Trying to download anything took a whole day, and I got bored fast and went to go skate and hang out with kids from school. Plus I risked getting caught by my parents, not only downloading it. But we had no flash drives, and no CDRs so I couldn't hide it from them.
99% of the time I spent online was talking to girls at school on Yahoo or AIM.
Similar experience with limewire and computer aids, I'd usually download some music and then head out to do something else while I waited. To say the least, with dial up as well, even loading flash videos on newgrounds took several minutes, as opposed to being instantaneous. When I think back on early youtube as well, the lack of accessibility made each new video more of an attraction and something that you had to go out of your way to view, rather than something shoved at you as a way to keep you addicted.
I did have my own computer though, father being a techie, so had the luxury and pox of both knowing how to hide things better, but also having a father who knew how to find them, if he really wanted to go out of his way.
People forget how vanilla pre-2005 internet actually was.
I didn't get to /b/ until around 08. The way I heard about /b/ was one of my edgy nerd buddies telling me to never go there. It was not a place for even the outcasts. It was a place for a very niche group (inb4 secret club). They used porn and gore to keep the kids and normalfags out. Now it just attracts them because they are desensitized and "normal" porn doesn't work anymore. Not many people in 08 were on /b/ solely for porn. Look at /b/ now. That's all it is. It makes me sad and sick. Zoomers think we were just pervy edgelords, and they try to emulate it. They don't understand it was oh so much more than that.
I'm not sure if I would say that the pre-2005 internet was too vanilla, but more that you had to go out of your way to see the more disturbing content. I agree with you here though, in that fetishes and sexuality wern't at the forefront of things, people didn't wear their "degeneracy" (really an overused term, both by edgelords and moralfags) as a badge of honor, and gore wasn't common in discords. When I view zoomer-esque discords, and see an abundance of porn, fetish stuff, gore, and other edgy /b/ esque things, it does disappoint me quite a bit with how
normalized this all is now.
I actually never really liked /b/, the boards that were more interesting around the time were things such as /3/ or /mu/, because they were more hobby oriented.
On the gore and porn being a way to vet people, you're spot on there. It's similar to that Voltaire quote, in that “Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company.” People seem to forget that 4chan used to once be more libertarian in orient and was birthed during the Bush presidency, where slacktivism was more popular in social media, weed was banned and we had people coming to high schools to warn about its dangers, evangelicals were more prominant, and pop-punk bands like green day made everyone sperg out about authority. You even had more left libertarians on the site, though it was certainly more slanted towards people like Ron Paul and laughing at greenday moralfags as well. The vetting factor of having edgy content, nigger, faggot, etc was originally more about "how thin is your skin, and if you are ready to judge that fast, do you really belong here, how willing are you to swim in other currents?". Its just a pity that, in the inverse, you had people who fully embraced the shock content in a more unironic lens, and that shifted the sites culture as well.
Oh and south park. But the crazy thing about that is... I learned a lot of morals and social skills from that.
Really the best show of that generation, imo. There's still a lot of moral lessons that still stick with me from that. I'd say pot and social media (relevant for this zoomer thread) both have the same effect here, and thats what I do worry about with zoomers.
Not going to get too gender crit, but I agree that porn is having a more destabilizing effect on youth, in particular with relationships. When I was working in social media, one of the more disturbing trends that I would notice was younger and younger girls becoming more and more sexual, and very young girls, who I would basically consider kids, talking about BDSM, how their boyfriends expected it, being constantly bombarded by some unrealistic body images, sexualization at an earlier age, etc. As much as I have a distaste of TRAs and consider them to have some very messed up views on gender and sexuality, no wonder so many younger girls are trooning out. Ranting, but, thats really one of the things thats
actually wrong with zoomers and different between generations. Earlier sexualization being further reinforced through social media and easy access to porn, and the expectations that this brings.
The problem is everyone needs internet for work and school so you can’t unplug or cut down the internet like you could in the old days with tv, game systems or home computers. It’s also stupidly cheap to get a shitty smart phone or television these days.
This is one of the things that does frustrate me. Its why I would like to return to a home phone, because I do feel like the expectation with mobile phones is that you are constantly available now, whereas before, when someone called, if I didn't answer they might assume I was out for a walk, busy, away from the phone because of tasks, etc. I enjoy phones being more of a destination, and less of a required partner. To say the least, its the same with computers.
Even if our parents plunked us in front of the tv or NES, we weren’t exposed to strangers from all over the world. We either played games with irl friends or family or watched Sesame Street.
I think that the majority of people weren't exposed to people from around the world, but the big problem here is more that parents just don't teach their kids proper internet safety. ILJ exhibits some of this, in that you shouldn't want photos of yourself floating around online, you should be careful with your internet security, and the people you know from thousands of miles away- be very aware that you are seeing an image of themselves that has been cultivated, is showing their "best side", and may not be who they actually are the majority of the time.
For example, with Chris Chan and ILJ, he was seeing a very cultivated image of her that was not who she truly was, and taken advantage of by proxy of that. You add in that social media created skewed visions of other individuals, very few people post their L's or themselves at their worst, and it really creates a recipe for mental illness and feelings of inadequacy, for all generations. This is all something that the zoomer generation is at the forefront of in a way that our generation wasn't, and the sheer notion that they are constantly in
performative mode online, and the online world bleeds even more so into the real world, is disturbing.
Adults with more internet experience really need to try and find healthier ways for zoomers to integrate themselves into the online world (because you can't just go full luddite, as you just create really stunted individuals who can be naïve in the opposite direction and get their mind fucked in college when they're no longer sheltered), though it may be a loosing battle overall because of how entrenched online infrastructure and current trends are in everything.
