the majority of this blogpost was written mid september
The dead internet theory was still fringe 5 years ago, but now even mainstream voices are complaining about the enshittification of social media and all other online platforms. With the rise of generative AI, the rest of the internet, previously accessible via search indices, has been drowned out in SEO garbage. Since this view is as mainstream as it is, I'll stop lamenting the issue and tell you what I'm doing about it.
The first obvious thing to do is to download a lot of media. So here's the list of what I've been downloading with approximate sizes and links if you want to do so as well.
yt-dlp -f 249wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisitesThe next issue is breaking the habit of browsing algorithmic online platforms, which in my case is mostly just Reddit and YouTube. Now I could go ahead and just add a small selection of subreddits and youtube channels to an RSS feed reader, but I believe its better to just default to 4chan for now, since I find that site more entertaining and enriching.
Eventually I want to spend less and less time online, so a good place to start is to just unplug the router an hour before bed and only plug it back in an hour after getting up. An alternative is to spend a whole day offline every once in a while, but I prefer just chunks of offline time for now.
Ofc once I actually have a regular job I will adapt this as needed. If I only have an hour in the morning before commuting to work, I will go online for a couple minutes.
If I install discord, email and github on my phone that already covers the majority of stuff I need to do online. Even if I keep using the laptop for these, having them on the phone as well makes me more resilient against network outages, since the phone is even more portable and I can go into the city for wifi. This may eventually enable me to shift to mobile data only and save the money for at home internet.