5.01.25: The “Old” Internet

I miss the internet before everything got monetized. Back when people built websites for fun, not funnels. When forums were alive, blogs weren’t SEO bait, and you could stumble across someone’s weird corner of the web without a pop-up asking you to subscribe. It felt like a digital wilderness—messy, creative, a little chaotic, but honest. Now it’s all ads, algorithms, and optimized content trying to convert. Everything’s polished, branded, trying to sell you something. I still love the internet, but damn, I miss when it felt like a community bulletin board instead of a marketplace with surveillance baked in.