Like others have suggested already, I have no issue imagining the apparition of new space(s) that will themselves become true alternatives to the Web. Heck, the Web itself become the success it is as an alternative to other online spaces.
A bit like with TV. I have not owned a TV since the early 00s, because I consider TV mostly crappy content that is also over-saturated with ads, two things I’m not interested in wasting my time with. Luckily, there are alternative ways to access visual content that don’t require me to watch a TV. But TV still exists for people that like it.
The real question should be: will people be willing to move away from what the web is becoming/has become, the place where all their friends/family/colleagues are, in order to populate a less shitty but newer kind of space? Looking around me, I have some doubts. I remember when blogs were new and cool. The intensity/quality in some of them was great and there were large readership. Today, it’s barely if anyone will click on link that doesn’t point to YT (or reddit, or some other social media)… That doesn’t bode well, imho.
My only counterpoint is that people have always moved to the next thing the web has to offer once the old thing has become stagnant/particularly shitty and friends/‘influencers’ (in the more general sense) move too. Remember that one message board? MySpace? Nexopia, if you were a teenage Canadian at the right time (or predator, I guess)? ICQ? MSN? All once very popular, all now relics of a bygone age. And truly old heads will have reference points going even further back.
There’s hope. Granted, we have far more people online than there were during previous shifts like these, and it at least feels like people are more willing to put up with bullshit from their online spaces than they used to be. But there’s still hope.
Like others have suggested already, I have no issue imagining the apparition of new space(s) that will themselves become true alternatives to the Web. Heck, the Web itself become the success it is as an alternative to other online spaces.
A bit like with TV. I have not owned a TV since the early 00s, because I consider TV mostly crappy content that is also over-saturated with ads, two things I’m not interested in wasting my time with. Luckily, there are alternative ways to access visual content that don’t require me to watch a TV. But TV still exists for people that like it.
The real question should be: will people be willing to move away from what the web is becoming/has become, the place where all their friends/family/colleagues are, in order to populate a less shitty but newer kind of space? Looking around me, I have some doubts. I remember when blogs were new and cool. The intensity/quality in some of them was great and there were large readership. Today, it’s barely if anyone will click on link that doesn’t point to YT (or reddit, or some other social media)… That doesn’t bode well, imho.
My only counterpoint is that people have always moved to the next thing the web has to offer once the old thing has become stagnant/particularly shitty and friends/‘influencers’ (in the more general sense) move too. Remember that one message board? MySpace? Nexopia, if you were a teenage Canadian at the right time (or predator, I guess)? ICQ? MSN? All once very popular, all now relics of a bygone age. And truly old heads will have reference points going even further back.
There’s hope. Granted, we have far more people online than there were during previous shifts like these, and it at least feels like people are more willing to put up with bullshit from their online spaces than they used to be. But there’s still hope.
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