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Fun Optimized Out of the Internet: A Builder's Guide

The internet's golden age of creativity has been replaced by optimized platforms. Learn why this HN story resonates and how builders can reclaim weirdness.

Fun Optimized Out of the Internet: A Builder's Guide

The internet used to feel like a playground. Personal blogs, weird forums, Geocities shrines to obscure hobbies. That feeling is gone. A recent Hacker News post titled "The best is over: The fun has been optimized out of the Internet" captures this loss—and the community's reaction shows I'm not alone in mourning.

The essay that sparked it

The linked essay argues the internet has lost its soul. The author describes the early web (2000s through mid-2010s) as a time of genuine exploration and low-stakes creativity. People made sites because they wanted to, not because an algorithm rewarded them. Now platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram have optimized every interaction for engagement. The serendipity, weirdness, and pointless creativity have been engineered away. The author points to examples like lip-syncing videos on TikTok and the death of the personal website. The post ends with a call to action: go make something for the hell of it, even if it's just a one-page story written in pen.

Why it's blowing up on HN

The post struck a nerve. At 223 points and 151 comments, the HN community is deeply engaged. Many commenters agree but add nuance.

"I agree, but it's been said by all... make homebrew software for an old Nintendo console, pick up cross stitching or weaving, make an independent film with a friend... it's not enough anymore to merely criticize this bad time we're having."

Another pointed out the cyclical nature of nostalgia:

"It's funny because I knew lots of people in the early 2000s who were mourning the loss of the 'old Internet' then. Kind of like how everyone thinks the music they listened to as a teenager is the best and it's all been downhill since."

The thread also links the loss of creativity to a broader cultural shift from safety and surplus to tension and scarcity, referencing 9/11 and economic inequality. Several commenters mention the "walled gardens" of CompuServe and Prodigy as early versions of the same phenomenon.

My take

The essay is right, but nostalgia is always rose-tinted. Every generation mourns its own golden age. Still, something is genuinely different about the commercial internet of today. The early web was a blank canvas; now it's a billboard. Platforms have optimized not just for engagement, but for predictability. Weirdness doesn't scale. The fun hasn't been entirely destroyed—it's been pushed to the margins. The indie web movement, small Discord servers, niche subreddits, and the resurgence of static blogs prove people still want to create. But it's harder to find and easier to drown out.

What bothers me more is the loss of the "beginner's mind." In the early days, everyone was learning together. You could make a terrible website and it was okay. Now the barrier to entry is low in tools but high in expectations. You're competing with polished content from professionals and algorithms that punish amateurishness. That scares off tinkerers. That's a tragedy.

What this means for builders

If you're building something for the internet, you have a choice: accept the optimized path or fight for the messy one. Here are concrete implications:

  1. Embrace the small and weird. The most loyal communities form around niche interests. Think about building tools that enable personal expression without the expectation of scale. A simple blogging platform that doesn't require SEO optimization or a gallery for hand-coded CSS art.

  2. Resist the engagement trap. Features like likes, shares, and algorithmic feeds optimize for attention, not satisfaction. Consider whether your product really needs them. A comment section can be a place for serendipity—or a cesspool. Design for the former.

  3. Lower the stakes. Make it easy for people to create without pressure. Compare building a full WordPress site vs. a one-page HTML file. The latter invites play.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>My Thing</title></head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello, World</h1>
  <p>This is my weird little page.</p>
</body>
</html>

Anyone can open a text editor and make that. That's powerful.

  1. Learn from the walled gardens. The HN comment mentioning CompuServe and Prodigy reminds us that even before the web, people found community in curated spaces. The challenge is building a garden that doesn't become a cage. Open protocols and interoperable systems (like the fediverse) can offer the best of both worlds.

Should you care?

Yes, if you build for the web. The death of fun is a warning sign: when platforms optimize so thoroughly, they squeeze out the very creativity that made them thrive. The builders who succeed will carve out spaces for genuine human expression, even if small. The rest of us can ignore the nostalgia and keep scrolling—but that's exactly how we ended up here.

[1] Original HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48022992
[2] Original essay: https://muddy.jprs.me/posts/2026-05-03-the-best-is-over/
[3] IndieWeb movement: https://indieweb.org/
[4] Neocities (modern Geocities clone): https://neocities.org/
[5] Fediverse explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse