog authors, recipe creators, book writers, artists, etc -- should just be happy feeding the global consciousness because then everyone will get a tiny diluted iota of their unattributed wisdom.

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horsawlarway 2 days ago | parent [-]

How old are you?

I'm old enough I remember a vivid internet of exactly that.

Back when you couldn't make money from ads, and there was no online commerce.

Frankly - I think the world might be a much better place if we moved back in that direction a bit.

If you're only doing it for money or credit, maybe do something else instead?

> If posts had no usernames, no one would comment on this site.

I'd still comment. I don't actually give much of a shit about the username attached. I'm here to have a casual conversation and think about things. Not for some bullshit internet street cred.

	▲	SamBam 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm more than old enough to remember the birth of the internet. Back when I had a GeoCities website about aliens (seriously) it was still mine. I had a comments section and I hoped people would comment on it (no one did). I had a counter. I commented on other people's sites in the Area 51 subsection I was listed under. The aim wasn't just to put out my same-ol' unoriginal thoughts into the distributed global consciousness, it was to actually talk to other people. The fact that I wrote it under a dumb handle (a variant of the one I still use everywhere) didn't make me feel less like it was my own individual communication. It's the same for everything else, even the stuff that was completely unattributed. If you put a hilarious animation on YTMND, you know that other people will be referencing that specific one, and linking to it, and saying "did you see that funny thing on YTMND?" It wouldn't have been enough for the audience to just get some diluted, average version of that animation spread out into some global meme-generating AI. So no, "Google Zero" where no one sees the original content and is just "happy that their thoughts are getting out there, somehow" is not something that anyone should wish for.
	▲	reactordev 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You can’t bring back Compuserve. You both are right however it’s the medium that determines one’s point of view on the matter. If I just want to spread my knowledge to the world - I would post on social media. If I want to curate a special viewership and own my own corner of the web - I would post on a blog. If I wanted to set a flag, setup a shop, and say I’m open for business - I would write an app. The internet is all of these things. We just keep being fed the latter.