> I feel that people are fed up with the internet for the first time since its creation.

At least for a great number of people, I believe this to be true. The things that initially made me interrested in the internet, computers and and software are gone from the mainstream. The web has developed in to a perverted Minitel, it's a place I go to order something, if I can't find it in local stored, I read a little news, I look up documentation, and then I check out again. Much the same for TV really, there's no real reason for me to watch the news, movies and shows. The news is poorly covered and just rehashes of the same reporting. Movies and TV shows are commercialized to the point where I'm not even going to try, on the off chance that I hit something good. The stuff I buy is also often highly selective, as the chance of buying juke is at an al time high, better to buy nothing.

I feel like we're close to a major reset, at least for a portion of the population. Many simply can't stand sad state of algorithms, shareholder interests, subscriptions and just pure greed at the expense of everything else. If the reset isn't going to be society wide (which it probably isn't because a large part of the population also seem to not give a shit or they are actively profiting of the current state of affairs), then we're going to see one group quietly distancing themselves from media, technology and modernity. We'll use technology only to the extend where it helps us to our jobs and function in society, taking care to not compromise our humanity, then log right back off.

The original author escapes me, but the quote: "The future has lost it's appeal to me" seem increasingly true with every passing day.

I'm surprised there isn't a politician who makes this their brand. I would vote for them even if they didn't want to do anything else.

The politicians only talk about regulating content, instead of regulating the algorithm. An error across all dimensions - politically, pragmatically, legally.

I would do these 2 things:

(1) ban all recommendation engines in social media, no boosting by likes, no retweets, no "for you", no "suggested". you get a chronological feed of people you follow, or you search for it directly.

(2) ban all likes/upvotes showing up on public posts, to reduce the incentive for people to engage in combat on politically charged topics

No impact on free speech, everyone still has a voice. No political favoritism. No privacy violations.

I would bet only these tweaks will significantly reduce extremism and unhappiness in society.

> "The future has lost it's appeal to me"

culture is stuck in endless remakes of optimistic 70s futurism

it's an important point: we don't have a future, a telos, that doesn't fill us with foreboding

I feel this way. I used to spend so much time online, learning, coding, playing. Through the dot com boom and bust. Through the financial crisis after financial crisis. Web 2.0. Social media.

I’ve checked out on pretty much everything except for OSS.

I’m looking for land and an RV to start homesteading because I feel like that’s the only thing that will distract me from doom scrolling news.

This is very well said and I've found myself on the same page. I've said this before, but when I was younger the internet was an island of sanity in an otherwise pretty crazy world. Now, the internet broadly is much crazier than the real world and much of the time it's best avoided. This is still a lot of great content on the internet, but always right next to it is something addictive, outrageous, manipulative, etc. attempting to steal your attention and waste your time. People with better impulse control might be able to avoid this in an effortless way, but that's not me.

Abstaining is really the only thing that's been working for me, and all I'm going to try to do is abstain more. It's clear that my old refuge has been destroyed by greed and misanthropy, and the only path for me is to abandon the refuge as much as possible.