The web is important. I think I’d forgotten that for a while. The apps are all shiny, sugar-coated with gaming mechanics that meter out dopamine hits at just the right cadence. I would find myself closing Instagram only to re-open Instagram; pull-to-refresh, hope for a new hit, repeat. The apps are comforting—they fill your screen and hold you within themselves.
The web was not designed for casual dopamine hits. It doesn’t try to keep you. Any single click may take you to an entirely different world with new possibilities…
But the web: it’s messy and chaotic. It requires searching on search platforms that increasingly don’t want you to leave them or it requires knowledge of an address, with an esoteric structure and an inscrutable protocol. The web was not designed for casual dopamine hits. It doesn’t try to keep you. Any single click may take you to an entirely different world with new possibilities, leaving the old one behind.
The web is a beautiful chaos where anyone is welcome to contribute, but where, increasingly, you can live in quiet isolation.