AI actually changed my life for the better, but I’d still trade it all to go back to the pre-AI world. I miss being "stupid."

Does anyone else just deeply miss the internet—and honestly, the world—before AI was shoved into absolutely everything?

​I was thinking about the old Google today. I miss typing a weirdly specific question into the search bar and actually having to dig through crusty old Reddit threads or obscure forums from 2008 to find an answer. You used to find replies written by some passionate nerd who cared about the topic. Now, you just get a sterile, bulleted AI summary at the top of the page. It’s efficient, sure, but it completely killed the feeling of exploring the web.

​And man, the memes. I miss when memes and internet culture were just the organic peak of human absurdity. People were so raw and insanely creative. Now, half of what you see is just AI-generated brainrot, synthetic voiceovers, or algorithmically optimized slop. The actual human humor is getting buried.

​But honestly, the biggest thing? I kind of miss being stupid.

​Having the entirety of human knowledge instantly processed and handed to me at all times is just exhausting. There was a certain magic in not knowing something right away. I miss having to wonder about things, or debating a random fact with a friend for an hour because neither of you could instantly prove the other wrong. Now, omniscience is just sitting in my pocket, and it feels weirdly isolating.

​I miss how people used to think and talk before everyone started using LLMs to write their emails, texts, and posts. Everything is starting to sound exactly the same. I miss the typos, the awkward phrasing, the actual human voice behind the screen. I miss when AI was just a cool sci-fi concept and not an inescapable feature in every single app we use.

​The paradox here is that I’m being a massive hypocrite. AI has genuinely helped me so much—it's changed my life, streamlined my work, and made things infinitely easier for me. I use it all the time. But even while benefiting from it, I just sit here reminiscing about the world before it existed.

​Am I just wearing rose-tinted glasses, or does anyone else feel this exact same exhaustion?