Drew Austin sums up in a sentence the reason why I’m finding myself spending much less time on “the internet” these days:

So much of the digital landscape is effectively an ad for itself that the distinction becomes irrelevant.

(There’s also a great passing observation in there regarding how billboards in meatspace, for all their ugliness, are often obscuring something even uglier.)

The prevailing discourse still seems to be stuck in a “yes, the internet is awful now, but it’s where we’re going to spend the rest of our lives anyway” loop. But then that’s exactly what we thought about malls, not all that long ago.