Will the Internet ever excite me again?
on hating ads and the end of the needed innovation
ARE WE APPROACHING THE END OF THE NEEDED INNOVATION?
I know it is probably the woman in me starting this off by saying: I am not an expert, and there is probably some very interesting, underlying, psychological name for it, but yes I will start this off by saying I am not an expert in internet innovation.
I am however getting very annoyed at having to watch 3 (!) sets of ads while trying to watch an episode of Girls (currently on episode 7, season 1) on Binge - a streaming platform for which I already pay. I am an expert on having to watch the same two ads three times during an episode that lasts around 25 minutes, and sometimes that happens to be right in the middle of Adam Driver saying very ungodly things while masturbating and I am sure Binge does not plan it to happen at that time (or maybe they do), but ugh, ugh, ugh it is very frustrating.
I am also an expert on Instagram and around 2 weeks ago I opened the app and saw there is a new feature - shake your phone to reveal the photo - I thought to myself surely Adam Mosseri can come up with more exciting things. Am I the only one that thinks that the new feature is very reminiscent of iBeer? It is!
The thing is that recently all the “innovation” I see online feels either done before or straight up boring. It also feels like we’re going in circles with some innovation, repeating things that have already been done by repackaging it with new words, fancier explanations, and ….. higher prices.
ADS ON STREAMING SERVICES I ALREADY PAY FOR, TELEVISION 2.0 & STREAMING FATIGUE
We got Netflix as a family in secondary school, just in time for Riverdale to come out. Got HBO sometime in high school and then Disney +, which I remember everybody being quite excited for. Now turns out my parents are also paying for Prime, and my old roommate had Apple TV, so sometimes we would watch movies there. In Australia however, they don’t have HBO, so naturally I had to get Binge. Binge, you’ve either got it or you don’t.
I am paying 7.99 AUD a month, which I was quite happy with. It feels like a good price. 7.99 dollars. I can spend that. Sure! However, that was my initial attitude. Oh, how wrong I was to be so excited about a new streaming service at the click of my keyboard, at the touch of my screen.
My basic plan doesn’t cover ads, and now I have to watch ads whenever I watch… anything.
That is not the point of streaming services! Right? We all got streaming services, because ads are annoying and we wanted to be able to choose what to watch. We hated when a movie stopped just at that girl will kiss that guy and you had to watch an ad about new mayonnaise. Well, ads are back. And it seems like a lot of things from traditional TV are finding their way back to streaming platforms.
Not only ads are back, but so are channels. On Binge you can find the “History” channel that streams a selection of history programs all day long. That is basically cable TV, well… it is traditional TV, but repackaged, renamed and probably more expensive.
Mina Le (aka my favorite YouTube professor) talked about it in one of her latest videos: the downfall of streaming. There she points out that although streaming platforms seem to be popping up all the time - like the new streaming flop from Try Guys - their business models are mostly not profitable. So they’re doing everything to bring back costs. Enter ads & higher prices.
And people are tired of not only the changes happening - no one likes to pay more for all 5 streaming services we subscribe to. But what I have been thinking about is that it feels like we have hit a wall and instead of creating new business models we are either only increasing prices or doing stuff that has already been done.
WHY AM I SHAKING MY PHONE?
And now about the new Instagram feature. It’s not that I hate the shake your phone to reveal the photo feature, it just feels… boring (?) And I had a very similar reaction with Threads, that felt like X 2.0. So it got me thinking. Maybe as customers, we are just tired of getting the same product over and over but just repackaged and more expensive? Our attention economy is already so scarce, so when BeReal introduces yet another feature to make us stay longer on the app that was designed to be not like other apps it feels very money-focused. It feels like we are the product, which is true, but it feels more in your face.
Maybe I am being overly pessimistic, and I am sure people working at those apps are putting all their time into creating the most fun UX for the users, but recently I have just been feeling quite blah about seeing features that are a) boring, b) repackaged product I have seen x times already, c) feel like yet another way to make us spend more time thus make more money for these companies. As a user I am fine with using Instagram for photos, WhatsApp for texting, and Substack for reading. I do not need a 4th, or 5th ad for the same thing, nor do I need the 2nd app to introduce features of the first app. That’s enough apps already.
The whole argument of this essay can of course be debunked by saying well what about AI, isn’t that the biggest innovation happening right now? And yes, that’s true, but again making AI stickers on WhatsApp doesn’t really make me that excited you know?
Also, AI just makes me scared, especially with the news of Murdochs (yes those evil people) providing news for developing ChatGPT (grim times, grim times people).
WILL THE INTERNET EVER EXCITE ME AGAIN?
There are a few reasons for my current Internet hate flare-up. 1. The Internet is really overwhelming now, 2. Even though it is overwhelming I still spend way too much time on it, 3. WHY AM I WATCHING ADS FOR SOMETHING I ALREADY PAY FOR?
But maybe it’s good I am experiencing this flare-up. Maybe it is good that I (and possibly other people) are feeling quite tired of the increasing costs of everything online and boring updates and features that only keep us glued to the screen for longer.
Maybe it will be a sign to the big companies that we care more about connecting and keeping things simple. Well, that of course won’t happen, again ChatGPT just signed this crazy deal with Murdochs (evil, evil people!), but a girl can dream.
Pls, let me know if I am alone in all those feelings. As always: forehead kisses!