People used to have social lives and meet and make friends and go out before apps or broadband. In the dialup days the internet was an addition to an already completed life. Facebook and iPhone was where things started to go to shit. Suddenly everyone was permanently online instead of just the cool people. And their brains all went to mush and they forgot how to relate to other people and have a life.
Really, because I’m more nostalgic for having hope for the future.
Fuck that, I’m nostalgic because there was an actual aesthetic with character. “Modern” flat UIs are boring and flat.
I almost cried reading the explanation.
Well, then the Internet wasn’t a capitalist shithole. It was only a shithole.
“Nostalgia” is not really reserved for great times, just different times. Is just reminiscing.
In addition, AIM was great at the time because it was the first “messenger”. It was instant without the clunky and slow interface of email that for some reason we continue using 30 years later. It’s not better in any way.
clunky and slow interface of email that for some reason we continue using 30 years later
Email is actually great, it’s the original fediverse - anyone can start a server and interoperate with everyone else. With a decent client it doesn’t need to be clunky either, although with 90% of people stuck in webmail I can understand why people think it sucks.
It’s not great at all. It’s messy and disorganized and confusing and very much not private, and people don’t use it properly. No client can fix that. If it was “the original fediverse” we wouldn’t need a new one.
I could only get AOL in my town back in 1995 or so. Back then you had to pay… by the hour? The minute? Something like that. And AOL wasn’t a 24 hour service, it would shut down each night and kick everyone off.
No, it’s because it wasn’t full of bots and shitty content created solely for the purpose of generating clicks. People created content to have fan and share their passion, not because they wanted to be a professional influencer.
everybody knows its the nostalgia for GEOCITIES AESTHETIC
-Under Construction-
For the majority of people the internet used to be a room, a place you went and accessed a device.
The device wasn’t mobile, we usually didn’t carry around the thick laptops of the time around.
At first using the device would disconnect the phone, and you couldn’t carry it around easily.
As times changed and it’s mobility shifted it became more and more commercially viable and then it was invaded by corporate interests.
Now it’s not just a room, it’s everywhere and it’s allows all sorts of powerful groups to exert influence over every single person that connects with it
Tbh the indieweb and fediverse have me feeling this way these days. I look forward to getting home and checking my forums and messages, just like I used to after school.
Do you have any recommendations for good forums?
Search your hobbies, there are tons that are still around and busy. Some that i like to visit are grassrootsmotorsports.com and hobby-machinest.com, but you can just search for “%hobby% forum” and you’ll probably find something decent.
This and the old internet was largely non-commercial compared to today. It was the “small” internet of passionate nerds, academics, and techies who needed an outlet for their passion. I remember being confused when I learned the “.com” was intended for commercial web sites only, because most personal websites people had were “.com”
The old internet was decidedly anti-commercial.
I remember very well people being revolted by online advertising and how it commercialized a free place.
They were right.
yeah once you found a niche community you had knowledgeable people that would at least reply by the weekend, and expert advice would be free just because some guy was happy a stranger liked the same things.
You just had to be confidently wrong enough to aggro the guy that actually knows his shit.
Maybe that strat was always around but I associate it more with the later 2.0 web
I have a 20 year old coworker I constantly ask probing questions about what it’s like never having not had the internet. It’s so weird.
I mean crushing boredom isn’t a thing anymore because of it, which is cool and I can acknowledge that. But there’s also something very dystopian about it and clearly it’s having pretty serious negative effects on society, politics in particular. So yeah…not really sure how to feel about it.
I just went camping and put the goddamn thing in a bag for 4 days and forgot about it. Friends and I only brought the internet up once during the trip to joke that we hoped when we got back into reception we’d find out he had died. It’s funny cuz I don’t even need to say who.
Crushing boredom is absolutely still a thing. I guess you could move it over into mind-numbing boredom if you really wanted to get pedantic. If anything, it actually makes boredom more likely. The internet has caused a severe amount of overstimulation in most people, and so now things that they used to take enjoyment in mean nothing to them.
I thought you meant the internet was a he
Hell yeah
The internet was much better before people figured out how to make money off of it.
It’s not figuring out but just waiting until there are more non-nerds moving in that new market and then start monetizing as the market reaches critical mass for their particular niche.
