Old Internet Reminiscence - Where did it all go?

[Meriasek]

I miss pre 2007 internet.

God yes. If only because websites were less bloated and didn't require you to click away at least three things (usually cookie consent, desktop notifications, and newsletter) every damn time.
People were also marginally smarter, and more importantly, people were not online 24/7.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

Because the old internet belonged to gen x and 80's born Millennials who knew how to have fun on the internet. The old internet was outlandish and an absolute ball.

When the Boomers got online and then the over emotional Gen Z the fun was over.

 

[LeroyJenkem]

Normalfags ruined the internet, then turned around and used the internet to ruin everything else.

 

[Yuri_]

boomers shit their pants laughing over this in the late 90s

 

[Dom Cruise]

One of the more impressive things about the internet in the 2000s was the fact that there were so many dedicated fan sites, name any anime or video game and there was a pretty good chance there was a well done fan site dedicated to it, even stuff that is totally obscure and forgotten today had an entire fan site and fan forum back then.

Today at best you'll get a throw away wikia and the forums are either ghost towns or deactivated completely.

 

[AnaphylacticShock]

The people who ruined the internet have always been on the internet. The coastal elite and corporate CEO types. Don't blame the people who got on the internet after smartphones became a thing. True, most don't have the curiosity to explore outside of social media, Amazon, bank website etc. But it's not really their fault that TPTB have created this boxed in, small internet. If you don't have a lot of experience with the internet before, it's hard to "break out" of. And increasingly, less places to go.

 

[Meat Target]

Remember old Facebook? There were groups dedicated to calling someone in your class a fatass or a faggot.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

Does anyone remember that dutch girl with the absolutely amazing voice in the early days of youtube? I remember she amassed a ton of fans doing covers of songs and I believe she was signed to a record label. I loved the rising star element of youtube back in those days as the people who gained popularity back in those days did so on their talent.

 

[Ronnie McNutt]

big corps ruined the internet by turning everything into a neverending competition

and your grandma has internet now, too many normalfags has interwebz now although i don't think most of them use it for alot other than honeypots like tiktok or faceberg

 

[Land of Noz]

Does anyone remember that dutch girl with the absolutely amazing voice in the early days of youtube? I remember she amassed a ton of fans doing covers of songs and I believe she was signed to a record label. I loved the rising star element of youtube back in those days as the people who gained popularity back in those days did so on their talent.

Even Justin Bieber I believe got "discovered" on youtube in like 2007 or 2008 or something. Very weird to think of Bieber was the first "youtube star"

 

[Lemmingwise]

Money ruins everything. I imagine early radio was just as magical. Now stations own waves in most countries.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Money ruins everything. I imagine early radio was just as magical. Now stations own waves in most countries.

There goes the last v-logger

 

[Trigger Me Timbers]

I wonder if the classic woke blue haired tumblarinas will reminisce about 2014 internet the same way we think about pre-Facebook internet.

“oh it was a great time on the internet, all you had to do was call someone fascist or racist on Twitter and within a week they would have been banned and lost everything. ahh the good old days…”

 

[Max Free]

You can thank smart phones. Before that you needed a PC to get online, and that was a barrier to entry for the sort of people who destroyed the internet.

Funny. Not that long ago I blamed native network support of mainboards and the PPPoE-protocol, that replaced the dial-up process of modems for that. Without having to open their computer to install a 56k-moden, configure it correctly and then dial the correct number to get online, the first great wave of stupidity could be already felt in the 2000s.
The setup also made you feel like a total nerd. Not everyone could do that, and back then you knew that.

 

[whatever I feel like]

I miss competently run shock sites like Rotten.com/the Daily Rotten (and the Rotten Library!), Liveleak, the original goatse, etc. Even the "cesspit" of early gen Youtube and like others have said unfiltered Google search.

But the thing I miss most of all is the Blackface Kermit video of him and Mister Metokur prank calling tranny hookers and "jokingly" threatening to cut off their heads. "My poop is friendly." bwwahaha


And in all fairness, there was also a lot of shit to wade through, like fifty Dragonball Z "fan sites" that all stole the same content from each other (enjoy our Goku killing Pikachu gif collection!) and ran articles talking about how much more pure HK fansubs full of swearing were. I don't miss that early internet.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The internet was somewhat ruined by "smartphone culture" combined with "social media culture", which also led to Current Year.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Also YouTube enforcing strict copyright. Fuck YouTube.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

I didn't start using the internet till 2000 with my own computer and 56k dial-up modem. Back in the 90's I never had a PC so I couldn't use the internet. Matter of fact the only time I used it was at a friends house who was lucky enough to own a computer and had internet access. I am talking about the late 90's like 1997-1999. The first time I saw the internet was in 97. I never used it I just watched my friend use it and it was only for a few minutes.

The internet pre social media and smartphones was ok. But the internet didn't really get fun till you have sites like YouTube come along. Till then it was all text and shitty websites. 56k dial-up was slow as hell. Also, the porn sucked. I mean it was still porn but there was no Pornhub or Xhamster. Sitting around with a shitty dial-up modem downloading like small clips of porn that took ages. But people still managed to have fun on the internet back then. Before Myspace and the social media cancer came along there was chatrooms. I used to use Yahoo chat. It was the only place you could go and call someone a nigger or faggot and watch some 28 year old woman sitting in front of her webcam sipping a beer with her tits out. That was for free and not some internet whore shit. They were not ugly fat women either.

A lot of things kind of killed the internet or made it worse. Smartphones, tablets and social media played a role of course. But so did the user friendliness of computers. Older computers and I mean even ones from the early 2000's were not that normie friendly. Like they took some level of intelligence to operate and not screw up. But that's kind of how things progress. They steadily get easier to use. Smartphones and tablets just made it happen much faster.

I think the one thing people miss the most about the old internet was the freedom of speech platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter used to have. I remember using forums in the mid 2000's and I don't ever remember being able to say whatever I wanted. I know because I got banned on a lot of forums for saying certain things. But it kind of varied from forum to forum. Like some forums would let you use some vulgar language as long as it wasn't too excessive. Then some wouldn't allow it at all and even some wouldn't allow the discussion of religion or politics. Most forums didn't allow any racism or homophobic slurs. You could say them but most people would report you and you would be banned, Usually it was a temporary ban and it was 24 hours then after that 2-3 days a week or month then a permanent ban. I got a few permanent bans back then.

People who like to talk about the "golden age" of the internet always talk about all the freedom of speech it had but I don't remember it that way. People only had the freedom of speech that they had on sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter because those sites had huge numbers of users and it's hard to moderate such large user bases. On a small forum with maybe 150-200 users, it's much easier to moderate than a site with millions and millions of users. They didn't have a good way to moderate every post and so on. They didn't have the AI tech that they have now. AI combing through every post to make sure you don't say anything wrong. AI looking over your videos to make sure you don't post inappropriate content that will violate the TOS or copyrighted material. If they could have had the AI tech back then though in the late 2000's and early 2010's they would have used it. But they didn't so there was more freedom.

The internet used to be like the old Wild West and like the Wild West it got tamed. But instead of civilization and law enforcement it was AI.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

I forgot the biggest internet killer of all.

Reddit.

Reddit killed the forums. There used to be a bunch of video game forums on the internet. Now they are all mostly dead or nearly dead. Like the activity is so slow a thread can stay somewhere near the top for days.

I hate Reddit and only use when I have to and it's not often. I avoid using it as much as I can. I remember in the mid and late 2000's there were forums all over the place and they were pretty active. But by the early 2010's they all started to die. It's not like the forums offered any level of free speech. Going over to Reddit wasn't that much of a change.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

Member spamming fake links with meatspin in them?

I member.

It was fantastic.