MP's Definitive Dark / Deep / Etc Web FAQ

1. Does such a thing exist ?
Yes.

2. Does it have levels ?
Yes, it has levels.

Notwithstanding what "the web" may have originally meant, or what it may have been originally intended to mean, or what random groups of obscure dorks prefer to pretend it means, the only reasonable definition of "the web" in context is "the sum total of accessible information".

Since "accessible" has a significant subjective component (meaning it depends on who's asking), and seeing how people aren't equal and the common man is always found in the worst position availableⁱ, it then necessarily follows that the web will be accessible by degrees.

So yes, it has levels.

3. What levels are there ?
The most directly evident, therefore the most trite and therefore the least interesting or useful is the shithead trap : wikipedia, reddit, the few "news" sites that Google keeps on an arbitrary, handwritten listⁱⁱ and feeds into search results irrespective of any other considerationsⁱⁱⁱ and so on.

The next level down is the obscure fringe of the shithead trap. To understand by example : just like you, Hanno Böck is nobody on a stick. Also just like you, he probably has a personal website somewhere. If any third party (of the innocent kind) hears the name and wants to "research" it, that third party is infinitely more likely to run into the Trilema article discussing how much of a deceitful shitbag Hanno Böck is than into Hanno Böck's own personal website, whatever it may be. Since we made no presumptions about the identity of the obscure matter (which we didn't, because Hanno Böck isn't somebody), the argument holds in general : there's a bunch of things nobody cares about that a bunch of people who don't matter put online. For the longest time a scam generally known as "online advertising" or "online marketing" was misrepresented as a tool to close this gap, but I expect by now bitter experience if not intellectual faculties have made matters plain to everyone capable of comprehension to any degree, so I won't insist.

Even further down comes the commercial trap. This contains all sorts of moderately more interesting crap - such as research papers^iv, or footage of Kim Kardashian sucking cock, or the contents of your WoW server. It's never very expensive, nor is it generally worth the cost.

One layer down there's the "private" web, the stuff of "logins"^v and whatnot. The contents of a MySql database, for instance, or of your yahoo email account are "dark" to "everyone" - except of course for the provider ; and for any government who wants to take a peek ; and for any hacker who feels inclined to partake ; and for everyone who's willing to pay enough ; and for everyone else.

Arguably yet another layer down there's the gimmicky darkness. IRC channels that "don't log", for instance - you can't read what was said unless you (or your logger) were present. Tor/onion/the rest of the crap, for another instance - you can't read what was said unless you're the NSA or any of the other guys spying on Tor traffic as a matter of course. There's always some gimmick involved, which is why it's called the gimmicky darkness, but nevertheless you may find footage of Michelle Obama sucking (suspiciously white) cock there, as well as all news long before it "breaks" on the shithead trap sites, as well as all sorts of other inconsequential things (your next fix qualifies as inconsequential).

Finally, the last layer is the proper darkness. You know you've reached it because fresh tracks look like this and stale tracks look like this. The problem with RSA-encrypted material is that you have no idea what it is. Neither do I. Neither does anyone else. So who knows, maybe it's pretty cool, right ?

To summarize : the shithead trap (I) is what you see whether you want to or not ; its obscure fringes (II) you could see if you gave a shit, which you don't, much to the chagrin of the idiots involved, who somehow perceive themselves as people equal to all people notwithstanding they're much closer to goats ; the commercial trap (III) you can see if you're willing to pay, be it in dollars, patience, skill, connections, what have you ; the private web (IV) is where someone lied to you about how secret your secret stuff was ; the gimmicky dark web (V) is where someone lied to you about how secret your stuff was ; the dark web (VI) is encrypted and unavailable to you (because no WoT).

4. Could we say 80% of all the stuff is on the Dark web ?
Depends on what you mean by your terms. For instance : this article is about a thousand words, say 6KB. A shitty movie of the ilk Hollywood still churns out, hour-and-a-half of crap bereft of tits or ideas, is about 2GB. If I put this article and that movie in a package, what % is article ? And bear in mind that whatever you answer, five years ago the same exact crap came in 600MB packages - nothing whatsoever changed to justify the tripling in size.

From another angle, if your idea of "dark web" or "deep web"^vi is "anything but I" or "anything but I+II" above, then definitely - the vast majority of information is not directly available to every dork with a dial-up, this isn't the time of FidoNet anymore. Conversely, if your idea of "dark" or "deep" web is strictly VI above, then absolutely not, it's such a tiny element as to vanish entirely, much like the total mass of humans (~5 * 10¹⁴g) when compared to the total mass of the Universe (~3 * 10⁵⁵g).^vii

5. Is access to the Deep / Dark Web however defined what makes the powerful powerful ?
No. It is a symptom and not a cause - the cool people went to the cool parties where you weren't invited long before the web was invented.

6. But would I become cooler if I got exposed to the deeper, darker web more ?
No. This isn't fucking tanning.

7. Can you recommend any reputable sellers of deep dark web self-tanning lotion ?
Reddit, the chans, onion forums - what you're already doing, basically.

8. How can I become genuinely cool ?
You can't. Go away.

1. This is what it means to be Joe Average : to be a worthless shithead without capabilities, abilities or options. [↩]
2. Yes, they "got rid" of the ridiculous kludge that was "page rank". To be replaced by guess what. [↩]
3. With the notable exception of color schemes - if you're a shithead of type A (or at least click like one) you'll get a lot of references to the same half dozen cesspools publishing your kind of crap ; whereas if you're a shithead of type B you'll get a lot of references to a different dozen, of basically the same thing. Call A "progressive" or "traditional values" or whatever the fuck you will - for as long as you're a "normal" person with "normal" interests there's a list of half-dozen cesspools for you online just like there's McDonalds and Burgerking to simulate choice for you offline. Except of course if you type "pizza" into your feeder app, in which case you get Domino's and whatever else - neither of which have anything to do with pizza, but then again you'd think pizza tastes weird if you ran into some anyway.

   Go Trumplincton 2016! [↩]

4. The problem with "science" as practiced today is principally that it has absolutely nothing to do with science, and consequently the costs of interfacing with its sad waste product aren't so much "pay to access" as they are "sift through the crap you've accessed" ; so much so that reasonable people simply opt out altogether. [↩]
5. Http is a stateless protocol. "Logins" presume to introduce a stateful connection. This is braindamage of the first order, and all the attempts to paper over the fundamental idiocy of it to date have failed miserably ; they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. [↩]
6. It's unclear that users mean to distinguish these terms in practice. [↩]
7. Consider : I wrote this article and felt no need to push out any stuff on the Deep Dark Web ; my monthly production is in the tens of thousands of words published here and tens of thousands of words on IRC (V, technically, but web-bridged to II) yet the month where I actually exchange ten thousand words in encrypted comms is rare.

   This goes for a very heavy user of teh darkest and deepest recesses of the knowledge web. If I can get through the days and months without favouring it, then definitely so can everyone else. Any way you look at it, it has to be tiny, and so it is. [↩]