The Old Ways
Are we going analog in 2026 or maybe just returning to the heyday of the Old Internet? Maybe both?
Like a lot of Millennials, I was deeply invested in blogging back in the day. It was part creative expression, part ritual. I’d sit down with a story to tell, some photos to illustrate it, and I’d hit publish for all the world to see (typos included).
Social media grew and grew though, overtaking blogging as the popular choice for connecting over the Internet. So many of us used it to hustle ourselves into various mental health problems while we toiled on content creation, grinding for followers in the hopes our account became the next big thing.
Now, as social media becomes a cesspool of AI slop and ragebait, a lot of us are backing away, choosing to “go analog” instead by using mp3 players, digital cameras that don’t have a wi-fi or even a bluetooth connection, and buying back all our CDs, DVDs, and Blurays from the thrift store.
Going analog is something of a rallying cry: we don’t need to have AI stuffed into everything we use just so billionaires can trick their investors into thinking more people are using AI tools than they really are. They’re artificially inflating the AI adoption metrics. People aren’t always using AI because they want to, but they’re using it because they can’t opt out.
Worse still, they also can’t opt out of having their data scraped to train the AI models.
What I post for my friends and followers to see is being fed into an AI database at the same time. Every time I post, I am very aware that my creative work is being used against me, building a database controlled by people who would see my medium be completely generated by computers. It feels gross.
I posted a reel a few weeks ago and had immediate regret. It was done out of habit, my end-of-the month clean-out of my camera roll where I drop a carousel of images as a monthly roundup. Why do this to myself? I gain nothing by posting to Instagram.
These feelings brought me to think about restarting my blog instead, with only a “notification” post to Instagram to let people know there’s something here for them to read or flip through. Certainly, not handing over piles of my work to companies that are actively screwing over their users for profit.
When it comes to sharing our lives and creations with each other, the Internet still has a place. Going analog is great for so many things, but we can’t discount the way the Internet has tied us together across huge distances and diverse cultures. Why not then a return to the Old Internet, the one where blogs kept us up-to-date and taught each other new things?
So here I am. Let’s go back to the old ways.
