The Anachronistic Internet: When Cat Videos Actually Mattered

Summary: A late-night, sleep-deprived rant about how the internet used to work, triggered by watching 2 Broke Girls and realizing how anachronistic everything feels now.

The Anachronistic Internet: When Cat Videos Actually Mattered

So here I am, 3 AM, can’t sleep, supposed to give a talk at FOSDEM in a few hours, and I’m pretty sure I’m getting sick after three weeks of travel. What does any rational human do in this situation? Watch 2 Broke Girls, obviously.

And holy shit, does that show feel anachronistic now.

Hipsters Don’t Exist Anymore (And Other Revelations)

First off, the hipster jokes. Nobody makes hipster jokes anymore because hipsters either don’t exist or became less culturally relevant than emos. Remember emos? Yeah, that’s how dead hipsters are.

But it wasn’t just the cultural references that felt ancient. It was the internet itself.

There’s this scene where Caroline (the blonde one) takes Max’s laptop to do some business stuff and stumbles upon her browser history. Not search history—browser history. And what’s in there? Cat videos. A cat ringing a doorbell. A kitten doing funny stuff. She rattles off 5 or 6 different videos.

And I’m sitting there, exhausted and probably feverish, thinking: “Holy crap, that’s how we used to consume content.”

When Million Views Actually Meant Something

Remember when a video with a million views was a big deal? Not just numerically, but culturally? It meant millions of people actively sought that thing out. Someone told them about it—word of mouth, in real life—and they went home, opened their browser, fired up YouTube or Google, and searched for “cat ringing doorbell” or whatever.

They made a conscious choice to watch it.

That’s so radically different from today it might as well be from a different species of internet.

Today, a million views means an algorithm shoved something in front of a million eyeballs. Half those people probably didn’t even want to see it. They were just scrolling, trapped in the engagement machine, and the algorithm decided their attention belonged to that video for the next 30 seconds.

The Browser History Archaeological Dig

Let’s talk about browser history for a second. When was the last time you checked yours? I mean really looked at it?

Back in the day? Browser history was like an archaeological dig of your curiosity. It told the story of how you discovered things, how you followed rabbit holes from one interesting thing to another. You’d see the path from “funny cat videos” to “how do cats see color” to “are cats colorblind” to “evolution of feline vision” to “why are my eyes dry” to “computer screen blue light” to “buying blue light glasses”

That was the internet. A web of curiosity, not a feed of algorithmic manipulation.

The Walled Garden Apocalypse

Today, that same cat video discovery journey happens inside TikTok or Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. It’s all contained within one app, one ecosystem, one company’s idea of what you should see next.

The browser? It’s basically just a container for apps now. Gmail, Slack, whatever productivity tool your company forces you to use. The actual web—the place where you could stumble upon weird personal blogs and random forums and people’s actual thoughts—that’s mostly dead.

We traded the open web for engagement algorithms and dopamine slot machines.

When Sharing Was Intentional

Here’s another thing that hit me during my 2 Broke Girls insomnia spiral: sharing used to require effort.

If I wanted to show you a video, I had to copy the URL, paste it in an email or IM, and send it to you. You had to click it, wait for it to load, and make the conscious decision to watch it. There was friction, and that friction meant something.

Now? I can “share” something by double-tapping it, and it gets blasted to everyone who follows me, whether they want it or not. The algorithm decides who sees it and when. There’s no intentionality, no curation, no thought.

We optimized the friction out of sharing and accidentally optimized the meaning out of it too.

The Great Attention Heist

This is what really gets me: somewhere along the way, we agreed to let algorithms decide what deserves our attention. We handed over one of the most precious resources we have—our focus—to systems designed to extract maximum engagement, not deliver maximum value.

In the old internet, your attention was yours. You decided to search for something. You decided to click on a link. You decided to bookmark something for later. You were the curator of your own experience.

Now? Your attention is a commodity being traded in real-time auctions you don’t even know are happening.

But Wait, It Gets Worse

The really messed up part is how normalized this has become. We act like this is just how the internet works, like it’s some natural law. But it’s not. It’s a business model. A very specific, very recent business model that prioritizes engagement over everything else.

Quality? Doesn’t matter as long as people keep scrolling. Truth? Secondary to virality. Your mental health? Not their problem. Your time? Their most valuable asset.

We’re not users anymore. We’re the product. And we’re being sold to advertisers who want to influence our behavior.

The FOSDEM Connection (Because Why Not?)

Speaking of influencing behavior—I’m supposed to talk about social web and community building at FOSDEM in a few hours. And maybe that’s the connection here. The old internet was more like open source: decentralized, community-driven, built by people who cared about the craft, not the profit.

The new internet is more like proprietary software: controlled by a few big players, optimized for their benefit, not yours, and increasingly hostile to alternatives.

Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so nostalgic for browser histories and intentional sharing and cat videos that people actually searched for. It wasn’t just a different internet—it was a different philosophy about how technology should work.

So What Now?

I don’t have a grand solution here. I’m literally writing this at 5 AM while probably getting sick and definitely procastinating.

But maybe awareness is the first step? Maybe we can start making more intentional choices about where we spend our attention? Maybe we can support platforms and tools that respect our agency instead of exploiting it?

Or maybe I’m just being an old man yelling at algorithmic clouds.

Either way, I should probably try to get some sleep before I have to explain why social web matters to a room full of people who already know why social web matters.

At least that’s one thing that hasn’t changed: programmers still love stating the obvious to each other at conferences.

Update: The FOSDEM talk will be fine. Caffeine is a hell of a drug.

Also readable in: https://maho.dev/2026/01/the-anachronistic-internet-when-cat-videos-actually-mattered/ by @mapacheMaho 🦝🍻:

Think there might be some truth in this matrix...

(creator: unknown)

Then put your little hand in mine

There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb

RE: https://mastodon.social/@by_caballero/115968453192473247

interesting writeup about federated package management by @andrewnezAndrew Nesbitt
#fedidev

well that's neat
https://nesbitt.io/2026/01/25/pkgfed-activitypub-for-package-releases.html

Then put your little hand in mine

There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb

llms prove the elite do not believe in a meritocracy, they believe in mediocrity elevated by privilege

Notepad++ have today confirmed their auto process was compromised by Chinese nation state threat actors, in a supply chain hack: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/

This backs up my blog from late last year, with #GAYINT threat actor mapping to Funky Stamen.

The infrastructure and update mechanisms have since been tightened. For what it’s worth - entry was to telcos and financial services with interests aligned to China. Notepad++ dev did a great job treating issue seriously.

I feel like the push towards genAI is reflective of the notion that all things are just Product and the goal is to be Productive.

The drive is to get any sort of end result, whether it’s good or not, because all that matters is shipping something rather than what that thing actually is.

genAI is the fast fashion and Temu of creativity.

My fast zero-allocation webserver using OxCaml

Link: https://anil.recoil.org/notes/oxcaml-httpz
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46854534

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2026)

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857488

I showed my 12-year-old daughter how to chat to Claude using Xcode's Coding Assistant tab, and she spent the next two weeks building a game. It's out now on the App Store, and she's feeling very proud of herself ✨ https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/scramblet-word-puzzle-game/id6758466548

this ICE train is underwhelming compared to TGV, it is going like 100kph

🗺️ Ihr habt ja vielleicht mitbekommen, dass ich die Fedikarte wiederbelebt habe!
Neu findet ihr sie unter https://fedimap.de.

Ich würde mich freuen, wenn auch du dich dort einträgst. Wie das geht, steht auf der Webseite. 💫

🌍 You might have heard that I’ve brought the Fedimap back to life!

You can now find it at https://fedimap.de.
I’d love for you to add yourself to the map. The instructions are on the website. 🙌

#fedimap #fedikarte

세종호텔 로비농성장은 해체되고
다시금 그 앞 도로에 나와서
연행되어 유치장 수감된 사람들을 석방하라는 구호를 외치게 되었다

작년에 이 비슷한 광경을 봤는데 여전히 이렇게 하게 되는군요. 소년공 출신 대통령과 민주노총 출신 노동부장관을 갖게 되었는데도.

🦊 Firefox 147 is here! What's new?

✨ CSS Anchor Positioning enabled by default
🚀 WebGPU on all macOS with Apple Silicon
🧭 Navigation API for better SPA control
🎨 DevTools improvements for pseudo-elements & animations
and more...

Release notes 👇
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/147

今更ですが登録してみました
惚気たり、壁打ちしたりすると思います
よろしくお願いします

@mcc "A, B, harf, D, buzz…"

@mcc So the other day, I, for reasons that make sense, bought a book from the eighties about one-person games, written by of all people Gyles Brandreth. It lists fizzbuzz as a game to actually play by reading it out loud, but using divisors 5 and 7.

This has nothing to do with anything, I just had to get this extremely strange experience out of my head.

there's a whole youtube.... genre? of videos documenting or exposing people for cheating at competitions, speedruns, games, etc.

It's an honestly bizarre microcosm. There's channels that are dedicated to doing only that.

Add `Select` component (#37702) by diondiondion has been merged! https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/commit/ceb4a878fb3ea9a4c8cafaf5bfedfab8dc2622e1

Come to Montreal the food's amazing. The *hospital food's* amazing. The *hospital food alternate menu for people with food sensitivities* is amazing. They invented a version of "drunk 3 AM post-bar-hop greasy french fries" but gourmet. Right now I'm in the train station (sorry, "Gare") eating… whatever this is, from a cubicle next to the Subway. I literally don't know what this is. It's incredible

path-dependent types (the program behaves differently depending on which directory the source is stored in)

Learn about WinAppCLI with Noraa!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rTsqUBpMwc

寝るのだ！​​​​

You can download PDFs of @feed404 Media's zine about ICE surveillance.

https://www.404media.co/icezine/

ねよ​​

​​​​

@mcc We don't talk about b**zf**z, not since the Incident.

Hey @stefanoStefano Marinelli I'm trying to figure out how to establish a presence on bsd.cafe's DeltaChat. I have no idea what to do and could use a little help. Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?

Call for Mugs
For our new building, we need mugs. So grap the opportunity to promote your open source project among our foss students and send us max three mugs! We will use the mugs to serve our students coffee and tea. OS-SCi Spoorlaan 400, 5038 CG Tilburg The Netherlands

https://music.apple.com/kr/album/tangerine/580708279?i=580708288&l=en-GB

Hoy me ha llegado esto de @prahouTomáš 💜
Justo para el #LunesDeCamisetas

I love and appreciate community events such as #Fosdem, but it makes me sad to see the gender imbalance in #foss tech. I'm aware of the issue, but being at such a large-scale event makes it very tangible and visible.

#deib #dei #diversity #opensource #womenintech #womeninSTEM

Holy shit. TIL that Janet Jackson is the only Grammy-winning artist with a CVE.

CVE-2022-38392 indicates that playing Rhythm Nation near certain hard drives will cause a crash, because the song contains a resonate frequency with a 5400RPM spinning disk of a certain diameter and construction.

Neat.

#music #infosec

"A bitcoin or two", haha. You have no idea how long and hard a bunch of us had to fight to keep cryptocurrency out of Firefox.

https://mastodon.social/@jk/111749535910951398

TFW you are told to implement harfbuzz but instead implement fizzbuzz or, perhaps more dangerously, the reverse

I really love Mastodon, but it’s practically impossible to have a representation of a small business here. You get piled with “this has to be opensource!!1!”, “why do you charge money for this?” and so on. I and others tried so many times to basically move Instagram accounts here, but the amount of hate here for small businesses just trying to do their thing is just too much.

We had a spy infiltrate the depths of the Social Web Devroom at #FOSDEM this year and can leak the insider information that there were ⁂'s on many slides throughout the presentations

@aerique https://mastodon.social/@jk/111749535910951398 ive thought this for a while. i am 15% sure that it is true

Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking for upgrades (22 candidates): 100%
Processing candidates (22 candidates): 100%
The following 27 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

Installed packages to be UPGRADED:
	AppStream: 1.1.1 -> 1.1.2 [FreeBSD-ports]
	harfbuzz: 12.3.0 -> 12.3.2 [FreeBSD-ports]
	harfbuzz-icu: 12.3.0 -> 12.3.2 [FreeBSD-ports]
	lcms2: 2.17 -> 2.18 [FreeBSD-ports]
	libfyaml: 0.9_1 -> 0.9.3 [FreeBSD-ports]
	libgcrypt: 1.11.2 -> 1.12.0 [FreeBSD-ports]
	mysql80-client: 8.0.44 -> 8.0.45 [FreeBSD-ports]
	orc: 0.4.41_1 -> 0.4.42 [FreeBSD-ports]
	pciids: 20251227 -> 20260115 [FreeBSD-ports]
	png: 1.6.53 -> 1.6.54 [FreeBSD-ports]
	py311-adblock: 0.6.0_48 -> 0.6.0_49 [FreeBSD-ports]
	py311-certifi: 2025.11.12 -> 2026.1.4 [FreeBSD-ports]
	py311-urllib3: 2.6.2,1 -> 2.6.3,1 [FreeBSD-ports]
	spdlog: 1.16.0_1 -> 1.17.0 [FreeBSD-ports]
	waybar: 0.14.0_2 -> 0.14.0_3 [FreeBSD-ports]

Installed packages to be REINSTALLED:
	ImageMagick7-7.1.2.11 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)
	cups-filters-1.28.17_12 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)
	libcdr01-0.1.8_1 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)
	libfreehand-0.1.2_27 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)
	libraw-0.21.5 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)
	libreoffice-25.8.4.2 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)
	openjdk17-17.0.17+10.1_1 [FreeBSD-ports] (required shared library changed)

Installed packages to be REMOVED:
	py311-qt6-webengine: 6.10.0
	qt6: 6.10.1
	qt6-webengine: 6.10.1_3
	qt6-webview: 6.10.1
	qutebrowser: 3.6.3

Number of packages to be removed: 5
Number of packages to be upgraded: 15
Number of packages to be reinstalled: 7

The operation will free 291 MiB.
327 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: 

굿묘닝. 나는 일어나서 유산균 한봉지 때리고 한바탕 놀았다냥.

고양이 보여줄게 #고양이보여줄게

Anyone have a #selfhosted “read it later” app that they like? Any particular reason why?

Rust Coreutils Continues Working Toward 100% GNU Compatibility, Proving Trolls Wrong https://lobste.rs/s/c3vvtw #rust #unix
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-Coreutils-FOSDEM-2026

독일 맥주 판매량 1년새 6％↓…사상 최저
(베를린=연합뉴스) 김계연 특파원 = 독일 사람들이 갈수록 술을 덜 마시면서 지난해 맥주 판매량이 사상 최저치를 기록했다.
https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260203002700082

#news #뉴스

국가의 사과를 요구하는 동해안 납북귀환어부 사건 피해자들에게 경찰이 “위령제가 열리지 않아 사과가 지연되고 있다”고 답변한 것으로 확인됐습니다. 피해자들은 1971년 동해에서 조업하던 중 북한군에 납치됐다가 귀환했으나 수사기관의 불법 구금과 가혹 행위로 인해 간첩으로 몰려 억울한 옥살이를 해야 했습니다.

[단독] 납북귀환어부 아직 30명 살아있는데…위령제 열...

고양이 보여줄게 #고양이보여줄게

큰 흉부와 가슴은 잘못 없어 내가 싫은 건 중력의 법칙을 벗어난 독자적인 물리 엔진을 인체에 강제로 심었을 때 발생하는 움직임이라고

にゃ