Can the internet ever be fun again?

Or is it just doomed to the vapidity of sterile commercialization?

It feels like everything is serious these days... and 'humor' is only of the commercial variety. Joke communities and circlejerk communities are considered 'hate groups' now. Mods will ban you for sarcastic comments on 'serious' topics, and even on non serious ones, and everything is politicized either by trolls, bots, or whackjobs.

It's boring when you can't joke anymore. I miss my internet communities of 5-10 years ago when you could joke around, and even people of different beliefs and persuasions could laugh at themselves.

Now everything is so deadly serious. It's a complete bummer. And any sort of 'edge' or sarcasm or sardonic remarks are ban-worthy.

I guess it's just poe's law run amok? I feel like mods could tell the difference 10 years ago and the non-jokey psychos were just ignored.

Drummyralf , (edited )

My feeling is that this is temporary. Currently there is a big fight about what is offensive and what is not. It is only logical that, when that public debate is still ongoing, people will have less tolerance towards offensiveness: we haven't reached a consensus yet on what we should tolerate in our online language. We as a species are not used to the responsibility of anonymous communication and the repercussions it has on how we act and perceive that communication.

Also, movements and changes most of the time go to the other extreme first, before landing in the middle somewhere. That's just how change often (not always) works.

That, or you're getting old and you're doing the "back in my day" thing. Could be that too. The world changes, language changes, jokes change. It's just part of life man.

Edit: welp, this apparantly is a hot take, when I thought it was quite neutral. I'm not saying we shouldn't stand up against offensive behaviour (my view is the opposite). It's that coming to a sensible consensus about certain topics as a society takes time. It takes time to convince people to change their ways, but it also takes time to not fight for extremes when you're having new talking points. Everything is balance. But in my attempt to keep it short I apparantly didn't convey much of that message.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Love this post

https://hilariouschaos.com/pictrs/image/db24e06c-df58-4e1d-92db-edecf19f930a.webp

airrow ,

there's the indieweb movement, smaller sites trying to have fun, like neocities

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