Probably asking for people to be educated on the difference as to what they’ve missed out from the internet back then compared to today. I think I have a good perspective since I’m one of the few out there who’ve been around the internet for three of its decades and have seen it develop into what it became.

For one thing, the internet wasn’t reliant on Cloudflare and it was fine. Try to imagine an internet, where you weren’t prompted by a stupid Cloudflare verification check that has a 50/50 chance of it failing. Captcha did exist back then but was no where near as annoying as it’s been designed to now. The only thing between you and getting into your account was a password. Nothing else. No stupid verification codes having to be sent to your phone or whatever else.

And it was fine.

Social Media was tamed. If we could only go back to where it was just Reddit, Facebook and MySpace, then things would be fine. Because that was all that we needed. Now we just have too many and it’s all saturated. Plus the versions of all of those platforms were at their best back then, no where near their broken malformed selves now.

Blocking dumb trolls. Get a life.

  • KnightOfOldEmpire@lemmy.ml
    6·
    12 hours ago

    You could feel people’s passions, nerd wars over hot and unsanctioned takes on different forums and various jokes that were just blast to experience or see taking form. There were situations when you pressed F5 and got another page of comments to read. Yes, there was trolling and rage baiting even then.

    Nowadays you have Discord channels that are just waiting for some official announcement that creates some traffic and then goes back to low traffic mode. In an age where you don’t need a CRT monitor or wait in line for a public access to the internet to check the replays you have this low activity.

    There wasn’t that much cultivated passivity that you’ll find in modern spaces, referring to various algorithms in Reels that keep you passive and engaged.

    Money wasn’t the main driving factor, it’s honestly no coincidence that the most helpful guide you might find in the flood of bloated articles will feel like it was made in the 90s - 2010, likely it was.

    I feel there’s something to this, more chaotic and unsanctioned views combined with general curiosity vs modern and carefully cultivated official outlets to the point our own reactions feels curated to fit the official framing. Sure there were “venerable ones” but the discussion didn’t relay on them to carry the discussion or generate content.