We Used to Share the Same Internet

I’ve been thinking about how different the internet feels now compared to ten or fifteen years ago. Back then it felt like we were all seeing the same things. If something went viral, you knew everyone had seen it. There wasn’t much of an algorithm deciding what you should care about. It was just the internet. And it felt collective, like we were all in the same space.

Now it’s fragmented. Everything is hyper-personalized. My feed looks nothing like yours, and yours looks nothing like someone else’s. Everyone lives in their own little bubble. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s just exhausting. It feels like nobody agrees on what’s real anymore, because nobody is even looking at the same inputs.

I noticed this the other day on an AI forum. Half the people there are convinced we’re completely screwed and that everything is about to collapse. The other half think this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened and that we’re on the verge of transcending being human. There’s almost no middle ground. It’s either fear or pure hopium.

The same thing happens with privacy discussions. People talk like the dystopia already arrived. Not that it’s coming, but that it’s done, settled, irreversible. Everything is being tracked, we’re constantly watched, and the only mistake was thinking we ever had a choice.

Even pop culture feels like this now. I’ll see someone say, “This artist is everywhere. It’s their era.” And I’ve never heard of them. Not once. They’re everywhere in that person’s feed. They’re invisible in mine. It’s not a shared moment. It’s just overlapping hype inside a bubble.

I think about this with careers too. Someone can be doing incredibly well in their field. Promotions, recognition, followers, awards. Inside that circle, they matter a lot. Outside of it, nobody really notices. It’s just another job title, another update. The importance feels huge inside the bubble and almost nonexistent outside it.

It feels like we all live on different versions of the internet now. Nobody is really looking at the same thing. The feeds barely overlap. Inside each one, everything feels significant, urgent, worth arguing about. If you step back, it mostly looks like noise.