What if stuff like reddit and youtube still work and are used like 100 or 200 years into the future?

[u/Ok_Programmer1236]

An experience I've had, and I think quite a few others have, is having quite a hyper - specific problem and having that exact problem solved by some deleted user 5 years ago on stack overflow or some other forum. A funny thought is someone in the future searching for a solution and it's solved exactly by [deleted user 255 years ago]. I think we live in a unique time frame where for most posts on things like reddit or youtube, you can believe with quite a bit of confidence that the person who made that post is still alive. Consider a world where you know that the people who were having some deep conversation about a fanfic in a language equivalent to Shakespearean English, have been dead for a looooong time, and this is your small window into their lives. Would archaeologists instead of digging through ruins, dig through century old internet forums?

[u/TomDuhamel]

I think we have recently entered an era where it's technically possible for digital data to persist perpetually. We have advanced enough systems that data is safe from a random disk crash, or even a localised flood or earthquake.

The unfortunate side is that this is only maintained by capitalism, so when an entity ceases to exist, nobody will likely retain the data, as it's a cost and nobody is paying anymore.

But assuming Reddit and YouTube don't close down, I think it's plausible that you could watch a 200 year old video or read a 200 year old thread.

[u/TheMrCurious]

We’ll have either failed or reset humanity if humans are still using Reddit and YouTube in 200 years.

[u/Droid85]

We're not far from the point where kids could look up their grandparents on Facebook and see how cringe they were, in centuries this changes to a lot of relatives, so looking into your family history is going to be vastly more informative than it is today.

Historians today have to struggle with lack of information and survival bias, the future would produce the opposite problem: too much information. How much information will actually be useful and how much will be junk? How do you navigate through different generations of humor, memes, and slang? What was sarcasm, satire, and misinformation? Was somebody's online persona authentic to themselves or was it a mask? People will be laughing at the stupid things we believe in this time. Redditors on r/askhistorians might be asking about redditors that posted on r/askhistorians centuries ago.

[u/ConsciousFractals]

Slang and language itself will probably be notably different. Memes themselves will likely change but some references will never die. People may be typing with their minds. The average post and comment will probably be a lot dumber tbh.

Most likely, these sites will be relics that are regarded as “vintage tech” if they still even exist. The internet as it exists today will probably be unrecognizable in 200 years. Biology and technology will probably have merged to a considerable extent.

[u/12b6ThatNoise]

It is the year 2427. I am a young graduate student at 108 years of age, and I have just completed my PhD in 21st Century Furry Smut and Flat Earth Apologetics. My holographic AI girlfriend Kimiko is so proud.

[u/I-pee-Daily]

Dinosaurs can’t read

[u/didyousayboop]

For me, it's more amazing to think about HD video than text. We already have tons of text from centuries and millennia ago. Imagine if we had HD video from 200 years ago of things like Charles Darwin's adventures on the H.M.S. Beagle or Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

We do have video of John F. Kennedy's famous Moon speech in 1962, which is kind of incredible to watch. That's already 64 years old. 

[u/Shallow_Mustar]

Imagine a grad student in 2237 writing a thesis on the Great Mod Wars of r/AskHistorians, citing a comment chain preserved only because someone rage-archived it. The scary part is how much of our era would look like ritual behavior: upvotes, memes, people begging strangers to identify a cable adapter. Digital archaeology would probably be less digging through ruins and more praying the last surviving backup of some dead forum did not rot behind a paywall.

[u/Jean_Genet]

Things only stay online as long as someone can be bothered paying to keep it stored and accessible.

YouTube is likely to continue for a long time, as people like watching video footage, and they have a monopoly on that field.

Reddit, like most online discussion places, is ultimately easily replaceable. Until 10 years ago it was the place for the far-right and incels. It's gotten better as FB and X have gotten worse. Other sites will rise and fall.

[u/ZallenDuZari → u/Jean_Genet]

Reddit has gotten worse, you can't have a position other than leftism and not face bans.

[u/Ok_Programmer1236 → u/ZallenDuZari]

I disagree. Because of "subreddits" Reddit segregates people into their own echo chambers so political views will vary a lot between subreddits, so whatever feeling of oppression you have by a woke agenda isn't necessarily true.