20 may 2025
Reading Facebook.com comment sections feels like a natural metastasis of media that had been seen with paperback and television. Comments are less about individual insight (and therefore without latent value or purpose) and more-so about a re-posting of a ChatGPT explanation. Why bother reading if you can do this on your own?
Nearish the end of the paperback rise, sometime in the late 90s, books were cheap and accessible but gradually less novel and more about what can be considered written for television. I consider the Harry Potter series as a signal for the end in children lit and the rise of cable television, which I felt withered quicker than expected. I recall being told that a career in television would be boring but safe. Today? I think that would be inadvisable.
Video games. Mobile apps. Etc. All go the same way of bitrot.
A sign of the Internet's losing novelty is LinkedIn. On the r/linkedinlunatics forum, many posts show not of engaged conversations but simulated engagement posts with the pretension of interaction. This pretension can be described as a “vibe” that is either good or bad based on context. The vibe can be so “unhinged” and wrong that it leads to both a ridiculous publication and equally an outraged readership… which in some cases is the purpose and intent of the neo-decadent movement.
I must ask myself in this late period of Internet (decline), will there be yet another great work published on its medium? Should we expect anything more than Tiktok? And what is the future medium?