I think the thing I miss most about the old internet was the fact that many people just produced things without worrying about getting paid all the time. Websites were basic but fun, people uploaded funny videos just for laughs, and sites like Reddit were hardly heard of.
Something that I get angry about occasionally is how so many people have had their hobbies stolen from them. Like people who’d tinker about in their spare time making music, now feeling like they have to monetise it, and feeling the stress of not being able to supplement their failing income because they’re just one artist in a sea of artists, someone without a major label giving them a push.
I don’t blame the people at all, we’re all just trying to get on in this increasingly shitty world.
I do a little radio show once a week. It’s reasonably popular, but not so much that I could ever think about giving up the day job, and my day job’s pay isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things. But even I’m at a point where I’ve set up a Patreon where if anyone wants to kick in £3 a month, they can. Ultimately it just helps with the running costs of my VPS and domain renewal, and will hopefully give me enough to be able to pick up a new midi controller.
It’s fine, and people are happy to help out because they get to be a part of something they enjoy, but I hate that there’s been an increasingly vocal bit of my brane over the past year or so that’s been telling me that if everyone who listens paid £3 a month, I’d be ‘earning’ an extra £450 (give or take). According to my stats, the episode from a couple of weeks back is up to 250 listens on the podcast feed. That’s £750…
It’s my hobby. It’s a thing I enjoy doing. But if I’m not careful it’ll veer far too closely towards something I have to do, and that’ll kill it.
In his analysis, Marx identified four key aspects of alienated labour.
First, the worker is alienated from the product of their labour, which is appropriated by the capitalist and confronts the worker as a hostile power.
Second, they are alienated from the activity of production itself, which is experienced not as a fulfilling expression of creativity but as coerced, meaningless toil.
Third, this leads to alienation from their own human nature, or species-being (Gattungswesen), as free, conscious activity is reduced to a mere means of survival.
Finally, the worker is alienated from other people, as social relationships become reified and mediated by market exchange, fostering competition and indifference rather than community.
Looks like #2 and #3 apply directly to the situation in your comment.
The internet was also a place you went to, and you could actually turn it off or walk away from. Now it’s everywhere and stitched into our entire lives.
I still write and release open source software projects despite full well knowing they will likely have 0 users and that AI could replicate it in 1% the time I took. Doesn’t matter. I do it cause programming is what I love to do. I think it’s really sad that a lot of people have forgotten that’s the purpose of doing this kind of stuff. It’s not like we were ever gonna see a cent for it anyways. One of my projects was downloaded about 8000 times. That’s nice. Too bad it’s a project I discontinued because I no longer use it. No refunds!
A programmer that does it for the love of the game! Here’s to hoping more people (yes human ppl, not agents) follow your example! These are the things that keep me vested in tech in the first place
I love people like you. I can t believe I was talking to my partner about this very case of FOSS programmers who do it just to scratch an itch but still benefiting others and the world more than any sycho-corpo can ever hope to
I have a few projects like that and I used to create itch.io pages for them (at least for those related to gamedev). I’ve discontinued all of them years ago but recently I started getting notifications about people paying a dollar or two for them for no reason.
Are you using Linux / Wayland? Lately I’ve been having a lot of fun using gtk4-layer-shell in creative ways. Imo a great way to come up with projects that you’ll enjoy and be motivated to finish is to explore something totally novel and see where it takes you. An even better way is to recognize that feeling of ‘I feel like my computer should be able to do X’ and then make it possible. My last project of that variety was a system to stream videos from torrents as soon as possible after the download begins. Can start watching a 10gb video file all the way through in full quality with no buffering after like 30 seconds of downloading if you fiddle with the torrent and analyze the video file as it’s being written. Unfortunately I won’t be releasing this one as I learned that it would be quite bad for swarm health, but it’s cool for personal use.
That is cool, and KDE Plasma is my home these days. This is all very relevant to my interests and I suspect it is to more and more others lately too.
Thanks for contributing even if it doesn’t get a ton of attention. You never know when your novel approach to something will end up being THE idea someone needed to solve their own problem.
I think the thing I miss most about the old internet was the fact that many people just produced things without worrying about getting paid all the time. Websites were basic but fun, people uploaded funny videos just for laughs, and sites like Reddit were hardly heard of.
Something that I get angry about occasionally is how so many people have had their hobbies stolen from them. Like people who’d tinker about in their spare time making music, now feeling like they have to monetise it, and feeling the stress of not being able to supplement their failing income because they’re just one artist in a sea of artists, someone without a major label giving them a push.
I don’t blame the people at all, we’re all just trying to get on in this increasingly shitty world.
I do a little radio show once a week. It’s reasonably popular, but not so much that I could ever think about giving up the day job, and my day job’s pay isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things. But even I’m at a point where I’ve set up a Patreon where if anyone wants to kick in £3 a month, they can. Ultimately it just helps with the running costs of my VPS and domain renewal, and will hopefully give me enough to be able to pick up a new midi controller.
It’s fine, and people are happy to help out because they get to be a part of something they enjoy, but I hate that there’s been an increasingly vocal bit of my brane over the past year or so that’s been telling me that if everyone who listens paid £3 a month, I’d be ‘earning’ an extra £450 (give or take). According to my stats, the episode from a couple of weeks back is up to 250 listens on the podcast feed. That’s £750…
It’s my hobby. It’s a thing I enjoy doing. But if I’m not careful it’ll veer far too closely towards something I have to do, and that’ll kill it.
Marx had a lot to say about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
Edit:
Looks like #2 and #3 apply directly to the situation in your comment.
Dude knew what he was talking about.
I think about this peach vinaigrette story a lot in that context: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/142qfal/uusername_unavailable_offers_us_a_cautionary_tale/
Please forgive the Reddit link.
That was a legit horror story
God. Yes.
The internet was also a place you went to, and you could actually turn it off or walk away from. Now it’s everywhere and stitched into our entire lives.
“We had computer rooms, and the Internet should have stayed in those.”
I still write and release open source software projects despite full well knowing they will likely have 0 users and that AI could replicate it in 1% the time I took. Doesn’t matter. I do it cause programming is what I love to do. I think it’s really sad that a lot of people have forgotten that’s the purpose of doing this kind of stuff. It’s not like we were ever gonna see a cent for it anyways. One of my projects was downloaded about 8000 times. That’s nice. Too bad it’s a project I discontinued because I no longer use it. No refunds!
You’re an artist and i hope you see the importance in that.
Me too. Me too.
A programmer that does it for the love of the game! Here’s to hoping more people (yes human ppl, not agents) follow your example! These are the things that keep me vested in tech in the first place
I love people like you. I can t believe I was talking to my partner about this very case of FOSS programmers who do it just to scratch an itch but still benefiting others and the world more than any sycho-corpo can ever hope to
I have a few projects like that and I used to create itch.io pages for them (at least for those related to gamedev). I’ve discontinued all of them years ago but recently I started getting notifications about people paying a dollar or two for them for no reason.
What kind of projects are you working on? I really need to start some of my own or contribute to other projects but I’m not even sure where to begin.
Are you using Linux / Wayland? Lately I’ve been having a lot of fun using gtk4-layer-shell in creative ways. Imo a great way to come up with projects that you’ll enjoy and be motivated to finish is to explore something totally novel and see where it takes you. An even better way is to recognize that feeling of ‘I feel like my computer should be able to do X’ and then make it possible. My last project of that variety was a system to stream videos from torrents as soon as possible after the download begins. Can start watching a 10gb video file all the way through in full quality with no buffering after like 30 seconds of downloading if you fiddle with the torrent and analyze the video file as it’s being written. Unfortunately I won’t be releasing this one as I learned that it would be quite bad for swarm health, but it’s cool for personal use.
That is cool, and KDE Plasma is my home these days. This is all very relevant to my interests and I suspect it is to more and more others lately too.
Thanks for contributing even if it doesn’t get a ton of attention. You never know when your novel approach to something will end up being THE idea someone needed to solve their own problem.