That’s not it at all. The internet used to be a multitude of small sites. A true bazaar made by individuals, visited by individuals in their web browsers.
Now it is all the 5 biggest platforms trapping users in their apps and doing their best to wall everything off.
some things about AIM are better. on discord, you express yourself with a monthly fee and now the member list is full of distracting animations. on AIM (and myspace), you had to learn some HTML to format the song lyrics in your bio just right.
People used to have social lives and meet and make friends and go out before apps or broadband. In the dialup days the internet was an addition to an already completed life. Facebook and iPhone was where things started to go to shit. Suddenly everyone was permanently online instead of just the cool people. And their brains all went to mush and they forgot how to relate to other people and have a life.
Really, because I’m more nostalgic for having hope for the future.
Well, then the Internet wasn’t a capitalist shithole. It was only a shithole.
I almost cried reading the explanation.
Fuck that, I’m nostalgic because there was an actual aesthetic with character. “Modern” flat UIs are boring and flat.
“Nostalgia” is not really reserved for great times, just different times. Is just reminiscing.
In addition, AIM was great at the time because it was the first “messenger”. It was instant without the clunky and slow interface of email that for some reason we continue using 30 years later. It’s not better in any way.
clunky and slow interface of email that for some reason we continue using 30 years later
Email is actually great, it’s the original fediverse - anyone can start a server and interoperate with everyone else. With a decent client it doesn’t need to be clunky either, although with 90% of people stuck in webmail I can understand why people think it sucks.
It’s not great at all. It’s messy and disorganized and confusing and very much not private, and people don’t use it properly. No client can fix that. If it was “the original fediverse” we wouldn’t need a new one.
I could only get AOL in my town back in 1995 or so. Back then you had to pay… by the hour? The minute? Something like that. And AOL wasn’t a 24 hour service, it would shut down each night and kick everyone off.
No, it’s because it wasn’t full of bots and shitty content created solely for the purpose of generating clicks. People created content to have fan and share their passion, not because they wanted to be a professional influencer.
everybody knows its the nostalgia for GEOCITIES AESTHETIC
-Under Construction-
For the majority of people the internet used to be a room, a place you went and accessed a device.
The device wasn’t mobile, we usually didn’t carry around the thick laptops of the time around.
At first using the device would disconnect the phone, and you couldn’t carry it around easily.
As times changed and it’s mobility shifted it became more and more commercially viable and then it was invaded by corporate interests.
Now it’s not just a room, it’s everywhere and it’s allows all sorts of powerful groups to exert influence over every single person that connects with it
Tbh the indieweb and fediverse have me feeling this way these days. I look forward to getting home and checking my forums and messages, just like I used to after school.
Do you have any recommendations for good forums?
Search your hobbies, there are tons that are still around and busy. Some that i like to visit are grassrootsmotorsports.com and hobby-machinest.com, but you can just search for “%hobby% forum” and you’ll probably find something decent.
This and the old internet was largely non-commercial compared to today. It was the “small” internet of passionate nerds, academics, and techies who needed an outlet for their passion. I remember being confused when I learned the “.com” was intended for commercial web sites only, because most personal websites people had were “.com”
The old internet was decidedly anti-commercial.
I remember very well people being revolted by online advertising and how it commercialized a free place.
They were right.
yeah once you found a niche community you had knowledgeable people that would at least reply by the weekend, and expert advice would be free just because some guy was happy a stranger liked the same things.
You just had to be confidently wrong enough to aggro the guy that actually knows his shit.
Maybe that strat was always around but I associate it more with the later 2.0 web
