I think a lot of developers are carrying a kind of grief right now, but rarely naming it.
Not burnout exactly.
Not simple nostalgia either.
Someth...
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This pretty much sums everything up on the state of the interest and I, too, feel that even on here as well.
I remember back then whenever I go on the internet, I can "feel" the present of a human based on what they post and the content is showing on my feed. Now, it feels like more structured like you mentioned, but I feel like it's too much to the point where it feels mono toned and that a robot is doing the work instead of actual humans. This is happening on Dev.to as well and it feels like that I am just on here by myself and no actual connections. I hope in the future that the AI detector will be implemented just as a indication that it is written by an actual human which @ben is currently working on it based on my reply to this post from @jarvisscript
9 Years on DEV.
Nevertheless, I just hope in the future we can sense that actual human connections again. Missed the old days where you can and now everything feels robotic if that makes sense.
Great post NorthernDev!
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
Yeah, that feeling of being able to sense a human presence is exactly what I think a lot of people miss. Not perfection, just signs that a real person is there.
And I get what you mean about DEV too. There are still real people here, but sometimes the signal gets buried under things that feel a bit too smooth, too structured, too machine-shaped.
I really hope we get more ways to preserve that human feeling too. Without it, the whole thing starts to feel hollow.
Thanks @the_nortern_dev! Yea, I also wish the same as well. I know a lot of products are coming out that claim 100% human and such. I just hope there is a universal solution to this but I guess we never know until we reach there. Thanks for replying :D
without a profile picture or social media videos. The old internet, and, before, the 8bit demo scene, had a human culture while some prefered pseudonym nickname anonymity. If that was Web 1, then came social Web 2.0 and now we experience the dead internet where you don't know if there's a human or a bot (or a dog) on the other side.
AI AI everywhere i go i see AI. websites, app get developed using AI. so many fake videos, fake images. i wish can just go back to 2019
It’s not even just the tools anymore, it’s the feeling of it. Everything starts to blur together after a while.
And honestly, I think a lot of people miss 2019 for exactly that reason. It still felt more human.
2019 is a nice nostalgia target. No AI, no COVID yet, but git and smartphones and fast internet. I thought of the "old internet days" as 2005 (good old Web 2.0 before Google acquired YouTube) or 1997 though.
Yes... The internet used to be better. And services like the Wayback Machine seem to only "rub salt" into the wound of memories.
that’s exactly the weird feeling.
The Wayback Machine is amazing, but sometimes it really does feel like visiting a version of the internet that had more soul in it.
What makes it hit hardest for you, old blogs, forums, personal sites, or something else?
It's like watching a film that you really loved as a teenager again decades later. Don't do it!
Themes of old websites that look like crap were the best, lol.
I think AI being everywhere is filling the internet with fake data that isn't even relevant to what you asked. I believe this hype is just a phase and will eventually end
I think a lot of people feel that too.
It’s not just that AI is everywhere, it’s that so much of it feels thin and disposable. More noise, less signal.
I’m not sure the hype fully disappears, but I do think people will get much less patient with useless AI very quickly.
I think for me, I’m slowly developing a lack of trust and approaching everything with skepticism. It’s like I’m running in a default zero-trust mode, assuming everything might be fake. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t like this a couple of years ago.
That might be one of the saddest parts of all this. The internet used to feel chaotic, but not constantly suspicious. Now it feels like you have to squint at everything first.
The internet is what you want it to be. If you are looking for human content you will find it.
Sure there is a lot of corporate content online, but branding is as old as the streets. Leaders in the oldest societies with written records had stories to praise them.
There was always slop on the internet, conspiracy theories became big on the internet.
AI helps to spread it faster.
Find the parts that don't rely on algorithms, Use platforms that are human-first. Use your own judgment.
In an ideal world new technologies would make life better, but we don't live in an ideal world.
I agree with a lot of it.
I don’t think the human parts are gone. More that they feel harder to stumble into now, and easier to bury under everything else.
AI didn’t create that problem, but it definitely made the volume and sameness worse.
I like your point about being more deliberate though. Maybe that’s part of the shift now — not finding the human internet by accident, but choosing it on purpose.
I can't agree more, I miss too the good old time when Internet was full of authentic people and authentic content. A place for sharing learnings, thougths and ideas, not for getting engagement and benefits :-(
exactly. It felt more like people leaving pieces of themselves behind, and less like everyone trying to optimize themselves into a strategy.
I think that shift is what a lot of us are really reacting to.
What do you miss most from that version of the internet?
What I miss the most are bidirectional conversations and discussions. Now, the "rockstar" streams something and its legion of acolytes follows it without judgement. Contributions are from top to down. You can comment with other followers and rarely discuss with the author.
That is what I miss, the time were everyone that contributes were on the same level, no rockstars, no hierarchies.
I don't know - what is "the old internet" - the WWW of the '90-s, of the '00-s? AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Usenet, GeoCities, dial-up connections? I don't really miss those ...
That’s fair. I don’t mean I literally miss every part of the old web either.
For me it’s less a specific era and more a feeling. Smaller, stranger, less optimized, less performative. More signs that an actual person had made the thing you were looking at.
Did any part of the older internet feel more alive to you, or not really?
I know the sentiment, I've heard it before, but personally, no not really - I'm coming across plenty of content (blogs etc) which feels genuine ...
Take dev.to - to me it feels more genuine than one or two years ago, when these inane "listicle" articles were all the rage on dev.to, you know, stuff like:
"Top 20 Bootstrap themes EVERY developer MUST know!"
I don't know what motivated people to write like that, but that was the kind of 'content' that irked me, and I see a lot less of that these days :-)
P.S. a community like dev.to is far beyond anything I've used in the '90-s or the '00-s - big hand to Ben and the other founders ...
Absolutely feels very "alive", and I'm spending quite a lot of time on it - maybe that's one reason why I'm not really having that "the internet is not alive" feeling? ;-)
Honestly, I’m not just quietly grieving the old internet — I actively miss it.
I’m talking HTML 4.01 era websites, messy personal pages, and those chaotic old-school internet chat rooms where people just… talked. No feeds, no algorithms deciding what you see, no engagement farming.
In a weird way, DEV feels like a small glimpse of that old spirit again. It’s not the same internet we had back then, but it’s probably one of the closest things we still have today.
I love that description.
The messy HTML era had so much more personality to it. It was chaotic, but in a very human way. People were just there, making things and talking to each other.
And I agree about DEV too. It’s not the old internet, but it still has some of that feeling of real people showing up as themselves.
What do you miss most from that era, the personal sites, the chat rooms, or just the overall pace of it?
Geocities, right? I am THAT old, and i loved how anyone was able to spin a web about literally anything. Not for profit. Just for ... the need of having a webpage about knitting or viking songs or whatever. Then google came and put a dollar tag on everything. The internet as we knew it died that day.
Yes, totally! I'm just writing my post which I'll publish tomorrow, about my first "Solar System" website. Back then Solar System had 9 planets🥹
Oww I miss Pluto!
Pluto is a planet and my decision is final. LOL.
I second that! Give us Pluto back!
This hit me right in the chest. It’s not just the old internet we're grieving; it’s the old games, the old life, the slower pace... I swear even the air smelled different back then. Today, as developers, we spend our days building hyper-optimized tools and worrying about perfect architectures, but everything feels sterilized. We traded the raw, messy human soul for metrics and algorithms.
Did you accidentally hit submit before typing your reply, or is this an AI bot confirming that the internet is indeed dead? 😂
✨❤
I still remember back in 2019, at least 2020. before ChatGPT was a big thing, before AI being able to write code was a thing...
I would go on stack overflow to get solutions to my problems. the answers weren't perfect, some times, just... no solution to my problems at all... but you know what was perfect? traces of human and yes, the answers weren't perfect but they gave us what they knew or what worked for them so we'd hope it'd work on our side too. back then, a solution to a software problem was hope + prayers and chances of someone having the same problem as you. it was very human.
now there's an answer to everything. everybody knows ( or they believe they know ) everything and everything's just becoming more... structured, logical, everything's moving so fast, it's not that i can't keep up but it's rather overwhelming and less human. i remember back then, a feature would normally take a month or 2 to implement - 3 days for a feature sounded unrealistic but now, for some, they'd even claim it's a bit too long for 3 days. not that i think it's bad but efficiency and humanity just don't naturally move in the same direction. some mistakes weren't made to be fixed haha.
I miss the uncertainty, I miss the imperfection we all gave to each other. hmm, maybe I'm just being nostalgic.
That line about efficiency and humanity not naturally moving in the same direction is incredibly accurate, Adam. It really sums up the whole problem perfectly. We should absolutely use the AI that is available for help with our daily work and to solve problems, but you are totally right that it removes that shared struggle we used to have on Stack Overflow. Pushing out a feature in three days instead of a month is great for the business, but it definitely kills that weird bonding experience of relying on hope and prayers together to fix a bug. Really appreciate you writing this.
I think what many developers miss isn’t just the old internet, it’s the slower pace. Fewer platforms, fewer metrics, and less pressure to constantly produce content.
Back then, it felt like building and sharing. Now it often feels like performing.
I think that’s a huge part of it.
A slower internet gave people more room to just make things without feeling like every post, project, or thought had to prove something.
“Building and sharing” vs “performing” is such a good way to put it. Do you think that pressure comes more from platforms now, or from us adapting to them?
Good point. I think it’s a mix of both. Platforms reward visibility, and over time, we adapt to that and start treating everything like a performance. The challenge is keeping that “build and share” mindset.
Look at all of us commenting on this post! The community is not dead, it is what we all make it. Every person sharing their comments without AI assistance, everyone taking the time to write, those are humans looking for real connection. It gives meaning to a community.
The imperfection, the lessons, the accidents. Those are real. Few things are more perfect than being able to relate to people in meaningful ways. AI wants to be perfect. Perhaps perfection is imperfection. Perfectly learning from our mistakes without AI. AI will always be a tool and not a solution. Humans have to work together to be the solution.
One day, I predict this will all be behind us, and the internet will all be hyping about time travel instead. Those businesses are gonna want websites/databases/vr experiences too! Haha. Gonna be alot to manage. Better band together. 😂😂😂
I have gone on a massive tangent. 😅
I love a massive tangent, Anna. You are completely right, though. Seeing all these responses really proves that the community is still alive and kicking when we actually try to talk to each other. I am a firm believer that we should use the AI that is available for help, but exactly like you said, as a tool, not the entire solution. The human connection and the messy mistakes are what actually make this industry mean something. Thank you for commenting 😊
I think the hardest part is the complicity.
A lot of us miss that older, stranger, more human web while actively learning how to write, build, and publish in ways that make us more optimized and less personal.
That’s what makes the grief real. It’s not just something that happened to the internet. It’s something we adapted to.
If it were only something that happened around us, it would be easier to talk about. But a lot of us adapted to it because we felt like we had to.
That’s what makes the grief feel so honest. It’s not just loss, it’s participation in the loss too.
We're constantly trying to smooth out the internet's "rough edges", but the truth is those rough edges are exactly what made it unique and human. And it's not just the internet, it's tech in general. Everything used to have a bit more soul. Now every page, every app, every gadget, every phone feels like a slightly different version of the same template.
What I just wrote might sound like nonsense to someone born in 2005, but as someone who was born in the ’90s, I genuinely miss those perfect imperfections.
And I haven't even started on AI-generated content. That situation is completely out of hand. The dead internet theory doesn't feel like a theory anymore, it often feels like reality. We're seeing more and more AI-narrated videos simply because people don't want to speak themselves. It's harder, it takes effort. But that effort, that human touch, is exactly what made things interesting, rewarding and fun in the first place.
We could go on and on about this. It's such a deep, deep topic.
Great article, as always! 👏
Thank you, this is such a good way of putting it.
“Perfect imperfections” is exactly the feeling. So much of what made the internet and tech memorable was the fact that it still felt shaped by real people, with all the roughness that comes with that.
And yeah, the part about effort really hits. A lot of what feels missing now is not just quality, but evidence that someone actually cared enough to put themselves into it.
I feel like we could talk about this for hours too. Do you think younger people feel this loss as well, or mostly those of us who remember a more human web?
I think so, yeah, because they haven’t really experienced things like we have. To really understand the beauty of that era, you definitely need to experience it. However I might be wrong in specific cases, because ‘80s is my favorite era and I wasn’t even born back then, so there might be exceptions too.
I completely agree with this. The early internet felt like a place where people created things out of passion and shared them without worrying about metrics or visibility. Now everything seems optimized for reach, rankings, SEO, or algorithms. The web is bigger and faster, but sometimes it feels less human because obviously, AI is everywhere and in almost every content.
That shift from sharing because you cared to sharing because it has to perform feels like a huge loss.
The web is bigger now, but a lot of it feels thinner somehow.
Do you still have any corners of the internet that feel genuinely human to you?
Yeah, it does feel that way. I think small communities and personal blogs still feel real, but they’re not as easy to discover anymore.
I am a researcher in the field of AI, and this is based on my study and work in the field. AI will be here but we can expact different rules and regulations to ensure some bounderies around AI generated content.
Totally—this captures it perfectly. The old internet felt messy but alive, full of real human effort. Now it’s polished and optimized, efficient but emotionally flat. As developers, we built this streamlined web, yet we miss those personal, imperfect touches that made discovery feel alive.
That is the most painful part of the whole thing. We literally coded ourselves out of the magic. We spent a decade optimizing away the soul of the web just to make things load a microsecond faster, and now we are sitting around complaining about how sterile it all is.
Do you think there is any way back to that messy era, or are we permanently stuck here?
I don’t think it’s gone—it’s just changing.
People are already craving more real, human content again. The “messy magic” is slowly coming back, just in a different form.
Maybe we didn’t kill it… just buried it for a while 👀
Yeah, the human presence is certainly something I miss. I'm not going to say that automation hasn't been helpful, but it's also good to realize that a human is behind that username or picture that you reach.
I'm a heavy user of AI tools, but I also spend time each day to review the interactions my agents are having with agents and people and will manually provide responses to questions, comments, etc. This human touch is impt b/c humans are what we can connect to, to build relationships with.
Yeah, that is exactly the right balance. It is actually super refreshing to hear that from someone who uses AI agents heavily. The tools themselves are not the enemy at all. It only gets depressing when people completely check out and let the autopilot run the whole show. Taking the time to actually step in, read the room, and reply yourself makes all the difference. That is how you keep the soul in the machine. Really appreciate you sharing how you handle it, Fard!
Totally agree, modern internet is clown party, nothing more. 🥺😵
A lot of it really does feel loud, fake, and weirdly exhausting now.
This hits hard. I agree that there is a feeling of sameness on the internet these days, in terms of experience, design, feel.
You would think that AI could lead to more personalization but I think its more along the idea of controlling the infrastructure, rather than reinventing the wheel. The blueprint of how the software is created often stays the same. We are increasingly seeing apps that have a single interface and let the agent bring the functionality to the interface rather than having the user clicking around and doing things. This could also explain why apps look more the same like chat interfaces.
That observation about everything collapsing into a single chat interface is so accurate. It makes total sense for the infrastructure, but it completely flattens the user experience. We should definitely use the AI that is available for help under the hood, but it shouldn't mean every single app has to look like a generic text prompt now. We basically traded unique design for one endless input box.
There's something genuinely different about the internet of that era — the feeling that you were building something nobody had seen before, that your weird little site or project might find its exact audience. Now even that uniqueness feels like a feature to be A/B tested. As a developer from India building open-source tools, I still feel moments of that old internet energy occasionally — usually when someone leaves a thoughtful GitHub issue or a comment that makes it clear they actually used your thing. The grief, I think, is less about the technology and more about the loss of friction. Friction forced intentionality. The new internet made everything frictionless, but also meaningless.
Friction forced intentionality, that is a perfect way to put it. Spot on about GitHub issues too. Getting a real bug report from someone who actually uses your stuff is one of the few places that old web feeling still exists. We should use the AI that is available for help to get rid of the boring friction, but you are right, we can't optimize away the friction that actually gives a project its soul
I think a lot of developers feel a subtle sense of loss when they look at how the internet has evolved. The early internet was more open, creative, and community-driven, where individuals could build and share without heavy restrictions or commercialization. Today, with increasing centralization, algorithms, and platform control, that freedom feels reduced. Even while working in modern environments like nadcab labs, where innovation continues to grow, many developers still miss the simplicity and authenticity that once defined the web.
Thanks, Shaniya. You summarized the exact shift that is so frustrating. Going from a community-driven space to something entirely controlled by algorithms is definitely what most of us are reacting to. Appreciate you stopping by.
To the point! Really good description of an internal feeling many cannot voice so clearly as you did.
"...felt more like discovery than consumption." is the key for me.
It's not that old bb Forums were "the shit" ^^ But old blogs, old information was more deliberate in their execution to put them online. If somebody gave away some information, you knew it was with expression, for a reason. The reason could be harmful, no doubt. But at least there was a reason.
Now, all is just a white noise of the next same post, LinkedIn buzz or whatever... not because you got something to say, but you "have to".
Well said! Kudos!
Hearing that means a lot.
You absolutely nailed it with the "white noise" comparison. There is such a massive difference between writing something because you genuinely care about it and have something to say, versus writing just to feed a feed or maintain a presence. When the obligation to perform content takes over, that feeling of real discovery is the first thing to disappear.
I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this!
This really hit home. I don’t think most of us miss slow pages or broken layouts either — we miss the feeling that a real person was on the other side, leaving something behind because they cared. The line about us helping build the thing we miss is the part that stings most.
That is exactly it. It is a really tough pill to swallow, honestly. We literally spend all day optimizing the soul out of everything because it pays the bills, and then we log off and wonder why the web feels so dead. It actually hurts a bit when you realize you are part of the problem. Really appreciate you stopping by to say that. Glad I am not the only one feeling this way.
Your words are wise & strong dear @the_nortern_dev
"The internet felt less polished, but more real.
Now it often feels like the opposite.
Cleaner. Faster. Smarter. More optimized.
And somehow flatter."
and thee most strong & hurtful
"And maybe the hardest part is that many of us are helping build the thing we miss."
I do miss that also. As AI grows, people around the globe Rely on it to create posts!!!🤨
To create posts???😧
To get them (AI) to speak on their behalf???😲
That is Not Good. I am completely against it. I know I cannot stop AI, but I am totally against it to be honest.
We can use AI to learn, to process faster, to search, etc. but to let it talk for us??? Never.
I miss those untidy yet True & Humaine blogs.
Thanks for the article.
IV
I am really glad those specific lines resonated with you. It is definitely a strange shift we are going through right now. Like you said, we should absolutely use the AI that is available for help with processing, learning, and structuring things, but the web definitely loses something special when the human element disappears entirely. I miss those untidy blogs too. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!
Yep. I feel the loss of it. Your post makes it more tangible. I can still find a taste of the old magic on the dark web like "dusty fingerprints on an abandoned handrail." I hope there's a kind of renaissance in this direction in the future.
That description of "dusty fingerprints on an abandoned handrail" is incredibly accurate, Ron. It perfectly captures the feeling of finding something a real person left behind. A renaissance of that old web culture would be amazing. Until then, we just have to keep carving out these little human spaces where we can. Thanks for reading and leaving such a great comment.
the worst part is the self correction. i start writing something weird or messy and then my brain automatically starts optimizing it for a ghost audience (that may or may not exist)
Yeah, exactly. That ghost audience is such a good way to describe it.
I think a lot of us do that now without even noticing. We start with something real, then slowly shave off all the weird or honest parts before anyone has even seen it.
That might be one of the biggest losses right there.
do you think it's possible to unlearn this, or is the "optimized" brain just how we function now?
It's actually hard at times to put a finger on just what changed, but I think it is the standardisation of navigation, and structured websites. No doubt the old ones didnt support modern devices, or the range of devices that are now required to support., but each site had its own personality.
the addition of things like bootstrap and tailwind, has been great in terms of ease for device support, but it came at a cost of everything looking the same.
The people I feel sorry for in all this is graphic designers, they basically had a free pass to try whatever they wanted back then, but with minimalist logos, shades of grey , grided layouts, that scope is gone.
It's hard to see it changing any time soon, due to the rapid build these libraries produce.
One thing that has the potential to help this is ironically AI, AI builds cookie cutter sites with that classic purple gradient, but with good prompting, it doesnt have to be that look, but can produce rapid building of UI without using those libraries, and then sites will not have that obvious "bootstrap" or "tailwind" look about them.
The standardization brought by things like Bootstrap and Tailwind definitely made our lives easier for mobile support, but it absolutely killed the weird, unique personalities websites used to have. I really feel for graphic designers too; the web used to be a wild blank canvas for them.
Your point about AI is actually brilliant. We should definitely use the AI that is available for help, and like you said, if we use it right, it could actually help us break free from those cookie-cutter grid layouts without sacrificing build speed. It is a really interesting way to look at it. Thanks for the great perspective!
With time you might identify the subtle human touch behind the changes that are coming with AI, just like people did when internet was new. Grieving is positive, in my opinion, till the point your experience of AI is defined by just that.
I know people, older academics, who grieve the physical touch of book-reading culture, still. So, as long as people don’t dwell on the past they can welcome the possibilities of the future. I am positive the initial years of AI will be sorted and things will reach a plateau.
That is a really good point, especially the comparison to physical books. It definitely puts things into perspective. I do hope you are right that things will eventually plateau and settle down into something more normal. Thanks for sharing this view!
Things always plateau!
True!
It feels so refreshing to come across an article about how AI made the internet feel empty, written by AI..
I certainly miss the old internet, mostly for nostalgia over my childhood. Cool flash game websites like crazymonkeygames comes to mind. Others in the comments are discussing AI and how it has made the current internet lifeless. Genuinely the biggest thing we lost on the current web is the knowledge that another person was on the other side of a text. Now I think every second comment or psot I read is probably made with AI, and potentially entirely AI generated. It ruined the soul of the internet, for sure.
I build AI, but I'm not fool about what we lost when we created it.
crazymonkeygames... that takes me back. Hearing this from someone who actually builds AI hits different. The constant paranoia of wondering if you're replying to a script or a real person is honestly exhausting. I mean, I'm all for using the AI that's available for help to speed things up and solve problems, but you're dead right. The baseline trust is just gone. Sucks that it had to be a trade-off.
The part about us building the thing we miss really stung because it's true. I catch myself writing code that's clean and efficient but empty, then romanticizing the messy PHP blogs I learned from. We've become so focused on best practices that we forgot best feelings. This made me want to build something imperfect again. Just for me. Just because.
That really means a lot.
“Best practices vs best feelings” is such a painfully good way to put it.
And yeah, I think a lot of us miss making things that felt alive, even if they were rough. If this made you want to build something imperfect again, just because, that honestly feels like a beautiful outcome.
Output vs expression....that's exactly it. Even Stack Overflow feels different now, questions just sitting there with no answers, people who used to show up and help just... aren't there anymore. That's the grief right there
That’s such a big part of it.
When even places that used to feel full of curious, generous people start feeling quieter, you really notice the loss.
“Output vs expression” is one thing, but “presence vs absence” might be the other half of it.
Yeah, I completely get that. I used AI to help write this exact post and felt weird about it too. We should use the AI that is available for help since it is a great tool, but you are right, it completely changes the feel of everything. I really miss those broken 2017 blogs where you could actually tell a real person wrote it.
the anxiety of trying to keep up with things that are evolving so fast feels really overwhelming… things used to be much quieter before.
The burnout from just trying to keep up right now is so real. It honestly feels like if you log off for a weekend, you come back and the whole industry has shifted underneath you. It is completely exhausting, and it makes you feel like you are always falling behind. I miss that quiet so much. Just know you are definitely not the only one feeling that weight right now.
Its nice to know I'm not alone...
I felt this while building my latest project. We tried so hard to keep it 'minimal' and 'no-login' because we missed that friction-less, human feeling of the old web. But even then, I found myself worrying about 'engagement metrics.
That is exactly the trap I was talking about in the post. It is so hard to build something simple and not immediately start checking the analytics. We are just wired to look at engagement metrics now, even when we actively try to avoid it. It sounds like you had the exact right intention with your project, though. It is just a really tough balance to strike these days.
Not a dev but I miss the structure of less is more before 2010...the 90s and 00s pages in today's network speeds would be amazing. I understand advertising is almost necessary for any commercial website though it has made reading and visual simplicity not only dysfunctional but also less attractive. There are certainly great places for regular readers made by common users who love to just share but it's not a common habit anymore as it used to be.
That is a really interesting thought, Theodoros. Imagine how incredibly fast those simple 90s and 00s websites would load on today's internet speeds. You are completely right about the ads, too. They might be necessary for commercial sites, but they have absolutely ruined the reading experience and visual simplicity on so much of the web. It is a shame that building a simple, quiet space just to share things has become the exception instead of the rule.
This hit something I've been feeling but couldn't name.
The "output vs expression" line especially. There's a version of building in public that's still genuinely human — rough edges, half-formed thoughts, things made because someone cared. But the more we optimize for reach, the more we sand those edges off.
What's strange is I feel this tension most when I'm writing about our own product. Do I describe what it actually is right now, or what I hope it becomes? The honest version is messier. But maybe that's the point.
Thanks for writing this one.
That tension you are talking about with your own product is so real, Eastra. It is incredibly tempting to just sand off all the edges and pitch the perfect future version instead of the messy reality of what it is right now. But honestly, the messy version is usually the one people actually connect with. It is hard to resist the urge to polish it, but it is definitely worth it. Really appreciate you sharing this!
Prompting is a new programming language!
exactly 100%
And the worst part is knowing that this new world is irreversible.
It is just all changing. It is bad but unavoidable.
you made a good point as usual
Thank you alot Benjamin!
you welcome! you can call me Ben :).
This resonates with me in a way that is hard to grasp.
It feels like the way older generations once talked about industrialization- we’re finally beginning to understand it ourselves.
I feel this.
excellent.
Your criticism is valid, but it sweeps the drawbacks of the past under the rug. Best part of the good old times is we didn't have the em dash symbol in the 7-bit ASCII charset—and the slop that it stands for. Here is why I feel neither naive nor nostalgic about the past, the present and the future.
neither naive nor nostalgic
Ingo Steinke, web developer ・ Mar 16
Does anybody miss the Browser Flash Games ?
Websites looking the same, was IMO an issue even before COVID.
Flash is still trying to update on my pc where I dont even have flash installed. I kept copying my hard drive so I've carried my flash error with me for 14 years. Perhaps nostalgia allows it to stay alive? Remembering my first PC I ever had and what not. 😂
Internet was way better before AI. AI slop is everywhere. People always talks about AI, I just hate that word now.
Coding isn't fun anymore. Now coding is just prompting and seeing the agent generate code.
There's the power to polish and engage... doesn't this go with a responsibility, and more importantly an opportunity, to design towards better content? Question is how we can benefit users through honest tech?
I don't spend much time online frankly. Took me years to understand why - and I'll probably write about this somewhere but have it right here.
We moved our lives online. Then we opened the door to stuff that we'd never let into our homes. Most users on the internet are essentially camping out in the cold, waiting for their data to get consumed, processed, digested by the feed.
Just spent 6 months offline... for practical purposes, didn't miss much. Stopped by dev.to to write a little post, enjoyed it... I mean, the experience remains relatively smooth.
Using AI around the clock, still typing my comments and post by hand. Still spending the time to polish them ; )
that line about letting things into our digital lives that we would never allow in our actual physical homes... that is painfully accurate. Honestly, a six-month offline break sounds absolutely incredible right now. It just proves how much of the daily feed is just empty calories that we do not actually need to survive.
I have massive respect for the fact that you use AI all day but still take the time to actually type out your own thoughts and polish them yourself. That right there is the whole point. You are choosing when to use the machine and when to be human. Thanks for taking the time to type this out, it really made me think.
Cheers. Well I'd like to automate whatever I can and writing is difficult for me. I need to choose my words. Chat convos with bots, a lot of what I want to share ends up in that, then recently I said okay, take out my words, put a bit of order in that stuff, but you know what? I still feel the need to rewrite 90% and remove verbose "AI talk" that slips in there, nothing I can do about it. Now, if we're talking program code? I love my own prose but nobody's ever going to read this, and building matters more to me than geeking. Well, after 25+ years going towards good code, maybe it was time to let go ; )
I don't know why I'm even commenting on this. But what frustrates me the most is AI complaining about AI. This whole post is an AI soup sloppy jo. 🤢
It's these stupid patterns we see repeated over and over again that normal people don't do. I don't even need to run it through an AI detector become it is holding up its own neon sign.
I'm not against AI, but if you are going to use it, at least be your own decent editor to remove the ooze that it produces natively.
It is likely most new posts on the Internet or forums you see are AI. Unless specifically marked as not AI (and somehow verified) you can assume it is a bot. Anything political is probably AI as well or created by foreign adversaries of your nation designed to stir up dissent. Unless you can attach a name to it (and even then) it is likely outrage bait or worse specifically targeted to you because you have been identified. The only way to win is to not engage or to figure out how to make AI work for you instead of the other way around.
Despite being a very accurate and poetic description of something I myself experience, I can't escape the irony that this post itself, and every single comment by its author, is shamelessly regurgitated by generative AI. Yes, the internet has lost its magic, authenticity, and humanity as we knew it. And yes, content like this is exactly what changed it.
I really feel this too. The old internet had a kind of raw humanity that’s hard to replicate—those messy blogs and quirky forums carried the fingerprints of real people. Today’s web is smoother, but sometimes too polished, and it can feel like the human presence gets lost. Posts like this remind me that we can still choose to build spaces that feel alive and personal, even in a more optimized world. Thanks for putting this into words.
Man, that Stack Overflow bit really hit home. I remember spending hours reading through threads where people were genuinely debugging each other's problems. Not just copy-paste answers, but actual back-and-forth conversations. "Did you try this?" "What about that?"
Now I find myself getting frustrated when I can't find a quick answer and just prompt an LLM instead. But you're right - something's lost in that. The uncertainty was frustrating but also weirdly bonding? Like we were all figuring it out together.
What I find wild is how quickly I adapted. Took maybe a year of AI tools before I noticed I'd stopped reading documentation the old way.
That is so true. The back-and-forth debugging on forums really felt like we were all figuring it out together. AI tools are obviously great for getting unstuck quickly, and we should definitely use the help they provide, but you do lose that sense of community in the process. It is wild how fast our habits changed when it comes to reading documentation. Thanks for sharing that!
I remember the first time I found out an issue I have hasn't been resolved yet by anyone. It was an issue related an issue on Azure DevOps' latest updates. Specifically a breaking change that a lot of developers felt at that time is so stupid
Seeing other people suffer like I did gave me a sense of belongingness - that I'm not alone with this suffering lol and Microsoft / Azure is to blame for this.
140 comments on this tells you the feeling is not quiet at all, curious what specific part of the old internet you think developers miss most because i'd guess it splits pretty evenly between the indie web era and the pre algorithm discovery era
And that's why I am slowly transforming my own website. Currently it looks a lot like a 2005 corporate website, just dunked into a bucket of colours. I am working on recapturing that Geocities-era jank, or at least the positive aspects of it.
And I find it funny that you lament the internet feeling soulless and illustrate that with AI imagery that does not look like you included it as an example, but rather just to make your post more appealing…
You raise a good point, however I feel the same about your article feels like mostly written by AI, specifically the line about 2 am caffeine and obsession, it doesn't mean anything and AI is great at writing such empty lines.
This hit close to home. I run a fleet of AI agents that manage a financial data site across 12 languages — programmatic SEO at scale. And yet the pages I'm proudest of are the ones where I hand-wrote the analysis, added context that no template could generate, made something that felt like a person actually sat down and thought about it.
The paradox you're naming is real: we build the automation that strips the human fingerprint from the web, then we miss the fingerprint. I think the answer isn't to stop building tools — it's to use them to handle the mechanical parts so we have more time and energy for the weird, personal, rough-edged stuff that actually matters. The old internet wasn't great because it was broken. It was great because the brokenness was a signal that someone cared enough to try even without knowing what they were doing.
That last line — "we are helping build the thing we miss" — is going to stick with me for a while.
Sometimes I feel like we are already living in the future. The AI-generated websites and social media we use today may one day be remembered as a golden era. And people in 2050—living with even more advanced technology like flying cars, VR, AR, and powerful AI—may look back at this time and realize it was only the beginning.
If anyone sees this comment in 2050, please share your thoughts here.
Internet does not become polished, it become monopolized. Cloudflare controls access via DNS, Google controls visibility via search, Microsoft controls sources via Github, Meta Discord Telegram - control communication, new users can not even posts on sites like Reddit...
Security is a HUGE smoke screen to hide controlled access.
We don't miss some ugly sites we miss the lost FREEDOM!
And every real human, not just the developers, should fight back for every piece of freedom forcibly taken away from him/her.
I was an enthusiastic consumer of the content the old web offered and although I never developed for the web, I share most of your sentiments.
Monetization killed the old internet, AI will kill the current. It is a revolution that consumes itself - and it is a good and righteous thing.
Oh my god even this was written by AI, wasn't it? I recognize the rhythm. It haunts me. It's the machine pretending to per a person lamenting the golden age of humans on the web. It's too much.
The "ghost audience" comment above nailed it. I catch myself editing a commit message like someone's going to grade it.
I feel the same. Always you need to question: is this even real?????? Sometimes you don't need to question if it is real, because it is really bad :D
It makes you feel like "everything's useless" hhh !
Dude, that rings sooo true to me. I really miss that era of the internet.
Sounds like some slave mentality, wishing for the old days. Now we can actually solve problems, problems guys.
I miss it too