Were people in the 90s right? Was the internet a fad after all?

[celebrityskin]

• Sora
• OpenAI
• X/Twitter bots and engagement farming
• Death of the blogosphere and online communities
• Oversaturation of 'content creators'
• Dropshipping scammers
• TikTok, won't even elaborate on that one

The new and exciting internet as it was sold to us originally is truly over. It's been torn down by scammers and quick money schemes and monopolized by like five websites.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

...And you only just realised this?

 

[User names must be unique]

what the Internet used to be was a fad that died around 2008, this is the nu-internet designed and curated for the lowliest of nigger cattle.

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

It wasn't a fad so much as it was something full of potential ruined by corporate intervention to the highest degree and the masses having access to it at all times.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

The old WWW was a fad, now most people connect to the Internet to get to a handful of curated social media giants.

At least the Eternal September problem can end.

 

[Based Trees]

The quality of the Internet dropped significantly once smart phones were invented. Before that, having to sit your ass down at a computer seemed to be enough to keep low-effort posters away.

The third-world getting increasing Internet access should also be factored into the continued decline of quality.

Spoiler: The Internet's Downfall

 

[DiscoRodeo]

what the Internet used to be was a fad that died around 2008, this is the nu-internet designed and curated for the lowliest of nigger cattle.

Id say maybe 2016 was the final deathknell to be honest, and maybe around 2012 or 2013 the Wild West side of the web finally started to die off.

Web was best before smartphones though, when niggertechnology started proliferating, that was the start of the end. Still had some fun times till maybe the mid 2010s, but yeah


Monetization of content, the internet being an extension of real life and not a separate destination, noone developing their own websites or servers anymore, that really killed it.

I think the last death knell may have been the early 2010s when you still had a lot of that energy and there were some fun things going on online, but that was more the final home run. 2016 was also basically when social media saw what happened with Trump and then suddenly every website starts getting overregulated and propagandized, and where we're at now is just the cancer coming home stage.

 

[The Punished Mitch]

If/when Kiwifarms shuts down permanently and bossmanjack finally loses it all for the final time I'll have no more use for the internet aside from the boomerest of activities like email and online banking. All the organic joy and interaction has been washed away by censorship, mass consolidation and relentless commercialization.

 

[Drkinferno72]

They killed it in 2007 with the smartphone. Now normies really accessed it

 

[anon483637]

Hopefully AI kills it for real. Metagames each trend into oblivion the moment it appears, to the point no organic community can form, and the next generation of kids grows up not understanding why their parents love starting at screens so much. 20 years later it's impossible to explain a smartphone to a teenager.

 

[Dysnomia]

Hopefully AI kills it for real. Metagames each trend into oblivion the moment it appears, to the point no organic community can form, and the next generation of kids grows up not understanding why their parents love starting at screens so much. 20 years later it's impossible to explain a smartphone to a teenager.

A whole generation of kids whose parents can't teach them to play catch because they've never touched grass.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

No because Paul Krugman is always wrong.

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

More like internet ruined fad.

Internet was a mistake.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Like others said in this thread, "Web 1.0" was kind of a fad. It seems like the days of personal pages and forums like KF seem to be gone, and taking their places is the "honknet" of "Web 2.0" -- heavily censored sites like "social media" sites and Reddit. And "smartphone culture" led to that situation, as well as Clown World in general.

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

Like others said in this thread, "Web 1.0" was kind of a fad. It seems like the days of personal pages and forums like KF seem to be gone, and taking their places is the "honknet" of "Web 2.0" -- heavily censored sites like "social media" sites and Reddit. And "smartphone culture" led to that situation, as well as Clown World in general.

The latter version of the Internet you described is more Web 3.0, where everything is highly centralized and focused on social media and immediate accesibilty. I've seen Web 1.0 and it does have a lot of charm, but the maturation into Web 2.0, where forums for various topics, early video sharing sites like Youtube and Dailymotion and places like Geocities and the various blogsites like LiveJournal/Blogger existed with cool Y2K/mid 2000s Aero web design existed and social media existed but was just one of many flavors of the web instead of all-encompassing to the point that intrudes upon real life. I really wish we stayed in the 2000s in terms of how the Internet functioned. The Internet should only really assist you getting shit done IRL which was the norm and the limit of its reach in that era, not becoming a major facet of it like it is now.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

The latter version of the Internet you described is more Web 3.0, where everything is highly centralized and focused on social media and immediate accesibilty. I've seen Web 1.0 and it does have a lot of charm, but the maturation into Web 2.0, where forums for various topics, early video sharing sites like Youtube and Dailymotion and places like Geocities and the various blogsites like LiveJournal/Blogger existed with cool Y2K/mid 2000s Aero web design existed and social media existed but was just one of many flavors of the web instead of all-encompassing to the point that intrudes upon real life. I really wish we stayed in the 2000s in terms of how the Internet functioned. The Internet should only really assist you getting shit done IRL which was the norm and the limit of its reach in that era, not becoming a major facet of it like it is now.

Web 2.0 is what most people think of when they think of the "old Internet", all of the memes and popular sites originate from back then. It's now 20 or so years since then, incredible to think how much time has passed since YouTube started. Web 2.0 was the perfect balance, useful and helpful but not necessary.

Now we've got ridiculous dumb shit like needing a smartphone and an app for basic functionality. If your phone died you weren't fucked, like I'd be today with our 2FA systems at work.

Simultaneously more complex and more fragile at the same time. Not a good combination.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

The dumbest thing about the term "web 2.0" is that the part of internet that it defines as "web 1.0" has exactly the features of "web 2.0" (interactivity, whether through guestbooks, newsgroups, etcetera). It's like the enlightenment that had to call the previous age "the dark ages" and it took until recently for historians to go "no actually there is no evidence of less scientific discoveries in that period".

Replacing personal websites and blogs with personal vlogs really isn't that different. Just more centralized.

 

[geckogoy]

Replacing personal websites and blogs with personal vlogs really isn't that different. Just more centralized.

TBH I'll admit to being one of the retards that defended the idea that everything centralizing to youtube was fine. Sorry about that.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

TBH I'll admit to being one of the retards that defended the idea that everything centralizing to youtube was fine. Sorry about that.

Centralization always happens. It happened in the wild west, which became a loose confederation of states, which became more like a country with provinces.

It's closer to a force of nature. I remember thinking how unique the experience was of having access to internet in 1996 and even in 1999 I realized that it was a grace period that it was going to change and not be as wild west at one point. I just tried to enjoy it while it lasts and now I'm here reminiscing with you old farts.

 

[Butterschmalz]

Internet was invented as a communication channel for military purposes. And now its just a huge porn pipe. Works as intended.