Perpetually Online

It’s no exaggeration to say that I made a career out of oversharing on social media. In the early days of Twitter and Facebook my timeline became a running commentary on my work and life. I shared every problem I faced, every success I had, every blog post, every feeling, every stray thought. More often than not, that sparked a conversation which led to a problem solved, a success celebrated and, as time went on, the vast majority of my career opportunities. My (admittedly limited) reach as a musician would not exist if it were not for Instagram and Spotify, and the connections they enabled for me. Countless hobbies have been enriched by obscure forum posts in some tiny online community or another. Acquaintances made on the internet have gone on to become some of the most important people in my life.

It’s strange to feel nostalgia for something that is now wholly integrated into every single aspect of our lives, but I miss what the web used to be. Not specific websites or design trends—they have always changed with the wind—but the sense of being part of something. You could browse the web and feel genuinely connected to people who, for the most part, showed up with curiosity and good intent.

Now, everything on the web feels diluted. Every voice sounds the same: faceless, desperate, shouting into the void hoping to receive a scrap of crumbs from “the algorithm”. Things didn’t change overnight. It was a slow, steady erosion. More videos. More ads. More pressure to perform. More controversy in exchange for attention. Slowly, the content we loved became buried beneath clickbait, brand deals, cookie banners, newsletter popups, AI voiceovers and “don’t forget to like and subscribe”.

We stopped sharing because we had something to say, and started posting to be seen. We encouraged this shallow need for attention by baking view counters and likes and shares into every app and website we made. These weren’t isolated business decisions. We made calculated bets that sought to exploit the worst parts of human behaviour, and quietly, the whole thing stopped being fun.

It pains me to acknowledge just how little of what I loved about the web remains. Those conversations that fuelled my passion have long-since dried up, replaced with endless scrolling past avatars with nothing of note to say. The people don’t feel real. The connections, if any, are superficial and quickly forgotten.

And yet, I stay. Maybe out of habit. Maybe out of some leftover hope that it’ll swing back around. But more and more, browsing the web feels like trying to relive a memory through a photo. It’s a copy of a copy—recognisable, but lacking the soul of the original.

Maybe the version of the internet I loved isn’t coming back. Maybe it only ever existed because we were different then. Less cynical. Less exhausted.

We were building something human. Then we monetised it to death.