So, during one of my daily musings about how the internet is shit, I was astonished to find that the website www.internetisshit.org is actually still online after 12 years. It may be a little bit older, but not much.

There's nothing much to it - just 11 brief paragraphs, linked in sequence, about how shit the internet is, followed by a link to a printable version. At the time, I dismissed it as the ramblings of an embittered luddite, but when I read it again today, I found its predictions have been remarkably spot on.

It's certainly true that many people have become too online-centric, and judge the quality of things, businesses and people by its online presence. People who don't have Facebook pages (I don't anymore) are deemed social outcasts. Online journalism has certainly nosedived in quality and seeks to drive readers in through clickbait rather than quality research and writing. Online journalists have become infamous for never checking their sources properly and simply quoting unquestioningly from other (often false) websites.

The last few paragraphs are particularly relevant for me, which is why I'll quote them here: Discuss.

Yea it is. Now be good and unplug your ethernet or disconnect WIFI. Better?

Meh, it's neither the holy grail nor shit, and I guess the extreme sentiment that it's shit is mostly based on the unrealistic expectation that it was meant to be the holy grail. Both opinions seem pretty irrational to me. Like everything else, the internet has its upsides and downsides. It can cause addiction, laziness, peer pressure, but it can also facilitate a lot of daily tasks and work, and without it there would be no GOG and no simple means for you, the creator of internetishit.org or anyone else to broadcast their meaningful opinion to the whole wide world and discuss it with others across the globe. ;)

I guess a tool is only as good as the people using it; but saying it's all shit sounds a bit too pessimistic and misanthropic to me.

I don't think it's all shit, and if you read it again, I don't think the article is actually saying that the internet itself is all shit, but my opinion on whether it's bettered or worsened society as a whole since I first read that site has changed for the worse.

Back in 2003, I actually believed that society would be entering a new age of enlightenment. Now we live in an age of disinformation, misdirection, easy dissemination of hate and discord. Work is less about quality and more about quantity and speed - in my line of work (translation and editing), the internet has shortened turnover times to such an extreme that quality work is a difficult thing to achieve nowadays. The market is overcrowded with shovelware products - not just games, but also music, films, books, journalism - and ironically, the only way that most of them can stand out is with a foot in the physical world - brick-and-mortar stores, printed books, CDs, DVDs, physical copies of games, on-site consultations. Discourse on political subjects is rarely objective and reasoned - instead, the ease of access to a wide audience facilitates extreme views and intolerance.

In short, the internet has become the home of the bottom of the barrel. It might be a useful tool and source, and there may be quality present online, but at the same time, there's a distinct sense of order or standards severely lacking (a concept often referred to in German as a "rechtsfreier Raum" - basically meaning anarchy).

It is like telephone or TV nowadays. It is shit only if you make it shit for you.

I still recall in the middle/late 90s when internet was really picking up in popularity, largely due to Windows 9x. There was some TV program presenting what you can supposedly do on the internet, but the TV host still ended it all with a "Some of us have a real life too so to us internet has very little to offer.", kind of his contribution to how you can discuss with people from all over the world on internet, visit interesting web sites, it even have some services etc. In his eyes, it is just stuff for nerds, and will remain as such.

I wonder if that guy is still doing his banking etc. only on branch offices, not online? There are lots of other big impacts too, like how calling abroad is nowadays faaaar cheaper than it used to be. So many things are done online, heck nowadays many watch much more media online than from TV or radio.

I guess the difference between us is not rooted in pessimism then but in your previous optimism that I didn't share. ;)

That work is less about quality and more about quantity and speed seems like a general problem in our capitalist societies to me and not to blame on the internet alone. Disinformation, misdirection, hate and discord were there before the internet, they're easier to disseminate now, but also easier to expose, denounce and counteract. The amount of shovelware is offset by a greater choice, a better catering to different tastes and quite a few hidden gems that wouldn't have made it before.

Nothing is only good or only bad, I think you can't have one without the other, no freedom without a bit of anarchy, no choice without variety, including (subjectively or objectively) inferior options.

The internet is great when your purposefully wasting time when you should be doing something productive. Like now.

I'd much prefer to be watching Under Siege 2 or playing Total War.

I hear you, man. The amount of sources of information has vastly multiplied and it has never been easier to properly inform yourself (with a little skill), yet the things that people take for face value is absolutely mind-boggling.

It may be nostalgia, but I feel like it was easier to have a meaningful conversation on the internet back then, even, if people disagreed. I don't know... *insert get off my lawn pic*

From my point of view, people have much more information in their use nowadays (both real information and disinformation), they just have to know what to believe and whatnot, and make up their own mind. Many things are really not about "true or false" or "right or wrong", but differences in opinions.

I think the strength is that if someone spreads disinformation(?), then by default others have the ability to counter that, telling people why they feel it is disinformation. Also in many countries the mass media tends to want to hide some things, and I think it is important people have alternative ways to obtain extra information. Yes they need to be able to filter out disinformation or get confirmations elsewhere.

It is a much more level playfield than it used to be, as far as getting your opinion out and spreading information is. After all, that is why in many totalitarian countries they are trying to curb Youtube, Facebook etc. This can be used both for good and bad.

For instance, regarding the EU refugee crisis, the other day I read in Youtube comments or somewhere how a young girl was allegedly raped by asylum seeker(s). The person making that claim said that you can't find that in mass media because they don't want to tell bad things about asylum seekers.

I myself took that story with a grain of salt, not as a truth just because some nameless guy on Youtube claimed so. My first reaction was to tell him to give some back up or proof of what he is saying, where did you hear it (from another Youtuber?) etc. Police records, something? So just because someone is spreading some information that might pique my interest, doesn't automatically mean I will swallow it whole. If it is of interest to me, I'd try to get some official confirmation for it.

The internet isn't shit. People are.

Oh, it's definitely become much worse since Web 2.0. The offline experience enforces a pace of work through natural processes (consumption of resources, time delays) that encourage a much more measured approach to how we work. The "now" culture has resulted in people no longer thinking before they deliver or post things - journalists leave their articles filled with typos and factual inaccuracies, software is released full of bugs, books are poorly written. I don't agree with this. A lot of people are driven by inherent fear, distrust and hate, and when those seeds are sown, it's difficult to uproot them again. When I had an active Facebook account, for example, the number of hoaxes I kept seeing (among them some very nasty made-up stories from the far right, but also the terminally-ill baby pictures, the promises of free gifts etc.) prompted me to point out - quoting reliable information - about how it's a hoax.

But people just don't want to know - they rationalise their decision to disseminate it with excuses like "just in case" or "it might be true, you never know". In a select few (highly publicised) cases, this may be true, but ultimately, the lack of any "natural" curation is starting to discourage quality work. In PC gaming, for example, the trend is heading towards "budget" experiences, because full-price experiences find it difficult to compete against the Steam sale culture.

And it's a telling thing that many indie developers nowadays are seeking to stand out again with physical releases - so much so that many consider a physical publishing deal to be their holy grail. Likewise with books and movies, less so with music.
And yet people believe it. As long as your demand to provide evidence of the claim remains unanswered, the wider population continues to assume that the story is true.

Internet culture essentially places the burden of proof on you to demonstrate that the story is not true, and I guess you can see the problem with this. And even so, people are disinclined to trust proof if it conflicts with their own natural sense of distrust and hatred, especially when the rumours are designed to give them an overinflated sense of their own superiority. The anti-asylum messages for example are usually combined with national pride sentiments, the sick baby hoaxes are usually combined with sentiments of caring and emotionality.

In my defence, I was in my early 20s and at university when I believed that.

You know what it was like - everyone was praising the internet as "teh future", everything was "l33t" and the physical world was supposedly losing all meaning. Everyone thought that books, movies, music, games would all be online, that libraries were a thing of the past, that brick-and-mortar shops would be gone within a decade.

Over a decade later, and things are actually starting to move in the opposite direction.
The irony here is that the "mass media conspiracy" fallacy is commonly used by extremists to propagate lies: "What I'm telling you is the truth, the mass media establishment is lying, blah, blah, blah etc. etc. etc." Because the idea that a small number of news outlets controls the flow of information is unappealing to people, it drives them to believe disinformation. This is deliberately aimed at exploiting anti-establishment sentiment.

What's the point of exposing mass media lies when supposedly independent media is even less trustworthy?

Is it really so, or are we just assuming The Others are "dumber" than us that way, automatically believing everything they are told?

Naturally people want to hear what strengthens their own opinions (so neo-nazis are more likely to believe The Holocaust was a hoax, or the anarchists are more likely to believe that bank managers eat small babies for breakfast), but this also gives a level playing field to discredit those false rumors, and even the people who make them.

I think even common people have learned that there is also lots of false information out there. In my opinion any normal people learns that already in their childhood, sometimes people lie for different reasons.

All in all, I think internet also increases discussion (and arguments) between different people. Exchanging information. So not just reading what a newspaper told us, and then make up our own mind how we feel about it, or discuss with our closest friends. Now we can discuss about it with the whole world if we want to. Take for example Greece: discussing (and arguing) online the different point of view that people in different countries feel about it (including the Greeks themselves)? Providing the people speak the same language (usually English).

For people who feel they are able to filter information, more channels of data is a good thing.

If the "independent media" have some hidden agenda (like spreading opinions as the only truth etc.), they usually try to limit the newsfeed as well. Usually this means moderating the forum and banning people who have different opinions.

I find it laughable how even a Finnish anarchist site, which boldly proclaims not to have any masters but being a "media project" by its users, has become very strictly moderated. Heck, many such sites (I think that anarchist site too) are trying to prevent the use of Tor browser because it makes it harder for them to track who is writing there. Some anarchists...

To me that also demonstrates it is the limiting of data flow that is the problem, not the freedom of it. Those who are trying to push their own viewpoint, are also trying to control the data flow.