The internet is so ingrained in our lives that, most of the time, we don't even think about how much of our lives depend on it. If it disappeared, we would have a hard time doing a lot of things -- from, for instance, reaching banks to simply having an endless source of entertainment.
Actually, the internet is such an advanced thing that it developed its own culture. But have you ever thought what will happen to both the internet and its culture in the future? After all, everything changes online very fast. Well, some people did, and they shared their opinions online. Today, let's take a trip through some of these opinions and decide if we agree with any of them.
More info: Reddit
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In one way or another, you know what the internet is and don’t need complicated explanations, such as the one Wikipedia provides. But if that doesn't satisfy you, and you actually want some kind of simple description -- basically, it’s a wide network that connects computers all over the world, through which people can share information and communicate.
So, what's internet culture? To say it simply, internet culture consists of various customs, characteristics, communication styles, and similar things. These customs are developed and maintained by people online or, in other words, netizens, cybercitizens, or digital citizens, who can either participate anonymously or non-anonymously. Basically, it’s kind of just like any other culture, only it takes place on the internet, which presents certain unique aspects.
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Internet culture is a quite rapidly changing organism. Ever since its invention, the internet has developed not only its own culture but also greatly changed the offline world. It’s all going at such a rapid pace, so there’s no wonder that there are people wondering what the future holds.
One of these people is Reddit user u/RemnantOnReddit, who came to r/AskReddit to ask, “What predictions do you have for the future of Internet culture?” As it was revealed in the interview with Bored Panda, they were always interested in imaginings of the future like “Blade Runner” or “Detroit: Become Human.”
They said: “Picturing society in these futures is fascinating and one of the biggest parts of our society today on the Internet. In my lifetime, we've already seen a massive change, mostly the shift from small forums to large corporate apps. This all occurred in just 15 years.”
But what about the upcoming 15 years? This question drove the person to ask the question on Reddit. Yet, they weren’t surprised by the answers, as most of them were kind of expected: “There seemed to be a general consensus with the commenters, as well as key points that kept being touched on.”
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When asked about the main trends shaping internet culture nowadays that will continue to shape it in the future, u/RemnantOnReddit said that, in their opinion, it’s artificial intelligence, the erosion of anonymity, and conglomeration.
AI won’t simply have an impact on the internet -- it will completely reshape it: “Soon, it'll be almost impossible to tell if a video or blog has been created or written by artificial intelligence. It'll be an AI-driven machine of sloppy content, propaganda, and fake news.”
Then, the erosion of anonymity is another driving factor, according to our interviewee. Nowadays, anywhere you go on the internet is tracked in one way or another: signing up, agreeing to terms and conditions agreements, which u/RemnantOnReddit called “so long it'd put War and Peace to shame,” and so on.
Another major factor of the internet's change is conglomeration, the fancy word our interviewed Reddit user learned from the thread under their question. “15 years ago, there were maybe 10 big sites that I'd gravitate around, with dozens more I'd visit on a regular basis. Now, there are only really 4 or 5 corporate apps that encompass most of the features and content I'd have to squeeze out of a hundred websites back in the day.”
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So, as can be seen from the answers from various Reddit users and the person who asked the question originally, the internet’s future seems kind of dim. But, hey, maybe something will happen to change the future for the better. With such a fast pace of change, we can't properly anticipate what waits for us in the future.
Do you have any predictions for the future of the internet and its culture? Share with us in the comments! And don’t forget to upvote the predictions you agree with!
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It will become so intolerable with the combination of ads, rage bait, censorship, and AI that people will start an offline movement.Its going to be an unusable propaganda funnel. just bots screaming recycled nonsense to at each other to drive engagement. probably less then a dozen English language websites for casual research. we had the greatest source of knowledge the human race has ever achieved and we let the least cool people ever ruin it.One word: censorship.
If the creator of reddit, for example, would see what his platform has become, he would delete it. And it's going to be even worse IMO, the whole internet. There is not much freedom anywhere, anymore.
Remember the good old days pals, they will be just stories for future generations, we are lucky to have experienced, maybe, the freest place in human history, or the most freedom, on the internet of the 90s/2000s.Anonymity will dissolve completely. It's already been heavily eroded compared to what it was circa 2001.Even more artificial posts, I'm seeing more and more every day.I think Gen Z and Gen alpha will realize drawbacks to having social media where you share your identity/connect with people you know. I think there will be a rise in normalizing anonymity and candidness on social media, such as Reddit, etc where you are less focused on an audience and an image, and just be more authentic.You already can't trust text info, but image and video info is definitely going to get way harder to trust.Human beings will begin to shift away from publicly accessible online content in favour of spaces where the people they're speaking with can be verified as human, such as IRL spaces, private servers, and websites with sophisticated AI detection that we haven't invented yet. Half the population will become increasingly suspicious of media and anything that risks having been touched by AI, while the other half will unknowingly or consciously embrace it as the new world order of "truth.".Once social media eats it self to death i think the rise of forums and small owned forums will return.
small forums has smaller numbers smaller numbers makes it easy to mod and the small mod team does have admins snooping to bannd hammer there subreddit/discord/groupchat.
also the death of the free internet unless we rapidly switch to mix of decentralised/federated networks. servers cost money and ads just don't cut it anymore either donate your bandwidth and cpu or cought up the money.
i long wish for the days when social media dies.Conglomeration. Fewer websites offering more on each. 20 years ago I would visit hundreds of sites every week. Now most days I only visit the same 4-5 I always visit.1. Millions of dumb people are gonna be on the internet.
2. They'll display their culture of hate and other lowly acts.
3. Communities will be run by these jerks.
4. Eventually will be bought by politicians and political parties to run their own narratives and suppress others'.
5. Bullying will become a thing and open threats will be entertained.
6. Criminals will use this infrastructure to do other crimes, peddle d***s right in front of our nose and feds' eyes.
7. In the name of freedom of speech, people will talk about rubbish and taboo.
Oh it's already happening, haha.Ouroboros of AI-generated content designed to game algorithms eating itself.Companies whose job it is to scrub the internet of old profiles, posts, and accounts are going to become very popular.
We have entire generations documenting their lives online for everyone to see now. When some of those young people grow up and either enter politics or become famous, they are going to want to make sure those edgy racist and sexist jokes they made when they were 15 are not going to come to light.Either like that Black Mirror episode where everyone rates each other, or like Dune.I think we'll see even more emphasis on virtual experiences, like virtual reality socializing and gaming.There'll be internet "refuges" for humans where all content is generated by humans and not AI/bots.It will be very hard to tell what is real what is not, about everything. Look how much the Kate Middleton thing turned into a conspiracy circus..All culture will be hollow, mimicked, fake. besides the censorship and cancellation.If the corporations gain more control, we're going to see a massive loss of internet culture.It will be severely restricted in the name of misinformation.It would be digital privacy renaissance: Blockchain, encryption, and anonymity I think.Everyone will have seen everyone else naked (via deepfakes, OF, or hacking).Generative A.I. to design prompts for generative A.I.I have thought about this for years. I always thought it was important to have three types of Internet connection personas. The first being a verified identity where you can take care of official business and any transactions where it is important where your identity is known. This is inspired by the way developers are verifiedSecond is similar to how many sites do now. Pick a username, email address and password for that site. We already see pros and cons now. Each site does not keep our data very secure, but it is convenient for many interactions. Third is pure anonymous connection. Each connection is a throw away username. While 4chan types may thrive and it may be have a seedy underbelly, there are some really good reasons to be anonymous on the Internet. If you are doxxed, it is because you let too much personal information to be known or someone you know and trust f***s you. Other things that need creative solutions: Advertisement for free access to sites is a plus and minus. This is what is driving much of the negativity on the Internet. Algorithms are built to keep your eyes on their page for ad dollars or sales. Propaganda and criminal activity drive many bots. I am not sure how to break the information silo effect. SEO is big big business.Continued sanctuary for people who slept through English and debate classes and are possibly all related.People will tag every social media post with anything that might trigger people. Or, posts that are jokes will be expected to have something like a "/s" tag.So many dooming posts here. Sheesh. Haha
Honestly? My guess is you’d have to treat it like a living organism that is constantly learning. Mankind will continue to impart our knowledge into it until the internet becomes obsolete.
From that standpoint, it’ll grow, evolve, and form new adaptations for mankind to make lives easier. Maybe like, integration into synthetic biologics for remote monitoring and immediate medical interventions.
Maybe something better than the internet will come along, at which point it either becomes a new type of phone book, or an archive of historical knowledge.
In the immediate future, I’d put my long-term money on augmented reality. The possibilities there seem endless. From marketing, entertainment, and education, to communication, social networking, remote work, bla bla bla.
Gonna need lots of the ol interwebs for that.Ai everywhere. Influencers everywhere with more ad inundations directly speaking to you. Dialogue from ads that speak directly to you. Annoying advertising like we have never seen before. Influencers pushing their ai music and ai films and commercial products. Every aspect of every text you ever typed, every word uttered will be stored upon and ai constantly telling you how much of a hypocrite you are with receipts.
Hollywood with a power like never before. An inundation of s**t to an extreme like we haven’t seen. Eventual ip rights from actors will cave for ai reproduction and the streaming services will have all their exclusive ip that paying subscribers can only use to generate ai films with ip.
A boom in reality television like we have never seen before because real people will be desired more and the content of narratives would retain ai for budgets with hipster nepo babies filming real people for their art house films.I predict that in the future the words “internet” and “culture” will never be used in close proximity.The skibbidi toilet generation is gonna ruin the internet with pathetic memes that arent even funny.Lots of bots/AI yelling at each other.
I honestly think we are heading for a social media reckoning that is years overdue. We really need to quash the rampant misinformation and I do think that the younger generations are better at spotting all the BS. I still can't believe how bad it got in the mid-late 10s tho.
One of the reasons I like Reddit so much is it reminds me of the old IGN forums before social media really went crazy. I honestly think ppl are sick and tired of the big platforms like FB and Twitter. Zucc diversified Meta so it'll stick around but the dumpster fire that is twitter is only going to keep burning hotter till its gone as long as musk owns it and honestly at this point I don't see any saving it.
