Explaining the Internet in 2020
A succinct summary for anyone who's spent the last 20 years in suspended animation.
Late 2020
Welcome to the last days of the year 2020 - your desired time for metabolic reanimation. We hope your twenty years in cryosleep were comfortable. Regrettably, neither downloadable pizza nor uploadable empty pizza boxes are yet invented. To get you up to speed we have, however, compiled a short description of the Internet as it is today.
- Once a mere search engine, Google is now a massive network of supercomputer clusters running the most advanced AI software known to mankind. The finest brains of our time have crafted these algorithms to perfection in an effort to sell as many ads as humanly possible. This expertly engineered software ensures maximum leverage for any and all advertisers by blatantly disregarding the privacy and dignity of said advertisers' presumptive customers.
- Ostensibly, a site where Pall Mall-smoking women named Karen, invariably sporting outlandish haircuts, congregate to "scrapbook" "interesting" "ideas". In reality, it's the first successful, long running effort to bring a massive network of supercomputer clusters hosting the most advanced AI software known to mankind to a grinding halt.
- A computer game taking the shape of instant messaging software. The inherently paradoxical goal of the game requires no small amount of strategy, wit and cunning: The main objective is gaining as large a following of people as possible while simultaneously getting as many people as possible banned from the game.
- A photo sharing site moderated by jocks and dudebros. The only photos allowed are those featuring food, scantily-clad women or various workout methods.
- A site for spreading harmful political lies and conspiracy theories about a) the dangers of vaccines, b) geographical misconceptions completely invalidating global travel and c) falsely linking various restaurants to child pornography. The spreading of these conspiracy theories and bizarre political statements are funded by advertisements paid for by the DNC, the RNC, pharmacological companies, most major airlines and the bulk of the fast food industry.
- YouTube
- A site for sharing either ten minute videos about how to solve a computer related task that would take three terse sentences to describe in writing, or hour-long videos of someone playing a computer game so that you don't have to.
- Twitch
- Very much like YouTube, except without the risk of ten minute instructional videos ruining a perfectly good evening of watching someone else play computer games.
- Snapchat
- A computer game taking the shape of instant messaging software. No users over twenty years old are allowed and the objective of the game is to invent and spread various antisocial or risqué behaviors to fellow teenagers. Critics claim that this is nothing but a blatant rip-off of IRC, circa 1997.
- Tinder
- An online RPG with the goal of getting laid. Time is mostly spent fighting off NPCs.
- datagubbe.se
- A backwards website for cranky old gits who'd probably be better off in a state of deep, comforting cryosleep.