practice internet optimism
Inspired by:
- Antonio's My boss fired me over WhatsApp while he was on vacation in Honolulu, updated with The internet isn’t fun anymore, and it’s everyone's fault
- Sal's reply: The internet is fun
What a coincidence that Antonio nearly reprised Post-Human Posting's formula that inspired my piece on doomscrolling and reddit.
- First, the Hacker News submission for the initial post blows up.
- Then, the post author notices how visits to their blog skyrocketed.
- They identify a set of concerns that they see Hacker News commenters have with their post. In Post-Human Posting's case, it's snark and bot accusations. In Antonio's case, it's seriousness and rage bait accusations.
- Some authors use their Hacker News account to start replying to submission comments. Others choose not to or don't have such an account.
- The submission eventually gets flagged, removing it from the front page.
- The author publishes a response post a day or two later, which receives less visits but still outperforms the pack.
Trajectories as described make me wonder if chosen flavors of comment engagement and blog post updates yield positivity. When your work becomes viral, find opportunities for mutual upliting. Seek serious partnerships, express genuine gratitude, and constructively contribute to exciting conversations.
Add to that the overbroad technological pessimism I perceive from both authors' works. I'd like to think that the more I encounter such pessimism, the more it radicalizes me toward optimism. My world can always use more optimism, but it seems that their worlds can too.
On optimism, Sal pointing out our abundant technological landscape compared to years and decades prior is a sight for sore eyes. Options like websites, computer programs, and phone apps grow in number daily. Ever more disciplines and use cases receive adequate coverage thanks to human ingenuity and collaboration.
Better yet, nostalgia's sentimentality and constraints can synergize with bleeding edge possibility and complexity for a holistic view of innovation. Why not appreciate all the technological developments prior, in between, and yet to come too? Who knows what exciting developments will rock our boat next?
Yet, people like you and I don't even find a fraction of the available options. While your purview of the Internet has been so narrow, how much can you rejuvenate your internet?
Sal's directive to "find your happy places and avoid the nasty places" within the Internet complements my own call to "explore how alive its [your Internet's] inner workings are." You can go further than that too. Learn from, share, and build upon the healthy parts of your virtual spaces and beyond.
Find online pockets too busy having fun to enter vicious cycles of external approval and validation. Find escapists working so well together they have no (time for) complaints. Learn from those who reap outsized rewards while balancing being terminally online and healthily adjusted. Dive into fiction or your imagination if you feel that starved of inspiration from other people in your life.
Take your Internet use seriously through an undying process instead of worrying about stern tones. Maximize your online experience as much, if not more than, your offline experience with the one body, mind, and life you own.
Think twice about wielding weapons prone to collateral damage like "everyone" and "nobody". Say you think everyone just wants to "argue and overcomplicate everything" to where "nobody wants to have fun anymore". Could you be to blame? If your Internet has felt boring, show how you are making it more exciting. Then focus on the conduits that propagate your energy, not the pack that chokes your signal.
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