I Miss The Days Of The "Wild Wild West" Internet

The Internet and marketing has changed incredibly over the past year. Over the past two years...shit, over the past 6 months. I've been working on little blogs and businesses like this for quite some time, all of them ending up in me either selling the page or literally never making a cent... But Its amazing to me how much this landscape has changed in just such a short space of time.

A picture of me from the hayday of the internet *

It used to be that the way to make money in this field (or any content creation field) was to write something that would end in a pitch, basically. So if that were the case here I would write a big long post filled with reasons why I'm so credible, filled with testimonials and ideas that would make you a better whatever I'm trying to sell, and then at the end there would be a huge affiliate link that would say "BUY NOW!" all over it, and then you would hopefully click on that link and buy something. Or maybe it would be a link to a product I made, like a course or a product. Either way, the name of the game was the pitch. Nobody wants to read pitches all day. Its exhausting, it digs on your attention span and patience, and it doesn't make for very good reading, either.



Nowadays, thanks to all of this indexing, and "likes" and other such nonsense, many companies (like Google) can just figure out what you want to buy without my help. If you look at my blog right now, there's probably a link to something you've been thinking of buying for a while on there somewhere. I have no idea what the hell you want to buy. I've probably never met you. If I have met you, then why the hell are you reading my blog? pick up the phone and call me, I'd love to chat.



That aside, its probably at once the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to the internet. I am a libertarian, for lack of a better word, although I do believe that the government serves a very noble purpose in helping those in need (another time, another post) So, for me, the internet was this great sea of information that you could search in anonymity, unless you wanted people to know who you were. It was the ultimate in constitutional rights: to do as you please, to interact and enjoy others as you see fit, without being censored, pushed in a certain direction, or forced to do anything by any governing body. It was truly, in many ways, what our founding father's would have loved to have to transmit ideas and ideals to help them both become better learned themselves, and also for them to help enlighten more of the globe in the ways of Liberty.



With the advent of the NSA, I think a lot of that is getting lost. Google knows what you want to buy, because you searched it there. the NSA is indexing things you search, and people you contact right now. The Patriot Act has made it illegal for you to deposit funds directly into another person's account in certain circumstances. The List Goes on and on. And that's not the only thing that's being lost, either.



When I think back to...oh say 2008, 2009. The internet was nearly perfect. YouTube loaded quickly and easily, and if you paused the video and came back later because it was having a rough time, it would be fully loaded and ready to go when you came back. Google searches were predictable, simple, and got you great information rapidly. Email was easily sorted between spam and not-spam. Facebook was a wonderful scrolling marquee of things going on in your friends lives...I think it was even still in chronological order at that point. The parts of the internet we all still use today worked splendidly. They got us where we needed to go rapidly, and it was a simple, easy to use system for videos, chat, information, and communication.



Here we are today. YouTube doesn't load sometimes, even if you want it to. Bandwidth caps abound, unless you pay the premium price for internet (which I have been forced to pay, since we do all of our TV watching through the internet) There is a constant fear of being watched, indexed, searched and so forth. I don’t want to shop for condoms online, and then have a condom ad pop up when I'm doing an online learning with my child. But it happens now! These are things that aren't what the people want. They're algorithms made to help Google, Facebook, and whomever else is watching make more revenue, or gather more information, while pissing off the least amount of people. As far as I can tell, though, the internet has gotten slowly WORSE. Less user friendly, less accessible, and less usable...at least for a guy like me.
Now don't get me wrong, there's a multitude of benefits to this, especially for a blogger like myself. Like I said before, there's an ad on the screen as you watch this right now that’s trying to sell you something you probably want to buy. Click on it if you want, and I make a little money. That is a WAY better system as opposed to the 40 minute long reading list of pitches to get to the product system. Nobody wants to go through that, writer or reader. The Youtube videos and casts I make are much the same. we don't need to focus on product placement, or anything else. we need to focus on making content people will enjoy, and that's it. I need to focus on writing, and sticking to my experiment here. That's it. It's much more useful for all parties.



But why can't we just shut it off sometimes? Why can't we be like "hey Google, not right now OK?" Where's that button?  where's the "hey, let me use that 2009 internet for a minute" button? because there are times when I'm so grateful that things are now searched so much more quickly, and that I'm able to find what I want so fast. But there are other times when I really wish that Google just didn't know what I was up to. Not for any nefarious reason, or even because I'm "paranoid" (hint: I am) but more because sometimes its nice to explore the internet with that "open frontier" feeling again,where you're not constantly trying to be funneled back into the "search and purchase" system. Sometimes its nice to just read some information about something, ignore the shitty banner ads, and go on with your life. No more click bait-filled Facebook pages, no more ad funneling. Just data, ideas, and a clean, fast running internet with the pages you love. That has been lost in some ways.



I think that the benefits of indexing people are many. As I've stated, it lets me create this blog in the way I do. It lets me create my Youtube channel in the way I do. However, it's also causing the internet to move out of its "wild wild west" phase, and into the modern age of consumerism at every turn. It used to be that when I wanted to download some great free programs, I would simply Google "free x software" I would find a great developer who had made it, he would have a nice, clean web page, and I would download it. Now If I do the same thing, I find the program on a horrible, ad filled page, click the wrong link three times, and then spend the rest of the day uninstalling ad-ware. When I finally give up, I go to a torrent site, and download the SAME FREE, TOTALLY LEGAL program with  much less hassle. In fact, the page will have a bunch of useful reviews for the torrent, to make sure its clean, safe, and what you're looking for. Why are our governments trying to shut down the last place to get clean, free software? Why punish the many for the infractions of the few?



It's a shame, it really is. I think the internet will get its shit together soon, though, and we'll all reach a happy medium of nice load times, and cleaned up Facebook pages of the 2009 era, mixed with the great user friendly search indexing of the future. At least I hope so. Adware should get outta town though. Google: get to work.

* That's a picture of John Wayne. Of course its not me. Nobody is as cool as John Wayne.