… for my part in the debacle that is the Internet, so I’m writing long form as penance.

Below is this maker’s overview of the web’s history and its influence on mass consciousness between the years of 1997 to 2025.

Mia Culpa

I’m sorry, I owe you all an apology. Over these past 20 years I helped make societal conversations shorter and sweeter and more, just, you know, “bossy” and authoritative and all CTA-ey. And now here we are with a few too many rabid dog-like kind of people, just clicking and following and all acting simple-minded when life is oh so complex, rich and interesting.

If you follow this bit of how I see internet history¹, you can see the way we’ve collectively changed, as well as how we’ve collectively fallen into places named manipulated and consumed, instead of places named informed and creative.

So I know I’m partly responsible for the debacle we see in American government and society today. By weaving pages and links into tidy piles of code and money-making manipulation; by shortening, formatting, and calling humans to action using H-style headlines, quippy tag lines, hit-table SEO, and forceful formatting. I’ve fear I’ve harmed the ability of folks to feel out authenticity and be proactive, not re-active.

By using images in super-special ways to punch up text and touch on hidden meanings, I’ve been an agent of changing the way people create and interpret meaning. By eagerly honing and testing with performance stats shaping me into a kind of digital wizard, and by trying low-budget innovations to win, win, win the day, I’ve helped train my fellow humans to be super-attuned to punchy taglines, shiny buttons, and direct hits on our emotional selves so we’ll buy more stuff, including dumb ideas. Ugh. And, sorry again.

And I’ve helped people who interact with other marketing people and digital platforms think: this is great! And I meant well each and every step of the way. What’s that they say about the road to hell…

My bad, but let’s unravel this group thinking-thang with a loose little bit of history told by my makers’ POV, so maybe you too can see it. Awareness is step one, lots can be solved by seeing the problem.

How Information and Expression became Reactivity

Hint: it was for commerce.

See, 28 years ago, when I hand-coded my first website, the web was still kind of pure. There was Geo Cities for everyday people, loosely organized by crazy neighborhoods and loads of interesting creators making stuff – whatever floated our boats. It was art, literature and connection– true creativity.

And there were also larger entities with professional & informational websites: businesses, governments, educational institutions, non-profits and NGOs. And there was e-commerce in the early stages: Amazon for books at a price and speed that was beyond belief (and counter to all the normal rules of running a solvent business²). There were sweet little directories for small businesses, with templates and town pages showcasing real locations so real people could gather in places. Oh, and yes, there was porn.³

But all in all, websites were pretty much information-based. The content made sense, and was placed into websites and between websites in common-sense ways to share valuable information for thinking people quickly.

Purpose was first

You could say the purpose of websites was centered around making other’s folks lives better and easier. This was achieved by efficiently sharing quality information, locations, ideas, and data to support the greater good. At least that’s the way I saw it, and that’s the way I worked with it. You could say SHARING was a key feature of all the makers of webstuffs.

Information was generally crafted by smart people, for other smart people and was organized in ways so that people could find what they needed to do things in the world. Data between researchers meant everyone could learn more and academics could build on useful knowledge. Commercial sites were still basically showcasing their wares and letting you know where you could by them. Simple, non-manipulative. Attraction-based.

During this time Search (like Google) was a tool we used to find things. Our ability as users to think would help us find relevant answers. And those of us who learned to work over the results of Search (especially organic SEO-workers), could find ourselves employed. We shaped the way the tool worked, and we shaped the way content was presented… in tandem.

Let’s Be Social

And soon along came sharing digital media for individuals. Sharing your favorite stuff with others on MySpace, Chat Rooms, email, and other functions/platforms generally helped people showcase their individual preferences and communicate quickly with like-minded people. “This is my favorite band, have you heard them?” Still, we shared our best information with little to no money involved, and mostly without advertisements, or ad income tempting us to share anything other than from-the-heart human-centric content.

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Advertisement Age of the Web: Defined

And then came what I call the advertisement age of the web, which totally re-vamped the very purpose of the Internet landscape and the way people interacted with it. Sites and people that were not selling something, could now sell someone else’s stuff, and anyone could earn money just by interacting with information and technology that was eagerly provided by a growing class of what we now call “tech bros.” Google ads rose in prominence, and controlling how people searched became an ever-shifting skill that could make millions (mostly for Google but also for businesses who placed the ads).

Around this time content became a servant to commerce. Content was no prominent on the web for its merits to individuals or even businesses, but for its effectiveness in shifting human behavior. Google Ad Text, for example, could be crafted into more and more effective language patterns reflecting human psychological triggers writ large.

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Web 2.0 = Make Humans Dance

Social media came into its own here – the age of the 2.0. The web was different. Now, while everyone was ‘being themselves’ and ‘connecting to communities’ on the web, individuals also started serving as agents of profit for the platforms itself. People and groups could show up there and share content for free, or so it seemed, and lots of folks did. Advertisements were still awkward here… until, they weren’t. The tech bubble was starting to find its way toward profit because it had to. And that meant, content became seen as the means to the end: the stuff to grab your attention in ever more powerful ways, so that the platforms would remain viable for years to come until….

Ta Da: Monetization!

Facebook, in particular has always plainly showed us the ugly side of money-making tech bro goals. So was Zuck was shamed in early days. He had more people joined than most, a platform originally created to meet girls, I’m guessing. “Hey Zuck, You have so many on Facebook, but make no money. Ha Ha Harvard Man!” So, the burning desire for more power & more money materialized. Money and influence were THE measurements of success in tech bro land. So “monetization” floated in financial circles and business meetings like the Caddyshack Baby Ruth.

If a business doesn’t clearly make money, that what is it? Except, the businesses were making wealth, VAST wealth… just harboring it in the form of detailed data about you.

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Ugly Exploitation: Who Dat?

Next up, remember when Facebook used every day people’s personal photos to sell commercial products? Remember when the photo of you and your drunk friend could get served up to strangers in an energy drink ad? Or your pretty pal’s image wound up selling underwear? Right?! Gross and deeply offensive. So it didn’t last…

That particularly exploitive part of the web ended fast, then the era of platforms paying pennies to anyone who’d make content was born. So they began selling “space” kind of near your pretty pal…

Ah, most people said, this is better:

Facebook found their obvious way to monetize: Yay! Tech Bro for going “Obvious”!
1. Sell ads to underwear company and make $
2. Put ads in front of people platform knows might buy them, and use human’s personal content to get people there to see the ads – Pretty Pals and Shaky Uncle Gene and all.

Still exploitative, but less overtly offensive. Now you, your networks, and your interests are all used to sell you stuff while advertisers pay Big SocialM. Billions join in the money-flowing fun, world wide! It kind of looks familiar too, just like in old-timey TV and magazines: content with some ads.

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Video made the advertising darling

And then along comes egalitarian penny-payer YouTube! Here any person could reveal in like-TV format nearly anything they’d like. There was again quality content like great music and ideas, or videos how to fix a broken toilet, AND terribly useless content created only to titillate or stir sh!t for no reason except to get clicks.

But now… it’s become really worth it for every day people to make dramatic stuff. In fact, the average person posting was getting subtly trained to do just that. If one were to sell ads on their videos, they could make money. Isn’t this great?! More compelling content (for better or for worse), would gain more clicks. People would get rewarded for training themselves and their viewers to subscribe and watch and little bits of revenue gets shifted towards the creatives again. And the creatives get smarter and better than ever at maximizing the dollars. And, just like most things, many will ‘putin’ but only a few will really get anything out of it.

Unfortunately, not unlike streaming services underpaying musical artists (Ahem Spotify), the creators get pennies on the dollar to what the platform itself is raking in. Oh well… kind of seemed like a great idea, now is rife with conspiracy theories and dudes saying the government should be deleted while they play video games for show.

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Content remains king in an attention economy if it triggers uncomfortable emotions

I’m going to fast forward to right about now. TikTok, YouTube, social media of all kinds. All of it full of ads and full of ad bits of revenue for creators. Just to restate the obvious, the platforms get the lion’s share and the creators compete in gladiator fashion for the chance to create another day.

We also have young creators sometimes exploited by adults for income, with terrible ends at times. And everyone who seeks to make money this way, has their honest content shaped into something “marketable” by the platforms that host them. META Business, for example will call and chase creators to tell them how to “do it better” so as to gain more traction in the commerce of attention. Facebook META will also trap creators into receiving kick backs from the multiple pages they may make content for… even if they ask them to stop.⁴

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And Next: Attention + AI

So, what’s next surely has much to do with AI, chat bots, LLM and how these things scrape, regurgitate and ‘coach” creators how to do it better (in addition to putting loads of hallucinated stuff into search as fast as possible). Do what better for what, I always wonder? For commerce first, and social action, second.

But money first: more ads and more people buying and selling more things will drive the training of our collective consciousness, and by extension, our collective will.

And so it goes.

What to do today? Seriously, what a fubar mess…

Perhaps you could first check that you are on the right side of things by making things from your heart that are helpful in some way, and not just act from the suggestions of tech bros’ bots. They likely do not have your back.

More to come. Creators: I hope you find this an encouraging acknowledgement: just because you don’t have a big audience, loads of clicks and piles of commerce, does not mean you aren’t valuable. You will usher in the next age. If you can keep your website online that is.

In fact, these days, you are infinitely valuable. Don’t sell out, but do keep sharing the good stuff. The value will come around to you in ways far more important than a few tossed pennies from the authorities.

The information economy is transforming into an inspiration economy.

If content doesn’t ring true and real, it needs to fall away. Attention is the most powerful force you can wield right now along with your dollars. Spend ’em where you want the world to go, and respond to ads that support your personal power, not those that steal your peace.

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1. I am no scholar, and you can argue the timeline if you like, but if you read it as a whole, you can see the through lines, no matter even if a single platform’s date of coming to prominence is arguable. ↩︎
2. Remember the “Tech Bubble”? Yeah, so many multi-million dollar companies that actually earned NOTHING. ↩︎
3. There is always porn. For the sake of this piece, I’m not going to address this particular sector of the web, because that would be a large and sprawling piece which wouldn’t lend itself well to long-form (no pun intended). ↩︎
4. I have a long story about trying to get META to stop giving me money for a facebook page I co-managed. They literally did not have a technical mechanism by which I could STOP this money from flowing into my bank acccount, without my shutting down my personal bank account. Big tech with no “stop” switch, seems crazy right!? It is. ↩︎