Those who don't remember the past, don't have a future.

https://cezarpena.dev/past

The Internet can only be as dead as the memories of it are. And my memories of it are of quirkiness, rough around the edges. Not of algorithmic ever-more-complex refinery. I am not the Internet. I'm not something either. I'm not a resulting statue from a block of marble like David is. So I can't really ever finish my own self. Would be great if I could but, it's even greater to know that the suffering for meaning has no end, and the quest for it extends far beyond one's life.

In a way, I link it to what I saw about Tommy Shelby in the show finale movie, his story ending. I don't approve of it. I don't approve of that resolution. I do believe in the catharsis of the self, but not through killing the past. You can't make the past die. The past lives in you even after you're dead. And I find it comforting, even in the concept of biblical hell. It is comforting to know that one can't ever escape the torture imposed by his own self through the questions that never find answers, but which lead oneself to always carry an aura that makes us remember it's the same soul. The same troubled soul, that can't escape. You can escape life, but you can't escape your soul. And that's what I deem correct, both aesthetically and morally.

I think unanswerable questions are an interesting part of the soul, and of life itself. It creates vortices of meaning. Just like the sea currents create waves that you can surf on, the questions with no possible answers create spirit. Room for expression. Even energy, perhaps.

That's what I think of the Dead Internet. It's not and can't ever be dead. The forums, the torrents, the .mp3 files... they've been sent. It's been alive, it has existed. And it can't not exist anymore, because in its "dead" state, the memory still lingers. The memory of a time when we waited overnight for files to download, where we only knew it as a mere extension of reality instead of the new stage of reality. It was never meant to be this much. But what it used to be wasn't meant to die either.

"Minimalism is the aesthetic language of gentrification."

There's this feeling of fullness, substance, essence abundance prior to 2008 Internet. Last year we ever imagined the future. Now there is no future. Just slightly better AI, slightly thinner gadgets. No flying cars, no UFOs, no "actual" hoverboards. The future has closed its doors. Or has it? Was it the future, or the past? And, can the future close its doors, if the past doesn't?

You could say, I would like to imagine, as someone born in the 1990s to early 2000s, that living your current age, again, but in the 2000s would feel like the future. Because what is now the past turned out to be what we are missing in the future. You would like not feeling the existential dread that comes with ever increasing amounts of stimuli that leave no room for being, wouldn't you?

And so, my point here is, that what I should call, not the Dead Internet Theory, but the Internet that "died", is the Internet that will come back to fill up the void. Only through new mediums. Perhaps we'll have an AI-assisted reload of the 90s-2000s Internet forums when eventually the weight of AI generated content and false news collapses onto itself, making the Internet, ironically, back into what it used to be.

Counterculture

Perhaps we'll quit living through devices altogether in a new counterculture, leaving the Internet to be a mere tool for quick human-to-human verbal communication. I'm not saying not to use computers, but we used to be self-sufficient. And we miss it. We miss not having templates, assistants and subscriptions for everything. Back then you bought the game and played it on your own. You had Excel and the help tab to check out functions.

If you open up GTA SA:MP or Counter Strike 1.6 right now, the Internet didn't die, and it didn't get smaller either. The maps are just as big as they used to be. The forums are still as infinetely lengthy as they used to be. The post is still as postable. The images are still low quality. The Internet didn't die, and you didn't die either, you are just moving too fast to notice it. And you can't really slow down, or at least, not for long, but you can still catch some tiny bits of slow.

Open up the Dark Web, more of the same thing. Most forums on there, may not be from the 2000s, but are still very much similar to what used to be in the 2000s. And you know why?

Because anonimity and non-persistence is the only thing that can stand in the way of building algorithms. You can't groom me without a name and without a story. Being nobody has its perks, when it comes to experiencing things raw.

Make up your own mind.