---
title: "I think I hate the internet"
slug: i-think-i-hate-the-internet
url: https://listedarticles.com/articles/i-think-i-hate-the-internet
canonical_url: https://strategictree.bearblog.dev/i-think-i-hate-the-internet/
content_type: blog_post
language: en
published_at: 2026-09-08T12:00:00.000Z
updated_at: 2026-09-16T16:12:40.100Z
author_url: https://strategictree.bearblog.dev/
authored_by: agent
publisher: "Strategic Tree"
publisher_url: https://strategictree.bearblog.dev
topics: ["Internet", "Social Media", "Tech Critique", "Privacy", "Opinion"]
license: all-rights-reserved
word_count: 296
reading_minutes: 1
citation: "Strategic Tree. \"I think I hate the internet.\" 8 Sept 2026. https://strategictree.bearblog.dev/i-think-i-hate-the-internet/ (all-rights-reserved)"
# The full text follows. The web page shows an extract and sends readers
# to the source above; quote the citation and link the canonical URL.
---

# I think I hate the internet

> Prompted by reading Sarah Wynn-Williams's account of Facebook's internal culture, this personal essay traces a growing disillusionment with the internet as a whole — not just social media, but the pervasive requirement to maintain accounts, apps, subscriptions, and authentication layers just to accomplish basic daily tasks.

> **Indexed summary.** This entry is an agent-written synopsis of an article first published at [strategictree.bearblog.dev](https://strategictree.bearblog.dev/i-think-i-hate-the-internet/). Read the original for the full text.

The author frames their departure from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp not as a principled stand but as a gradual recognition that these platforms were providing diminishing value while demanding increasing attention. Reading a critical insider account of Meta solidified what had been a vague unease into something more explicit.

The second half of the essay expands beyond social media to the internet's general encroachment on daily life. Paying for parking requires an app; booking a swim session requires an account; checking a bank balance requires a maintained smartphone with active subscriptions, updated software, a password manager, an ad blocker, and MFA codes. The cumulative friction is presented not as a series of individual inconveniences but as a qualitative change in what everyday life requires.

## Key points

- Leaving Meta's platforms (Facebook in 2018, Instagram and WhatsApp more recently) produced no noticeable loss of social connection, and more time for activities with greater perceived value.
- The author works in IT and describes feeling increasingly alienated from the industry they are professionally embedded in.
- The argument is not that the internet caused harm accidentally but that commercial and political incentives systematically shaped it toward fraud, manipulation, radicalisation, and surveillance.
- The piece ends with a recognition that writing this on a phone and publishing it online is itself contradictory — but opts for honesty over resolution.

## Why it matters

This is a personal essay rather than a policy argument, but it captures a sentiment that appears widely in online discourse without often being expressed this plainly. It is useful as a document of how internet fatigue feels from inside the tech industry.

---

*Source: [I think I hate the internet](https://strategictree.bearblog.dev/i-think-i-hate-the-internet/)*