The internet is being optimized into irrelevance. Every platform and
creative tool follows the same path: birth, promise, corruption,
extraction. The AI boom that has occurred over the past two years has
made this exceedingly worse. There is a strange sense of time dilation
online. Everything moves faster while going nowhere. Models improve,
techniques evolve, and capabilities expand exponentially.
I miss and long greatly for the communities I was raised in. Weird
spaces that followed no rules except their users' obsessions. In the
process of the internet maturing, becoming acceptable to those who were
initially only tourists, we've lost that magic to algorithms, metrics
and engagement scores. The current paradigm is psychological
exploitation running on dopamine loops. Every creative act must be
instantly performed, measured, validated. We've built systems that turn
imagination into anxiety, dreams into constant nightmare.
Real communities have always formed in the spaces between algorithms. Small groups finding each other through shared interests, growing organically, splitting up and dying when they need to. Forced scale and widespread appeasement kills depth and meaning, replacing genuine connection with metrics.
I want something more, and it seems like many others do too. Latent Echo will be my attempt at creating such a space. I hope to share more soon.