Why does the internet feel less special and interesting now than it did in the mid 00s

[Ginger Piglet]

Because internet is not a fun place anymore.
People are patrolling other people for lynching in case they say "wrong things" and internet lynching are turning to IRL lyinching more often, with the encouraging of media and "influencers" (I hate this word). And internet turned into a Most Miserable Life Contest. Like, you make a post saying you like your life, then a bunch of people come to you to say you have privilege, you're opressing and things like that. Even a dog photo can be target of problematization by bitter people.

What is needed, though I don't think it'll happen, is something like this to go down:

- Person says something mildly problematic on twatter
- Outrage mob whipped up
- Outrage mob doxes person and their employer and demands that they be fired.
- Employer is vaguely influential or large, but not necessarily a household name
- Employer tells outrage mob to FRO, and that they do not accept harassment of their staff on or offline
- Outrage mob tries to boycott employer
- Employer sticks to guns, saying they do not negotiate with terrorists
- Employer sues elements of mob over harassment in order to send a message
- Majority of mob, who probably have something to lose, buggers off

Unfortunately it won't happen in my profession, because the Law Society would be more than happy to throw an individual solicitor under the bus over things like this.

 

[JM 590]

The internet of 2000 - 2007 felt so unique and special, it felt like a magical land of imagination and creativity.
And no none of this has anything to do with novelty because when I visit these pages from 2007 and so I still feel exactly the same as I did back then.

Because internet is not a fun place anymore.
People are patrolling other people for lynching in case they say "wrong things" and internet lynching are turning to IRL lyinching more often, with the encouraging of media and "influencers" (I hate this word). And internet turned into a Most Miserable Life Contest. Like, you make a post saying you like your life, then a bunch of people come to you to say you have privilege, you're opressing and things like that. Even a dog photo can be target of problematization by bitter people.

also this

The word "faggot" used to just be a generic insult, implying someone was wimpy and worrying about superficial happenings. There wasn't a homophobic context to it at all, and I'm not really sure how "faggot" became regarded as homophobic. It had more or less died out around the early 2010s, but it was ironically brought back to life by tumblrinas screech into their caramel macchiatos, now being considered one of those super horrible words that dare not be said. And considering there's no reasoning with those faggots, and since they tend to be the type to suck up to authority until they're put in authoritative positions, it's now one of those words that'll get you in hot water on any platform that's more toxic than a radioactive sewer.

You can see the Zerg-like creep of SJWs slowly taking over the internet as you start to see the use of the word "faggot" shift over the years.

Because you had less options so whatever you had seemed better. Go back to VHS and tell me it was great. It wasn't. Same principle.

I do miss cheap, recordable media. USB drives and hard drives are such an eggs-in-one-basket situation where you can lose so much if something goes wrong, and cloud storage is for faggots.

 

[UH 157]

Partly because you were younger, partly because the internet had a feeling of underground freedom back then and now you just feel the constant oppression of being watched by google while you masturbate.

Also you damn shitlord kids these days where your idea of forum culture is just taking a meme and running it into the fucking ground.

 

[TiggerNits]

Partly because you were younger, partly because the internet had a feeling of underground freedom back then and now you just feel the constant oppression of being watched by google while you masturbate.

Also you damn shitlord kids these days where your idea of forum culture is just taking a meme and running it into the fucking ground.

Man, I'm an old BBS poster, but at the same time, the meme shit now isn't much worse than it was in 2001. Just look at all your base, Mr T ate my balls and "I kiss you" that shit was all ran in to the ground so hard it prepared us subconciously for 9/11. It's just the communities were smaller so you could escape it. Now everything connects back thanks to Facebook, twitter, Imgur, reddit and Instagram being wildly incestuous.

 

[PL 001]

The word "faggot" used to just be a generic insult, implying someone was wimpy and worrying about superficial happenings. There wasn't a homophobic context to it at all, and I'm not really sure how "faggot" became regarded as homophobic.

I'm probably wrong here, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but the story I've heard goes that a faggot was a bundle of kindling used to start fires. When the Nazis were executing homosexuals, they would mock them, calling them faggots as they were burned alive.

That said, I agree with you, and I'm a gay dude who tells people to stop acting like faggots if they're being annoying/wimpy/whatever. This has not endeared me well to the LGBTOMGWTFBBQHAXORZ crowd.

 

[JM 590]

I'm probably wrong here, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but the story I've heard goes that a faggot was a bundle of kindling used to start fires. When the Nazis were executing homosexuals, they would mock them, calling them faggots as they were burned alive.

That said, I agree with you, and I'm a gay dude who tells people to stop acting like faggots if they're being annoying/wimpy/whatever. This has not endeared me well to the LGBTOMGWTFBBQHAXORZ crowd.

That's interesting, but does sound like a big stretch. You were mocking those you were executing by calling them the word you were using for the kindling? What?

My best guess was that since a faggot archaically means "a bundle of sticks", it meant, like, penises. Alluding to the promiscuousness that some gay men practice. I haven't heard that anywhere else though, that's a Piss Original.

 

[Lone MacReady]

rampant censorship and banning under nebulous "hate speech" TOS by big tech monopolies, copyright bullshit run amok and of course the subsequent self-censorship that comes out of fear. The net feels less special and interesting because it IS less special and interesting.

 

[PL 001]

That's interesting, but does sound like a big stretch. You were mocking those you were executing by calling them the word you were using for the kindling? What?

My best guess was that since a faggot archaically means "a bundle of sticks", it meant, like, penises. Alluding to the promiscuousness that some gay men practice. I haven't heard that anywhere else though, that's a Piss Original.

I took it as meaning since the kindling was used to fuel the fire, much like the bodies were that the Nazis used, that's why they called them faggots. I don't believe that's where it became known as a slur for gays though, just the story I've heard most often.

Hell, it used to also be a slang term for being tired. Mark Twain used it in Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Tom mentioned being "fagged out" after whitewashing the fence before conning the other kids into doing it.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

Also you damn shitlord kids these days where your idea of forum culture is just taking a meme and running it into the fucking ground.

Apparently you never perused Drew Curtis' Fark.com way back when.

It's where internet funny stuff went to die along with a hefty dose of Wil Wheaton faggotry.

 

[Dick Justice]

Partly because you were younger, partly because the internet had a feeling of underground freedom back then and now you just feel the constant oppression of being watched by google while you masturbate.

Also you damn shitlord kids these days where your idea of forum culture is just taking a meme and running it into the fucking ground.

Apparently you never perused Drew Curtis' Fark.com way back when.

It's where internet funny stuff went to die along with a hefty dose of Wil Wheaton faggotry.

Remember Ebaums World? I'm still trying to forget.

 

[Billy_Sama]

Easy, the 90s had the Space Jam website.

Space Jam

 

[Shibaru]

Honestly tons of factors came into play that ruined the Internet.

-Broadband became more widespread, inviting Political heavy Knuckleheads who have nothing better to do but Whine about the president, Bringing down any sort of Normality

-It’s Not 2008 Anymore, you can no longer kick back with your Core 2 Duo Dell Laptop with a Can of Vault and your Plasma Screen TV Set to G4 anymore, everyone apparently wants Bland Boring Modern Designs and Sodas that focus more on calling it “Zero Sugar” rather than actual Great Taste, Naturally Websites while pleasing to the Next Generation Lack Quirkiness and Differentiation mostly Reserving to Flat bland Boring hues of White or Black.

-Kids. Because parents know the internet Exists, they let Their kids run around the Internet bringing Websites down to kid friendly levels in their wake, soon Stuff like YouTube will outright ban people who aren’t kid Friendly even though yt started as a website for everyone to share content with, Kids Are Slowly Flooding on our favorite Websites without a care in the world to what the website is about.

Honestly I miss those days too and I absolutely hate the current state of the Internet.

 

[plattschwanz]

I miss all the specialised sites that would host content for niche topics.

I remember some Dutch home page that had guides on how to repair old pinball machines, then there were countless forums for the very complex Warcraft III World Editor, a bunch of websites for PC-9800 stuff and so on. Exploring the unfamiliar on websites who each had their own inquie design was pretty exciting back in the day.

Nowadays such sites don't exist anymore or everything is brought into line on a single website, like a subreddit or something, where there's nothing new to explore.

 

[Recoil]

The same reason music sounds less special. You're older and your brain isn't as fresh so things aren't as memorable because a lot of what you know now and take for granted in your day-to-day life was being experienced for the first time back then.

 

[lurk_moar]

I blame PC culture, SWJs, and everyone now including second and third worlders have internet access.

Facebook and reddit remind me of chatrooms where you know nobody.

 

[BenevolenceInDenial]

Progress happened. It's like with music: if you want to find something avant-garde and unique, you gotta look harder, because there's just so much shit ripe for the picking. And since progress happened, its rate decreased, so most innovations and breakthroughs are already in place, so there's very few truly "new" things.

 

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

It sucks because you're in a completely normalized version of the internet. It's made by everyone else for everyone else.

 

[Bad Headspace]

First of all we got used to it.
Second it got mainstream.
Third it got centralized.
Four it got monetized, that is why many places are just simply fake.
Five social media put numbers into social interaction and made it into a race.

Not to mention scale and expectation have changed. People want to have a lot of views and users. Remember when it was cool to have a few comments? Nowadays people mock you if you only have a couple hundred or thousand views on yt. Think about it, that is actually a big number.

 

[Michael_Jordan_Peterson]

The demise of the fun internet came as soon as corporations realized they could make money off of it.

Yes this the most fun website I remember from the old days was stileproject and its forum. It was just a guy as far as I know. He wrote up his own posts and had wierd videos from the internet. The forum was mostly unmoderated, the internet didnt really seem to need moderation back then. I think the most likely culprit is just corporations just wanting websites sanitized to make the most off ad revenue.

 

[Slappy McGherkin]

Yes this the most fun website I remember from the old days was stileproject and its forum. It was just a guy as far as I know. He wrote up his own posts and had wierd videos from the internet. The forum was mostly unmoderated, the internet didnt really seem to need moderation back then. I think the most likely culprit is just corporations just wanting websites sanitized to make the most off ad revenue.

Stileproject was a lot of fun back in the day, as was the early SomethingAwful. Stuff you could read and laugh at on a daily basis. I know SA is still around but is nothing like it used to be. SA used to have the best and funniest Photoshop competitions. They'd post a pic and then everyone would go to work on it and post the results to vote at the end of the week. There were some truly talented choppers there, creative as hell.