The Web is Dull

26/3/2025

I think I’ve spent a little under half my life online now. Lightly supervised web access since I was 10, messing around on Animal Jam and Scratch for hours in one sitting. At 12, I started making friends who would come to shape how I use the web - illegal anime streaming, Tumblr fandoms, the online art community, Wattpad, Happy Wheels, a plethora of gay porn, etc. What a time. I was never alive to know the web before it was so highly monetised, but at least I had this.

See, it was other people who introduced me to most of these things; I can’t imagine the kind of person I'd be now if it weren’t for this. I don’t talk to any of these people anymore, for various reasons, but now that they’re out of the picture… all of it is so dull.

Really dull. The internet is boring.

There’s probably some studies out there that show how exposure to the internet at a young age desensitises people and leaves them disillusioned or something. Maybe not. Right now, though, I just want to talk about my own perspective, regardless of what might’ve influenced it.

I've never been a very social person. The internet never did anything to help with this, and in fact probably made it a little worse. I remember feeling out of place within my real life friends for not having any online friends whatsoever - how and why would I go about that? I never ended up with a close-knit circle of twitter mutuals bonding over our favourite shows, or sharing my writing with other members of my fandoms, or making friends with people thousands of miles away on Discord. Sure, I had a good run with the Instagram art community for a couple years, but I never made any connections. Whatever’s clearly wrong with me prevented me making those steps. I don’t think I had the true adolescent-in-the-2010’s internet experience.

On one hand, I'm disappointed in myself - I had the whole world literally in my hands and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything with it? On the other hand, I think that mental barrier and subsequent disconnect from internet culture saved me from so much bullshit.

Clearly, I am deeply chronically online. I have no friends, both online and in real life, my screen time will be taken to my grave, I'm in a weird transitory period of my life that’s doing me no favours, and I will do nothing to deny any of this. But I can’t help but feel that those around me were somewhat worse, in some form. One of the first things that comes to mind is that person who told me that they once managed to spend 23 hours on Twitter in a single day. Even now I’m speechless. My mother started getting much more argumentative and hostile once she started using Twitter, too. Most of the other more prominent stories I have are terrifying, and would be insensitive to bring up on a rant about something as ultimately meaningless as the dullness of the web.

I understand quarantine fucked us all over, I understand that people’s home lives can affect how they use the internet, I understand that addictions can take over your life. What I don’t fully understand is why someone would choose to dedicate so much of their time to social media. I can theorise, but that is all. To my knowledge, the main appeal of the internet is connection with others, but is that really there? I never got the hang of it.

So much of the web feels impersonal, homogeneous and overly polished. Users are given to you by an algorithm that knows just a little too much about your personal habits and interests that can change at any second. Sure, we can get to know the people behind the screen, as I trust many of us do, but this can’t negate the fact that so much of the interaction on the web is so shallow.

And these things kept me thinking, how do you spend so much time on social media? How do you get this invested?

The simple answer is that it’s designed to be addictive. It’s true! Who on earth would deny that, at this point. Unfortunately, that makes the move away from social media intimidating, and for many people it feels impossible. There are, however, some steps that we can take to try and combat this. I'm looking at some of my old friends and at myself, and fuck, I don’t want to end up like that.

I never got into Twitter, thankfully, I simply never figured out how to really use it. I once tried out TikTok but deleted it the second I noticed myself reaching for it during school hours (my delegated study time). Those seem to have the worst effects on people, and every day I'm grateful I never got roped into it.

Delete the apps on your phone. Use the browser application and manually log in and out every time you use it. Install screen time control apps like ScreenZen. Hard block everything you can on your phone. The only social media I can access on my phone is Reddit via browser. Delete Instagram. Delete Snapchat. Delete TikTok. Delete Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest. Fuck, delete YouTube. Delete fucking TikTok. That app is just as dangerous as people say it is.

Tumblr is also bad for you, regardless of what their users tell you. Seriously, I’m saying that while having it as my main one. It’s awful.

You can do it. It’s pretty easy. You don’t have to delete your accounts - I still open Pinterest on my laptop once a week or so, look at art and a couple Twitter screenshots. I used to have such a problem with that particular app, maxing out my 2 hour daily screen time limit without noticing the time pass whatsoever.

You know what happened after I did this?

At first, nothing.

I didn’t miss a single one of these. Maybe it’s slightly inconvenient to not be able to open a Tumblr link here and there, but who cares? Does it matter? Really, I didn’t miss it for a second. The initial reflex to check up on an app when you’re bored goes away after, what, 3 days? After that it’s like they never existed.

After that, I'd try to scroll on my laptop here and there, and… it’s boring. I can’t spend more than 15 minutes on Pinterest, the dreadful/delightful app which formerly took up hours of each and every day of my life. Once you step away from that constant high of finding new things to look at for a few seconds, then taking another few seconds to find another thing to look at, it feels pointless.

The next thing I noticed was how similar every fucking site it. None are better than the others. They all give home to some of the kindest and most disgusting people you can imagine, they all host infighting over topics that truly don’t matter, they all spew content at you in an attempt to keep you engaged so they can throw ads on your screen. You know how depressing it is to not just know that consciously, but to truly understand and experience it? That disillusionment? It’s almost nauseating to think that you’ve spent so much of your life like this.

These places are all the same!

They’re boring.

No one site is truly better than the other, and once you take a step back, those who insist so sound like they’re part of a cult. Sort of. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Whatever. My main point is, with all 4 grand sites of Web 2.0 being near identical, and no personal connections within their userbases (which are getting progressively harder to make, but that’s a whole other essay that I'm not qualified to write), what’s keeping me here?

I'm still an incredibly online person, too much so for my own good. But recognising how absurd and often predatory the modern web is has helped me disconnect a little. Im looking into RSS feeds to see if they’d be something I could benefit from. Only 8 months ago, I had no idea how to read even the most basic HTML. Productivity has become more important to me when it comes to spending time online, usually through learning and practicing new skills. Social media isn’t half as educational as I thought. When looking for content to consume, I try to play a more active role as opposed to letting an algorithm dictate what I see (forums never should’ve died). I let recommendations written by real people guide me to new music instead of Spotify’s generated lists. I'm mindlessly scrolling a little less than before, both because I know it can be harmful and because I just don’t have any incentive to do so now. I'm not perfect in any way, but any step in the right direction is better than none, I think.

So, here I am, and here you are too. It’s a little nicer over here, don’t you think? It certainly caters to me more - just as it ought to, since I made this damn site. Wasn’t even that difficult. The move away from the modern web really isn’t that difficult, if you’re willing to put in some effort.

Here’s two more videos I sorta like, they sum up my thoughts quite nicely. Both are fittingly titled ‘It really is that damn phone.’