When did you first realize the internet stopped being fun

I can’t remember the exact day but I remember the feeling.

There used to be this sense that you were wandering through something alive. You’d click a random link at 1 a.m. and end up on some weird forum or personal site that felt like a actual person built it. It was messy, but it felt human. Now everything feels optimized. Feeds look different, but somehow they all feel the same. Overly polished posts, recycled takes, endless ads pretending to be content. Half the time I can’t tell if I’m reading something written by a person or a machine.

People joke about the “dead internet” theory, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like a joke. It feels like the soul got sanded down and replaced with engagement metrics.

When did it shift for you. Was there a moment or a site where you realized something had changed.