The web sucks now. Once a playground fueled by experimentation and freedom and connection, it’s a flimsy husk of what it was, all merriment and serendipity leached from our screens by vile capitalist forces. Everything is simply too commercialized. We commodified the self, then we commodified robots to impersonate the self, and now they’re taking our rattling jobs. We dwell in diminished and degrading occasions. I miss when memes had been humorous. I miss Vine. I miss Gawker. I miss previous Twitter. Blogs—these had been the times!

Stop me if these gripes sound acquainted. In 2023, the concept the web isn’t enjoyable anymore is standard knowledge. This 12 months, after Elon Musk renamed Twitter “X” and instituted a collection of berserk modifications that made it considerably much less useful, complaints concerning the demise of the great web popped up like mushrooms sprouting in dust tossed over a recent grave. Some individuals even complained on the very platforms they had been mourning. Type “internet sucks now” into X’s search bar, you’ll see.

The New Yorker published an essay by author Kyle Chayka on the topic, calling the decline of X a “bellwether for a new era of the Internet that simply feels less fun than it used to be.” People cherished it. (Sample feedback from X: “Relatable.” “Exactly right.”) Chayka claims that it’s now more durable to search out new memes, web sites, and browser video games than it was a decade in the past. He additionally argues that the rising crop of platforms well-liked with younger individuals—Twitch, TikTok—are inferior, enjoyment-wise, to the social internet of the 2010s.

Both of those arguments are baffling. Memes more energizing previously? Yes, it’s tiresome to see Tim Robinson in a hot dog costume for the five hundredth time, however c’mon. In the early 2010s—the years Chayka longs for—the web was all doge and doggos. It was the period of response GIF Tumblrs, the Harlem Shake, the Ice Bucket Challenge. Give me actually any nonetheless from I Think You Should Leave over “You Had One Job” epic fail picture macros. Only glasses of the rosiest tint may recast the 2013 web as a shitposting paradise misplaced.

The argument that the 2010s social internet was superior amusement to the platforms now well-liked with Gen Z is even stranger. TikTok has main points, however being unfun is not one of them. It’s been a springboard for some genuinely proficient individuals, from comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez to author Rayne Fisher-Quann to chef Tabitha Brown. Binging Twitch streams definitely isn’t my factor, however individuals aren’t being held at gunpoint and compelled to look at seven straight hours of Pokimane. They prefer it! They’re having enjoyable! And how can one say with a straight face that gaming acquired worse? Roblox alone is a gleeful world unto itself; to fake it doesn’t exist and isn’t a vibrant digital hangout is goofy and obtuse.

Corrosion of particular platforms on the web—X, to pluck the obvious instance—is an observable phenomenon. (I, too, mourn previous Twitter.) Musk’s modifications to how X operates have made it more durable to floor and confirm info; his antics have pushed away each advertisers and energy customers and allowed the cryptogrifter class to spam inboxes with invites to NFT drops and meme cash, leading to a digital area that feels deserted and crowded directly. Other platforms, although, are flourishing.

Look at Discord, as an illustration. Its siloed construction is a throwback to the pre-Facebook web period, when socializing on-line typically meant logging on to particular boards. The disintegration of the Big Tech-dominated 2010s web is making a extra balkanized social internet expertise, what Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler calls the “dark forest” concept, the place individuals flip away from huge, open mega-platforms in favor of extra non-public or area of interest digital areas, from nonpublic Slack channels to invite-only WeDiscussion groups or special-interest podcasts. While some individuals may discover that boring and exhausting to navigate, it’s not universally boring, or inherently troublesome to navigate.

There are severe issues with the web proper now. Platform decay—“enshittification”—is actual, and it’s not restricted to X. Search is in shambles. Plus, the flood of AI spam has simply begun. But there have been severe issues with the web 10 years in the past too. Arguing that the decline of sure corners of a earlier model of the web implies that the complete web isn’t entertaining anymore is a preposterous leap.