I don't think the best is over.

I read The best is over and I have been thinking about it since.

Not in a clean “this is my response” kind of way. More like it got stuck somewhere.

The article is about the internet feeling like it lost something. The weirdness, mostly. The amateur joy. The feeling that a person made something because they had to get it out of their head, not because they were building an audience strategy around it.

I understand that feeling completely.

I also hate it.

I hate how easy it is to believe now. I hate that “the best is over” lands as plausible instead of dramatic. I hate that I can look at the internet, a thing I have loved for most of my life, and understand why someone would say that with a straight face.

The internet feels too finished now

There was a version of the web that felt less finished.

That is the closest word I can find.

Finished.

The internet now feels finished in a way that makes me sad. Not because there is nothing new on it. There is endless new stuff. More than anyone could ever consume. But so much of it feels like it has already been formatted before it reaches you.

The joke knows it is a joke. The video knows it is a video. The post knows what kind of post it is. The person knows the role they are supposed to be playing.

Everything is smoother, but a lot of it feels less alive.

I miss the version of the web where things were allowed to be dumb without immediately becoming “content.” I miss when making something online did not have to imply that you were trying to become a creator. You could just be someone with a weird page, or a bad animation, or a little game, or a forum signature you spent way too much time on.

That stuff mattered to me.

Probably more than I realized at the time.

I think a lot about how many of my favorite internet memories would be embarrassing if you described them as products. They would not pitch well. They would not make sense in a roadmap. They would not survive a meeting where someone asked what the target user was.

They were just things.

And maybe that is what I miss most.

Things.

Not content. Not assets. Not campaigns. Not growth loops. Not polished creator output.

Just things someone made.

AI is not the whole disease

The AI part of this is where I get tangled up.

Because yes, AI is making the internet worse in a bunch of obvious ways. There is so much fake writing now. So many empty pages. So many images and posts and “resources” that feel like they were generated to occupy space rather than say anything. It is boring in a very specific way. Not just bad. Hollow.

But I do not think AI is the whole disease.

I think AI walked into a room that was already sick.

The internet had already been teaching people to flatten themselves. To make the kind of thing the platform wanted. To write the hook. To chase the format. To turn taste into a niche and personality into a posting schedule.

AI just made it easier to do that at scale.

That is what scares me, I think.

Not that machines can make things.

That people might forget what making things felt like before everything had to be legible to a feed.

I use AI constantly. That is part of why this is not simple for me. I am not standing outside of it pretending to be pure. Vibecodr would not exist the same way without these tools. I have used AI to write code, to think through architecture, to argue with myself, to test ideas, to move faster than I could have moved alone.

So I cannot honestly write some clean anti-AI essay.

That would be fake.

The truth is weirder than that.

I think AI can make the internet much worse.

I also think AI can help people make things they never would have made otherwise.

Both are true.

That is the annoying part.

The question is what we reward

A person making 200 fake SEO pages with AI is depressing.

A person making a tiny game for their friend with AI is not depressing at all.

A person using AI to flood the web with generic advice is depressing.

A person using AI to finally build the weird little tool they have been imagining for three years is kind of beautiful.

So the question is not just “is AI good or bad?”

That question is too easy and too boring.

The question is what kind of behavior the web rewards now that making things is getting easier.

If every platform rewards volume, then AI gives us more volume. If every platform rewards polish, then AI gives us more fake polish. If every platform rewards sounding authoritative, then AI gives us infinite confident nothing.

But if there are still places where small, specific, personal things can matter, then AI might do something else.

That is the part I care about.

I wanted somewhere for little software to feel real

I did not start Vibecodr because I wanted to make “an AI app platform.” I know that is probably the cleaner category. It would be easier to explain. It would fit better in a tweet.

But it is not how I think about it.

I think I started building it because I wanted somewhere for little pieces of software to feel real.

That sounds vague, but it is true.

I wanted somewhere a person could make a small app and publish it without turning it into a startup. Somewhere a weird browser toy could be enough. Somewhere a game that only makes sense to five people could still be worth sharing. Somewhere code did not have to live only as a repo, a screenshot, or a demo video.

I wanted the thing to run.

That has always been the emotional center of it for me.

You make something, and someone else can actually touch it.

Not read about it.

Not watch you use it.

Use it.

There is something different about that. It is a smaller distance between people. I do not know how else to say it. Software is usually wrapped in so much explanation that by the time another person gets to it, the thing has already been turned into a pitch.

I do not want every small thing to have to become a pitch.

Some things should just open.

Maybe that is naive. I do not know.

I am trying to keep some part of the internet available for that feeling anyway.

What I actually miss

I know this is all a little sentimental. I can hear that. I can hear the voice that says this is just nostalgia dressed up as product direction.

Maybe some of it is.

But I do not think nostalgia is useless if you are honest about what you actually miss.

I do not miss broken plugins. I do not miss malware. I do not miss everything being inaccessible and fragile. I do not miss needing ten different runtimes to open someone’s weird project. I do not miss the parts of the old web that were careless because nobody had learned the hard lessons yet.

I miss the permission.

I miss the unfinishedness.

I miss the sense that the web was not only something you consumed, but somewhere you could leave a strange little mark.

That is not impossible to want again.

It just probably will not come back automatically.

The default direction is optimization

That is the part that feels different now.

When I was younger, it felt like the internet would keep getting more interesting by itself. More people online meant more weirdness, more creativity, more kinds of people finding each other. And that did happen for a while.

But platforms got better at shaping behavior.

Money got better at finding attention.

Algorithms got better at sanding things down.

And now the default direction of the internet does not feel like weirdness. It feels like optimization.

So if anything weird is going to survive, I think someone has to make room for it on purpose.

That is all I am trying to do, really.

Not save the internet.

That would be an insane sentence to write.

Just make a room.

One room.

One small part of the web where a person can make something and let it exist as itself for a minute.

One room with some oxygen in it

I do not know if Vibecodr will become that. I hope it does. Some days I believe it very deeply. Other days I am just trying to fix the next broken thing and not lose the thread.

But I know what I am aiming at.

I want more little things on the web that feel like they came from somebody.

I want more software that does not need to justify itself as a business.

I want more experiments that are allowed to be awkward.

I want more people to feel like they can make something and put it somewhere.

And if AI is going to be part of how people make things now, then I want it pointed toward that.

Not more slop.

More people getting to make the thing.

That is why I do not think the best is over.

I think the easy faith that everything would naturally get better is probably over.

I think the old web is gone.

I think a lot of what replaced it is worse.

But I do not think the human impulse that made the old web good is gone.

People are still weird.

People still want to make things.

People still want to show someone else something they made and feel that tiny spark of being understood.

That is still here.

It just needs somewhere to go.

Braden