I Think a Lot of Developers Are Quietly Grieving the Old Internet

Source: Dev.to

Reflection

I think a lot of developers are carrying a kind of grief right now, but rarely naming it.
It’s not burnout exactly, but a feeling that the internet used to feel more human.

The old internet was messy, half‑broken, full of ugly forums, strange little blogs, abandoned tutorials, and personal sites that looked like they had been built at 2 a.m. by someone running on caffeine and obsession.

But that was part of the magic.

A lot of what we see now is technically impressive, yet emotionally empty. We learned from weird blog posts; now a lot of it feels more like output.

And yes, AI has made this feeling stronger—not just old websites, but an internet with fewer rough edges, less weirdness, fewer small corners, and fewer signs that an actual person had been there.

That is what makes this hard to talk about honestly. I miss that.