There's a hypothetical phenomenon called the "asshole filter" that some have proposed. Basically, the idea is: hostile, humorless and trolling type people chase away the more pleasant people over time. The end result being, the concentration of assholes is always going up on social media and anonymous online forums, etc.

I don't think it's very scientific. How could you accurately measure such a thing. But I have felt like it was happening as various corners of the internet have grown in popularity.

One way I try to deal with it on here is I aggressively block people. Why let my energy get drained when there's any easy way to never see the jerks again.

I don't know if this tactic will work long term. There are potentially friendlier instances to migrate to, also. Lemmy is an interesting ongoing experiment.

Hope you hang in. Completely understand if you don't want to.

I always find it weird when someone says they can't joke on the internet. I joke on the internet all the time, and I've been banned from 0 forums, Discord servers, or other social media groups. 1 subreddit, but that was appealed, and I wasn't even joking when I got that ban, lol

I've never seen the internet as some stuffy place where I can't joke around, or where I have to watch my tongue, and I've been using the internet for over 20 years.

I'm not going to accuse anyone of anything, though I do know that some people and communities have "old boys' clubs" or whatever they're called where their sense of humour tends to be saying things that shouldn't be said in polite company...things like racist or sexist jokes, rape jokes, etc.

The whole world isn't one big "old boys' club", and not everyone wants to see that crap. A big part of comedy is knowing your audience.

TL;DR, The internet is still fun. If it's not fun for you, then it might be your perspective that needs adjustment.

Blame the algorithms.

They intentionally defy normal human social behavior to pit you against people you're more likely to disagree with in a major irreconcilable way, prompting people to polarize as potential middle grounders are pushed in one direction or the other through constantly being fed the absolute most aggressive examples of "the other side" that are currently active.

It's like video game matchmaking but the slurs actually rank you up.

In normal human interaction you'd be able to just write the crazies off and stop talking to them, social media is your boundary hating aunt who refuses to accept you have a right to go NC over irreconcilable differences and keeps trying to force reconciliation at every family event despite neither of you having any want for communicating with the other, then acts shocked and horrified when actually succeeding in forcing a conversation just leads to another blow up because some people are just better off not speaking.

I don't really know where you're getting the idea that nobody can joke anymore on serious matters. I see it all of the time, go look at Reddit for example and browse r/news. There's always at least 50 people making punchline jokes on otherwise serious matters.

The problem is when people expect their jokes to fly in the faces of communities that explicitly state that they don't want that crap around. Then when the people who joke around are offended, in come cries about freedom of this and freedom of that. Dude, it's one community, cut it out and go elsewhere. Not everyone should have to tolerate your low-hanging fruit kind of humor.

And a lot of the time too, is that people absolutely DO NOT know when something is stepping over the line. It's the fault of the individual for not making the line apparent, but when they do, there's a point where joking is not warranted.

Some pockets here and there are still fun. It's just hard to find them.

If the internet isn't fun for you, find a community on the internet that you actually enjoy being in. Easier said than done, I know, but the internet is a big place.

Its the polarisation of the masses to the point they no longer wish to interact in a civil manner when disagreeing. I remember the days when u could talk to people who are fundamentally opposed to ur ideology and have a civil discussion. Now everyone jumps at the oppertunity to label everything as something awful without a single attempt to engage in good faith.

Yes it can be fun again but it will never be fun in the way you remember. My experience with the internet and the ways in which it was fun to me are likely different from the way it was fun for you.

I think a seperation from algorithms and corporate ownership of internet spaces will be a huge step towards making the internet more fun. As usual capitalism ruins the experience lol.

Give it time

The old school internet was fun because we were in charge. No one would put Peanut Butter Jelly Time or Look at My Horse on TV and let it play in its entirety. No one would print rotten.com on paper and sell it at the corner. For the first time ever in a lot of people's experience, you could publish and say whatever you wanted. Then the reality of hosting costs set in, and the government learned that the internet existed and decided what it needed was outlawed encryption, and long story short there was a long self selection process where only the assholes wound up in charge again.

But now it's coming back. I think everyone's a little bit shell shocked back to the Facebook way (e.g. screaming about the mods and how unfair, instead of starting their own instances / communities, e.g. bickering about what "the rules" need to be and when to put content warnings and whatnot). I think it'll equalize as the realpolitik of people generally running their own servers replaces the realpolitik of it being just a bunch of assholes running the servers and us being helpless and no escape from them.

I don't know exactly what culture it will equalize to, but I definitely feel like it will be a big step back towards the old internet. We just haven't gotten there yet.

You're on a network where the majority has strict limits on the topics you're allowed to poke fun at. Commercialization may have started the trend, but an eternal September of humorless cunts are keeping it going far and wide.

there's the indieweb movement, smaller sites trying to have fun, like neocities

You had me in the first half, not going to lie.

Yet another example of the general enshittification of the Internet. I don't see it getting better anytime soon

I've been part of quite a lot of communities ranging from old electronics to silly song contests to cartoons with sentient objects (you can tell by my profile picture) to vidya games. Almost all of them have been incredibly fun at first, but eventually turned into shadows of their former selves. It's honestly really depressing.

Am seriously considering founding a not-for-profit to provide an ad free / spam free / bot free basic community. Would cost a dollar or two a month. Chief differences to the lemmy would be one account per person via proof of identity signup (I think this would improve behaviour and discourage spam), a single authority to tackle voting abuse and other things useful to be not federated.

Aside from that revenue would cover technical staff costs + hosting and the rest could go to some good cause. There's be no ads. No data selling. Not conflict of interest over how the platform evolves. Would be open source. Adults only.

Id keep it as basic as possible to try and capture the spirit of 90s fora. Am not even sure I'd allow inline images or vid.

Thoughts?

It should theoretically be possible to set up an old school forum, train some ai bots on old school forum user data to get them to talk like morons and then boom, an old school forum full of computer generated shitposting. This way you could have a computer generated vintage internet experience from the comfort of your own home.

Lots of niche forums are like what you say. Wider interest platforms like Lemmy try to be everything for everyone, so have to be more bland. In the further reaches of the net you can still make fun of Javascript as much as you want and no one will yell at you.

Corporations, governments and very political users has sterilize the Internet. You can’t be edgy/tell edgy jokes without being called racist, sexist and so on. Also the Internet is being walled garden by said parties. Due them closing down sites. By removing the ways the sites can keep themselves going, like cutting off payment processing companies. If the mob cries or/and screams hard enough. They can remove you and web sites from the net. Look what happened to Kiwi Farms. Cloudflare had Kiwi Farms back. But the mob cried, so Cloudflare dropped Kiwi Farms.

Can the Internet ever be fun again? Will, it's going to be hard to go back to the old Internet. Look at who we are fight against. Can it be done? Yes, but it's going extremely hard.

Maybe the things you think are jokes are offensive to other people? Watch a movie from 20, 30, 40 years ago and see how those jokes held up - lots of racist, homophobic, sexist stuff. I'm not saying that's what you're looking for, but just that some jokes don't age well. When you know better, do better.

Volume. A long time ago, ten replies was huge, not a thousand.

Join the communities, follow the people, and start conversations where the world is still small, you'll find what you are looking for.

The filter is your friend, social sites are not the only sites (federated ones included), and there are many destinations to participate as long as you dont hunt for exposure to the masses.

Edit: Friendly reminder that IRC, web comics, and niche forums still exist.

What places have you looked?