There’s a different kind of silence on the internet now. Not peace — vacancy. You can feel it in the empty timelines, the vanished conversations, the shop links that used to hum with life but now lead nowhere. It’s not just quiet; it’s abandonment. It’s the hollow ache of realizing that everyone you once built beside simply stopped showing up.
It’s not burnout I’m angry at — burnout is human. What I can’t stand is the disappearance without word, the shrug, the slow fade of people who once swore that “community matters” but couldn’t be bothered to leave a light on when they left.
The Vanishing
There was a time not long ago when it felt like the indie web was alive. You could post something half-finished and still find others cheering you on. Every maker, writer, and dreamer had a small digital corner carved out by hand. The feeds were chaotic, weird, personal — but they were ours.
Now, you log in and it’s like wandering through an abandoned city. Familiar usernames still exist, but they’re ghosts — reposting ads, chasing engagement they used to mock, or gone entirely. The air feels thinner. You can almost hear the echo of what it used to sound like when people cared.
I didn’t realize how much I depended on that noise until it was gone. Not validation — proof of life. The sense that you weren’t the only one trying to build something honest in a world that only rewards pretense.
And now? It’s just me and a handful of others still shouting into a wind that used to carry voices back.
The Great Retreat
Everyone left — not with drama, not with collapse — just a slow, cowardly retreat into silence. “Taking a break,” they said. “Re-evaluating.” “Moving to other platforms.” But those platforms are dead ends too, and no one comes back.
It’s not that I don’t understand why they left. The grind is brutal. The algorithms keep shifting. The bills don’t stop. But damn it, we used to believe in something — in showing up, in making without permission, in building culture instead of content.
Now it’s as if the second the art stopped being convenient, the faith died too. And that betrayal hits harder than any platform crash.
The Selling Out in Slow Motion
What really breaks me are the ones who stayed, but switched sides. The creators who once swore they’d never bow to the machine, now crafting “authenticity campaigns” for brands that sell mass-produced rebellion.
They wear the indie aesthetic like a costume. They still talk about “community” but mean “market segment.” They call their fans “supporters” but treat them like analytics.
And look — I don’t blame anyone for wanting stability. We all need to eat. But there’s a difference between surviving the system and serving it. Somewhere along the way, half the scene decided it was easier to sell the look of independence than live the truth of it.
That’s how you end up with corporations calling themselves “creator collectives” while real creators can barely afford domain renewals. The word “indie” used to mean something built from the ground up; now it’s a brand package you can license.
What Staying Costs
Those of us who haven’t left — we’re not noble martyrs. We’re just too stubborn to quit. But staying costs something. Every rebuild eats a little more of your hope. Every migration, every broken system, every friend gone dark, it all chips away at the belief that showing up still matters.
You start questioning if you’re foolish for holding the line. You start wondering if all that talk about solidarity and community was ever real, or just another performance everyone outgrew.
Because here’s the truth: being indie now doesn’t feel romantic. It feels like shouting from the bottom of a river while the surface gets paved over for ads.
And yet, somehow, the only thing worse than staying would be leaving.
The Scene Didn’t Die — It Quit
Everyone loves to say “the creator scene died.” No, it didn’t. It quit. People got tired and comfortable and afraid, and instead of fighting for what we built, they let corporations build simulations of it.
Now the “independent creator economy” is a buzzword with venture funding, while the real independents are treated like fossils. It’s not death. It’s desertion.
And that’s what stings most: not loss, but cowardice. There’s nothing more gutting than realizing that the rebellion you believed in folded because it stopped being profitable.
We could have kept the fire going. We could have built our own infrastructure, stood by each other, made art for the sake of it. But instead, the majority traded in the wildness for convenience, and called it “growth.”
I Left the Feeds, Not the Fight
And before anyone asks — yeah, I bailed on social media. I left the algorithmic hamster wheel and the constant performative Trauma Olympics. But that’s not hypocrisy. That’s self-defense.
The indie scene was never the feeds. The feeds were just where we met. When those spaces got overrun — corporatized, sanitized, and turned into pissing contests for who’s more miserable, more authentic, more oppressed — that stopped being “the scene.” That’s marketing dressed as misery.
Leaving those spaces doesn’t mean leaving the work. I’m still here, building, writing, crafting, talking to whoever’s listening — I just don’t need to perform it for a feed that exists to commodify exhaustion.
There’s no rebellion in playing nice for engagement metrics. The rebellion is refusing to let your work be flattened into content.
The Aftermath
So here we are — the stragglers, the leftovers, the ones too obstinate to leave. There’s a certain clarity that comes when the crowd disperses. The silence is ugly, but honest. You can hear your own heartbeat again.
Maybe that’s all that’s left to do: keep making noise in the dark. Keep writing, crafting, building, and refusing to play dead just because everyone else did.
Because somebody has to prove that this still matters — that creation for its own sake isn’t extinct, just exiled.
The Reclamation
I don’t want the old internet back. I want something new that remembers what the old one taught us — that art doesn’t need permission, that “independent” isn’t an aesthetic, it’s a covenant.
If this is the end of the so-called creator scene, then let’s build something that doesn’t beg the algorithm for crumbs. Let’s build our own halls again, even if we’re the only ones sweeping the floor.
If the crowd doesn’t come back, fine. Let the corporations keep their costume rebellion. I’ll keep the real thing — rough edges, unpolished truth, and all.
Because at least it’s mine.
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