31 Netizens Share What They Consider To Be Next Big Changes In The Culture Of The Internet
Interview
The internet is so ingrained in our lives that, most of the time, we don't even think about how much of our lives depend on it. If it disappeared, we would have a hard time doing a lot of things -- from, for instance, reaching banks to simply having an endless source of entertainment.
Actually, the internet is such an advanced thing that it developed its own culture. But have you ever thought what will happen to both the internet and its culture in the future? After all, everything changes online very fast. Well, some people did, and they shared their opinions online. Today, let's take a trip through some of these opinions and decide if we agree with any of them.
More info: Reddit
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It will become so intolerable with the combination of ads, rage bait, censorship, and AI that people will start an offline movement.
It's already happening. The internet is powered by consumerism so it only tries to sell you what you've already bought. For conservatives that is anger and fear. For liberals that is hope and depression. These will only be amplified until that's all the internet will offer, since our economy is competitive capitalism it will never offer solutions or collaboration.
Its going to be an unusable propaganda funnel. just bots screaming recycled nonsense to at each other to drive engagement. probably less then a dozen English language websites for casual research. we had the greatest source of knowledge the human race has ever achieved and we let the least cool people ever ruin it.
One word: censorship.
If the creator of reddit, for example, would see what his platform has become, he would delete it. And it's going to be even worse IMO, the whole internet. There is not much freedom anywhere, anymore.
Remember the good old days pals, they will be just stories for future generations, we are lucky to have experienced, maybe, the freest place in human history, or the most freedom, on the internet of the 90s/2000s.
The reason there's less freedom is because people don't know how to handle freedom coupled to anonymity. The internet was a cesspool of dirt in the 00's. I should know, I was there. Chatrooms on legitimate children's websites filled with weird perverts, weird porn appearing semi at random through any channel. I remember I was at school, my friend was on a computer AT SCHOOL, in a chatroom on some easily accessible msn-type website and within minutes a dude turned on his webcam to live stream his w***y to us. We were fourteen. At the time it was kinda funny, but this goes to show it was a disaster waiting to happen.
In one way or another, you know what the internet is and don’t need complicated explanations, such as the one Wikipedia provides. But if that doesn't satisfy you, and you actually want some kind of simple description -- basically, it’s a wide network that connects computers all over the world, through which people can share information and communicate.
So, what's internet culture? To say it simply, internet culture consists of various customs, characteristics, communication styles, and similar things. These customs are developed and maintained by people online or, in other words, netizens, cybercitizens, or digital citizens, who can either participate anonymously or non-anonymously. Basically, it’s kind of just like any other culture, only it takes place on the internet, which presents certain unique aspects.
Anonymity will dissolve completely. It's already been heavily eroded compared to what it was circa 2001.
I have never been a big fan of social media. Tried Facebook years ago, just to keep in touch with family, but just didn't get all that much into it. Prefer to call or write to them, even email is more personal than a generic posting, and way more private too. When I found out employers were stalking current and prospective employees on social media, I dumped Facebook (which I rarely looked at anyway) and told my family to call, write, or email me. Besides, there are people out there I don't care to talk to, or to have know my business---and don't tell me I can set accounts to private, because I remember more than one leak of private information, and more than one update that turned off privacy settings and made all accounts public. Now, I know I can Google my name and find postings for things like my engagement announcement, my graduations, and other things that got in the news. That's fine, because I have no control over them, and besides, they're accomplishments. But I stay off personal social media for everything else because I prefer to keep my private life exactly that; private.
Even more artificial posts, I'm seeing more and more every day.
And the websites seem to prefer not to step up monitoring them either. Free speech isn't a pass to say anything that comes into your head. That's reductionist. It does have limits, and those limits cover the potential dangers from your words---because there are people who don't think before they speak, and don't consider the possible effects of what they say. The classic example is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre as a prank, and causing a panic where people get injured or even killed, when there's no fire at all. If you try to use free speech as your defense at your trial, the judge will tell you just how much of an idiot you are, before he sends you to prison.
You already can't trust text info, but image and video info is definitely going to get way harder to trust.
Internet culture is a quite rapidly changing organism. Ever since its invention, the internet has developed not only its own culture but also greatly changed the offline world. It’s all going at such a rapid pace, so there’s no wonder that there are people wondering what the future holds.
One of these people is Reddit user u/RemnantOnReddit, who came to r/AskReddit to ask, “What predictions do you have for the future of Internet culture?” As it was revealed in the interview with Bored Panda, they were always interested in imaginings of the future like “Blade Runner” or “Detroit: Become Human.”
They said: “Picturing society in these futures is fascinating and one of the biggest parts of our society today on the Internet. In my lifetime, we've already seen a massive change, mostly the shift from small forums to large corporate apps. This all occurred in just 15 years.”
But what about the upcoming 15 years? This question drove the person to ask the question on Reddit. Yet, they weren’t surprised by the answers, as most of them were kind of expected: “There seemed to be a general consensus with the commenters, as well as key points that kept being touched on.”
Human beings will begin to shift away from publicly accessible online content in favour of spaces where the people they're speaking with can be verified as human, such as IRL spaces, private servers, and websites with sophisticated AI detection that we haven't invented yet. Half the population will become increasingly suspicious of media and anything that risks having been touched by AI, while the other half will unknowingly or consciously embrace it as the new world order of "truth.".
I think Gen Z and Gen alpha will realize drawbacks to having social media where you share your identity/connect with people you know. I think there will be a rise in normalizing anonymity and candidness on social media, such as Reddit, etc where you are less focused on an audience and an image, and just be more authentic.
Companies whose job it is to scrub the internet of old profiles, posts, and accounts are going to become very popular.
We have entire generations documenting their lives online for everyone to see now. When some of those young people grow up and either enter politics or become famous, they are going to want to make sure those edgy racist and sexist jokes they made when they were 15 are not going to come to light.
When asked about the main trends shaping internet culture nowadays that will continue to shape it in the future, u/RemnantOnReddit said that, in their opinion, it’s artificial intelligence, the erosion of anonymity, and conglomeration.
AI won’t simply have an impact on the internet -- it will completely reshape it: “Soon, it'll be almost impossible to tell if a video or blog has been created or written by artificial intelligence. It'll be an AI-driven machine of sloppy content, propaganda, and fake news.”
Then, the erosion of anonymity is another driving factor, according to our interviewee. Nowadays, anywhere you go on the internet is tracked in one way or another: signing up, agreeing to terms and conditions agreements, which u/RemnantOnReddit called “so long it'd put War and Peace to shame,” and so on.
Another major factor of the internet's change is conglomeration, the fancy word our interviewed Reddit user learned from the thread under their question. “15 years ago, there were maybe 10 big sites that I'd gravitate around, with dozens more I'd visit on a regular basis. Now, there are only really 4 or 5 corporate apps that encompass most of the features and content I'd have to squeeze out of a hundred websites back in the day.”
Once social media eats it self to death i think the rise of forums and small owned forums will return.
small forums has smaller numbers smaller numbers makes it easy to mod and the small mod team does have admins snooping to bannd hammer there subreddit/discord/groupchat.
also the death of the free internet unless we rapidly switch to mix of decentralised/federated networks. servers cost money and ads just don't cut it anymore either donate your bandwidth and cpu or cought up the money.
i long wish for the days when social media dies.
Conglomeration. Fewer websites offering more on each. 20 years ago I would visit hundreds of sites every week. Now most days I only visit the same 4-5 I always visit.
1. Millions of dumb people are gonna be on the internet.
2. They'll display their culture of hate and other lowly acts.
3. Communities will be run by these jerks.
4. Eventually will be bought by politicians and political parties to run their own narratives and suppress others'.
5. Bullying will become a thing and open threats will be entertained.
6. Criminals will use this infrastructure to do other crimes, peddle d***s right in front of our nose and feds' eyes.
7. In the name of freedom of speech, people will talk about rubbish and taboo.
Oh it's already happening, haha.
So, as can be seen from the answers from various Reddit users and the person who asked the question originally, the internet’s future seems kind of dim. But, hey, maybe something will happen to change the future for the better. With such a fast pace of change, we can't properly anticipate what waits for us in the future.
Do you have any predictions for the future of the internet and its culture? Share with us in the comments! And don’t forget to upvote the predictions you agree with!
Ouroboros of AI-generated content designed to game algorithms eating itself.
apparently if you keep feeding AI its own content it starts generating overtly psychedelic garbage so no, not worried.
It will be very hard to tell what is real what is not, about everything. Look how much the Kate Middleton thing turned into a conspiracy circus..
The current definition of intelligence is: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. The future definition of intelligence is becoming: the ability to discern good information from bad.
There'll be internet "refuges" for humans where all content is generated by humans and not AI/bots.
Either like that Black Mirror episode where everyone rates each other, or like Dune.
I think we'll see even more emphasis on virtual experiences, like virtual reality socializing and gaming.
While I'm very introverted, I agree we still need some level of interaction.
It will be severely restricted in the name of misinformation.
If the corporations gain more control, we're going to see a massive loss of internet culture.
It's already happened. I remember, Gandalf, when internet culture was new. If you weren't there you'd be amazed at how much has changed in just 20 years. The way we interact with the web, each other, data, commerce. Completely unrecognizable. And I don't know that it's changed for the better, overall.
All culture will be hollow, mimicked, fake. besides the censorship and cancellation.
Everyone will have seen everyone else naked (via deepfakes, OF, or hacking).
So many dooming posts here. Sheesh. Haha
Honestly? My guess is you’d have to treat it like a living organism that is constantly learning. Mankind will continue to impart our knowledge into it until the internet becomes obsolete.
From that standpoint, it’ll grow, evolve, and form new adaptations for mankind to make lives easier. Maybe like, integration into synthetic biologics for remote monitoring and immediate medical interventions.
Maybe something better than the internet will come along, at which point it either becomes a new type of phone book, or an archive of historical knowledge.
In the immediate future, I’d put my long-term money on augmented reality. The possibilities there seem endless. From marketing, entertainment, and education, to communication, social networking, remote work, bla bla bla.
Gonna need lots of the ol interwebs for that.
The internet has been around for just over 40 years, and while it began as a means of universities being able to share and compare research, it quickly evolved into the hellscape we all know and loathe today. Humanity has had the entire wealth of human knowledge and history, and wisdom literally in their pockets and at their fingertips for nearly 17 years.....and everyone is getting dumber by the day. Conspiracy theories, misinformation, obsession with celebrity, victim mentality, divisive everything, feelings over facts and the perpetual desperate attempts by everyone on all sides to blame every problem on everyone else. Every attempt to make it better, manages only to make it worse as the masses fall over themselves to cater to the loudest minorities with no consideration for the broader consequences.
I have thought about this for years. I always thought it was important to have three types of Internet connection personas.
The first being a verified identity where you can take care of official business and any transactions where it is important where your identity is known. This is inspired by the way Debian Linux developers are verified
Second is similar to how many sites do now. Pick a username, email address and password for that site. We already see pros and cons now. Each site does not keep our data very secure, but it is convenient for many interactions.
Third is pure anonymous connection. Each connection is a throw away username. While 4chan types may thrive and it may be have a seedy underbelly, there are some really good reasons to be anonymous on the Internet. If you are doxxed, it is because you let too much personal information to be known or someone you know and trust f***s you.
Other things that need creative solutions:
Advertisement for free access to sites is a plus and minus. This is what is driving much of the negativity on the Internet. Algorithms are built to keep your eyes on their page for ad dollars or sales. Propaganda and criminal activity drive many bots. I am not sure how to break the information silo effect. SEO is big big business.
It would be digital privacy renaissance: Blockchain, encryption, and anonymity I think.
Generative A.I. to design prompts for generative A.I.
Ai everywhere. Influencers everywhere with more ad inundations directly speaking to you. Dialogue from ads that speak directly to you. Annoying advertising like we have never seen before. Influencers pushing their ai music and ai films and commercial products. Every aspect of every text you ever typed, every word uttered will be stored upon and ai constantly telling you how much of a hypocrite you are with receipts.
Hollywood with a power like never before. An inundation of s**t to an extreme like we haven’t seen. Eventual ip rights from actors will cave for ai reproduction and the streaming services will have all their exclusive ip that paying subscribers can only use to generate ai films with ip.
A boom in reality television like we have never seen before because real people will be desired more and the content of narratives would retain ai for budgets with hipster nepo babies filming real people for their art house films.
People are coming for Hollywood. The light has been shone and we all see the horrible humans in entertainment. They are not smarter, better people. They don't know more about politics or foreign policy. Keep the "stars" on the screen and that's it.
Continued sanctuary for people who slept through English and debate classes and are possibly all related.
People will tag every social media post with anything that might trigger people. Or, posts that are jokes will be expected to have something like a "/s" tag.
Tbh, I wouldn’t mind tone tags. I like them cause no one’s confused on the tone.
I predict that in the future the words “internet” and “culture” will never be used in close proximity.
Probably true, internet will be hidden and culture will become extinct.
The skibbidi toilet generation is gonna ruin the internet with pathetic memes that arent even funny.
This is just the older generations not getting the kid’s sense of humor. I don’t get it either, but even I can see this is opinionated and a bit mean. Everyone’s sense of humor is different, even if it seems cringe to us :/ Don’t blame the Gen alphas for the change in the internet, they were just raised with this age of clickbait and cringe memes so they’re going to continue it.
Lots of bots/AI yelling at each other.
I honestly think we are heading for a social media reckoning that is years overdue. We really need to quash the rampant misinformation and I do think that the younger generations are better at spotting all the BS. I still can't believe how bad it got in the mid-late 10s tho.
One of the reasons I like Reddit so much is it reminds me of the old IGN forums before social media really went crazy. I honestly think ppl are sick and tired of the big platforms like FB and Twitter. Zucc diversified Meta so it'll stick around but the dumpster fire that is twitter is only going to keep burning hotter till its gone as long as musk owns it and honestly at this point I don't see any saving it.
I think the internet will evolve differently in different countries/ cultures.
Netflix has a new documentary that called, "The antisocial network". How the anonymity of 2chan and 4chan gave rise to the lawlessness we currently see. It was very interesting.
4chan is the best example of how a website with no rules and compete anonymity looks. One of it's only rules is to not break US law but most boards don't even care about that
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Someone will try to have another go at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm It was an opt-out based tracking system designed to monitor you and serve targeted adverts. It was labelled as spyware by practically everyone. The Phorm system would have been installed at the ISPs. The shitstorm that happened was fantastic. The EU opened a case against the UK govt for allowing it to happen. For now its the continued march towards a place where there is no nuance. If you are for something then you must be against something else (even if you are not). Social media must be run by the Sith, they only deal in absolutes and it may explain Zuckerberg. /ramble_over
I think the internet will evolve differently in different countries/ cultures.
Netflix has a new documentary that called, "The antisocial network". How the anonymity of 2chan and 4chan gave rise to the lawlessness we currently see. It was very interesting.
4chan is the best example of how a website with no rules and compete anonymity looks. One of it's only rules is to not break US law but most boards don't even care about that
Load More Replies... Someone will try to have another go at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm It was an opt-out based tracking system designed to monitor you and serve targeted adverts. It was labelled as spyware by practically everyone. The Phorm system would have been installed at the ISPs. The shitstorm that happened was fantastic. The EU opened a case against the UK govt for allowing it to happen. For now its the continued march towards a place where there is no nuance. If you are for something then you must be against something else (even if you are not). Social media must be run by the Sith, they only deal in absolutes and it may explain Zuckerberg. /ramble_over
