Ugh! The internet, right? Aren't you tired of being miserable on the "modern" internet?

By Mike Reid | January 2026

I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s 2026 — and 2026 isn’t halfway through the 2020s.

2026 is 60% through the decade. (Or 3/5, if you prefer fractions.)

Remember that global pandemic that shocked all of us and shoved us headfirst into communiacting via Zoom and Slack?

Well, the pandemic began SIX years ago — in March 2020.

Or remember Twitter? The digital town square where progressives and conservatives could happily discuss and debate with mutual respect — 140 characters at a time?

Well, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion way back in 2022, and then he renamed it X in 2023. That's right. Just the letter X.

Or maybe you even remember when Facebook was cool? Now it’s an elephant graveyard — visited only by Boomers who can’t tell which posts are real and which are AI.

But look, the news isn’t all bad.

For example, your basic $999 MacBook Air now comes with M4 technology — lightning-fast, whisper-quiet, and powerful enough to run a full video production studio from your kitchen table or from a cafe halfway across the world. All on a machine that weighs less than three pounds.

And web design? Putting together a website used to require fluency in HTML and CSS — skills that most people didn't possess.

But in the year 2026, absolutely no such coding expertise is needed.

Web design basics. In 2 ½ hours. No HTML needed.

My point is this: here in the future (now the present) in the year 2026, it’s easier than ever to buy your own plot of digital land and then curate your digital space however you want — words, images, video — arranged in a design that’s uniquely your own.

And editing, updating, and publishing new content is easy.
‍
And yet, here we are in the glorious digital future — and our online world is making all of us miserable.

We’re all still trying to cram our unique humanness into boxes built by platforms that are collapsing, each one peddling algorithmically optimized digital junk food in order to satisfy shareholders looking for another few quarters of profitable returns.

Aren’t you tired enough of it all yet? Haven’t you had enough?

But the puzzle is that, here in 2026, while the technical barriers to creating the kind of content each of us actually wants to consume have all but disappeared, the real problem runs much deeper.

Because the platforms reward a very particular kind of content.

If you want your work to be seen, you have to play by the rules.

And the algorithms don't crave hope or curiosity or joy or nuance.

The internet demands outrage. It pushes fear. It creates anxiety.

I say this as someone who knows firsthand. I spent seven years as a digital fundraiser raising hundreds of millions of dollars online with fear, anger, and anxiety — because that's what drove donations.

Humans as villains.

But to be honest, I got lucky — unsually lucky.

Because I got knocked out of the digital junk-food creation game way back in 2021 — and that gave me the time and space to learn a whole new set of digital skills.

Video editing.

Web design.

And yes, AI — which, if you’ve been ignoring, you won’t be able to ignore for much longer because AI is getting frighteningly good, which means those who can use it well will have a huge advantage.

(And yes, today's AI has huge problems that will need to be solved by people who deeply understand it — the users of AI, not the people creating the AI — which is why learning AI is so important.)

But the biggest thing I realized after stepping away and watching the game for the last four years was this: the storylines are stale.

Yes, the internet runs on outrage — and yes, the dominant digital platforms (and the news) reinforce that outrage — but people are getting sick and tired of the same old outrageous storylines.

That guy — or that guy, or that gal — is a irredeemably bad person, and we should all channel our collective outrage toward them?

At this point, we're all exhausted by it — aren't we?

So here’s what I’d be down to do together — if you are?

Let’s take your biggest frustration and your greatest excitement and let's turn them into a brand new storyline that stands in opposition to a broadly disliked problem — instead of a person.

Let’s build something completely new — something better.

Let's invent something that nobody’s thought of yet — because there are endless available plots of digital land on the internet to be filled with new and exciting ideas.

And, yes, let’s build a new website in three uninterrupted days of deep work — together, IRL, not collaborating through screens.

No, not a website that you publish and never touch again.
‍
No, not a finished project.

The beginning of something new — truly original — something fundamentally different, and fundamentally better, than anything that’s come before.

Because it’s 2026. The future isn’t on its way — it’s already here.
‍
And now is the time to fix what’s broken, to redesign what’s tired, and to build something better than we’ve ever had before.

And if the three days are worthwhile, if you love your site, if it changes your life for the better — then pay for the site whenever you can easily afford to do so.

But of course, nobody hits a home run every time.

If you walk away from your project the next day, don’t pay a dime.

Not to worry.

(Or, perhaps we’ll want to meet up again to develop the site further before you launch even a 1.0 version. That's no problem, either.)

Because the biggest risk isn't developing a website that you don't ultimately launch. The biggest risk isn't "wasting" three days.

The biggest risk is staying stuck — trapped inside the same old tired digital platforms that are draining the joy out of humanity.

So what, exactly, are you waiting for? Let’s create something new.