Ghosts of the Internet: The Lost Art of the DIY Digital Age
How the Wild, Unregulated Internet Shaped Youth Culture, And What We Can Do to Reclaim It.
For the youngest of millennials and the oldest of Gen Z, a significant part of their childhoods was shaped by the early, DIY internet. They remember downloading zip files from Mediafire, remixing tracks on Audacity, and reading Tumblr confessions. At school, they'd trade raw mp3 files with misspelled tags and no metadata or beam LimeWire dubplates over Bluetooth. On the creator side, they relied on free tools like FL Studio, Sound Forge, and other sound editing software to produce their own content. Tumblr became a haven for anonymous confessions and personal text posts, while many were already managing their own Blogspot blogs. But today, almost all of Gen Z and Gen Alpha have no access to, or memory of, this unrestrained, personal digital landscape. In the span of just a couple of decades, the chaotic, creative internet has given way to the polished, commercialized one we know now. The DIY internet once empowered young people to shape their identities and cultivate subcultures, but that space has largely disappeared, overtaken by profit-driven, corporate platforms. This transformation has profound implications for how youth culture forms, survives, and resists in the modern age.
The Golden Age of the DIY Internet, spanning roughly from 2003 to 2014, was defined by platforms like Tumblr, Blogspot, LimeWire, SoundCloud (before monetization), YouTube (before algorithmic bias), and MySpace. These spaces were seen as arenas for unfettered self-expression, free from corporate control. DIY music scenes like Grime and early SoundCloud rap thrived in this environment, where raw, unpolished, and personal art could flourish. Musicians, in particular, used these platforms to distribute their work for free, build communities, and craft alternative identities. Much of early Grime emerged from pirate radio, MSN Messenger, file-sharing, and forums like the now-legendary GrimeForum and RWD Forum. Artists like Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Skream, and Benga, built and expanded their careers in these ecosystems. Later, figures like Lil Peep, Yung Lean, and XXXTentacion, emerged from the SoundCloud rap scene, a space marked by lo-fi aesthetics and punk sensibilities. At the same time, artists like Clairo, Beabadoobee, and Alex G used Bandcamp and YouTube to cultivate their fanbases. During this era, anyone with an internet connection could upload, remix, and share music or art - without the need for algorithmic validation. The internet was, day by day, democratizing access to culture and creative expression.
However, the following years brought massive shifts, marked by platform decay and corporate takeovers. Take SoundCloud, for example. As the platform introduced licensing deals and monetization options, it began prioritizing labels and alienating its original users, especially amateur producers and remixers. The new tier system pushed smaller creators to the margins, deprioritizing underground and experimental music in favor of larger, more commercially viable acts. By 2015-16, as Dani Deahl and Casey Newton note, SoundCloud had “squandered early enthusiasm with a messy transition to a paid business,” driving away the “lifeblood” of its early creators. Labels demanded takedowns of unlicensed remixes, and the reinstated content ID system led to “unwarranted song takedowns that ruined PR for new releases.” Labels even pulled music off SoundCloud against artists' wishes, leaving many who helped build the platform feeling neglected.
Meanwhile, Tumblr, once a haven for subculture, banned all adult content in 2018, a move widely seen as a profit-driven decision. As analyst William Jamal Richardson observes, when growth begins to threaten profitability, platforms often “wholesale ban inconvenient groups” under the guise of moderation, disproportionately affecting sex workers and art communities. This corporate sanitization led to a sharp decline in cultural relevance and user engagement.
YouTube, too, ramped up content policing with the rise of copyright bots and demonetization policies, often targeting marginalized and niche content, particularly queer music and political creators. The platform’s algorithm began prioritizing longer, “advertiser-safe” content, sidelining more experimental or subcultural videos.
This trend wasn’t exclusive to YouTube. Across most social media, algorithms increasingly favored engagement over organic cultural discovery, subtly flattening diverse subcultures into easily digestible “niche” content. The shift from RSS feeds to algorithm-driven timelines transformed how people discovered new content, limiting the chance encounters that once fueled serendipitous discovery.
As platforms monetized and sanitized uploaded content, the chaotic, decentralized nature of early DIY spaces began to vanish. In the words of Joanne McNeil, the internet could have been “a hell that is fun, ruled by idiots and thieves,” but in reality, “strangers, strangeness, anonymity, and spontaneity lost out to order, advertising, surveillance, and cutthroat corporatism.” Legacy Russell, in their work on Glitch Feminism, critiques technology and social media as inherently biased and surveilling, particularly in their control over race, gender, and sexuality. They warn against the “trap of visibility” when it doesn’t lead to fair representation and argue for a “strategic occupation” of these spaces, using the “glitch” as a form of refusal and resistance. For Russell, platform regulation mirrors society’s broader control over identity.
On the other hand, Tiziana Terranova views the internet as a “social factory,” where labour once confined to traditional factories now extends across society. The internet, in this sense, becomes a site where both cultural and technical labor generate value constantly, woven into the flows of networked society. Terranova argues that the “free” and often pleasurable activities of users online are far from outside capitalist relations; they are integral to the creation of value in the digital economy.
The shift from grassroots, community-driven platforms like Tumblr and early SoundCloud to more commercialized environments like TikTok has resulted in the erosion of distinct online "scenes" tied to specific cultural identities or genres. TikTok’s trend-driven content model prioritizes novelty, virality, and surface-level engagement over deeper artistry and cultural expression. As a result, artists are increasingly required to act as marketers, content creators, and data analysts, focusing more on algorithms and engagement metrics than on creative freedom. The pressure to conform to platform aesthetics - polished content, catchy hooks, and the ubiquitous use of filters - has drastically reduced space for raw, genre-bending, and experimental work.
This shift is evident across the board in art and music. Early internet art was messy, glitchy, and experimental, embracing imperfection as part of its charm. Today, however, the need to tailor content to fit specific platform norms leaves little room for this type of creativity. Many artists express anxiety over branding, conformity, and the overwhelming pressure to remain "on" at all times. As experimental musician KAVARI puts it, both underground and mainstream artists “feel this shared pressure online - being pushed out by algorithms that favor specific trends, forcing us to pay for visibility or surrender to ‘content creation.’”
In response, many young musicians are seeking alternatives. They’re turning to platforms like Bandcamp instead of Spotify, hosting virtual listening parties, and co-operatively supporting each other’s releases off-platform; trying to reclaim some sense of autonomy from the algorithmic grind.
However, there are individuals and platforms working to bring back the DIY spirit of the early internet. Take Tigris Li, for example. Tigris’ approach is hands-on and prototyping-focused. She uses widely available tools, shares her methods, and encourages others to experiment and adapt with what they already have, reinforcing the ethos of resourcefulness and creativity.
Then there’s Ted Childish, whose work echoes the early DIY internet culture of dissecting and remixing existing media. Ted brings this spirit to modern online success, examining and manipulating the structures and performances that define it. His DIY approach is more about understanding and subverting the systems in place than building new ones.
On the editorial side, P. Eldridge, the founding editor of Sissy Anarchy, has created a platform dedicated to “unruly voices, queer resistance, and experimental writing.” She also serves as the director, managing editor, and partnerships lead at Worms World CIC, and co-founded The Compost Library. These initiatives operate outside the confines of traditional publishing and art institutions, giving a voice to marginalized perspectives. They focus on “queer embodiment, refusal, and new ways of living,” built on collective care and organizing. Eldridge’s work bypasses the “trap of visibility” that Legacy Russell critiques, leveraging the digital landscape to foster independent platforms, build community, publish provocative content, and contribute to cultural and social change.
Beyond individual creators, alternate social media platforms are also emerging outside traditional structures. Perfectly Imperfect, for example, is a direct response to the “soulless algorithmic curation” that dominates platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X. Its mission is to break users out of “algorithmic bubbles,” putting control back into their hands - a core principle of the DIY internet. The platform centers on human-to-human recommendations, enabling users to discover music, books, films, and more through the personal tastes of artists, writers, intellectuals, and regular users. It harks back to the organic, word-of-mouth discovery methods of early internet forums, webrings, and independent blogs.
Can we reclaim the internet? I’m optimistic. Gen Z is already carving out smaller, more intentional digital spaces, often moving away from mainstream platforms and trends. Discord listening parties, zine swaps, and in-person shows are all helping revive the spirit of early internet DIY. Digital mutual aid and tool-sharing networks are also resurging, putting collaboration and autonomy back at the forefront.
That said, there are still significant barriers. Ongoing platform consolidation - think Google, Meta, TikTok - makes it harder to sustain decentralized spaces. Similarly, the centralization of payment systems like Stripe and PayPal creates gatekeeping, limiting financial autonomy for artists. Legal challenges surrounding remix culture and piracy-based subcultures further stifle creative freedom.
But there’s hope in the hybrids. The future of DIY culture may lie in decentralized, messy, federated post-platform systems that require new infrastructures for hosting, moderation, and sustainability. These hybrid spaces depend on emotional investment, care, and ownership. Only through collective effort will DIY culture be able to thrive once more.
Words: Sik Frydas