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I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

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Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#361

Post by ALittleLight »

tomjen3 wrote: post #358
ALittleLight wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A weird thing I learned while working on my own YouTube channel is that saying "Like and subscribe" actually does work. As in, you get more likes and subscribers by saying it compared to not saying it. It's like people need to be reminded that they can or should click those buttons. I could never bring myself to say it at the start of a YouTube video but I added it at the end and saw improvements in the analytics fro…

Do you get more people to do it by saying like and smash that subscribe button vs just saying like and subscribe?

I never experimented with it that much. My only test was asking people to like and subscribe versus not.

My intuition would be that you should use the phrasing that is authentic to your channel and voice. Most of my content was reading quotes from government reports, academic research, and news reports and then explaining what I thought about it in a calm monotone. (My vocal inspiration was Sam Harris). At the end of my videos I said "If you enjoyed this video please let me know by clicking the 'Like' button. If you'd like to see more content in a similar style, please subscribe." Which I felt represented the tone and pace of my videos.

On the other hand, if your channel is faster paced, more energetic, focused on being funny etc, then you probably should come up with a wacky or creative way to say "like and subscribe." I don't think anyone is going to subscribe just for how clever your saying is, but it will be more consistent with the tone of the channel. I think the main benefit of saying "Like and subscribe" is just to remind people to do that. Some people will be watching your video and enjoying it but just need an extra push to think "Oh yeah, I should subscribe, I do like these videos."

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#364

Post by hootbootscoot »

deeg wrote: post #234
thom wrote: post #206

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 flame…

I'm totally with you. Most of these lamentations are not people missing the old internet but their old selves, when everything was new and exciting. The OP rues the loss of Geocities but most of those sites were terrible and hard to read.

I disagree. I miss Geocities, and, more recently, Myspace. Both let YOU, the user, customize and design your "home".

So what if it was hard to read with 20 blinking GIFs and an autoplaying music player, it was YOURS.

The worst things about Facecrook are not it's monopoly, ok that's the worst, but I rather dislike that blue boring nav bar, 5000 friend limits (their graph DB can only handle that many or what's the bottleneck? cheap bustards!) and the generally lame mainstream design of the whole building. Like, who approved "pokes"? Even Friendster was hipper than Facehooked.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#366

Post by karaterobot »

Zak wrote: post #70
mrtksn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy access to many high quality contents. On the contrary, I would argue that the content quality is drastically lower because of optimisation for revenue and much less purer motivations. The video quality is really much much better though. Original video scene is great as the business side of the things is a solved problem. Yet again, it suffers from optimisation for advertisers as less and less things are kosher…

> On the contrary, I would argue that the content quality is drastically lower because of optimisation for revenue and much less purer motivations. I think the signal to noise ratio has decreased, but that doesn't mean there's less signal; there's just a lot more noise.

That's only relevant if the noise gets filtered out. I think there's a lot of evidence that our most prevalent platforms filter content for how much attention it can hold: which is to say, for revenue or less pure motivations. This is probably considered "quality" content, by some incredibly cynical metric of quality, and maybe the adoption of that cynical approach is the underlying change that has occurred on the internet in the last twenty years.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#367

Post by keithnz »

andyfleming wrote: post #274
hyperpallium2 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used to be able to find high quality information, by people who loved the topic. Now the top search results are SEO commercial sites; the old sites are gone or filled with ads; and the new sites... there aren't any new sites like this. Maybe stackexchanges are the closest (recently sold).

The landscape has changed, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t high quality content available anymore. For example, a lot of content is on YouTube. That may or may not be someone’s preferred medium to consume, but there’s definitely good and niche content.

I think a lot of expert content is now mostly video content. A lot of the time I'm finding I'm just typing things into youtube rather than google if I'm after some kind of expertise.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#368

Post by thom »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #341
thom wrote: post #206

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 flame…

It's a bit of a downer response. I think there's plenty to get excited about on the internet still, and I'm in my 30s. You don't have to accept boredom/apathy as a consequence of aging, although the catalysts will change. I don't expect an adult to scream with jubilation about toy trains.

That’s not really what I was trying to say, but perhaps I’ve still not mastered the medium after all these years, eh? I founded a company with people I met on Twitter who were all doing the same hobby, scraping data from the web and trying to make meaning out of it. The company started as a blog (remember those!) So yes, still excited by the Internet. But I’m not going to beat myself up (nor the youth of today) trying to recapture the feeling of the 90s web through the eyes of a teenage me, because I think that’s impossible.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#369

Post by annoyingnoob »

OK Boomer.

You might remember this one: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gratefuldead/shakedownstreet...

"Maybe you had too much too fast. Maybe you had too much too fast. Or just over played your part.

Nothin' shakin' on Shakedown Street. Used to be the heart of town. Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart. You just gotta poke around."

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#370

Post by ozim »

emptyparadise wrote: post #158
ozim wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is commercialization made it easier for people to express themselves and actually start using that resource. Commercialization made it form "only nerds sit in there" to "everyone is on the internet and it is cool", if there would be no commercialization, internet for masses would still be a silly toy. Just like going to the Mars - it is just a "hobby" for NASA, most of people on Earth are not giving a damn that…

Then maybe it's commercialization I dislike. I loved the silly toy internet. It was a place to get away from the real world. Now it's just a part of the real world. A lot of things turn lame once real names and money are involved. And that's the fate of most things once they get big enough. It makes sense, but it's still sad.

I don't think it is sad because it provides so much more value to the whole world.

Keeping it as a toy for selected ones would be really selfish.

There is still a lot of place for "not real world" in here.

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