A retrospective of my time on the internet • Hacker News Board

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#101

Post by sieabahlpark » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

doublerabbit wrote: post #89

dlkasajiewo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new users stopped reading the FAQs. They stopped lurking. They wanted things spoonfed to them, so the producers started spoonfeeding. The modern walled-garden system is the ultimate result of that. Is it the fault of those users? Not in any moral sense, it's reasonable to want a more structured presentation. Things change.

Spoon feeding isn't inherently bad. The issue is that the spoon went from a small pile of sugar to full spoon. Then when someone really needed help, they got lynched by a mob for asking for help because it was seen as spoon feeding. The days of the internet for me were when I got stuck, I could ask for help and a programmer would chime in and treat me like an actual human being. "Your doing it correct but in all the…

[dead]

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#102

Post by CM30 » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

I mean, the old internet still exists if you want to use it. At least, in many places online.

There are still forums, and people either discussing how to run them or setting up new ones today.

There are still personal blogs out there, and some are even bringing back things like blogrolls and webrings.

Heck, there's arguably a bit of a trend to try and recapture some of this era for a modern audience now. Sites like Neocities let you host personal websites like you would in the 90s, and I saw a human curated website directory for gaming blogs pop up on Bluesky the other day, complete with a webring you could add to your site once featured in it.

The issue isn't that this stuff isn't out there, it's that most people have chosen social media and big tech platforms over independently run websites and communities. If more people were like the author, social media could be made almost entirely irrelevant.

It's possible to live online without social media and apps, just as it is to support mum and pop businesses rather than Walmart or Amazon. It's just the majority of the population seem to prefer the convenience offered by the mass market solutions.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#103

Post by colechristensen » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

btheconqueror wrote: post #39

lizknope wrote: post #7

It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…

I was born in the mid 80s, enjoyed the internet from 95-2005ish and then thought there was a decline. Seems like there is a pattern here...

I bet when you were about 22 plus or minus a couple years music started to change for the worse too!

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#104

Post by DavidPiper » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #87

Things we don't have to worry about anymore: 10 ISPs worth of free trials and shortcuts on your Windows 95 desktop. AOL, MSN, Compuserve, Prodigy, AT&T, NetCom, UUNet, NetZero, EarthLink, MindSpring, countless local and regional providers... Your Windows 98 machine being taken over by viruses minutes after booting up Pop-ups! Pop-ups everywhere! Adware infesting your system. WeatherBug, HotBar, BonziBuddy, Ask Jeeves…

> Pop-ups! Pop-ups everywhere!

This part, at least, is satire, right? The rest I largely agree with :-)

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#105

Post by Aurornis » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:30 PM UTC

lizknope wrote: post #7

It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…

> I think everything changed when Eternal September happened.

The original Eternal September is about a specific year, but it has become an evergreen concept for each younger generation:

The Internet was really cool when I started using it and everything felt new or novel, but it started going downhill later.

That’s why this topic produces so much agreement when spoken of generically, but when the date of decline becomes the topic everyone just starts pointing to their early years on the internet as the golden age.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#106

Post by colechristensen » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:31 PM UTC

benfortuna wrote: post #60

lizknope wrote: post #7

It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…

Isn't that a bit elistist to say everything changed when more people joined? The point is not the consumers of the Internet but the producers are what changed it - primarily with advertising and walled gardens.

It's not elitist. It's just nostalgia.

"The change I was part of when I was between the ages of 15 to 25 was the best!"

"The change of the next generation that wasn't recognizably my peer group was bad and ruined everything :("

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#107

Post by fehu22 » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

lizknope wrote: post #7

It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…

Money getting into the net as created many problems

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#108

Post by eska » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

sire-vc wrote: post #93

freehorse wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world changed for a reason. Sure, but the actual reasons matter. A big part of it changed due to making the internet primarily a place for circulating ads, and that's a change many may not like.

I don't like ads either, but there are ad-free corners of the internet. If you don't like Facebook then don't use it.

Even if you don’t use Facebook they have a “shadow profile” of you. One of the things that is different on the modern internet.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#109

Post by technothrasher » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

lizknope wrote: post #7

It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…

I believe it was 1997 when I saw a URL on a can of Pepsi and thought, "yep, that was nice, but it's all over now."

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#110

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore

You're not alone. The internet we built doesn't exist anymore.

When I talk with fellow graybeards, the sentiment is universally the same: This isn't what we built. This wasn't the intent. This isn't what we worked so hard for. This isn't what was supposed to happen.

Easily 90% of the graybeards I know who were involved in the early days have largely given up on the internet. They use the new breed of "essential" technologies like smart phone apps to talk to their doctor, or online bill payments. But they don't have a lot of internet use because they're just not interested in it anymore.

They're also at the age when their interests are more focused on real-life things like families, and increasingly taking up the same real-life hobbies they used to make fun of online.

Maybe they're just burned out after dozens and dozens of hype cycles.† But for the most part, I think they've just given up hope.

† Just last night, I saw an article in a 1980's computer magazine about a company that came out with what we could call "AR" glasses to project a screen in you field of vision so you could compute on the go without a monitor. Nothing in technology is new anymore.