Regarding "Is that trend really viral?", I also think some people have stopped assigning value to things that go viral. It's not just a question of whether or not something went viral, but whether or not I should care even if it did.
People are starting to understand that engagement for the sake of it isn't necessarily desirable. The virality of something doesn't indicate its importance, just that it went viral. In some cases, it's a negative signal.
Over the last 1.5 years, I've intentionally reduced my interaction with social media significantly. I've become less and less aware of the viral trends of the week. I've stopped going to most of the content aggregators (HN is one of the last holdouts), and I've spent more time reading books and doing things in person.
My life is much better for it, and as someone who found tremendous value in Internet communities and credit them for helping me navigate a tumultuous childhood in the 90s, it now feels like the time to leave it mostly behind.
Not just because the Internet has changed, but because it is changing the people who use it. For all the good in the beginning, it was changing me in ways that I did not like. I was becoming more reactionary, less tolerant, and more pessimistic about other humans.
It seems to me that we're just not mentally equipped (or at least I'm not) to handle the Internet in its current form in the long run. It's fine for awhile, but degrades rapidly. I hope the next generation of web technology and communities will find ways to solve this, but I'm starting to think that part of the solution is to stop using it for the important stuff.
It turns out to be very possible, and very pleasant.
I skipped IRC but I was all over Direct Connect and attended hub LAN parties.
I loved digg, but that ended.
I was on facebook for 3 months when it came out before deciding it was toxic trash and deleting it.
I had a twitter but never understood it, never used it, seemed toxic too so deleted that.
Reddit became a hub of underhanded advertising and bad faith arguments by toxic actors, not to mention the restrictions that were applied to make it corporate friendly so that went in the bin too.
Like you, HN is one of the last places I visit, and discord is still scratching my Direct Connect itch with a few technology focused servers and people on the otherside of the world I've never met that I call friends.
The people in real life that I am close with can be found either in Signal, Telegram or over plain old SMS.
Recently my partners friend was visiting and she was on Tiktok the entire time. Sometimes spending time in her room on Tiktok rather than hanging out. She complained about Israels bombing runs, but had zero knowledge of the Oct 7 atrocities.
I really enjoy not being Algoritmically Assimilated like I see and hear many people are. Touching grass is good for us.
I had similar perceptions about "the modern web" affecting me like you describe, and it was quickly remedied by cutting out or always-swiftly-opting-out-from wherever the topic was "not at all pertinent to my current pursuits". If all your net use is in "utility form", then it is a pure wealth for work, side-project / hobby stuff, study, play, bureaucratic/coordination chores, communication with the folks you know (in my case it's just emails for arranging a meet or a call — don't grok "chatting", neither do my closest relations).
What's out then? What's out is all the opinion bloggeries and microbloggings, the whole feuilletonistic/debate spectrum, everything by "journalists", the reddits and chans, the economic or political or culture/zeitgeist doom or boom spectrums. Anything "news" that isn't specific-niche-or-thing news. It was only ever the lure of entertainment, spice, novelty, tickling-of-intellect in there anyway, but yeah it can leave unwanted engravements in mind over prolonged exposure. And for entertainment, spice, and novelty, there's a dozen thousand movies and a million games I and everyone else hasn't yet given play time for that hour-or-two a day of wind-down and the occasional "slow-mo day", from the past 60 years alone, let alone new stuff. They somehow seem oddly, innocently harmless in comparison, are self-contained and obviously not hellbent on "changing your path".
Of course that's what the article is alarmed about, but this way "the web" is a friendly, generously you-serving infrastructure offering of modernity and if you don't need it to be any more than that, there's just no such complication of "we aren't evolved/equipped for what we made" here..
This works especially finely nowadays vs. say 2016-2022 as "mostly-utilitarian"/non-blathery contents and discussions (whether thats a distro forum or a fandom wiki or a gaming channel or Github Issues, you get my drift) have healed from over-politization that did quite permeate them for that timeframe.
So maybe it's just really the old classic navigating-modern-mass-media skill building in yet another screamier more-blown-up iteration here.
People are starting to understand that engagement for the sake of it isn't necessarily desirable. The virality of something doesn't indicate its importance, just that it went viral. In some cases, it's a negative signal.
Over the last 1.5 years, I've intentionally reduced my interaction with social media significantly. I've become less and less aware of the viral trends of the week. I've stopped going to most of the content aggregators (HN is one of the last holdouts), and I've spent more time reading books and doing things in person.
My life is much better for it, and as someone who found tremendous value in Internet communities and credit them for helping me navigate a tumultuous childhood in the 90s, it now feels like the time to leave it mostly behind.
Not just because the Internet has changed, but because it is changing the people who use it. For all the good in the beginning, it was changing me in ways that I did not like. I was becoming more reactionary, less tolerant, and more pessimistic about other humans.
It seems to me that we're just not mentally equipped (or at least I'm not) to handle the Internet in its current form in the long run. It's fine for awhile, but degrades rapidly. I hope the next generation of web technology and communities will find ways to solve this, but I'm starting to think that part of the solution is to stop using it for the important stuff.
It turns out to be very possible, and very pleasant.