The Internet in 2026

I used to love the internet. I've grown up with it and some of my fondest memories are online ones. In recent years, and moreso in the last few months, I've gradually received less and less enjoyment from being on it to the point where it is getting into the negatives now. I've grown increasingly angry and cynical when it comes to the internet and its netizens and am likely even part of the problem. Why?

AI

Yeah, I've been pretty verbose on my opinions on this already so I'm not going to repeat all that again, you can read my previous blog posts on it. I've grown even more cynical and negative towards AI as of recent to the point where it has caused some friction here and there, both in friendships and professionally. People who I respect are using it in increasing manner and seem to be losing both themselves and their skills while they rely on it more and more, usually without recognizing it. Vibe coding is one thing, but a person who is genuinely already great at it relying on it almost feels worse. I don't see the whole AI situation improving anytime soon, but it is a big reason why I've fallen out of love with the internet and the feeling of browsing it. Everything I see has to go through an internal AI filter now and it's happened on more than one occasion that the filter fails to detect it. It is bad for a hundred times the reasons more than it is good and I'm not even sure that's that big of a hyperbole at this point. Moving on.

Enshittification

Many of the sites and services that I used to use have either gone away or gone to shit. Not only all social media/news sites, but even Discord is well on its way to going to shit as well with its upcoming IPO seemingly influencing a lot of their recent business decisions. This also goes for streaming/TV stuff or even movies. Enshittification has only been amplified more and more with the increasingly difficult economies in many places as well as AI getting mixed in and I can't imagine this getting any better anytime soon. New sites/platforms that show up also seem to have a much shorter runway in terms of going from good to bad. There's a few companies and places that genuinely still seem to put the user first and I hope they can continue to do that, but that list is actively shrinking.

Toxicity

With economies worsening and politics polarizing more and more across the world, the amount of toxicity on the internet feels like it has gone up significantly as well. Hmm, well, maybe not neccesarily the amount, but its spread out more since people are less inclined to behave better 'in public'. I'm not only seeing this in the WoW community, where previously respectable content creators are saying increasingly terrible stuff, but also in many of the other places I frequent and worse, from people that I thought weren't like that. Hell, I've become more toxic on certain subjects and am far more likely to overreact when it comes to some things compared to a few years ago. I recognize it, but I still don't like it or know what to do about it. Taking a step back from the places where I often feel inclined to be toxic might be one step towards fixing that for myself, but who knows.

Facts

Facts have become less and less important and are often overshadowed by increasingly large feelings, egos and opinions. I recognize this in myself as well. I try to stick with the facts and get very annoyed at misinformation, but there are cases where I will prioritize my feelings/personal opinions over certain facts. Not because I don't believe them to be true, but because accepting them would be far more depressing. I think that is the case for most people these days but in varying degrees and on different topics. At the same time, facts are also being threathened by governments, big corpo or AI around the world. I have always felt that the "hold on, someone is wrong on the internet" meme applies to me, but recently it feels like misinformation keeps winning regardless of how much I try, so I'm just going to stop trying. That is giving in, but also a way to protect myself from crashing out at the littlest thing on the internet.

Nuance

Somewhat related to facts, but nuance also feels like it has gone out of the window. Not only in terms of politics, but also when it comes to many other things. Either people don't recognize it anymore due to increasing polarization in daily life or they just don't want to. I've caught myself a few times being overly reactive to e.g. AI/queer rights which are subjects I am likely to throw nuance out of the window for. I can imagine this being the case for different subjects for different people as well, no matter how annoying I think that may be.

Entitlement

The entitlement people have to certain things is also getting out of control. Whether it's the entitlement to recognition, entitlement for someone else to adopt your opinion, entitlement to someone's time, entitlement to get support/something fixed in an open-source project etc. This is moreso something I'm seeing from younger people. I'm not sure what is causing it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is in part related to some of the other issues I mentioned earlier.

Community

The feeling of community has been harder to find for me in recent years, there are only a few places left where I feel comfortable and feel like I can be myself, and all of these are online. I would consider these all to be bubbles at this point, which isn't great, but from a place of self-protection, it is what it is.

Passion

One of the last things that keeps me around on the internet at all these days is passion. There are still plenty people who are posting about/sharing their passions online. I consider human creativity and the ways people talk about it and show it off one of the last good things on the internet. Granted, it has been harder to find and identify whether or not it is performative, but this is genuinely one of the only things outside of work that makes me turn on my PC.

I also still enjoy the content of certain content creators that are very clearly following their passion and align with me on many of the above points, but that pool is becoming smaller and smaller as they are also affected by the above things changing over time. Either in ways where it isn't worth it for them to make that content anymore, or where the services they do it on deteriorate so much where their motivation is also affected, or worse, when they also give into it.

Other than that, I still find enjoyment in making tools, but that has unfortunately gone down a lot as well with people augmenting/taking parts of them/training AI with for their own purposes, which feels like a sort of desecration. Open-source development, open information and archival are something that have historically been very important to me. Unfortunately, these are also the 3 things AI thrives the most on. I still hate misinformation, so for now the benefits of sticking with those 3 things outweigh the bad, but I won't be surprised if I change those views in the near future as well after a few more AI-psychosis fueled incidents, some of which have been very hurtful in the last few months.

Now what?

For starters, I'm stepping back from a handful of places, either entirely or just interacting with them less/sporadically. These are the kind of places that are negatively affecting me, not neccesarily by their fault, but just by the way things are these days. Depending on how things evolve, both for myself as well as these places/the internet, I might return/check back in some of these, but right now they're mostly trending negatively so I have no reason to stick around. The same goes for certain people that I haven't had a good relationship with for a while, and any interactions that I do have are negative ones. This is only a handful of people, but I'm cutting them off anyways. It's probably not you, its me, etc, bye.

Next, and I've said this before and will say it again until I manage to figure it out, I'm going to spend more time on finding a creative outlet for myself that isn't working on tools. If it is a digital one I'm sure I'll let people know through BlueSky (the only social media I still bother with) or through a blog post here. Touching grass as well as figuring out means of enjoyment that aren't digital is also something on the list, but in many ways the real world is similar to the digital one and a lot of the above issues are in play there as well.

Another one is trying to fix up my physical health, in some way it is still better right now than it was several years ago, but in other ways it has deterioated in ways I need to start to take seriously. Improving those has a good chance of also improving mental health, and maybe my patience in dealing with some of the above issues as well.

In terms of working on tooling and such, work on the listfile, wow.tools.local, WoWDBDefs and monthly Patreon posts will continue as usual, I have no plans of stopping those right now. I also still have a job in the WoW datamining space (for now, as long as I don't push back too hard on certain things), so these tools and projects are vital to me for that reason as well.

Anyways, that's that, see you in the next blog post, which is hopefully a bit more cheerful/optimistic.