Alive Internet Theory

2025-11-09

So there I was, playing Cyberpunk 2077, when I glanced at the hackernews feed on my second screen. I just finished making a character and my eyes wandered to something I happened to have open.

I saw a very promising title: Alive Internet Theory.

The website is fun, but what really resonates is the linked manifesto. It is so sentimentally written. A joy to read, because their north star is so bright.

I can't help but agree. As I started blogging, I felt a longing for my friends to join. Perhaps not specifically to blog or to website-make, but to do something on the internet. Somewhere where I can see their self-expression.

Because I saw signs of life here. I saw what it can be if we come together to make it something good.

I mean, just following random webrings and blog rolls, how could you want to let that die? We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We don't have to leave the internet, let us just leave social media behind.

To believe in each other, [is to] believe in the open Internet.

I believe in people, I belive in an open internet.

I recently bought Cyberpunk 2077 because it was on my mind recently, because of datakra.sh.

But the timing is not lost of me. I recently found a love in the internet and broadly just with digital spaces (hate that word, so corporate 🤢). Sure Cyberpunk is pessimistic about it, but I think that pessimism belies a lost love, not quite lost.

I think if you were truly pessimistic about technology, you wouldn't make this type of art. You'd have given up. I was there, I wanted to just disconnect. But not anymore and I don't think we should give up on the internet.

Spencer linked to another wonderful article The dark forest theory of the internet. Strickler makes draws a compelling analogy of the current internet ecosystem to that of a dark forest. Where all life retreats to private corners, to shield themselves away from the dangers of Web².

And in it, he correctly observes that while it is to the benefit of those wise enough to hide, it leaves the wider internet to be dominated by predators.

And you know what, fuck them. Put your shit on the internet and connect with random strangers on it. We should not yield what we have so easily.

There's a desire to turn it in, accept the Dead Internet Theory and get on with our lives. I implore you not to give up. There is so much out there, outside the sphere of control of veture capitalists. And I implore you to add to this, to share what you can and what you have.

Just because we spent so much of our time watching ghouls dance in a cemetary, does not make the town dead. And shit, you're alive aren't you?

I don't think I've been this happy in years.