I am definitely not the only person who thinks that. There are many people who share similar sentiments, maybe even including you, dear reader.
Nostalgia is a very common feeling, just look at how many Russians want the USSR back! Having been born in 2005, I pretty much grew up with the internet going mainstream, with YouTube being created the same year I was born.
Back when it was new, it was mainly used by hobbyists that wanted to show off pirated anime episodes cool and/or funny things they made for fun. (Forgive me if this just sounds like a rose-tinted petty bourgeois fantasy.)
Then you know what happened next. Like so many fun stuff under capitalism, like JoeMarx has mentioned recently with video games, the internet was commodified and made into a dumbed-down addictive tool for instant gratification, all for profit.
EDIT: I am referring specifically to web culture, not the actual technology of the internet.
I think a lot of this comes from how the internet in many ways has become less of a shared place, with fewer people self hosting and more moving to ‘platforms’ which has enabled massive commercialization (and an excessive desire to mine personal data, only to get hacked)
Even just since 2020 or so many platforms have leveled up their entshittification to absurd levels.
I'm really happy to have found Lemmy/Fediverse, and Lemmygrad in particular.
Nostalgia is partly an indicator that current environment is so shit that it can't just be reformed or tweaked to get to a better place. Instead the best solution that people want is to time travel back to before it all took a nosedive and restart from there.
Exactly, people don't get nostalgic for the times when their life sucked.
That's not entirely true. My childhood was completely shit and I still feel nostalgia towards it. I think fondly of the poverty meals we got fed, even though I know they tasted fucking terrible.
I guess it would be more correct to say that it's perception of life sucking that really matters. As kids we don't really have a lot of expectations for the world, but as we grow up we start being able to contextualize things more.
I'd rather go back to that, honestly.
Early 2000's was good too though. Anything that passed was better than now.
I still like usenet, they have those cool nzb files and great information regarding binaries!
I was born nearly decade before you and absolutely feel like i grew up on the internet too. It was so different when small blogs and sites dominated stuff and vbulletin or phpbb forum software was the primary way you experienced socializing online. Most of the closest friends in my life now I met initially on niche web forums or chat rooms pre-2010.
Even 2009-2013ish twitter was a completely different experience to what exists now. Its crazy how much the internet has changed even just in the last 5-6 years
Going through all this, how much do you think tablets/mobile OSs have to answer for? They seem to have made it desirable to have apps with essentially no settings. Is that a key factor?
Sorry for the late reply I missed this message until now. I definitely think the shift in software and to mobile plays a major part, especially when it comes to tech literacy of younger people now in my opinion. I feel like you used to have to learn a decent number of things about computers to accomplish basic tasks prior to smartphone/tablet era.
I think it is equally to do with the consolidation of corporate social media though, combined with the proper explosion of the internet which I guess probably came mid 2010s ? Just used to be less people online really
VPN's business model always sounded shady to me. In the 2000's there would be a site called Pat's Proxy Portal that would have the same function but I would trust immediately.
In my experience, it was more atomized, which isn't necessarily good or bad, but was certainly different. It wasn't consumed by algorithms at that point, so in that way, probably healthier. But it could also vary quite a bit based on where you went and how it was moderated. One of the first forums I ever hung out on was very small and niche compared to what a lot of forum stuff is now, so it was much more of a "everybody knows each other" feel than I experience with most of the internet now. And the few mods had a whole infraction system and were pretty tempered about stuff, which was probably more realistic to do with a group of that scale.
Some of the problems I see with the internet now are unresolved problems of scale and capitalism being a terrible fit for doing anything meaningful about them. For example, youtube algos that demonetizing people with false positives on stuff. On the one hand, how are they supposed to moderate the site reasonably at all? With the absurd rate of content being generated. On the other hand, capitalism would sooner fire every worker and make a robot run the site than payroll lots of human moderators, so even if the problem is hard regardless, they don't even want to engage with it meaningfully beyond slapdash solutions that make life harder for people who are doing nothing wrong. There is also the fact that the upload rate would likely be considerably lower, if the site wasn't designed to make regular uploads the main feasible way to get views. And getting views wouldn't be so critical if people weren't desperate for money. So that part does come back to capitalism. Panicking on content moderation because of where ads show up is also a capitalistic thing, only caring when the advertisers get upset about their product reputation.
Or another example, a popular thread on reddit in a large sub can get hundreds or thousands of responses. Most of these responses won't get read or engaged with by anyone. So what exactly is even the point there? For people to scream into the void? Websites like that value engagement numbers intrinsically, but aren't structured to consider the human side of what the engagement is even supposed to be for or how it will serve human needs.
It wasn't consumed by algorithms at that point, so in that way, probably healthier.
The algorithms are always trying to stir up shit. What's shoved in your face is people bickering. Bickerbait.
One of the first forums I ever hung out on was very small and niche compared to what a lot of forum stuff is now, so it was much more of a "everybody knows each other" feel than I experience with most of the internet now.
I use several of these forums. Just look up 'crocheting forum' and you'll find them.
I am referring specifically to web culture, not the actual technology of the internet.
LOL Absolutely not. I saw those years and people used to bait each other into checking out gore, scat and whatever other content you could make a shock site with.
The web culture was way worse back then, it was mostly slurs and way too much effort to destroy innocent people's lives
That's still what it is, it just got made easier due to companies convincing people to put massive amounts of their personal information online.
This is known as Dead Internet Theory.
this is mainly because at the beginning there is more variety but over time an optimal meta is found. Every website ends up having the same design now.
It will get worse with Chat GPT AI. Pretty much the entire internet will be flooded with AI generated content and become useless and boring.
Frrrrrr tho, early-mid 2010s were fire😭😭😭🔥🔥🔥🔥. Internet, games, movies, tv shows, anime, you name it! YouTube(Markiplier, Pewds, KSI, DanTDM), GTA 4 and V, ARK, Minecraft, FnaF, DR, Assassin's Creed, RE, BB, BCS, Creepypastas, indie games, Pokemons, Godzilla, Jurassic World, GOT, early 2010s animes, pre-Disney Star Wars, Gangnam Style, Gentleman, holy shit...
I made a similar post about it and mentioned it a couple of times. It literally feels like a completely different time at this point, internet and the whole vibe was so much different than what it is today, basically everything went to shit in like mid-2017 and it only got worse from there. YouTube was completely destroyed, social media became unbearable and actually good ones got shut down or ruined, good games destroyed with pointless sequels or updates and hyped games turned into garbage, constant dramas everywhere etc. It became even worse in the recent years.
Culture wars nonsense has spread its tentacles everywhere.
I have no interest at all in culture war issues, but people keep bring them up. Even on forums about completely unrelated things. Don't these people bore themselves?
I'm confused about your use of the term "culture wars". Typically when I see it used as a pejorative, it's from people who want to keep the status quo as it is, or play "enlightened centrism" and both sides stuff.
I have no interest at all in culture war issues
wonder where I've heard this one before
well...originally without corporative interests, anonymous used to attack rightist stuff like scientology or making fun of internet racists, segregating them in ghettos like /pol/ or stormfront, now the "ebin hackers" and "anonymouse" are brainwashed to look nazi paraphernalia and hate speech as "based", wanting a "trad gf" because "big tiddy goth gf" wasn't good enough
