Thinking About Garbage
Jan. 23rd, 2024 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grayestofghostsAs I don't have a job right now, today I spent time clearing out my email inbox of endless garbage I receive from job posting websites and otherwise so that I will actually see a request for an interview when I get one. I cleared out the garbage from the months of January and December, and my inbox still says I have 8,434 emails, and this is my newest email address out of 4 different ones I maintain.
This reminds me of a tweet I saw a few days ago:
text: I’m fascinated by the idea of the Dead Internet, in which AI bots create website copies littered with ads that are then recursively crawled by “audience bots” over and over again. There are sectors of the internet devoid of all humanity, except for the person collecting ad rev. --twitter user telefontelaviv
Computer and internet tools have made the dissemination of data so easy that it happens automatically without regard of who it is for and if that data is even useful to spread. It just happens automatically at this point, making the forms it takes -- emails, articles -- less and less useful, because as the amount blows up, the amount of actual meaningful information contained within is endlessly diluted. But who pays for this dilution? It's not the person actually making money off of the transaction or creating these 'helpful' tools. It's an entirely externalized cost on those of us who have to put up with this garbage. And it is a lot of garbage.
This reminds me of a tweet I saw a few days ago:
text: I’m fascinated by the idea of the Dead Internet, in which AI bots create website copies littered with ads that are then recursively crawled by “audience bots” over and over again. There are sectors of the internet devoid of all humanity, except for the person collecting ad rev. --twitter user telefontelaviv
Computer and internet tools have made the dissemination of data so easy that it happens automatically without regard of who it is for and if that data is even useful to spread. It just happens automatically at this point, making the forms it takes -- emails, articles -- less and less useful, because as the amount blows up, the amount of actual meaningful information contained within is endlessly diluted. But who pays for this dilution? It's not the person actually making money off of the transaction or creating these 'helpful' tools. It's an entirely externalized cost on those of us who have to put up with this garbage. And it is a lot of garbage.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 02:42 pm (UTC)On the one hand we keep losing websites and even archive sites have taken down things they doesn't like for various reasons. Users are going back to downloading things they want to keep, physical media is looking more appealing again.
And on the other there's all this random stuff of no real use to anyone floating around. I've gone to a search result and it's just a page of random sentences that happen to include the keywords I was looking for which serves no purpose except, as you say, ad revenue, only I don't see the ads because I have ad blockers on.
sectors of the internet devoid of all humanity, except for the person collecting ad rev It sounds so creepy or lonely put like that. Fuel for a dystopian sci-fi piece maybe.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 09:10 pm (UTC)I've bought more physical media than I have in a while in the last year or so, physical books and actually vinyl records (though I have my boyfriend to blame for a lot of that, haha). I do however still actually purchase digital copies and keep a library locally, unlike him. I need to back up my media more often tbh.
The amount of garbage produced is just... so bizarre. Like I know there's always been garbage and probably some day people will be nostalgic for this kind of garbage because there's going to be something even worse but. God. Why is it everywhere, and the stuff I want just gone.