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The Internet once held the promise of an unbound connection for humanity. A shared resource to pool our collective knowledge unrestricted by international borders or geography. That was the idea.

In the early days of the new millennium, there was this influx of shared cretivity. A vast assortment of websites from all walks of life. Anyone could create a basic AngelFire or Geocities site and fill it with whatever they wanted. It was like a personalized room. People created sites for music, for art, for their various hobbies, conspiracies, or just to share science projects. Even the early social medias reflected this. MySpace was the big thing at the time. Everyone had a MySpace page, and the amount of customization you could do to your page was incredible. MySpace allowed you to edit the HTML on your page in whatever way you saw fit.

Pages would have Justin Timberlake playing in the background while your mouse cursor would transform into a dribbling basketball. People would design their layouts to showcase their top five friends and photos from their gallery. Backgrounds were dynamic and GIFs were actually used for more than just reaction images.Even the early days of YouTube allowed users to customize their channel. It didn't matter if the color scheme made no sense or felt like pouring acid on your eyes. If you wanted dark blue text on bright red backgrounds, the world was your oyster.

Then something happened. Something subtle, but it grew malignantly in the background.

The Internet became privatized. Corporations saw this burgeoning world and sought to conquer it as they did oil, water, and housing. Year by year, they imposed new restrictions on our creative expressions. You can use these colors, but not those. You can use these fonts, but not others. And it wasn't enough to stifle that. The advertising companies got in on the action as well. They decided that the Internet was to be driven by metrics and analytics. Data. Data. Data. They wanted to know where you lived and what you do and what you enjoy so that they can sell you a new cat wallet or a shiny red car. But the process wouldn't work if the user doesn't click on anything. The ad companies wouldn't know what made you tick if you didn't click.

So they decided on something devious. The ad companies realized that people loved controversy. They realized that people will click on things if it causes them a little stir in their hearts. Anything to make the heart beat a little faster sounded like dollar signs. And you know what makes the heart beat faster like nothing else? Negativity.

You see it around you, don't you? On Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on the news reels. "The future is going to be terrible." "This is why women don't want you." "This is why you are hopeless." "This is why your way of life is endangered." They kick people down so that they can extend a hand to help you up, but only if you pay that premium. It's an offer derived from the idea that you are not complete, not happy, nor content until you take one more trip around the hamster wheel.

But have you ever stopped to wonder if the things you're driven to spend money on have actually brought you any happiness? Or have they only been temporary reprieves, a little bit of a distraction?

It's a lot more profitable to sell you balms than an actual cure. Not that I'm here to offer a cure. That'll be on you to figure out. But while you take the time to do so (and I certainly don't expect it to happen overnight), try to reframe what you see around you and understand that, yes, there is a lot of bad happening in the world. But there is also a lot of good. It's just not profitable to look in that direction.