The Anachronistic Internet: When Cat Videos Actually Mattered

So here I am, 3 AM, can’t sleep, supposed to give a talk at FOSDEM in a few hours, and I’m pretty sure I’m getting sick after three weeks of travel. What does any rational human do in this situation? Watch 2 Broke Girls, obviously.

And holy shit, does that show feel anachronistic now.

Hipsters Don’t Exist Anymore (And Other Revelations)

First off, the hipster jokes. Nobody makes hipster jokes anymore because hipsters either don’t exist or became less culturally relevant than emos. Remember emos? Yeah, that’s how dead hipsters are.

But it wasn’t just the cultural references that felt ancient. It was the internet itself.

There’s this scene where Caroline (the blonde one) takes Max’s laptop to do some business stuff and stumbles upon her browser history. Not search history—browser history. And what’s in there? Cat videos. A cat ringing a doorbell. A kitten doing funny stuff. She rattles off 5 or 6 different videos.

And I’m sitting there, exhausted and probably feverish, thinking: “Holy crap, that’s how we used to consume content.”

When Million Views Actually Meant Something

Remember when a video with a million views was a big deal? Not just numerically, but culturally? It meant millions of people actively sought that thing out. Someone told them about it—word of mouth, in real life—and they went home, opened their browser, fired up YouTube or Google, and searched for “cat ringing doorbell” or whatever.

They made a conscious choice to watch it.

That’s so radically different from today it might as well be from a different species of internet.

Today, a million views means an algorithm shoved something in front of a million eyeballs. Half those people probably didn’t even want to see it. They were just scrolling, trapped in the engagement machine, and the algorithm decided their attention belonged to that video for the next 30 seconds.

The Browser History Archaeological Dig

Let’s talk about browser history for a second. When was the last time you checked yours? I mean really looked at it?

Back in the day? Browser history was like an archaeological dig of your curiosity. It told the story of how you discovered things, how you followed rabbit holes from one interesting thing to another. You’d see the path from “funny cat videos” to “how do cats see color” to “are cats colorblind” to “evolution of feline vision” to “why are my eyes dry” to “computer screen blue light” to “buying blue light glasses”

That was the internet. A web of curiosity, not a feed of algorithmic manipulation.

The Walled Garden Apocalypse

Today, that same cat video discovery journey happens inside TikTok or Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. It’s all contained within one app, one ecosystem, one company’s idea of what you should see next.

The browser? It’s basically just a container for apps now. Gmail, Slack, whatever productivity tool your company forces you to use. The actual web—the place where you could stumble upon weird personal blogs and random forums and people’s actual thoughts—that’s mostly dead.

We traded the open web for engagement algorithms and dopamine slot machines.

When Sharing Was Intentional

Here’s another thing that hit me during my 2 Broke Girls insomnia spiral: sharing used to require effort.

If I wanted to show you a video, I had to copy the URL, paste it in an email or IM, and send it to you. You had to click it, wait for it to load, and make the conscious decision to watch it. There was friction, and that friction meant something.

Now? I can “share” something by double-tapping it, and it gets blasted to everyone who follows me, whether they want it or not. The algorithm decides who sees it and when. There’s no intentionality, no curation, no thought.

We optimized the friction out of sharing and accidentally optimized the meaning out of it too.

The Great Attention Heist

This is what really gets me: somewhere along the way, we agreed to let algorithms decide what deserves our attention. We handed over one of the most precious resources we have—our focus—to systems designed to extract maximum engagement, not deliver maximum value.

In the old internet, your attention was yours. You decided to search for something. You decided to click on a link. You decided to bookmark something for later. You were the curator of your own experience.

Now? Your attention is a commodity being traded in real-time auctions you don’t even know are happening.

But Wait, It Gets Worse

The really messed up part is how normalized this has become. We act like this is just how the internet works, like it’s some natural law. But it’s not. It’s a business model. A very specific, very recent business model that prioritizes engagement over everything else.

Quality? Doesn’t matter as long as people keep scrolling. Truth? Secondary to virality. Your mental health? Not their problem. Your time? Their most valuable asset.

We’re not users anymore. We’re the product. And we’re being sold to advertisers who want to influence our behavior.

The FOSDEM Connection (Because Why Not?)

Speaking of influencing behavior—I’m supposed to talk about social web and community building at FOSDEM in a few hours. And maybe that’s the connection here. The old internet was more like open source: decentralized, community-driven, built by people who cared about the craft, not the profit.

The new internet is more like proprietary software: controlled by a few big players, optimized for their benefit, not yours, and increasingly hostile to alternatives.

Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so nostalgic for browser histories and intentional sharing and cat videos that people actually searched for. It wasn’t just a different internet—it was a different philosophy about how technology should work.

So What Now?

I don’t have a grand solution here. I’m literally writing this at 5 AM while probably getting sick and definitely procastinating.

But maybe awareness is the first step? Maybe we can start making more intentional choices about where we spend our attention? Maybe we can support platforms and tools that respect our agency instead of exploiting it?

Or maybe I’m just being an old man yelling at algorithmic clouds.

Either way, I should probably try to get some sleep before I have to explain why social web matters to a room full of people who already know why social web matters.

At least that’s one thing that hasn’t changed: programmers still love stating the obvious to each other at conferences.

Update: The FOSDEM talk will be fine. Caffeine is a hell of a drug.