Ore: Are you a robot?

The Digital Wasteland

So, this is it, huh? "Are you a robot?" is the cutting-edge question the internet throws at us in 2025. Real profound stuff. It’s a far cry from the promises of a connected world, a global village, a… well, you know the drill. We were sold a utopia, and we got CAPTCHA codes.

And then there's kottke.org. Bless its heart. "Home of fine hypertext products since 1998." I remember that site. Hell, I used to link to that site back in the day. Now? It's held together by member support and affiliate links. Which, hey, no shame in the hustle. Gotta eat, right? But it’s also a stark reminder: the open web, the one we were promised, ain't exactly thriving. It's more like a digital bake sale run by a few die-hards who haven't given up hope.

86.47% beloved, it says. By whom? By bots? By the ghosts of web surfers past? Don’t get me wrong, I respect the hustle, but that number feels…aspirational, at best.

What happened? Where did we go wrong? Was it the rise of the social media walled gardens? The death of RSS feeds? The relentless pursuit of eyeballs and ad revenue above all else? Probaly a combo of all three, offcourse.

The Cookie Crumbles

The cookie notice. Oh god, the cookie notice. It’s the digital equivalent of a telemarketer calling during dinner. "Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading." Translation: "We want to track your every move so we can sell your data to the highest bidder."

I remember when cookies were just…cookies. You know, the kind you ate. Now they're digital tracking devices, and we're all just walking, talking data points in some giant corporate spreadsheet.

And the Terms of Service? Don't even get me started. Who actually reads those things? It's like signing a contract written in ancient Sumerian. You just click "I agree" and hope for the best. Hope you're not signing away your firstborn child or something.

I'm getting old, aren't I?

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support. See, even the scrappy independents are beholden to some tech overlord. We're all just tenants in someone else's digital kingdom.

It all feels…fragile. Like a house of cards built on a foundation of venture capital and fleeting attention spans.

The Emoji Singularity

🍔 💀 📸 😭 🕳️ 🤠 🎬 🥔

This is the future of communication? A string of emojis? I mean, I get it. A picture is worth a thousand words, and all that. But is this really progress? Are we devolving into a species that communicates solely through cartoonish representations of food and feelings?

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man yelling at clouds. Maybe the kids are alright. Maybe this is all just a natural evolution of the internet. But I can't shake the feeling that we've lost something along the way. Something…real.

Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe I'm the one who's out of touch. Maybe the internet is exactly what it's supposed to be: a chaotic, messy, and ultimately meaningless collection of cat videos and conspiracy theories.

So, What's the Real Story?

The web's dead, baby. It just doesn't know it yet.