Cultural Predictions for the Future

[Deckade (Tolo)]

Society is always changing, it's one of the few things that I see as constant about it. What I want to know is what you think is going to happen to the way we use the internet and culture in the next few years .

Are we reaching a pressure point, where the increased hostility of social media user interfaces, and the experience as a whole hurts the right person enough for them to make a difference, and for enough people to be willing to follow? Are we going to see a dramatic exodus of internet interaction as a whole with the advent of AI generated comments? Will we again see a stronger delineation between the adult world and the adolescent world, or will popular content continue to attempt to appeal to every demographic possible, but fail to truly captivate any of them?

That's a lot of questions, but I think some of them are questions worth answering, even if they seem awfully intangible sometimes.


I think that as social media and ai content becomes more addictive it will be easier to be seen as taking the "humanist" position by abstaining from it, and this will be popularised, and also easier to criticise those who continue to use it, for better or for worse. That's one of my ones

[Melooon]

I remember being on Neocities in 2017 and thinking "this is it! this is the future of the web!".. and then it never came.. 2018 happened and the site got quieter.. by 2019 Neocities was a ghost town compared to 3 years earlier.. melonking.net was more or less in archive mode. THEN something unexpected happened in 2020 It can be so hard to predict the future!

In the 60s everyone wanted to change the world, in the 70s they realised they couldn't change the world, so they tried to change themselves; in the 80s they decided that was not going to work, so everyone just decided to get rich. In the 90s when people realised they could not all be rich, they decided to be cool instead; in the 00s when not everyone could be cool, they decided to get corporate jobs; in the 10s corporate jobs were boring and everyone decided to be an influencer/digital nomad vlogger - what this decade will be remains to be seen, but at a guess I think influencer culture will totally collapse (and possibly be replaced by AIs!)

If there is gonna be a backlash against AI, it wont be this decade, it will be in the 2030s (Sounds so futuristic!)

Global culture is totally out of whack at the moment! The internet and technology is moving way faster than institutions like art galleries or universities can keep up with - they have no idea what to do or whats going on in popular culture! Im not really sure what to do about that, but I know the very idea of culture is gonna be so twisted up in the next 20 years it wont resemble anything like our idea of culture from the 20th century. Most of the world is in panic mode about this, but the European Union is doing a lot of good work to try and figure it out in a sensible way, so theres hope! I also think smaller communities (like this one) can do a lot of good for the world in figuring out how to make this interconnected-web culture work in a positive way

I think if things are healthy, we will see less division; if things are unhealthy we will see more division - I HOPE we will start to see more indie artists starting the break the deadlock of corporate media (like Marvel, Fortnight etc) - I dont think we are gonna do that by creating better media than corporations (thats impossible), however I think allowing people to participate in chaotic self made media could be the path forward (neocities is a great example of this).

If the past has taught us anything, its that doing what everyone else does never works; so if we are gonna make a better future, we need people to start doing their own thing instead of following trends - is that possible? Only time will tell, but we can actively work towards it!

[Guest]

I predict we're going to have to get used to our morals and ethics being uprooted in the future, too, no matter how progressive we currently think we are. We will also have to adapt with the times - and things that are considered absolutely taboo and reprehensible at large today will be at the forefront of liberation movements in the future.

I for one plan to stay 'up to date'.

[Deckade (Tolo)]

I predict we're going to have to get used to our morals and ethics being uprooted in the future, too, no matter how progressive we currently think we are. We will also have to adapt with the times - and things that are considered absolutely taboo and reprehensible at large today will be at the forefront of liberation movements in the future.

I for one plan to stay 'up to date'.

I wonder if this is because cultural values are still changing, or actions are finally catching up to beliefs. Values are definitely transferred less from generation to generation. I think what's new is the ability to further our attitudes towards values in idle moments by ourselves, rather than solely through actions in the physical world, this lets us develop our beliefs at a much faster pace, and potentially without much connection to our immediate circumstances. I wouldn't ever feel the need to compromise on treating people with respect and dignity however sometimes I wonder if our compassionate natures might end up hurting us somehow in the long run.

I think a lot of people, following 'those recent events' (including me sometimes) are sometimes quite far away from the traditional human experience, and sometimes see what were once normal behaviours and ways of interacting as abnormal. It will be interesting to see if we are able to move away from conventional morals and ethics or if it's too difficult for us to stomach. I hope that we retain the idea of being content with small, kind lives, as in reality I think most of us are simple people.

[Plasmon]

I have a feeling that copyright will become a hot topic within the next few years, at least among artists. AI pictures are making the topic unavoidable for visual artists, and for musicians the issue can only become more pronounced. If anything, I think the current AI situation has the potential to make copyright laws stronger; while I'm against that out of principle, it would be funny—in a slightly fucked up way—to see visual artists dealing with the same copyright-hellscape musicians have been navigating for years.

[Guest]

I wonder if this is because cultural values are still changing, or actions are finally catching up to beliefs.

Good point. Whenever people defend things like racism and sexism in the past or from older people, they'll say "it was a different time" or "they grew up in a different era," but there were people 100 years ago who knew racism and homophobia were wrong, even if they were in the minority. It's not like these things suddenly became wrong. Most people just were wrong.

I don't think what is "good" changes (without getting into the subjectivity of human morality). Just the number of people who are good changes.

I have plenty of my own knee-jerk biases based on past negative experiences with members of one group of people or another, but I try to recognize it's a bias, recognize that a bad experience with one person should not reflect on everyone who resembles them, and not let myself express or act on those biased impulses. And when I find something someone else does to be icky, I recognize it's okay to feel that way because it's not for me while recognizing that it's fine for someone else to do those things if it's not harming anyone.

[Onio]

I have a feeling that copyright will become a hot topic within the next few years, at least among artists. AI pictures are making the topic unavoidable for visual artists, and for musicians the issue can only become more pronounced. If anything, I think the current AI situation has the potential to make copyright laws stronger; while I'm against that out of principle, it would be funny—in a slightly fucked up way—to see visual artists dealing with the same copyright-hellscape musicians have been navigating for years.

It's never been great for artists in the first place. I've had my work copied multiple times for someone else's profit, or just straight up stolen lol. Happens to most artists, has been happening for a long time, the recent AI thing isn't really new. Most people just don't see it as a big deal, and if an image is on the Internet, then it's most likely free to be used.

Richard Prince has made a career out of stealing other people's work: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/richard-prince-wins-major-victory-in-landmark-copyright-suit-59404/

[glitchlynx]

I'm curious to see how internet culture changes as the fediverse becomes more well known. Much of the reason many people (myself included) have the social media accounts that they do, or the reason they sign up in the first place is because the people they know are on there. If you want to talk to your friends who are using facebook, you have to have a facebook account. This makes it difficult for a new social media platforms to take off, because many people won't want to sign up for a platform that none of their friends are on. With the fediverse this is much less of a problem. 

Maybe this won't make much of a difference in how social media is used / structured, but its possible that over the next couple of years it could become easier to avoid using major social media platforms as new ones take their place that are federated and open source.