remember when you could post a blurry photo of your lunch and get 47 likes from people who genuinely cared? yeah. that's gone. that's so gone.
somewhere between the algorithm deciding your entire personality and AI generating 4,000 tweets a second, we collectively looked at each other and said wait, wasn't this supposed to be fun?
and so here we are. 2026. doing the most 2016 things imaginable.
people are touching grass making Tumblr accounts again. developers are writing blog posts on self-hosted websites that load in 0.3 seconds because there's literally nothing on them. Discord servers with 12 members about extremely specific topics. RSS feeds. RSS feeds, people.
the timeline goes something like:
2016 → internet is chaotic but kind of magical
2018 → wait why is everyone angry
2020 → okay this is too much
2022 → algorithm ate my personality
2024 → AI ate the algorithm
2026 → bro I just want to post a jpeg without it going through 7 layers of engagement optimization
the "2026 is the New 2016" thing isn't really about nostalgia. it's about the quiet realization that we traded weirdness for reach and somehow ended up with neither. your 2016 blog that 40 people read hit different compared to your current posts that 4,000 people scroll past in 0.3 seconds.
the funniest part? the tech is better now. infinitely better. and yet everyone's running toward the jankiest, most low-fi corners of the internet like it's a lifeboat. because in a way it kind of is it absolutely is.
indie web is having a moment. small forums are back. people are paying $5/month for newsletters from strangers. we are out here manually curating our feeds like it's 2009 and Google Reader is still alive.
is this sustainable? probably not. will we all be back doom-scrolling by next Tuesday? almost certainly.
but for now, the vibe is: make something small, put it somewhere weird, and don't check the analytics.
the algorithm will not save you.
you already knew that.
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