Comment by gdulli
2 days ago
Over the last 30 years the culture and power has made a gradual shift from 100% pure hobbyists to 4% hobbyists, 48% scammers/predators, and 48% commercial.
You can't pinpoint when the fun stopped and it's subjective. I personally became conscious that the party was fully over around 2023, after a few years of feeling it subconsciously.
2023 was when Twitter and Reddit changed their respective APIs and became openly user hostile, which was the symbolic turning point for me.
The world is full of people who get excited about things, but never, ever help. The Internet brings these kinds of people right to your door. They’re exhausting and toxic in a way you don’t truly appreciate until you really notice. Eject them from your life and computers become nice and fun again.
I feel 2023 is when we entered the decrepit stage, but ~2015 is when it began: Theranos, Musk's charlatanry and cult, "unicorns", Cambridge Analytica, the raise of social media addiction, etc.
Not that things were amazing before that... it's just that mid 10s had simply too many bad actors showing up at the same time with a lot of money and power.