Today’s internet is way worse than the old internet.
I’d rather accidentally stumple onto pain olympics or lemon party than accidentally stumble into a black mirror episode
Anyone remember when CompuServe had these chatrooms or channels that were basically collaboration websites before Geocities blew up? I liked those.
KennyLauderdale! I follow him on Youtube and Bluesky, he’s made some excellent videos about anime and other Japanese shows!
I remember when I got my first 4800baud modem upgrade from my 2400baud modem. So I could connect to my friend’s house who had a sick BBS server.
Old internet:
- Lots of fun places to visit
- “So, first I visit thisite, then click that other link, then click the 3rd link on the right from the bottom up”
- Oh fuck, no, don’t go in THERE
- Hey, another toolbar for my IE toolbar collection!
- Wait, what was that site again?
- Ugh, why won’t this image load?
- No mom, I’m not keeping the phone line busy!
- One login for this forum, another for that forum, another for that other forum…
- Wow, email sure is neat! Instant messaging with anyone in the world!
- weird noises when the mouse hovers certain elements
- BOOBIES!
Current internet:
- tiktok, instagram, google, facebook, amazon
- ANIMATED BOOBIES!
I’m proud to not use any of those current products. Except for google because of google login.
Can I ask what you use instead of youtube?
I feel the opposite. I’m “C-64 dial up BBS” years old. I’m far, far more concerned with the internet today. It’s become destructive on so many levels. The corporatocracy takeover, the enstupidification, AI, troll farms, bots, outright lies, echo chambers willfully and ignorantly forming realities outside of objective truth…
The modern internet is an awful conflagration that everyone is trying to manipulate and control while throwing more fuel on it in an attempt to profit from it.
Goatse is nothing compared the dumpster fire that’s happening.
I’m not fine with it at all.
I’m that many years old too… 1970 represent!
I liked it better when it was just random people coming together to talk about whatever random shit you were into. It felt so much more inclusive. Like no matter how weird your hobby was, somebody out there was into it as well… or sharing very funny stories like the creation of overly engineered toasters. Or putting a camera on a coffee pot to check if there was fresh coffee. Or the stories of the BOFH.
Now it’s too controlled, monetized, enshittified, homogenized, etc. It’s not about people connecting anymore or creating content that people actually want and learn from. With all the AI generated bullshit, it’s likely not even created by people anymore. At least with goatse, tub girl, or lemon party you knew that was actual people… not sure if that’s better or worse actually. But somebody created it for others to “enjoy”… well experience might be a better word here. But you get the idea. It was people coming together because they wanted to. They enjoyed it. Now it’s all scams, rage-bait, and algorithms created to drive engagement. It’s almost like it isn’t fun anymore.
But there are places that still remind me of the old internet. Lemmy for example. It’s not exactly the same but it shares its DNA.
It certainly was more egalitarian. Geocities or MySpace were kinda examples. Anyone could make their own space, often for free.
Most content today is crap, and the rest is someone stealing or reacting to that crap, ad nauseam. Though TBF if anyone remembers the early days of youtube or other platforms it was full of stupid stuff too, but it was “lookit me, lol!” for likes rather than ad-riddled garbage that somehow people expect to be taken seriously for.
Goatse or 2g1c was our clickbait, and nobody tried to sell you anything or make it any more than it was. It was garbage and we knew it.
Agreed. Been on FIDO, been on BITNET before I went on the internet - way before the web. Way before the eternal September. People today cannot even start to imagine how the net was back then. Forget “six degrees”, maximum distance was maybe three. You basically knew everyone, or you knew someone who did.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Saddam Hussein’s hanging. BME pain olympics. A midget in a ET suit having sex with a giant spider. Meatspin. All these things will be lost, like tears in the rain.
Time to fry.
Gadafi getting knife fucked and killed in that crowd was a big one too.
I saw the Saddam hanging, too. I also saw Daniel Shaver get shot.
deleted by creator
I find it interesting because the BME Pain Olympics was mostly done with plasticine and the like for shock value
I create performance art with my dick which isn’t gore (I’m not going to hurt my dick!) and I’m often accused of using AI
People are simultaneously skeptical and also ridiculously credulous, depending on what they want to believe
Reads username: FistingEnthusiast
I guess that checks out
My Goatse sense is tingling
You’re the man now, dog!
Oh that brought some shit back from the fiery depths of my childhood memories
Does anyone remember discharges.org? A fucking weird corner of the internet.
BME Pain Olympics
I have a clip of Indestructible Man on my phone, because that dude is a legend!
I’m really confused what this could be referring to.
Because the folks who’ve been around the longest and remember the early days of the Internet are currently in utter dismay over how their fun international sandbox has become a Black Mirror-esque horror show, while everyone else seems to just shrug and obediently upload their face scans so they can watch AI videos of uncanny-valley cats playing cruel pranks on facsimiles of political figures in-between unskippable ads for applying to be an ICE agent under promises that it’ll be like COD but in your own backyard with living, breathing brown people.
I’m also clueless and don’t understand what the OP is talking about - who is having a mental breakdown and why? And aren’t the millennials who are the only tech and internet literate generation exactly the people having a mental breakdown over the way the internet is going? I’m so confused, I need more context.
Spot fucking on. The people who’ve watched it grow then wither are the most bitter because we saw what it could have become
I’ll never forget John C. Dvorak’s 2006 article from PC Mag, where he argued that we were living in the Golden Age of the Internet, and to enjoy it while it lasts, before it ends up overcommercialized like what happened to radio. I only half believed it at the time, but I see now that he was 100% spot on with that prediction. (Snippet here; can’t find a scan of the entire article.)
I’ve been on since BBS’s , I was just starting to understand it a little then it expanded to browsers, then there was the FTP’s to share pirated software, ICQ to meet people from all over the world it was good.
Then it went to shit, the only good thing is that torrents have been keeping my media free.
I miss IRC. I met really cool people there. From nowadays social networks almost nobody. Not sure what is the difference, maybe it helps that I do not want to link my real person to social networks.
Dude, you don’t have to miss IRC, you can just hop back in. Its still great. A little less people but once you find a couple of channels its excellent.
Just few months ago I came back to my old IRC channels about my hobbies. All empty except the one from my city, that is used only by men to find sex, 0 conversation.
Oh yeah the old ones we used to hang out in are long gone. I found new ones.
Even though I’m not the owner or admin of this place, I feel like I can invite you to have a look around. Relevant info and a webchat can be found here: https://inthemansion.com/
Statistically speaking, most people alive for the days of the early internet are significantly better off than younger generations. That’s my guess, that whoever posted this is comfortably oblivious to the class war
But if you’ve been around long enough and have been reading and paying attention to history, you shouldn’t be surprised because the ruling class is literally doing what they have always done.
The US has not changed, their ruling class has been raping and eating people and children since its inception, but people ignore that history or aren’t taught it because it was done to slaves.
Slavery never ended, it just changed names and presentation to for-profit prisons.
Idk if we are desensitized or just not surprised because we could see it coming
I was assuming OP means all those gross out pics/vids, or the death/violent stuff. Those pain olympics were something else, and I couldn’t finish 2 girls 1 cup.
Not just me then
This my brother.
Man, I’ve been on the “internet” since before it had pictures or videos or sound . When each “website” was a different phone number, and if more than a few people were visiting it, you had to wait and call back later. Just to read in green (or amber) text on a black screen, someone’s comments on some old post, and weeks & weeks of comment threads.
It was amazing.
Am I upset about the state of the internet today? Not really. It’s evolving, getting worse in some ways, better in others. I’m still interested to see what it grows into. I have my own hopes as to what it will become, but I’m sure I’ll be surprised at the direction it takes.
Am I upset about the state of the internet today? Not really.
You somehow witnessed corporate interests encircle and subvert the internet’s wonderful idyllic culture into the torment nexus of capitalist control and propaganda and you’re not upset?
We also have witnessed humans rebel against that and create a new decentralized internet that we are currently using
Idk i have faith in weird and creative people who refuse to follow rules
Idk i have faith in weird and creative people who refuse to follow rules
Ramen, let us be blessed by his noodley appendages.
Well, a legion of bots ended the new Digg beta test despite their best efforts. It came as a surprise to the company.
It was really sudden! I was on that version of Digg (what was it, the 4th?) and one day I opened the page and it was just a message that they were laying off a bunch of people and shutting the site down to try to figure out what to do about all the bots. All the users, all their communities, all their posts and comments, gone. I think they aren’t going to be able to do anything without a mechanism for strong trust, and a revocable one. The most trustworthy account in the world could start spewing slop around at any moment.
Ah well. It had many many fewer users than Lemmy anyway!
Budd Dwyer
You also never clicked an advert or used your real name.
Please tell me that people aren’t clicking ads…
Enough are doing it that it’s still profitable. Last estimates I saw were 10% who saw an ad clicked one, and 10% of those who clicked bought what they saw
That’s just hard to fathom for me. Wow.
It’s actually been dropping over time. It used to be more like 10%, now I see some people celebrating 0.4% conversation rate. What’s also been happening in conjunction is the cost has dropped. On like Facebook and stuff now you can serve like 1000 impressions for like $5 or something. I don’t know exact numbers on cost there but stupid low like 0.10¢ per clicked ad.
Across a lot of media, impressions are so cheap now they don’t even charge for them, just the clicks cost (“CPC” is the charge type, “cost per click”). They track impressions to give advertisers metrics on conversion rates, but they don’t charge for them.
1% of ad views result in a sale? That seems implausible
The terms you want to search of you’re curious “Click through Rate” and “Conversion Rate”. It’s actually been falling over time as people get more and more used to ignoring ads or using ad blockers. They vary some for type of product and location of ad (fantasy novels on a book blog are likely to be higher, drop ship Amazon stuff on Facebook are likely to be lower), but yeah, not super high.
The thing is, I do not honestly object to ads - the internet has got to be paid for somehow…
My objection is the way that ads are served. It’s the creepy stalking users far and wide across the web that irks me.
This targeted bullshit. No, no and NO!
I’m more likely when I am on any given site - to check out an ad that is discrete, static and embedded and shows up regardless of the ad blocker I use.
That is different.
At that point, I’m seeing something that another person or business that runs the site has made a decision to advertise, it may be a product or service they like and use.
The rest of it though… can rot.
I can’t believe people don’t figure out the 30 seconds of looking it up it takes to not see ads. Worse, some people get confused at why the page looks different if you install them a blocker.
From an actual conversation I had once:
“What’s your problem with adds, I love them. They always recommend things I could actually use. It’s genuinely a great way for me to learn about new products or services.”
Sure. Fundamentally, this is what ads should do. The problem comes from how intrusive they are in pushing their propaganda. And now they’re literally everywhere.
I remember back in the day before browser tabs when sites would open new windows for ads. And sometimes those ads would open more windows for ads. And some of those windows had sound, or porn, or both. Worse yet, some would open off screen so you couldn’t easily close them. That’s where the term “pop-up” came from in pop-up blockers.
~Talk about whack-a-mole.~
Even Youtube is filled with scam ads, trusting ads to deliver you worthwhile results is like trusting Facebook not to sell your data to the highest bidder.
Wait… you’re watching youtube w/o an ad-blocker?
I haven’t seen a YT ad in more than a decade, I did happen to watch this Coffeezilla video yesterday on AI deepfake ads.
Do we know the same people? I asked the two who said this if they actually click on the ads and buy something. You can imagine my horror when they said yes. Meanwhile, I have a Pihole on my network and uBlock on every single browser.
The average person has magic black rectangle for worldwide interaction. That’s the extent of their knowledge, cookies are a foreign concept if they don’t come straight out of the oven
do you live within c-suite boardroom powerpoint presentation
This was definitely in a corporate setting lmao
I sometimes do it if it’s a company I really dislike. Then I immediately click back, happy in the knowledge that my brief action probably cost that company a tiny bit of money.
(Side note: I’m an early Internet user.)
Are you one of those people that returned empty prepaid junk mail flyers? ;)
Every time! I usually filled the envelope with whatever other rubbish I could fit in it too.
🤝
I’ve clicked a few. Mostly by accident, the rest by deception.
I used to click ads on websites I liked back in the aughts
My wife does. I throw it back in her face whenever she gets wide ‘you click the ads’
I don’t even see the ads anymore, just the close button. My eyes just slide off the edges.
“…the AOL days…”
That funny feeling when AOL users consider themselves the experienced, wisened ones.
I mean aol stared in 1989 it’s been here pretty much from the start.
I think only those who used AOL use it as a milestone. Those who used AOL were poorly regarded. It was a sanitized version of the internet.
