I recently played the video game Hypnospace Outlaw and one of the things that stuck out was there was a set of five “subverses” of sorts about nerd culture, and the parent company that runs Hypnospace wanted to get more of that sweet ad money, so they consolidated them into one space, and put it on a slower server. And when you visited these pages, they were noticeably slower compared to the new “sports” space which they did to chase that sweet new customer retention money, all in the leadup of, well, see for yourself (major spoilers).

What do you want? Do you want the internet to be for academics again? Because we’re past that. The moment you have to put a monetary value to something, it becomes about seeking monetary value either to 1) keep it going or 2) keep it going and make a bit of cream on top. This is how the world works now. I hate it, but i’m not pining for the old days either. The cycle continues from Geocities, to Social Media, to the Fediverse, and probably the Metaverse after that.