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I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

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Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#201

Post by ryandrake »

uncertainrhymes wrote: post #162
superasn wrote: post #139

Is there a term for when people reminisce something and think those were the days at the same time think everything contemporary has gone to the dogs? Like my uncle who is an old car enthusiast who thinks ambassador was the greatest car ever made in India yet if you are really objective about it was truly a bad car (wrt milege, comfort, safety, design, etc). I feel the same reading the comments here. Really don't mis…

Old. I kid, but it does seem a function of age. I've always seen a dividing line between people whose fondest memories are in the past, versus how much they look forward to making new memories. I am right in the middle right now, and trying not to let it swing too far into curmudgeonness.

I'm in my late 40s and already feel that curmudgeon voice in my head. Ignoring it is harder and harder every year. New Internet sucks because it's too commercialized. New software sucks because it's all cloud based rather than native. New cars suck because you can't wrench them. New music sucks because everything sounds the same. New movies suck because they are made for people with a 5s attention span. Everything else sucks because it's more expensive than I remember. It feels truer and truer every year.

My newest car is late 2000's and that's also around when I stopped subscribing to new stuff and adding new things to my home media library. I look at my parents who are kind of culturally stuck in the 60s-70s, and then see myself getting more and more stuck in 90s-00s. Happens to us all I guess.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#202

Post by slver »

vkk8 wrote: post #151
slver wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memes won’t go away. Nor will ads.

Memes will be killed by some entrepreneuring copyright troll at some point. In many jurisdictions, memes would either break the copyright laws or at least be in the grey zone. It's only a matter of time before someone exploits this. After one case, the platforms will ban them to avoid the risk of getting sued themselves. The same will probably happen for gaming videos.

Really. All right, I'm looking forward to the author of dickbutt stepping up and claiming what's theirs.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#203

Post by flir »

fuckwarmweather wrote: post #174
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you not skipping the bullshit? I feed most of my youtube addiction through mpv and have configured several key combinations which allow me to quickly bisect the video. These videos are always full of comments like "why did I have to spend 20 minutes on this", while they never take more than 15 to 20 seconds from me. By the way, with a proper youtube-dl config in place you don't even have to open the browser:…

Can you elaborate on the key combinations thing? Is it just for jumping around in the video or is there more to it than that?

I don't know if it's what OP meant, but I'm imaging starting at the 50% mark, then jumping forward or back 25%, then jumping forward or back 12.5% etc, until you've zeroed in on the nugget of content in the sea of noise.

Might make a good browser plugin. Binary search, but for video. Tweaking the exact ratios might be an interesting problem. I'm thinking (no evidence!) that 30% for a forward jump and 15% for a backward jump might work better. Large jumps forward until you hit something interesting, then small jumps back to find the start.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#204

Post by pixl97 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #159
pixl97 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bullshit asymmetry therom predicted this. Filtering bullshit is so hard it's easier making money selling it yourself.

But this also means there is a need to filter bs that can be addressed.

Hence the problem. Spam for example has ruined email to the point that only a few large providers control the majority of email flows, if you make them mad, you cant send email. Same thing happening with content.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#205

Post by zeroonetwothree »

ferros wrote: post #4

In 20 years somebody will write an article about missing this ‘old’ internet from 2021. I wonder what they will miss.

I don’t see that anyone could have predicted the change of the past 20 years so it’s silly to think we can even guess at the next 20

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#206

Post by thom »

I think it's easy to forget we're not the same people we were 20-25 years ago. I see all sorts of lamentations about various things in the world changing and becoming less magical. But as far as I'm aware, I could still go and argue about bands in chatrooms. I could talk to other writers and dream about my future best-selling novels. I could go read random opinions about any subject and get into an exhilarating flamewar about it.

I don't want to do any of those things. I'm in my 40s and I have 3 kids. The internet 15-year-old me experienced was magical because _I_ was a blank slate. Every new friendship was thrilling, every new skill opened up infinite horizons, every nook and cranny felt like somewhere I could belong. But life moves on. I'm more than half-way through my career, perhaps not the one I was expecting. I didn't marry the girl I met on IRC. I don't have strong opinions about Radiohead anymore. I find people, however delightful and kooky they are, quite tiring having got to know 10,000 of them at this point.

I know all this is true because my kids love the internet and find their place in it with all the joy I used to. And I'm pretty sure older generations frowning upon it all is part of the rush anyway.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#207

Post by superkuh »

There are two mutually exclusive views of the web. As a set of protocols set to allow individual humans to share information about things they love and the web as a set of protocols to make a living.

Profit motivated web presences want views, they want attention, they need nine 9s uptime, need to be able to do monetary transactions absolutely securely, and they want to be an application not a document. They live and die on the eternal wave of walled garden's recommendation engines because that's the network effect and that's where money flows. It doesn't matter if this means extremely high barriers to entry because money solves everything.

Individuals' websites are freeform presentations about the things that person is interested in. They are the backyard gardens of the mind and the most important thing is lowering the friction from thought to posting. There's no need to get tons of traffic instantly (or ever), they're mostly time insensitive.

The old web (and other protocols) still exist but they're much harder to find because they are not constantly updated. The time sensitive search engines deprioritize the static sites or even drop them after a handful of years.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#209

Post by raffraffraff »

andrepd wrote: post #190
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Includes the very worst part of echo chambering though. Don’t like someone OR their comment? Just do your part with three other people and it’ll be faded, once it’s faded other people will join in hiding the bad man who said the bad thing - and gone! No more contrarian opinion, we protected other people! Everyone agrees now. How wonderful.

How ironic. I agree, downvote-based discussions invariably lead to echo chambers / monocultures. See the dumpster fire that are reddit comments. At least on old-time forums there was no such bullshit (except post count :)).

If you don't have the ability to vote, you can't influence the content in a positive way either. Some comments are pointless, like some tool making the "and my axe" joke for the millionth time.

Reddit lost its way when they started heavily moderating or banning entire subs that didn't fit with their woke US-centric world view, while rape porn was "fine". I closed my account a while back and stopped visiting the site, but unfortunately, there are so many organisations and FOSS projects that use it in an official capacity that it's unavoidable.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#210

Post by zeroonetwothree »

failwhaleshark wrote: post #171
npteljes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely the case. It's also them encountering the first X, and then the millionth X. And a bunch of other biases also come into play, like survivorship bias. The good old refrigerator that's chugging along just fine for the twentieth year. It's not like today's shitty refrigerators can ever last this long. What's unseen though is the huge pile of discarded refrigerators on the landfill.

The fridge I grew-up with lasted 30 years. It does seem like an industry-wide conspiracy to make "durable" consumer goods last only as long as their warranties. And also, to make money on replacement parts and complete replacements. The "Just go buy another one"-mentality makes me cringe.

It seems like consumers prefer fancy features than durability
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