Comment by al_borland
2 days ago
It’s hard for me to know if it’s the computers that changed or my stage of life.
I think they become less fun sometimes during the later stage Web 2.0 era as everything shifted toward services. For most, computers became a thin client to access services on the Internet. To me, this isn’t very fun. The computer becomes an appliance to access services rather than one used to run programs that can be customized and tailored to the user. Of course that local experience can still exist, but only for users who are very intentional. For shared experiences, it’s only for users whose friends are also intentional. This intentionality usually means doing a lot of extra work. This work was not an issue when the pay off of new functionality was there, but is harder to justify when it’s often less functionality for more work… the main upside being freedom and agency over the experience.
Seemingly every service being a front to collect and sell data also makes things less fun. There is a certain level of trust that needs to exist when running software and that trust relationship has been broken, even by real companies. It makes it hard to trust anything, which pushes me away from trying new things that might be fun.
This change coincided with my transition to adulthood, where priorities shift. It’s impossible to say if I’d still find computers fun in 2026 if I was 19 again, but my gut tells me I’d be a lot less interested.
If there is a path back, I think it might be along the lines of Pewdiepie’s newfound love of Linux. He seems to be having a ball.
Given that enshittification is such a common term today, that didn't exist a few decades ago, suggests the decay is real not just a stage of life perception.
Earlier computers, and particularly the early Internet, were all about personal freedom. The computer served you and the Internet was there to connect you with peers. So that was fun and the possibilities were literally infinite.
As the giant corporations and particularly the advertising industry (which destroys everything it touches) have slowly taken control, computers and the Internet no longer serve us, the people. We are now the product, to be fully monetized at every stage. Monetization alone is bad but not terrible, but in order to maximize monetization the corporations also need to exert control, thus all the increasingly restrictive technology where we are very clearly only a paying consumer kept within a box, not a participant.
While the technology world has been almost entirely enshittified, it's good to keep some optimism though. The fun parts still exist, they're just more effort to find.
On the Internet, support your hobby email lists (open participation, no corporate control), support enthusiast-driven forums and websites (independently run, no social media giants monetizing every message!). There are fewer of these but they do exist, support them. Or start your own! Don't let the megacorporations own your hobby interactions.
On the programming side, work on something hands-on fun if you like. When I want to geek out programming like it's 1995, I have a BSD box and work on a hobby project which is all in C. No vibe coding, no thousands of unknown npm dependencies, none of that junk. Just me and emacs and the kernel and the compiler. I don't work on it often but every now and then a weekend of real programming is very relaxing and reminds me how much fun it is.