Algorithm fatigue is real, and the open web is the cure
Why scrolling the same six apps feels worse than it used to, and what the rest of the internet still has to offer.
For about a decade now, most of our internet time has been spent inside a handful of apps that all behave the same way: an infinite feed, ranked by a model that knows what keeps your eyeballs locked. It works, until it stops working.
You've probably felt it. You open the app, scroll for ten minutes, and close it feeling slightly worse than when you started. Nothing surprised you. Nothing made you laugh out loud. The only thing you saw that was actually new was an ad.
That's algorithm fatigue. The feed is so finely tuned to your past behavior that it has nothing left to teach you about yourself.
The open web, weird personal sites, indie games, hand-coded oddities, browser experiments, niche directories, never went away. It just got harder to find, because no algorithm is incentivized to send you there. That's exactly why it's still good. Nothing on a personal homepage is engineered to keep you scrolling. It's just there because somebody made it.
Hit the random button. Spend ten minutes somewhere a recommendation engine has never heard of. See if you feel different afterwards.