The social internet isn't social
I started writing a regular blog perhaps 12 years ago. Back when I started the only real option was to publish it yourselfeither as static HTML pages, or with one of the early Perl, or PHP scripts (I wrote one of the early ones, and unwittingly became internet famous for a short while). Over time hosted blogs slowly appearedprovided by the likes of Blogger, LiveJournal, Moveable Type, Vox, Yahoo 360, and WordPress (most of them came about because Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP or Perl came to rule the internet, but that's another story for another day). Over time I hosted my inconsequential words at just about every platform out therebut putting your words out there wasn't the main reason for doing it; it was about being a part of something bigger than yourself.
If you go back to those early days, people tended to share the following; Daily Life Urban Legends Conspiracy Theories Ideals Ideas Hopes DreamsIf you look at the grandly titled “social internet” today, the vast majority of the content being belched out consists of the following; ThemselvesIt's depressing. The vast majority of the social internet is now filled with obsessive soap boxing, grandstanding, introversion or extraversion targetted narcissisticaly (is that even a real word?)at the author. It's all about “me, me, me”.
The social internet is not social at allit is a platform for attention seekers to promote themselves to the uninterested crowd. Quite bizarrely, the crowd seems to feign interest in order to promote their own self interest, and this self feeding monster perpetuates.