Your Internet is not the same as My Internet

If you're pressed for time, just jump ahead and watch this video. Seriously, it will be the best nine minutes of your life you've spent in a while:

If you do have a bit more time, it really makes you wonder what the solution to these problems are. Have we finally come full circle, where the power of the Internet isn't discovered FOR us anymore, but BY us? 

My earliest memory of the Internet is of me watching a favourite television show in the 1990s, and at the end they displayed on the screen a web address where you could go view MORE about this magical show. As a kid in the 1990s, I had no Internet-capable PC, and it wasn't until High School that I finally got access through the school computer laboratory.

For me though, the concept was a magical one. I remember chanting out that whole web address (a lengthy one), including the 'www', and annoying my mother. Here was an ADDRESS to a special place with content about this thing I love.

Maybe that's what we need again: to personally take responsibility for identifying inspiring sources of content. To click on unsubscribe links for content we don't like, giving the better content a chance to catch our attention. To actually type in specific URLs, not just Google our interests and accept whatever Google delivers to us.

I'm tired of the privacy issues online. I hate social media where I feel no need to share anything, and the people I'm following don't either. I HATE 'free' web-platforms thinking they own my content because I dared to share it through their platform.

This is me, wanting a return to the early days. Wanting to re-assert control over my content. Wanting to be a producer of quality content, not just a mindless aggregator. In short, Say No to Bad Internet.

For extra credit, here's the Veritasium video that inspired it all, and which will forever make you question the value of Facebook likes and advertising. It's amazing how people will exploit any system, and the rest of us are mired in the battle: