Internet culture/media is one of the most documented in history; billions of people worldwide come together to create something for everyone to see. Occasionally one of these creations will spread and become ingrained into history. Still, eventually, all things die out and new media is created and spread this is the internet cycle but that dead media is still alive, the people behind the thing may be gone but the media is preserved.
The year 2023 has been one of the most active and that could be due to the pandemic a few years back that brought more people onto the internet. However, a majority of popular media was conceived starting in the summer and that bandwagon of media is still going into December. Indie works have started creeping up the most popular of these is “The Amazing Digital Circus”. Movies like “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, “Barbie”, “Oppenheimer”, “Napoleon”, “Leo” and “The Super Mario Bros.” are some of the most popular. In all this, there is still an underlying problem with the internet, in a place where rules are more of a suggestion then you could see more negative aspects.
“Overall, it seems as though the internet has been a positive thing, giving individuals in groups a way to access forums and pages and communicate with other members of the group, but it also has harmed humans, things like incel culture,” sophomore Andrew Washington said. “The main issue I feel that makes incel culture a negative thing is how easy it is to get in but how hard it is to get out, at first you find this group of people who seem to share the same ideals, frustrations at not being able to get a romantic partner being the most common, but the more time you spend you either start to notice that some of the people are genuinely horrible, or you become blind to notice and get sucked in. I don’t have personal experience with incel culture but have heard trying to get out of it is a very stressful and anxious task.”
These kinds of people usually blend in and a person won’t realize their true intentions until they’ve already grown too attached to that person. However a majority of the time these bad actors will reveal themselves in the first interaction so the risk of meeting someone smart with their tricks is very low.
“I’d say the internet is a good place to go and be open in some places, however, it has evolved to be more mean-spirited with hate being thrown at people or groups that don’t harm people,” sophomore Jason Chase said. “Most of the modern trends such as ‘Skibibi toilet’ attract this mean-spirited energy and it can be annoying with all the people making comments and reacting to it.”
In most modern media the work isn’t the issue it will usually be the reaction to it. Lazy media a majority of the time will get only a few reactions before it falls out but the greater the reaction the larger the product will become. Fans mold the media into something they like but the product has to be clever or played out well enough to gain popularity.
“I overall think that the internet is a cruel place and I try to avoid it at almost all costs,” sophomore Mohammad Shuaib Alizai said. “I’ve gotten into one group once and it was a terrible experience. It was full of middle schoolers acting tough and it was very annoying just infuriating.”
The internet has shown that it can house greatness, but it can also house negative emotions people are allowed to express themselves to others who could agree with them. That is something that would be much harder to do before this age of online commerce. Some online commerce can be bad and there isn’t anything to do about it but modern society relies on it heavily and removing it could lead to outrage. In the future, the internet could be a better place but that is currently unknown.
