“Internet” here is appropriate too. Although he’s reminiscing about mid ‘90s websites, most of that was still an extension of the amateur, interest-driven culture (and counter culture) that was prevalent across Usenet, gopher, and ftp sites prior to the web’s domination and conflation with “Internet”
> What had I missed from the 90s that didn't make it into the 00s?
IRC was a big one. Back when you hopped on a server, typed in #cityname, and joined a lively realtime conversation with folks in your area. That was cool.
I’m too young for usenet, but I’ve been hearing about how cool and amazing it was for like 25 years now. Apparently the web never quite managed to capture that magic.
I remember the days growing on dialup using AOL and 'WoW(? i think)' this is much better
there's collaborative fiction and art all over the place, people easily talking and sharing their work and hobbies from homebrewing and math to the wookiepedia, gamejams, SCP, game mods, whatever is it kids do in minecraft and roblox even when it comes the mainstream there's stuff like (blockclub, the athletic ..etc ..etc ..etc)
If anything I think what all of these "old internet" articles illude to is the authors feeling nostalgic for when they were part of what they considered to be counter-culture or lost interests they want to burry themselves in
Looking at Google Groups, my first post to Usenet was in 1993. So yeah, I know something about early consumer Internet culture. Even then sock puppets were frowned upon.
I seem to recall reading articles like this in 1997 about the internet.
“What’s there to do really?” they asked. Whatever annoyance somebody had with the state of the early web was magnified into a portrait of decline.
It was only for nerds. Or maybe too shallow with ugly amateur content. Or too commercialized already. Or maybe it was never going to be a successful platform for business because nobody is crazy enough to put their credit card number in an online form. Etc.
These contradictory complaints were all present back in the day, but in retrospect there was so much room for both technical and social growth that they just seem quaint now.
Exactly - the internet had been a big contributor to online culture through the 70s. Of course this stuff all had precursors in things like ham radio, model trains, etc. but it's not really sensible to identify those as "online". Nothing springs from the void.
Nice to get called "young man" though, it's been a while :)
"I wanted something that expressed the fun I had using the internet, as well as hit on the skill, and yes, endurance necessary to use it well."
I miss how fun the internet used to be. There is something lost with the current torrent of entertainment that is readily fed through popularity based algorithms. Hacker news is about as close as I get to that feeling, but it’s not the same since it’s completely hub and spoke. Youtube can come close in a similar way, if you stay away from shorts. But, what I really miss, is how often I found myself falling off the web into other places on the internet. gopher and telnet and archie. There were these other places to explore, and because the net was so much smaller it made sense to explore.
FWIW, I’ve had a similar sensation playing on a shared minecraft server recently, the stuff people build is so varying and interesting.
Absolutely true, but I would say that MUDs and IRC and Usenet are the definition of pre-Internet boom culture. It was a big deal when my parents were able to get online and use a browser to engage with other people. My dad could have been playing chess online via IRC and email for years, but it wasn't until he had a browser that it was within his technical comfort level.
Juggling websites in the 90s is my history with the internet that so many seem to be nostalgic for. An advancement in a hobby going straight from colleges to a 10-year-old in a small town via unstyled html.
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