from 2003 until about 2013 I felt like the internet was largely mine. The masses hated it and thought it was weird, geeky, and nerdy. Now in 2026, in August, I think something has fundamentally shifted. Now the internet (which is largely just called "social media") belong to them. The masses. There are entire dynasties of degeneracy that have arisen, conflagrated, and then fallen away in the past 5 to 8 years that I am mostly completely unaware of - but I am aware of enough to know that there are many more out there. The masses, the large herd, in all of their various tribes and such, have taken over the internet. There are people who have had massive fame who are now unknown. There are long histories of lol cows who back in 2013 were not even on the internet. I also think, that things have accelerated. Not just in time but also in content - the sheer mass of content is impossible to actually conceptualize. People no longer exist in the 'real world' (the meat world). No, the masses now entirely live online. I barely exist online now. It's strange how it has flipped. When I was online they were barely online. Now I'm barely online and they are online for long hours per day. I know that the 'internet' changed significantly when gen z adopted it in their early teens and I know that the 'internet' is changing again now. I know that saying the internet is changing is actually saying that people, the masses, are changing and consequentially society is changing. There is no practical separation between the internet/the masses/the society. Those 3 things are one thing. part 1. part 2 continued in comment.
>>85279578A year or so ago I saw a tiktok livestream and the amount of shit on the stream, buzzing around or flashing or moving or just sitting there was disgustingly chaotic. But totally normal to all the tiktok users. I saw livestreams where there would be two screens, with two tiktok users, side by side, and both streams were playing their own sounds from the users. All of that was happening on one screen on my phone. Insane. Chaos. But the users were totally normal about it. The most severe aspect of this is that both gen z and gen a, largely, have accepted all of this and anyone who speaks different about it is labelled 'unc'. It's the implication that being against all of this means you're old, you're not young - you're not with the 'in' crowd. The masses are self-selecting for their own perpetual digitalized enshittification.
Be happy. Those in charge would never let society truly collapse. It is society which empowers them, without it they'd be no better than "the masses" as you call them. If the masses become as useless as their current trajectory suggests this makes one such as yourself more valuable. Perhaps it's nice to be accepted into general society, but I'll always prefer to be above them.
>>85279579weirdly enough, i recently learned that "unc" is (or used to be) a term of endearment among black people. it refers to older men that have respectable amounts of life experience.i wonder why of all words to co-opt, zoomers chose that one and turned it into something hideous
>>85279619>>85279626I guess all these things make for interesting times.
>>85279578people have felt that since before you were born, eternal september
>>85279654I understand the eternal september thing but I was part of multiple online communities. We would write guides, develop articles, and host events and things. It wasn't brainrot. I was doing that around age 11 to 18.
Before youtube and social media you actually had to effortpost to be online
>>85279665>Man in my time it was differentSaid every unc in history. I also like that you completely failed to understand what unc actually means and tried to overcomplicate it. You just did a "who is the hacker know as 4chan" moment.
>>85279708What I've seen is pretty clear degeneration in cognitive faculties and that has coincided with the quality of the internet becoming worse and worse in terms of discussions, content created, and such. The 'unc' term is clearly used in the way I described it. There is a strong anti-intelligence streak across the internet now. Just consume, be braindead, have brainrot, just consume and then die. Life has no greater meaning and there's no dignity in living. Just be brainrot and consume. That is the dominant culture.
>>85279740Isn't that just the broad accessibility of social media bringing more normies on to the internet? I mean, people used to sit on the couch and watch television all night. These are the folks you share an internet with nowadays, imbeciles.
>>85279750Yeah the point you make is a good one that social media has, in so many ways, replaced the television.
>>85279578I get what you said about how we were the ones online before and now its flipped around. Back in the mid 2000s, something as simple as knowing about a dumb flash animation with a dancing banana man made you an official denizen of the internet. PBJ time was exclusive knowledge no normie had access to and you felt like you were part of a secret club with other internet goers. And then one day family guy broadcast that shit everywhere and completely ruined the exclusivity. Watching the internet slowly change from "our" space to "their" space over the past two decades has been one of the most soul crushing experiences of my entire life. I wish we could go back to pre-social media society in general. Shit just isnt the same anymore.
>>85279782Yeah feels kinda crazy to see that the period of time from 03 to around 13 for me was actually an anomaly. 13 to 26 now is the 'real thing'. Everyone online, all the time. What I liked was something different, but that thing, was not the real thing. Hard to explain but at the time I was not aware of that, I was naive, I thought what we had at the time was the real thing and it would just keep getting better as more and more people joined. I don't think that way anymore. What is happening now, what the 'real thing' is now seems to exist outside of time. Livestreams from 5 years ago still look 'brand new'. It's a strange place.
>>85279740unc literally exclusively refers to people that are old, it has nothing to do with you not using the internet you fucking retard. Its not even that offensive of a term, its still a sort of endearing term, playfully mocking you for being old and out of touch.
>>85279578Everything has been getting worse since he left us. The summer of 2014 was the last one I truly got to enjoy
>>85279740>from what I've seen is a pretty clear degeneration in cognitive facultiesWow my grandpa said the same thing. He said nobody reads novels and books anymore, nobody can speak English properly. Oh but this time its different.
>>85279782>>85279809You felt a sense of belonging, now that its popular you no longer feel a sense of belonging. What you didn't realize is that you were supposed to get married and start a family, then you'd feel that exact same feeling but 10x over on crack.
>>85279854I described the way I have commonly seen that term being used, especially in 2026. >>85279878Actually I was naive and genuinely didn't think people would, in gross numbers, engage in brainrot bullshit. Recently Mr Beast released some low iq music dance video of him doing some dance and it got like 800,000 likes. There was a time when I genuinely used to naively buy in to the idea that people/algos wanted high quality content. I've long since divested from that naive thought framework. It is obvious to me that the majority of people desire the most base and sloppified shit. They simply want to passively consume. The masses truly are just consumers. Hard and bleak realization for me as I used to believe that the internet would create a golden age of intelligence, wonder, innovation, and genuine mastery of human potential. I'm not disagreeing with you about the family point, btw. >>85279864Cognitive decline is obvious now - teachers, professors, and academics studying intelligence in youth have noticed significant cognitive decline. Capacity that used to be the norm is no longer available. Capabilities of cognition have massively cratered.
>>85279578Pretty much. Main reason the internet resonated with so many of us was because we didn't fit in IRL. Now it's the opposite and I feel like I would be judged way less IRL than online
>>85279923>I described the way I have commonly seen that term being used, especially in 2026.Well you're wrong, probably because you're not on the internet much anymore. >cognitive decline is obvious nowIts not, the fact that you're bringing up teachers and academics talking about it leads me to believe you also consume slop. All those "gen z can't even read" videos are slop, the same as a tik tok dance.
>>85279958I'm correct about the way unc is being used and I'm also correct about the cognitive decline being obvious. Attention spans have shortened. Cognitive capabilities have diminished. Teachers and professors, on the frontline of education, are documenting decline in the capabilities of students who aren't able to match previous cohort outcomes from previous years. In written testimony, before the US senate, Jared Cooney Horvath said that Gen Z is the first generation in history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one.
