the obscene commercialisation of the internet has kinda ruined it for me tbh. i remember when my dad brought the family computer home when i was 9 and i became obsessed. picture it, youre a kid in the late 2000's and you've just gotten off of school. it's rough, you're getting bullied and excluded by most of your classmates. but this magic box let's you access almost anything and everything that would interest you. for me it was youtube, flash games, fanart for my favourite media and hell, even fanfic. my dad was kinda absent and my mum was emotionally distant so i had pretty much unrestricted internet access from when i got home and when i had to go to bed. of course, then my dad left and my mum focused on paying for more essential stuff and we went without internet from 2011 onwards.
i spent a lot of time at my grandparents house, they had internet so i didnt go too long without it. honestly i kinda miss how it was. theres a certain nostalgia tied to how i used to access the internet, semi-retro tech included. i have these vivid memories of just being in the 'computer room' as a kid. it was late at night, late for a 10 year old at least. i'm laying on the couch, a little tired. the dim single wall lights were made even dimmer due to the fact that one of the bulbs was burnt out. the lighting and the room itself were both warm, cozily so. my dad smoked, the scent of cigarette smoke lingered in the air and the sound of the old mechanical hard drive buzzed slightly as my dad typed away on the keyboard. i miss it.
nowadays my use of the wired is just a distraction. the hollow conversations with ai and the regurgitated content for whatever hot topic of the week is just serves to keep me from doing anything productive. it's almost like stockholm syndrome. even as i type this, i have another tab open. there's a youtube video playing, "unsolved internet mysteries [entry 1]". the topics covered are ones ive heard of 100 times before. cicada 3301, the story of jack froese, mortis.com... i'm aware that part of the reason is just down to me being terminally online but theres nothing new on the wired.