Internet

I have a lot of thoughts about the internet. I dislike the internet, well I dislike it more and more every day.

Some context is needed. I was born in the early 2000s, I grew up with the internet, the iPhone, and social media. I grew up when having a camera meant something special was happening, and digital photos were still bizarre. I remember the stacks of CDs of documents my parents had. I remember the excitement of getting my first tablet and how stunning it was to have games there. I distinctly remember the feeling of wonder when I first discovered the internet. - this was on a family computer. I remember my first PC, a Raspberry Pi. ( I think I still have it somewhere, I remember having an analog video output for it) I remember when I made my first hello world HTML page. I remember the first time I programmed something. ( I think it was in JS and it was a sort of turtle graphics program that drew a snowman) I remember finding my first "video game" online. ( Minecraft ), reading the books, watching countless videos on YouTube ( stampy longhead, CaptainSparklez, sundee, DanTDM ,and others) I remember when I first got into cyber security - I found an injection vulnerability (when they were still common) I remember when I went to school browsing HN and seeing OpenAI for the first time.

this was the moment i realized how the internet was gonna change forever. back then I rarely saw ads on YouTube ( 5s skippable ones) , then it became 15, and now it's just a sea of ads. AI and profit destroyed the internet as we knew it. i miss the old internet. the one where I didn’t have to use a VPN to access content. where i could freely explore without being tracked or bombarded by ads, or paying for access.

But even with all of this, I can’t stop loving the internet.

(wrote this a long time ago haven't published it yet until)