Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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This video by Downward Diary grabbed me because this is the exact headline that makes me nod wearily in depressed agreement. The internet WAS better when less people were on it.
He covers everything that I’ve been feeling lately, from the way social media is basically designed to turn every interaction into a battledome to the loss of text-oriented web design & websites in general to the all-ages surge in gullibility. But the sheer omnipresence of the web is probably what hurt it the most.
Yes, I realize the hypocrisy of posting this in a weblog. But weblogs used to be novelties. The notion of someone taking time to go to the sole internet-connected desktop they had and sit down to write & share their thoughts was new & radical once. Now? Getting people to read even good blogs that aren’t politics or fanfic is like pulling dragon’s teeth. So much of the internet feels like walking into a key jangling convention having their annual competition. Constant noise, constant motion, nothing that takes more than a few nanoseconds for your brain to register… and that’s just the leisure activity. Even prior to remote work becoming more widespread (which I do appreciate, since it means less commute time), you needed to be online to do so many of your job’s tasks, and it’s only become more of a common practice since that time. There is no gap between the internet & the rest of your life anymore, and that’s definitely hurt it as much as the commercialism & the takeover of social media.
Also, as the video points out, there used to be a barrier to entry for the online world, be it technological (dial-up, needing a desktop, etc) or knowledge-based. People did have a certain level of etiquette that has since vanished, from respecting the stated purpose of a given board/chat to just understanding the value of privacy. There were places that were definitely siloed off by age, not just for risqué reasons but also because, well… lemme put it like this. When you let the dominant & loudest voices in any given area (such as social media) be teenagers without experience and/or self-awareness, you lead to the “culture” of that area dragging everyone down to that level of immaturity & skewed worldviews. When you limit them to their own areas, like the old web frequently did, you avoided that.
The only thing worse is seeing a 40-something’s opinion that is functionally identical to a 14-year-old’s, and that is distressingly common online.
That’s the thing that bugs me the most about the modern web: the deliberate regression. The loss of any sense of nuance that used to come with age & experience, the tendency to treat everything like team sports or to means-test who “qualifies” for everything from politics to identity to health, the gleeful (and often hypocritical) dehumanization of anyone who disagrees even slightly, the belief that if you don’t make every aspect of your existence publicly known then you must be hiding something sinister, the refusal to engage with history due to it not being in lock-step with present-day perspectives, the insistence on slotting every single thing into “X equals BAD, Y equals GOOD”... that’s something post people eventually grow out of as they go out & experience life. But because the people who have the most time to be online are immature strident teenagers & people who are too shut-in to have ever had that opportunity, they wind up setting the site culture for most of social media. Then you get to watch people with jobs, kids, responsibilities being just as rigidly morally righteous & mentally stunted as the most obnoxious kids you’ll meet, getting worse & worse… It’s like watching your parents become mindless Fox News drones, only somehow less self-aware & more cacophonous.
These are the people who will act like the entirety of the old internet was just 4Chan. Even when they were there, they’ll act like all the web had to offer prior to the rise of Facebook was just a constant stream of edgelord posting & being deliberately offensive. It’d be pathetic if it wasn’t so obnoxious. That these same people will then post the most heinous NSFW stuff you’ll ever see on social media & throw a fit when asked to at least tag it, when it would have been limited to a dedicated site you’d have to deliberately seek out to view, is worth noting. Same with them referring to every online-originating work they don’t personally like as “alt-right coded” (which I've seen applied to everything from vaporwave to using Frinkiac). The same people who will complain about lacking third spaces, while living in a region full of them & just refusing to use them for a litany of petty reasons, preferring to stay constantly online.
The reason skip weeks happen here is because I have made a deliberate choice to silo the internet. Most of my work here, or on the public drafts of my writing, is done during lulls at my day job. When you’re online, there’s this weird obligation to never be bored that can’t be easily resisted. You NEED to have audio at minimum streaming while you work. You get as many “check out this (probably AI) cute animal video from Facebook” texts from your family as you do work or personal texts. You’re bombarded with short videos, emails, Teams calls, websites checked at lunch… it’s becoming too damn much. I want a time to go offline, watch TV, and do something that doesn’t require wifi to entertain myself. I don’t want to feel that obligation to be reachable at all times anymore, because that wasn’t always there.
I need the present-day internet as much as anyone else does, but dammit, I don’t ENJOY it anymore. And the latter is directly connected to the former. The video’s airport terminal analogy is the perfect comparison, only anymore it’s one where everyone is angry, tired, drunk, paranoid, and at least a few are wearing full diapers. And frankly, once you’re old enough to have weather-related body aches, you really don’t need to spend your time there voluntarily as much as others.
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I usually only post finished projects or ones that have enough in process that they actually look like something, but I felt like sharing one of my annual ongoing projects. As part of making myself keep a daily journal, I do a mood scarf along with each entry, with a color representing that day’s recorded mood. It’s usually a simple 2-to-4-row repeating pattern that’s easy to remember, cuz I’m doing it prior to bed & don’t have the energy anymore for a complicated lace motif.
Somehow, though, this year’s pattern choice wound up being more ornate than I expected.
A week into the year, and we’re already tired & sore the majority of the time.
Closeup of the motif.
I really like how this has come out, but here’s the thing - it looks NOTHING like the pattern in the book that I’m using. Here are the pictures from the book (which is 200 Ripple Stitch Patterns by Jan Eaton, with all editions sadly now out of print):
I think the only thing mine has in common is the center crisscross effect.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m using a larger yarn weight and/or needle size or a difference in tension or just my well-documented history of being absolutely AWFUL at yarn overs. But I like the end result, and I guess that’s what matters the most. Especially since I’m gonna be doing it for the whole year.
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Lightning-squared round! Cuz I have thoughts.
It made me happy to see actual children excited to see KPop Demon Hunter merchandise (clothes, dolls, etc) while out shopping, since that means it’s actually reached its intended audience and isn’t one of those “beloved largely by terminally online 20&30-somethings while not being interesting to the kids it’s supposedly for” works. I’m sure y’all can think of examples of that effect.
Me: “I don’t need another afghan kit.” Also Me: “I have to get this, it’s beautiful, it’s on sale, and it has half-price shipping.”
Coke should reconsider OK Cola, cuz so much of that ad campaign feels prescient and almost like a parody of the whole “it’s okay to not be okay” overly-cutesy approach to mental health, only 20 years too early. Hell, there’s the revival slogan, “It’s okay to be OK.” Done. Coke, gimme all the moneys (blimp is optional). Also, the flavor description sounds like local favorite Take-A-Boost, so I’d probably be on board.
Another banger from Jeff Harris, on how you can & should still be able to criticize anything that you consider yourself a fan of and how blind allegiance does no one any favors. I'm more willing to call out creators on the things that get this effect, cuz there are way too many who deliberately cultivate that blind loyalty so that they can always have a defense squad. It's been especially bad in comics & animation circles, and I wish more people would address how unprofessional (at minimum) it is. Also, I’m guessing that post was inspired by people at Bluesky being Very Normal™ about his earlier on-point criticism of their comfort subnetwork.
Yep, still upset about Joanns. This is gonna be a thing for a while. It's the non-food version of when I find myself missing Don Pablo's (especially around my birthday).
Today in “We’re Heading Towards The Ending of Threads But Without The Bombs To Justify It”, a significant swatch of Zoomers seem to think “cornball” is a slur on par with the r-word.
"Some people don't like to see straight-up villains, because they see themselves in them." Agreed. The whole “this classic evil villain is actually misunderstood/made some good points” trend is part of a LOT of things that I cannot stand in both modern media & modern audiences. And the people who like it tend to be the same ones that partake in “it’s okay when WE do it” behavior quite a bit. It’s something I try to avoid & interrogate in my own work, but at least I know that I’m probably not doing the theme justice instead of thinking that my work or a work I like containing it is THE definitive approach. That this same crowd is also the first to embrace “this is the ~realistic~ take on (insert heroic archetype here)” works that always default to cynicism & justifying every single point of failure in their lives as “honest” or “real” should also be mentioned. Just stuff by & for broken people looking for every excuse to avoid any repairs.
“Breathe… and know that you are alive…” Thank you, waiting room mindfulness ad, I am & have been aware that I'm alive. Now what're gonna do about helping me make it tolerable, that isn't a glorified way of saying “not anyone's problem”?
God help me, I might have to check out Smiling Friends. I’ve seen more than a few funny clips, including the whole quasi-ARG with the CGI girl, and the fact that it’s disliked by the same people who think a certain other [as] show is ultra progressive & cured their cancer, while thinking this one is evil alt-right propaganda cuz it has Newsgrounds roots, feels like a good sign.
Sometimes I wonder if any of my old moots ever think about me, but I don’t wanna bother checking for two reasons. One, the one time I did, a bunch were both directly insulting me AND trying to paint themselves as sympathetic & rational instead of the [as]hole cultists they were. And two, I really don’t wanna see how much further some of them have hurled themselves down some unhealthy rabbit holes. It's just as well. Even if they did, they probably think I'm some eeeevil monster cuz now I stopped biting my tongue about some of their particular stripes of stupidity.
I am now mildly hating myself cuz it’s looking like I’m going to need to re-subscribe to Crunchyroll after all, especially if they pick up the Restart anime.
Star Detective Precure, huh? I was disappointed by how monotonous You & Idol was once they finished the whole Kiss/Zukyun plot. There was a lot of potential with the idol theme that they squandered, to say nothing of the wasted presence of the Dancing Star “team up” or making Cure Connect a permanent addition (I’m firmly on Team More Male Cures), so I hope this one uses its theme for more variety & not just outfits.
I do like that we’re having another Cure with black as her main color, though. And we’re having another “non-pink leader” season.
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There’s the first true 2026 Sampler finished. To close out, here’s my creamsicle kitty in a moment of quiet contemplation.
“I wonder how loud I should scream to wake the human tomorrow…”
Thank you for reading and see you next time.
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