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A retrospective of my time on the internet

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Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#201

Post by Funes- »

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.

That was a critical turning point, to be sure. But what came about with the conjunction of social media and the smartphone around 2010 was a much more impactful one, as it made the Internet undergo extremely essential changes, not just a qualitative (and quantitative) modification of its userbase. The Internet became the media outlet for hypercommercialism and late-stage capitalism, basically, and all the societal changes we've seen since are byproducts of that paradigm shift.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#204

Post by Aurornis »

Delphiza wrote: post #20
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 had the same weird feeling reading the post. Where OP was 'living there' in 2007, I was building sophisticated apps with big teams to do things build commercial insurance systems. I don't know whether I built the things that OP missed about the old days, or paved over the things that he used as a child. If there is one thing I miss about the Internet that I grew up with, it is the trust and self-policing. We were o…

> We were on forums (even usenet) and got along. Now it is all walled gardens, rage bait, racism, and people shouting at each other.

You’re remembering the good parts and forgetting the bad parts that you looked past at the time.

Old usenet was full of vicious flame wars. You could find civil posts if you filtered through content but the ugly parts were everywhere.

This is classic nostalgia: Looking back you only remember the parts you liked. When everything feels new and exciting we have more energy to overlook the bad things.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#205

Post by jameshart »

sanderjd wrote: post #63
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…

Yeah, but it does seem like there have been multiple distinct changes, rather than this just being an age-based phenomenon. I seem to be about a decade older than the OP, and I'd also say that the early '10s is when things got less fun. Although I dunno, I thought "web 2.0" was just hype (and thus bad) and that Facebook was ruining everything, and those were five to ten years before 2012. So maybe it's less of a spec…

Web 2.0 wasn’t just hype. It was also rounded corners and glassy lozenge buttons implemented with CSS sliding door background sprites.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#206

Post by chasd00 »

t-3 wrote: post #173
dom96 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how I interpret gamergate. Actually I view gamergate as the staging post for MAGA and Trump getting elected. It was a great trial run for flooding the zone with lies and outrage to defeat progressives. It worked then and continues to work.

I think you're both right. It was around that time that internet and real-life culture started fusing together increasingly. Internet became more political, including in the tactics used, real life became /b/, even the president is an internet troll. When everyone is on the internet, all of a sudden our socioeconomic and political differences are magnified and the narcissists and sadists have a never ending feeding-t…

Yeah i feel like that was one of the first times regular people out in the real world really tangled with hardcore internet trolls. I think it was a shock to both to have their territories invaded by the other.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#207

Post by toyg »

reaperducer wrote: post #116
Delphiza wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same weird feeling reading the post. Where OP was 'living there' in 2007, I was building sophisticated apps with big teams to do things build commercial insurance systems. I don't know whether I built the things that OP missed about the old days, or paved over the things that he used as a child. If there is one thing I miss about the Internet that I grew up with, it is the trust and self-policing. We were o…

it is the trust and self-policing. We were on forums (even usenet) and got along. I think it's because back in Usenet days, most people posted their real names, home addresses, work addresses, and telephone numbers as part of their signatures. Now there is zero accountability for anything anyone says. Go ahead and lie. There is no reputational penalty. Maybe what we need is a re-birth of forms, but with accountabilit…

> Something like Reddit, but with everyone's real names and contact information attached

This is what some Europeans governments are effectively trying to achieve, although hamfistedly (as governments typically do).

We definitely need a replacement for Twitter/X for mainstream journalists, politicians, and other leaders, to interact in.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#208

Post by chasd00 »

Delphiza wrote: post #69
smackeyacky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a lot of bad natured Usenet flame wars. I don’t think it’s worse now it’s just the volume got louder and things like reddit amplifying stupid to new lows. Easy enough to avoid. Facebook and LinkedIn I would consider novel compared to usenet but it’s hard to tell the fakeness and bots from each other, or from static. Again, easy to avoid.

Yes, what we remember is interesting, especially while reflecting on posts such as OPs. The Internet that I grew up with didn't have bots, neighbourhood gossipers, weaponised propaganda... we spurned people trying to sell stuff. My teenage Internet predated widespread use of email, so predated spam. Maybe my rose-coloured glasses remember a smaller number of real people and a demographic that was closer to my own.

> The Internet that I grew up with didn't have bots

to be fair, I found eggdrop on almost every single corporate Linux server in all my clients in those days.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#209

Post by jerf »

sanderjd wrote: post #67
Delphiza wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same weird feeling reading the post. Where OP was 'living there' in 2007, I was building sophisticated apps with big teams to do things build commercial insurance systems. I don't know whether I built the things that OP missed about the old days, or paved over the things that he used as a child. If there is one thing I miss about the Internet that I grew up with, it is the trust and self-policing. We were o…

To me, "gamergate" - or I dunno, the "alt right" thing more broadly, it's hard for me to remember which thing begat which, or maybe I never knew - was when I first remember thinking "what's with all the nastiness?". I was on twitter back then, and it felt to me like some kind of flood gate opening.

I think this is more about us all being on platforms that value engagement and simply don't care if that "engagement" is people fighting with each other. The Internet always had whackjobs... in fact on a per capita basis I'd bet that in the early days we're praising as "we all got along" the whackjob ratio was higher than it is today and it has since regressed to the norm... but the systems structurally tended to discourage the nastiness. There was still plenty of it, but on Usenet, you could add the guy who enraged you to the point of blinding rage to your ignore file... and you could add the two guys who refuse to ignore each other to your own ignore file. In the Weblog space you could just, you know, not read that other blog that infuriates you. On custom forums the community was small and tended to evict people.

It was not paradise. But it was more workable, when the platforms weren't designed by PhDs to seek out and exploit your outrage for their ad clicks.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#210

Post by felix-the-cat »

chasd00 wrote: post #163
felix-the-cat wrote: post #36

I miss the whole dot-com boom era - that was the best. I was working in Austin at the time and would drive to work down a road that was lined with all the latest dot-com goodness like DrKoop.com, Living.com, et al. And who can forget reading f*ckdcompany.com every morning and marveling over the latest startups rumored to be hitting the skids.

when they went bust all their fancy furniture showed up on ebay and second hand stores. I know an attorney that bought Herman Miller Aerons by the dozens. It was like the startup chair in those days haha.

Not to mention all the great deals on expresso machines, lmao.
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