Throwback Society

Hello to whoever is reading this, my name is Aleasha and I will be your guide into the wonderful world post-internet, you see ten years ago there was this huge power surge that knocked out the power to the whole world and when the power was brought back the internet was not. There were many attempts to bring the internet back but every attempt caused a new power outage so for the sake of everyone in the world the internet was just left alone. It was relatively easy for people to go back to not having the internet because of how new it really was, there were a few that needed a little more time to deal with the fact that didn’t have the internet to rely on anymore. Me being a 40-year-old woman can remember what both sides were like; I can remember having to go places to see and talk to people and I can also remember being able to video chat. As I said earlier I am here to help you to understand what life is like now that we are in a permanent throwback Thursday and how that has affected things like social media, dating, and even google.

Let’s start from the beginning and go from there; everything was going the way it always did, people were working or at least trying to work given the whole pandemic situation that we were trying to get over, but that is a story for another day. I was getting online to get an online meeting that my team was having about the various social media accounts we were running for companies, I was in charge of a good portion of the accounts being the team leader and all. Just as I was about to launch Zoom the power went out; I went to check and see if I was the only one but it seems that everyone’s power was out as well, we just assumed it was a blackout and we would have it back soon. I went back inside to send a text one of the members of my team and let them know the situation, however, I soon realized I was unable to do so. It seemed that cell service was out as well, there was nothing I could do but wait for everything to come back on which was a fast process like we all thought it would be.

After a week of no power, people started to panic, and after a few weeks of no power it was straight chaos; looting and riots were happening all the time, people didn’t know what else to do, I made sure to say at home and just read a book or meditate. A month and a half later they were able to get the power back on but the internet didn’t come with it, once again people began to panic; most people's livelihoods rested on being able to sell things online. With that avenue gone these people would have to go back to renting out spaces to sell their items or set up booths at flea markets and swap-meets, we were going to have to regress if we were going to survive. A lot of people who sold things online could not go to a physical place to sell their products, these people didn’t have tangible items to sell, it was mostly digital items.

A great example of non-tangible items being sold online are YouTube videos; content creators make videos that people watch which generates ad revenue for these people, however, now that the internet is no longer a thing those content creators have no way to get their videos out. Without videos for people to watch, there are no ads to be shown during the videos so there is no ad revenue for the creators to collect and thus they can not earn what they used to. Another great example is online games and apps, most of these developers make their money through in-game purchases and micro-transactions from the players. However, without the internet, most people can play these games anymore and so they have no way of buying anything new from the app stores or from the games themselves thus the developers cannot make any money. The final example I will give is about web designers and people who do online coding for a living, these people make their money designing websites for companies. With the internet gone, one of many skills that they had is no longer useful to them, these people literally built that internet that we used; web development was one of the things that were keeping the internet going strong.

The internet crash of 2021 was something that we all had to learn to live with because as far I can see we are not going to getting it back any time soon; as I said before, I am one of the lucky few who remembers how life was like both with and without the internet. This is just the beginning of my story, I will be giving a somewhat full account of what life is like in a number of areas affected by the internet crash, things such as social media, dating, and even things a simple as google. I have been your guide for the time being Aleasha and will try to be back soon with a few new stories about what life is like since the internet has gone away for good.