Mostly offtopic: This reminds me of the LiveJournal page where you could view all the latest images uploaded to that site. It was a mix of everything from news to porn and gave a small insight into the zeitgeist. It was also voyeuristic, and to this almost 50 year old it seems similar to the endless-refresh consumption of tiktok.
The web was definitely much, much smaller back then. You couldn't do something similar with any of the large social media sites, although maybe a small random sampling would work. I wonder if part of the perceived ills of social media are due to the sheer scale of it all? It's impossible to be "caught up" with anything anymore, there's always another trillion gallons pouring out of the firehose. Perhaps that's partly why HN endures, it stays small?
During the Small Web days it was possible to get "caught up" because the web was mostly niche. Now that the web encompasses most of society it's not possible to get "caught up" in the same way. You simply can't know about everything.
The Overwhelming Web requires the opposite strategy from FOMO. It requires aggressive pruning, unsubscribing, and careful curation of attention.
The niche underground nerdery has turned into a tidal wave of mainstream bullshit and trying to get "caught up" on that is the trap of the generation.
I remember some TED talk or some other tech talk where the presenter mentioned a Flickr stream of all newly uploaded photos. As you could only set the permissions after uploading photos, often, some private photos and scanned documents would appear in that stream for a few minutes.
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Mostly offtopic: This reminds me of the LiveJournal page where you could view all the latest images uploaded to that site. It was a mix of everything from news to porn and gave a small insight into the zeitgeist. It was also voyeuristic, and to this almost 50 year old it seems similar to the endless-refresh consumption of tiktok.
The web was definitely much, much smaller back then. You couldn't do something similar with any of the large social media sites, although maybe a small random sampling would work. I wonder if part of the perceived ills of social media are due to the sheer scale of it all? It's impossible to be "caught up" with anything anymore, there's always another trillion gallons pouring out of the firehose. Perhaps that's partly why HN endures, it stays small?
During the Small Web days it was possible to get "caught up" because the web was mostly niche. Now that the web encompasses most of society it's not possible to get "caught up" in the same way. You simply can't know about everything.
The Overwhelming Web requires the opposite strategy from FOMO. It requires aggressive pruning, unsubscribing, and careful curation of attention.
The niche underground nerdery has turned into a tidal wave of mainstream bullshit and trying to get "caught up" on that is the trap of the generation.
I like the phrasing of "The Overwhelming Web"! Quick Googling shows no other similar uses, did you just come up with it?
Yeah, it seemed like a more apt description of what we have than "large web".
I remember some TED talk or some other tech talk where the presenter mentioned a Flickr stream of all newly uploaded photos. As you could only set the permissions after uploading photos, often, some private photos and scanned documents would appear in that stream for a few minutes.