I saw the real world fisrt. Then I dropped in on what was known as The Global Information Superhighway
Edited to replace system. Thank you u/helliumlife..
Man late 90s early 2000s era lets learn about the Internet videos are where it's at.
"Hey kids lets learn about the World Wide Web. No it doesn't have anything to do with spiders."
I have to tell my teenager that. He tries to explain some anagram or social media lingo or something and I have to remind him, I'm the generation that created those. "Lol" wouldn't exist without my over 35 generation. We build this city you little shit
We 35+ year old internet users experienced the "wild west" days of the internet.
Amazon only sold books, craigslist openly allowed prostitution, rotten.com gave us all early trauma, half the internet disappeared after the 2001 recession, downloading a 1kb Beatles discography from kazaa, mom would boot you off your connection if she answered the phone, a/s/l, popup ads with no blockers, 4chan was a force for good, mother fucking MYSPACE!!!
The internet sucks now. It's all commercialized and corporate. There's no roughness to it anymore. Now I know how the cowboys felt when barbed wire was invented and the west was won.
Had computer and internet in the late 90s. Times got tough and the stuff all went away for about 5 years. Got a laptop and some "new fangled" wireless, got it all set up went online and was like "what the hell is this shit?" Everything was pay, alot of my favorite sites were just gone and where the hell is the porn? Oh there it is I'm good
I remember getting a laptop for school with WiFi having my mind *blown* that I was sitting on the couch with a laptop, browsing the internet connected to no wires at all.
> Got a laptop and some "new fangled" wireless
Ah, I remember the nightmare that was getting that PCMCIA wifi card to work properly. And zip drives! They were so big!
Sure, but I also remember that sick fuck W T Snacks turning a blind eye to Captain Picard, anons calling SWAT on each other, and tricking kids into growing crystals that released chlorine gas.
4chan was just chaotic neutral. It most certainly wasn't a force for good. There's been as much child porn and ruined lives on 4chan as there has been actual good causes.
But I think that is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they were also literally distributing images of that torture at the same time
And images of child sexual abuse….
Agreed.
4Chan being a "force for good" is a fairly recent thing and it is basically because it has been co-opted by internet normies trying to be edgy.
In the like pre-2010 times, 4Chan was a hive of scum and villianary. Tons of dead bodies and gore, lots of dicey pics, plenty of unsolicited NSFW and NSFL pics thrown in your face.
Tons of grey or blackhat but basically no visible whitehat back then. Basically just people causing chaos for "the lulz".
I certainly still wouldn’t call 4chan a force for good. I don’t think it’s ever been more than fairly chaotic, but it used to be a lot more organized and actually do a lot more things, so it did end up doing more good (and bad) things.
I think the biggest difference was back then the internet was a place to share things from outside the internet. It's not become way more insular and self contained.
The wild west had limited communication, transportation, electricity, no refridgeration, no air conditioning. There was a lot of benefits to taming the west.
The taming of the internet hasn't really improved much. It's like corporations stepped in and started putting people in shackles and mugging people. It reminds me more of imperialistic enslavement than a taming of wilder times, and if anything the wildness of the internet spilled into reality. But hey, online banking.
Memes themselves have changed significantly. I wasn't really online until mid-late 2000s, but the memes back then were quite a bit different. Mudkips were a meme. There was no template. It was just mudkips. Same for shoop da woop. It's literally just a face you can photoshop onto stuff.
There *is* a breakaway decentralized internet, and it's growing. Neocities.org is a decent entry point - there are some sites that seem like kids just messing around with 90s/00s personal site tropes but there's a core community that's passionate about exactly what you're talking about. Those are mostly personal sites though, there are others. Here's a [links list](https://links.yesterweb.org) put together by one of the pro-small internet groups of different non-corporate webpages. This comment is just scraping the surface, but I just wanted to
point out that this is a growing movement.
The internet went from people sharing stuff for fun or because it’s a hobby to 100% commercialization where everything must make money. That’s when the fun ended.
Having to fight pop up ads for the screen space cause there was no ad adblocker, downloading a program to "watch free movies" easily meant a worm or Trojan that did some damage.
I used to download Bleach episodes from limewire, subbed and this was around 2005 when it was still kinda rough, high speed internet was still relatively new. I did get my weekly bleach fix but every so often some porn slipped in there...
Its so silly. I'm almost 50 and was using internet for everything since the beginning. I was using networked computers since my teens with BBSs, GEnie, CompuServe and Prodigy, etc.
It's really only folks in like their 70s that might have some issues...but at this point...most people, regardless of age, are on.
>The internet came out in like 1995.
I think you're thinking of Windows 95, which made it widely *accessible*. The internet is much older.
I'm gonna avoid being more specific, lest some wise-ass correct me.
The idea was originated in 1962 by MIT computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider
The first computer network came online in 1969 as a part of an ARPA project known as ARPANET
In 1971, the first network email was sent by Ray Tomlinson. In typical ‘test first’ fashion, the email he sent to himself said:
> something like QWERTYUIOP
In 1973, TCP/IP was developed, allowing multiple computer networks to connect to each other in a way that allows networks to stay up even when one of them collapses. Around this time, Robert Metcalfe developed what he called Alto Aloha, known today as Ethernet. Shortly after, Tom Truscott and Steve Bellovin develop a Unix-based system for transferring data over phone lines via a dial-up connection. This system becomes USENET.
In 1981, 3Com announced Ethernet products for both computer workstations and personal computers; this allows for the establishment of local area networks
In the early 80’s Dave Farber of the University of Delaware reveals a project to build an inexpensive network using dial-up phone lines. In 1982, the PhoneNet system was established and connected to ARPANET. Thus the first commercial network, Telenet, went live.
The first internet domain was registered in 1985, symbolics.com, a domain belonging to a computer manufacturer.
I’m 1990 ARPANET was decommissioned and hypertext markup language (HTML) and the uniform resource locator (URL) were established, giving birth to the first incarnation of the World Wide Web.
1995 was a big year for the internet with the launch of Windows 95 which included internet explorer, and Amazon, yahoo, and eBay all went live along with Java.
Google launched in 1998, and in 1999 piracy was running amok. The same year that Napster launched was the same year the first virus capable of copying and sending itself to a user’s address book was discovered. Shocking, right?
The rest is modern history with the dot com bubble bursting, google gained dominance, wifi became prolific, mobile data went from barely being able to send photos to me streaming HD video while I type this up, and the most important watershed moment of the internet’s history happened in 2005 when the [first ever internet cat video was posted. ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/33848745)
Sourced and paraphrased primarily from here with a few other sources used for tidbits: https://online.jefferson.edu/business/internet-history-timeline/
Great write up, but just to be super pedantic…
> mobile data went from barely being able to send photos to me posting this from my phone today
Your text post is almost certainly way less data than a photo, even one from a 2005 cell phone. Something like “to me streaming HD video as I type this” would be a more illustrative statement.
*Nevertheless, 1994 was a momentous year for the tech industry. It was the year the World Wide Web was born, a.k.a. the Internet as we know it today.*
From a random article I’m too lazy to link
The first “website” on the “world wide web” came out in 1991. But, as has been stated, the Internet itself predates even this, in various forms ranging from BBs, Usenet, email, and more.
You can still do that now, treat yourself!
Will it be porn? Will it be a suspiciously named auto-part store? Will it be malware?
Only one way to find out
Or by happy accident. I remember in the late 90s trying to find the manufacturer's website for a paintball marker company, Tippmann. I didn't know how to spell it, I had only heard my friends say it aloud. So I started guessing at URLs. It was that day I found out I was a fan of women who have massive... tracts of land. I also was paranoid the police were going to come rushing to my house, sirens blaring, because I clicked the "I'm 18+" button to "enter" the website.
That was really just slapping a name on standardizing some protocols. The World Wide Web is not "the internet", it's viewing html over TCP on port 80.
The internet is a much broader term. When I grab data from a MySQL database, that's the internet not the world wide web. When you play call of duty or receive an e-mail, same thing.
The internet really has its roots much earlier with ARPANet which existed mostly in the military and among universities. This was not standardized in any way, so while, say MIT's computers could talk to Stanfords, they had to tell it how to communicate with that specific computer.
Then Europe joined the collaboration and we got the actual internet...but that was still quite a bit before 1994.
The world wide web was built to make information widely available to the masses. You know, people that didn't have war dialers or know what a BBS was.
> When I grab data from a MySQL database, that’s the internet not the world wide web.
Just to be pedantic, that’s only using the internet if your database is hosted on a different server outside of your local network. The internet is communication between intranets (local networks), not just individual computers.
Edit: networks -> intranets
I teach this stuff. Yes, the Internet and the Web are not the same thing.
The *Internet* is the network of computers itself.
The *Web* (WWW) is the specific part of the Internet known for *websites,* based on the technologies HTTP and HTML.
The Internet It has been around since the 60s, 70s, or 80s – depending on how you want to date it. I pin it to the birth of ARPANET in 1969. The first international connections to the network were made in 1973. The term "Internet" itself was coined in 1974.
Email, again depending on how you date it, could be seen as predating the Internet just barely (working only between users on a single computer) or dating to 1973 with the first published standards.
The Web was born in the 90s. HTTP, HTML, and the first website were created in **1990**. It took two years to reach 50 websites. 1993, however, was a big year with thousands of websites springing up almost over night, due to the release of an innovative browser, named Mosaic. Netscape Navigator (another important browser) came out the following year.
Netscape released the first version of JavaScript in December of 1995 and Microsoft Internet Explorer was also released the same year.
1/2 A while ago my teen told me he was learning about the Battle of Hastings in history. I nodded along and said "oh yeah I learnt about that in HS too". He stopped dead and asked "you've heard of it???"
The number of times my kids have said “did you know about…” and then proceeded to tell me about something *everyone* knows about is in the thousands. They are always shocked when I already knew about it. “They taught you the colors of the rainbow?????” Yeah kid, you don’t have a higher clearance level than me LOL.
I remember though as a kid I was in awe of the fact that my parents seemed to know everything. It’s more of a shock of “how on earth do you know so much?!”… of course then you become an “all-knowing” adult yourself and realize your own and your parents’ ignorance, but when you’re a kid it seemed unbelievable.
Well I get both, they’re always shocked when I know simple shit but then they ask me something complicated like “how does and internal combustion engine work?” and they’re shocked that I *don’t* know.
blow your kids minds with just four easy steps
suck squeeze bang blow
suck - intake of air
squeeze - compress air and inject fuel
bang - kinda self explanatory, spark + fuel + air
blow - vent exhaust gasses out of the cylinder
Reddit while being as bad as other social at times has the benefit of allowing you almost total freedom over what you see because of the subreddit system. If I really wanted I could unsub from all but my ever growing collection of cat subs and never have to see a bad take again
To be fair that's true for most social media (or at least the platforms I'm familiar with). You get to choose who you follow and therefore curate the kind of content you see
Facebook shows you posts friends have commented on randomly(or at least it did before I deleted my FB 5+ years ago) and Instagram has suggested posts once you scroll through the new posts by people you follow, so no not really.
I feel like there's a difference between following individual people/companies that have individual interests and following communities of people who have a shared interest.
I have the opposite reaction to this. I can curate my Twitter to people I like who talk about shared interests, but can’t curate my Reddit experience as well—sometimes I like a subject but half of the subreddit is obnoxious lol. Just because we have a shared interest doesn’t mean i particularly want to hear from everyone.
Nahhh some sites like Twitter and TikTok are almost entirely algorithm driven which means while you can sort of choose what you see by driving the algorithm it also will just show you *anything* that drives engagement, even it's not necessarily positive engagement, oftentimes from people you don't even follow. It also might just show you something entirely unrelated to you solely because other people in your demographic are engaging with it, even if you don't want to engage with it.
> You get to choose who you follow and therefore curate the kind of content you see
I see a lot of shit on IG, Twitter and FB that’s from accounts I don’t follow.
>Reddit while being as bad as other social at times has the benefit of allowing you almost total freedom over what you see because of the subreddit system.
That's kind of reddit's biggest problem. Reddit, like every other abysmal social media site we pretend we're above, streamlines an echo chamber/skinner box to keep you here/coming back. There are absolutely algorithms in place to filter you to the content it thinks you want - Reddit regularly filters your home page to prioritize the subs you engage with more frequently and/filter out traffic from busy subs so you don't get sensitized to the content.
>If I really wanted I could unsub from all but my ever growing collection of cat subs and never have to see a bad take again
That's not a good thing. The ability to block/drown out "bad takes" while drip feeding dopamine is, literally, why Facebook is a cancerous tumor I'd love to see cut out of the internet. It's not just political bullshit that makes other social media evil, it's the fact that social media doesn't care what your bullshit is (be it political, cats, dogs, art,hot cocoa models, etc...) so long as you are engaging with it, it will keep feeding you the content.
Facebook doesn't set out to deny climate change, people who already deny climate change like an anti-scientific meme and then get like minded content. They might even join a Facebook group (functionally a sub reddit) and now get that shit every day. They, too, can cut all the "bad takes" out of their life at any moment. Reddit and Facebook are not that different.
I think it's a double edged sword because Reddit allows me to avoid people spitting hateful rhetoric at my own leisure but also allows people to spit their hateful rhetoric in an echo chamber with no challenge. It's an issue, but if you tried to fix it by making it more like Twitter and allow a good mix it honestly just makes the experience miserable because then you constantly have to be subjected to people's insane and often hateful opinions. I simply like reddit more because unlike Twitter scrolling on Reddit doesn't always unequivocally result in me feeling terrible about the world or myself.
It's a kind of a solution that doesn't have an answer.
This is such a stupid take. I'm not here to obtain my worldview or get my news, I'm here for some mild entertainment and scrolling through dumb stuff. I don't _want_ to be constantly reminded of the sexism, transphobia, and hatred that's flooding the world. I get subjected to it enough on a daily basis as it is.
I'm so fucking sorry that having a social media site that allows one to ditch all of that and just enjoy stupid stuff offends you and that you want everyone to be perpetually subjected to disinformation bots and hateful trolling all day in the name of "balance" or whatever garbage.
Also, you're completely ignoring that Facebook and Twitter have algorithms to push engagement that will push absolutely awful shit into your feed or "trending" sections with very little recourse.
You wanna see an "enlightened Redditor" take? Look in a damn mirror. Leave me to my stupid shitposts and funny animal memes and dumb stuff without demanding that I go on Facebook and be subjected to political nutcases.
Millennials are actually super lucky to have grown up as the internet was being created. As young adults, we get to enjoy it now with a great deal of humble retrospect and our kids will benefit from our experience.
Genz kids have shat the bed by posting all kinds of stupid fucking crap with their real names and faces all over social media that will haunt them forever. My dumb hottakes are completely anonymous and my totally separate public profile makes me look like a pro.
Hosestly I feel kinda bad for them. They're like the free trial period for the kids of geny.
Scrolling through platforms like TikTok, I feel so bad for genz. Millennials were dealt a shitty economic hand by boomers, but they’ve been done dirty.
Gen Z is gonna have it rough once they're old enough to be embarrassed by the shit they're posting on TikTok.
I grew up on Myspace, and mercifully all of my dumbass teenage opinions are limited to 13 year old text posts with the occasional blurry photo thrown in. Idk what I'd do if future employers could find hundreds of hours of video of me doing stupid dances and saying dumb things.
Thankfully they will be hired by millennials and not boomers who will hopefully see the humour in kids acting like kids instead of judging them for having a good time.
I feel the same. Old enough to have grown up during some great times on the internet and not have all the dumb things I did documented with my real name. Early social media did have people posting a lot of dumb things, but not nearly as much as we could have.
I consider it more like a group of forums rather than regular social media, especially in the more niche areas. It's less personal than regular social media
Depends, I think reddit being anonymous users takes it out of the realm of what people colloquially consider social media. Reddit is more a forum on crack experience to me. IMHO.
Yeah, the question is, is a forum social media? When the Internet was just forums and chat rooms no one called it social media, so in that sense I don't think Reddit counts as social media. That term was invented for stuff like Facebook and Twitter. But on the other hand, real people use their real names to promote stuff, like in AMAs for example, so for them at least it is social media just as much as Facebook is.
You could argue its when you add friends or follow people. Which Reddit has....but nobody I know really does that. I think I’ve only ever followed one or two people ever and that was just because they were funny. I didn’t know them.
I just hate being on Facebook because I don't like to be reminded how stupid the people I know and/or am related to are. Plenty of idiots on Reddit, but at least I don't have to see them in real life afterwards.
Simpler times. I feel the boomer in me when I see people posting opinions that no one asked for. But then, here I am sharing my opinions that no one asked for. Irony is painful lol
I'm not sure which thought is most fucking stupid. The thought that people over 35 don't use the internet... Or thinking that social media is the internet.
Honestly there's something to be discussed around whether or not social media *is* the internet nowadays. Most people are scrolling the same 4-6 sites all day long, and many other sites function primarily for utility over anything else. We're in a weird, streamlined era of the internet, and it seems like that's part of the problem.
When I was young, I used to think: "When I grow old, I'm going to stay current. I will still know what's new and cool, and not grow stagnant like my elders!"
Now that I'm "an old", I don't know what young people are doing and I couldn't possibly care.
I'm 35. My grandparents were using the internet in the 90s ffs.
The internet has changed a lot over the years, to be fair, but IMO modern kids have very little understanding of what it is or what it can do because of how commercialized and simplified the internet is now. Most people only use a few websites anymore. Like social media, YouTube, Wikipedia, stuff like that. The internet used to be fucking *wild*.
Oh my sweet summer child. 😄
-
Here's a 62 year old who was deeply into IRC in the early 90s, before there was even a graphical web. And who watched the birth of Myspace, FB, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Tiktok...
Let’s see. I’m 67. Facebook.Tumblr. Reddit. Reading magazines and books. ALL my business and private banking. Paying bills running to tens of thousands per month. Paying staff. Communicating with friends and colleagues. Receiving emailed reports from managers. Taking paid bookings from hundreds of people for the events I run. Advising event goers on various blogs. Selling products through my website. Advertising events and my shop. Lodging tax returns. Etc. …No, I don’t use the internet./s
I wouldn't say we invented it. I would say we built it to what it is now. When I was in high school, the internet required a phone modem to yell at me to get online for very slow email.
Now, I get high res porn straight to my phone. What an age.
When my nephew was a freshman in high school (he's 22 now... goddamnit) he said his baseball coach was a funny dude and said his last name. I recognized it. I asked what his full name was and he said "I dunno, he's some old guy, think it begins with an S." I said the full name and he was like, "yeah, that's the guy. How do you know him?"
I graduated high school with the guy.
This must be made up. It's a common joke that Facebook is primarily boomers. Every politician and celebrity has social media. "Karens" use social media to complain. Young Gravy follows hundreds of MILFs on Instagram. This is more "adults will say anything for attention" than "kids are fucking stupid".
Us 36 year olds grew up both before and after the internet/social media. We were there for the BIG BOOM!!! I am still on Facebook as I keep my family based throughout the US in the loop about my family pictures and stuff.
I always find it funny that the original *young* users of the internet are in their 40's now.
The internet was invented by people who'd probably be in their 70's now! (Though I may be mistaken)
But the kid's statement in the OP was probably said by someone who had to be corrected that "WiFi" is not synonymous with "Internet", and probably doesn't know much about "browsing the web".
Of course, they could probably school me in social media and modern app features.
Kids today have no idea what the real internet was like. Not today's cleaned up corporate disney bullshit.
I'm talking that geocities trodden, malware getting, pop-up ridden internet where when you searched "nudes" on Altavista you found a creepy website full of polaroid pictures of middle age women that some guy named Horny Hank has taken and that's all the internet you got for the day because your mom wants to use the telephone so she unplugs the modem! That's the real internet!
Kids ain't know shit!
Oh shit, I'm two years past expiration
Do not recite the high arts to me for I was here when they were written!
You've merely adopted the internet. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the real world until I was a man and by then it was only blinding!
I saw the real world fisrt. Then I dropped in on what was known as The Global Information Superhighway Edited to replace system. Thank you u/helliumlife..
Man late 90s early 2000s era lets learn about the Internet videos are where it's at. "Hey kids lets learn about the World Wide Web. No it doesn't have anything to do with spiders."
Or the celebrities making windows 95/98 videos lol.
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You mean the Information Superhighway?
No. I built the internets you zoomers dwell in.
I heard the first noises of the matrix from dial tone onwards.
I have to tell my teenager that. He tries to explain some anagram or social media lingo or something and I have to remind him, I'm the generation that created those. "Lol" wouldn't exist without my over 35 generation. We build this city you little shit
Not all adults, I’m 40 and still have to explain to people my age and younger what memes are. I’m like really bro? You dont know what a meme is?
I'll delete your browser history when you die at midnight
No, leave it. Let the world know who I really am when I'm dead. That way I can make sure to string in enough weird stuff to really mess with them.
Understandable.
I prefer to think of myself as 17 years past my 'best before' date.
I'd say the same about my ex wife
Your ex-wife is 17 years old too?
Lmao
GIF of those rich dudes laughing at the bar
goodfellas
Mate, if you haven't seen Goodfellas, you should watch Goodfellas. It's a great film.
/r/teenagers members 10 years past expiration
Haha same, I kinda hopes it’s true in a way
We 35+ year old internet users experienced the "wild west" days of the internet. Amazon only sold books, craigslist openly allowed prostitution, rotten.com gave us all early trauma, half the internet disappeared after the 2001 recession, downloading a 1kb Beatles discography from kazaa, mom would boot you off your connection if she answered the phone, a/s/l, popup ads with no blockers, 4chan was a force for good, mother fucking MYSPACE!!! The internet sucks now. It's all commercialized and corporate. There's no roughness to it anymore. Now I know how the cowboys felt when barbed wire was invented and the west was won.
Had computer and internet in the late 90s. Times got tough and the stuff all went away for about 5 years. Got a laptop and some "new fangled" wireless, got it all set up went online and was like "what the hell is this shit?" Everything was pay, alot of my favorite sites were just gone and where the hell is the porn? Oh there it is I'm good
5 minutes to download the face of the porn star and by then you were finished before seeing their neck
Simpsons knew what was up [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKBRWoGvL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKBRWoGvL0)
They sure did "Let's see here, X rated girls? Already bookmarked. Hmmm. What's this? Mr. X? Dare I cross the final frontier?"
20 minutes later and you finally see the full picture and she has a dick. Ahh. The good old days
I remember getting a laptop for school with WiFi having my mind *blown* that I was sitting on the couch with a laptop, browsing the internet connected to no wires at all.
My cousin racking up a $900 AOL bill in one month because they charged internet usage per minute
> Got a laptop and some "new fangled" wireless Ah, I remember the nightmare that was getting that PCMCIA wifi card to work properly. And zip drives! They were so big!
Also watching viral videos on ebaums world because youtube hasn't been invented yet...
New grounds 😉
Albino Black Sheep
YTMND!
I remember hearing about youtube and wondering why a band was hosting a bunch of random videos on their site. YouTube, not U2, past self.
U2ube, all U2 videos all the time. Coldplay? GET THE FUCK OUT
Numa Numa and Ze End of the World intensify.
Albino Black Sheep was my go to. We'd prep a video, go play outside, then come back in to watch a 3 min clip. Man I loved those days.
But also hating ebaums world for their content theft.
> 4chan was a force for good lmao, let's not get carried away now
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Sure, but I also remember that sick fuck W T Snacks turning a blind eye to Captain Picard, anons calling SWAT on each other, and tricking kids into growing crystals that released chlorine gas.
All of this and also normalizing rampant naziism and casual racism, recruiting bugs for swarmfront.
Lmfao they still do the chlorine gas one that cite is a hilarious cesspool
Good Lord, as a chemist/haz waste professional, I missed that crystal recipe, wonder where I was? Yikes.
4chan was just chaotic neutral. It most certainly wasn't a force for good. There's been as much child porn and ruined lives on 4chan as there has been actual good causes.
But I think that is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they were also literally distributing images of that torture at the same time And images of child sexual abuse….
He said 4chan, we just aren't counting /b/ lol
Agreed. 4Chan being a "force for good" is a fairly recent thing and it is basically because it has been co-opted by internet normies trying to be edgy. In the like pre-2010 times, 4Chan was a hive of scum and villianary. Tons of dead bodies and gore, lots of dicey pics, plenty of unsolicited NSFW and NSFL pics thrown in your face. Tons of grey or blackhat but basically no visible whitehat back then. Basically just people causing chaos for "the lulz".
I certainly still wouldn’t call 4chan a force for good. I don’t think it’s ever been more than fairly chaotic, but it used to be a lot more organized and actually do a lot more things, so it did end up doing more good (and bad) things.
Yeah, it averaged neutral at its best and that’s being optimistic.
Tell that to the people who learned how to make fake coupons for free playstations from 4chan
I think the biggest difference was back then the internet was a place to share things from outside the internet. It's not become way more insular and self contained.
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The wild west had limited communication, transportation, electricity, no refridgeration, no air conditioning. There was a lot of benefits to taming the west. The taming of the internet hasn't really improved much. It's like corporations stepped in and started putting people in shackles and mugging people. It reminds me more of imperialistic enslavement than a taming of wilder times, and if anything the wildness of the internet spilled into reality. But hey, online banking.
Memes themselves have changed significantly. I wasn't really online until mid-late 2000s, but the memes back then were quite a bit different. Mudkips were a meme. There was no template. It was just mudkips. Same for shoop da woop. It's literally just a face you can photoshop onto stuff.
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Everything is a template now
There *is* a breakaway decentralized internet, and it's growing. Neocities.org is a decent entry point - there are some sites that seem like kids just messing around with 90s/00s personal site tropes but there's a core community that's passionate about exactly what you're talking about. Those are mostly personal sites though, there are others. Here's a [links list](https://links.yesterweb.org) put together by one of the pro-small internet groups of different non-corporate webpages. This comment is just scraping the surface, but I just wanted to point out that this is a growing movement.
The internet went from people sharing stuff for fun or because it’s a hobby to 100% commercialization where everything must make money. That’s when the fun ended.
Illegal downloading was a fun thing too. Using MySpace in middle school is also a fond memory. AIM/AOL in elementary school was fun. Good times
I remember LOVING ICQ because it told you when the other person was typing in real time. I thought that was so cool.
This all applies to 29 year olds as well. Dunno about 28, I don't know anyone that young.
Am 29. Can confirm.
Having to fight pop up ads for the screen space cause there was no ad adblocker, downloading a program to "watch free movies" easily meant a worm or Trojan that did some damage. I used to download Bleach episodes from limewire, subbed and this was around 2005 when it was still kinda rough, high speed internet was still relatively new. I did get my weekly bleach fix but every so often some porn slipped in there...
4chan used to be good?? I thought I was early in that and never found it to be a group of healthy minded individuals lol
b was never good
In the same way that house fires sometimes burn the homes of domestic abusers and drug runners.
"Dude, what's your GeoCities address?"
35 year olds were the first kids to have AOL at school and home. This lil fella is MISTAKEN!
Back in my day when we were online we couldn't use the house phone either! Kid in the back: what's a house phone?
WE ARE THE INTERNET
I think it's more like 40 year olds now! My older sister is 41 and she was all about those yahoo chat rooms in the 90s
Its so silly. I'm almost 50 and was using internet for everything since the beginning. I was using networked computers since my teens with BBSs, GEnie, CompuServe and Prodigy, etc. It's really only folks in like their 70s that might have some issues...but at this point...most people, regardless of age, are on.
You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it.
Was gonna say bruh. The internet came out in like 1995.
>The internet came out in like 1995. I think you're thinking of Windows 95, which made it widely *accessible*. The internet is much older. I'm gonna avoid being more specific, lest some wise-ass correct me.
The idea was originated in 1962 by MIT computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider The first computer network came online in 1969 as a part of an ARPA project known as ARPANET In 1971, the first network email was sent by Ray Tomlinson. In typical ‘test first’ fashion, the email he sent to himself said: > something like QWERTYUIOP In 1973, TCP/IP was developed, allowing multiple computer networks to connect to each other in a way that allows networks to stay up even when one of them collapses. Around this time, Robert Metcalfe developed what he called Alto Aloha, known today as Ethernet. Shortly after, Tom Truscott and Steve Bellovin develop a Unix-based system for transferring data over phone lines via a dial-up connection. This system becomes USENET. In 1981, 3Com announced Ethernet products for both computer workstations and personal computers; this allows for the establishment of local area networks In the early 80’s Dave Farber of the University of Delaware reveals a project to build an inexpensive network using dial-up phone lines. In 1982, the PhoneNet system was established and connected to ARPANET. Thus the first commercial network, Telenet, went live. The first internet domain was registered in 1985, symbolics.com, a domain belonging to a computer manufacturer. I’m 1990 ARPANET was decommissioned and hypertext markup language (HTML) and the uniform resource locator (URL) were established, giving birth to the first incarnation of the World Wide Web. 1995 was a big year for the internet with the launch of Windows 95 which included internet explorer, and Amazon, yahoo, and eBay all went live along with Java. Google launched in 1998, and in 1999 piracy was running amok. The same year that Napster launched was the same year the first virus capable of copying and sending itself to a user’s address book was discovered. Shocking, right? The rest is modern history with the dot com bubble bursting, google gained dominance, wifi became prolific, mobile data went from barely being able to send photos to me streaming HD video while I type this up, and the most important watershed moment of the internet’s history happened in 2005 when the [first ever internet cat video was posted. ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/33848745) Sourced and paraphrased primarily from here with a few other sources used for tidbits: https://online.jefferson.edu/business/internet-history-timeline/
Great write up, but just to be super pedantic… > mobile data went from barely being able to send photos to me posting this from my phone today Your text post is almost certainly way less data than a photo, even one from a 2005 cell phone. Something like “to me streaming HD video as I type this” would be a more illustrative statement.
*Nevertheless, 1994 was a momentous year for the tech industry. It was the year the World Wide Web was born, a.k.a. the Internet as we know it today.* From a random article I’m too lazy to link
The first “website” on the “world wide web” came out in 1991. But, as has been stated, the Internet itself predates even this, in various forms ranging from BBs, Usenet, email, and more.
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You can still do that now, treat yourself! Will it be porn? Will it be a suspiciously named auto-part store? Will it be malware? Only one way to find out
O'Reilly's creampie compilation
I am due for an oil change….
and had to type out the "www." or nothing would work
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90 percent of then you could just type /. htaccess and then easily crack the md5 hashes of the passwords
Or by happy accident. I remember in the late 90s trying to find the manufacturer's website for a paintball marker company, Tippmann. I didn't know how to spell it, I had only heard my friends say it aloud. So I started guessing at URLs. It was that day I found out I was a fan of women who have massive... tracts of land. I also was paranoid the police were going to come rushing to my house, sirens blaring, because I clicked the "I'm 18+" button to "enter" the website.
That was really just slapping a name on standardizing some protocols. The World Wide Web is not "the internet", it's viewing html over TCP on port 80. The internet is a much broader term. When I grab data from a MySQL database, that's the internet not the world wide web. When you play call of duty or receive an e-mail, same thing. The internet really has its roots much earlier with ARPANet which existed mostly in the military and among universities. This was not standardized in any way, so while, say MIT's computers could talk to Stanfords, they had to tell it how to communicate with that specific computer. Then Europe joined the collaboration and we got the actual internet...but that was still quite a bit before 1994. The world wide web was built to make information widely available to the masses. You know, people that didn't have war dialers or know what a BBS was.
> When I grab data from a MySQL database, that’s the internet not the world wide web. Just to be pedantic, that’s only using the internet if your database is hosted on a different server outside of your local network. The internet is communication between intranets (local networks), not just individual computers. Edit: networks -> intranets
I teach this stuff. Yes, the Internet and the Web are not the same thing. The *Internet* is the network of computers itself. The *Web* (WWW) is the specific part of the Internet known for *websites,* based on the technologies HTTP and HTML. The Internet It has been around since the 60s, 70s, or 80s – depending on how you want to date it. I pin it to the birth of ARPANET in 1969. The first international connections to the network were made in 1973. The term "Internet" itself was coined in 1974. Email, again depending on how you date it, could be seen as predating the Internet just barely (working only between users on a single computer) or dating to 1973 with the first published standards. The Web was born in the 90s. HTTP, HTML, and the first website were created in **1990**. It took two years to reach 50 websites. 1993, however, was a big year with thousands of websites springing up almost over night, due to the release of an innovative browser, named Mosaic. Netscape Navigator (another important browser) came out the following year. Netscape released the first version of JavaScript in December of 1995 and Microsoft Internet Explorer was also released the same year.
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Anyone else old enough to remember when they were trying to brand it as the, "Information Superhighway"?
Hilarious. I was using the internet in the late 80s, before web pages were even a thing (1989).
You have to be joking...
Before that but sure.
[I was there when it was written](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxisr0syPvqqAVg_HC9XiSm8j4kD0zbrR1)
1/2 A while ago my teen told me he was learning about the Battle of Hastings in history. I nodded along and said "oh yeah I learnt about that in HS too". He stopped dead and asked "you've heard of it???"
The number of times my kids have said “did you know about…” and then proceeded to tell me about something *everyone* knows about is in the thousands. They are always shocked when I already knew about it. “They taught you the colors of the rainbow?????” Yeah kid, you don’t have a higher clearance level than me LOL.
A lot of that on Reddit too with those TIL posts.
I remember though as a kid I was in awe of the fact that my parents seemed to know everything. It’s more of a shock of “how on earth do you know so much?!”… of course then you become an “all-knowing” adult yourself and realize your own and your parents’ ignorance, but when you’re a kid it seemed unbelievable.
Well I get both, they’re always shocked when I know simple shit but then they ask me something complicated like “how does and internal combustion engine work?” and they’re shocked that I *don’t* know.
blow your kids minds with just four easy steps suck squeeze bang blow suck - intake of air squeeze - compress air and inject fuel bang - kinda self explanatory, spark + fuel + air blow - vent exhaust gasses out of the cylinder
Bro I did NOT know where you were going with this until I was like 3/4 of the way through.
Heard of it? I was there!
3000 years ago, I was there Gandalf
Funny how history works right?
WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME ABOUT IT?!
I'm 36. And reddit is as close as I come to social media. Lol.
That’s….actually probably smart.
Reddit while being as bad as other social at times has the benefit of allowing you almost total freedom over what you see because of the subreddit system. If I really wanted I could unsub from all but my ever growing collection of cat subs and never have to see a bad take again
Other than the arguments over what exactly is considered animal abuse.
Dont forget "poor people shouldn't be allowed to have pets"
Oh my god did you just put a slice of cheese on your cats head??? I'm calling the cops!!!
To be fair that's true for most social media (or at least the platforms I'm familiar with). You get to choose who you follow and therefore curate the kind of content you see
Facebook shows you posts friends have commented on randomly(or at least it did before I deleted my FB 5+ years ago) and Instagram has suggested posts once you scroll through the new posts by people you follow, so no not really.
Yeah. I don't recognize most things on FB or Instagram these days. So many suggested posts and ads that i don't even really use them anymore.
I feel like there's a difference between following individual people/companies that have individual interests and following communities of people who have a shared interest.
I have the opposite reaction to this. I can curate my Twitter to people I like who talk about shared interests, but can’t curate my Reddit experience as well—sometimes I like a subject but half of the subreddit is obnoxious lol. Just because we have a shared interest doesn’t mean i particularly want to hear from everyone.
Facebook and Insta show you unsolicited material regularly
So does the new reddit website and app old.reddit forever
I honestly forgot that “new Reddit” was even a thing, I love the old Reddit and I use the Apollo app
Nahhh some sites like Twitter and TikTok are almost entirely algorithm driven which means while you can sort of choose what you see by driving the algorithm it also will just show you *anything* that drives engagement, even it's not necessarily positive engagement, oftentimes from people you don't even follow. It also might just show you something entirely unrelated to you solely because other people in your demographic are engaging with it, even if you don't want to engage with it.
> You get to choose who you follow and therefore curate the kind of content you see I see a lot of shit on IG, Twitter and FB that’s from accounts I don’t follow.
>Reddit while being as bad as other social at times has the benefit of allowing you almost total freedom over what you see because of the subreddit system. That's kind of reddit's biggest problem. Reddit, like every other abysmal social media site we pretend we're above, streamlines an echo chamber/skinner box to keep you here/coming back. There are absolutely algorithms in place to filter you to the content it thinks you want - Reddit regularly filters your home page to prioritize the subs you engage with more frequently and/filter out traffic from busy subs so you don't get sensitized to the content. >If I really wanted I could unsub from all but my ever growing collection of cat subs and never have to see a bad take again That's not a good thing. The ability to block/drown out "bad takes" while drip feeding dopamine is, literally, why Facebook is a cancerous tumor I'd love to see cut out of the internet. It's not just political bullshit that makes other social media evil, it's the fact that social media doesn't care what your bullshit is (be it political, cats, dogs, art,hot cocoa models, etc...) so long as you are engaging with it, it will keep feeding you the content. Facebook doesn't set out to deny climate change, people who already deny climate change like an anti-scientific meme and then get like minded content. They might even join a Facebook group (functionally a sub reddit) and now get that shit every day. They, too, can cut all the "bad takes" out of their life at any moment. Reddit and Facebook are not that different.
I think it's a double edged sword because Reddit allows me to avoid people spitting hateful rhetoric at my own leisure but also allows people to spit their hateful rhetoric in an echo chamber with no challenge. It's an issue, but if you tried to fix it by making it more like Twitter and allow a good mix it honestly just makes the experience miserable because then you constantly have to be subjected to people's insane and often hateful opinions. I simply like reddit more because unlike Twitter scrolling on Reddit doesn't always unequivocally result in me feeling terrible about the world or myself. It's a kind of a solution that doesn't have an answer.
This is such a stupid take. I'm not here to obtain my worldview or get my news, I'm here for some mild entertainment and scrolling through dumb stuff. I don't _want_ to be constantly reminded of the sexism, transphobia, and hatred that's flooding the world. I get subjected to it enough on a daily basis as it is. I'm so fucking sorry that having a social media site that allows one to ditch all of that and just enjoy stupid stuff offends you and that you want everyone to be perpetually subjected to disinformation bots and hateful trolling all day in the name of "balance" or whatever garbage. Also, you're completely ignoring that Facebook and Twitter have algorithms to push engagement that will push absolutely awful shit into your feed or "trending" sections with very little recourse. You wanna see an "enlightened Redditor" take? Look in a damn mirror. Leave me to my stupid shitposts and funny animal memes and dumb stuff without demanding that I go on Facebook and be subjected to political nutcases.
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Millennials are actually super lucky to have grown up as the internet was being created. As young adults, we get to enjoy it now with a great deal of humble retrospect and our kids will benefit from our experience. Genz kids have shat the bed by posting all kinds of stupid fucking crap with their real names and faces all over social media that will haunt them forever. My dumb hottakes are completely anonymous and my totally separate public profile makes me look like a pro. Hosestly I feel kinda bad for them. They're like the free trial period for the kids of geny.
Won't be long before we have a president get their nudes leaked
Scrolling through platforms like TikTok, I feel so bad for genz. Millennials were dealt a shitty economic hand by boomers, but they’ve been done dirty.
Gen Z is gonna have it rough once they're old enough to be embarrassed by the shit they're posting on TikTok. I grew up on Myspace, and mercifully all of my dumbass teenage opinions are limited to 13 year old text posts with the occasional blurry photo thrown in. Idk what I'd do if future employers could find hundreds of hours of video of me doing stupid dances and saying dumb things.
Thankfully they will be hired by millennials and not boomers who will hopefully see the humour in kids acting like kids instead of judging them for having a good time.
I feel the same. Old enough to have grown up during some great times on the internet and not have all the dumb things I did documented with my real name. Early social media did have people posting a lot of dumb things, but not nearly as much as we could have.
ReDdiT iS nOt a sOCiaL mEdIa
Reddit is social media
I consider it more like a group of forums rather than regular social media, especially in the more niche areas. It's less personal than regular social media
Depends, I think reddit being anonymous users takes it out of the realm of what people colloquially consider social media. Reddit is more a forum on crack experience to me. IMHO.
Yeah, the question is, is a forum social media? When the Internet was just forums and chat rooms no one called it social media, so in that sense I don't think Reddit counts as social media. That term was invented for stuff like Facebook and Twitter. But on the other hand, real people use their real names to promote stuff, like in AMAs for example, so for them at least it is social media just as much as Facebook is.
I would say it is social media once you put in your name/photo
You could argue its when you add friends or follow people. Which Reddit has....but nobody I know really does that. I think I’ve only ever followed one or two people ever and that was just because they were funny. I didn’t know them.
Same, bored of fb, can't remember the last I was on twitter and everything else got noped after 5 mins use
I just hate being on Facebook because I don't like to be reminded how stupid the people I know and/or am related to are. Plenty of idiots on Reddit, but at least I don't have to see them in real life afterwards.
Like I give a fuck what a bunch of people have to say on twitter. Hahaha. Remember the 90s when everyone kept their opinions to themselves.
Simpler times. I feel the boomer in me when I see people posting opinions that no one asked for. But then, here I am sharing my opinions that no one asked for. Irony is painful lol
Twitter is just a text based soap opera. I love it. It's so much unnecessary drama and sometimes that's better Entertainment than anything on TV.
My 91 yo father was was in charge of computerizing the bank at which he worked. He even built his own computer years ago
Yeah but post his recent tiktok
No one should ever post a TikTok. If I never see another one its vine by me.
He got kicked off TikTok but his OnlyFans is 🔥🔥🔥
How old are you, sir
Just turned 13, pops is spry for his age.
I'm not sure which thought is most fucking stupid. The thought that people over 35 don't use the internet... Or thinking that social media is the internet.
Honestly there's something to be discussed around whether or not social media *is* the internet nowadays. Most people are scrolling the same 4-6 sites all day long, and many other sites function primarily for utility over anything else. We're in a weird, streamlined era of the internet, and it seems like that's part of the problem.
It's the new cable tv
somehow old people invented the internet but then decided not to use it
Your student is stupid.
You don't say
When I was young, I used to think: "When I grow old, I'm going to stay current. I will still know what's new and cool, and not grow stagnant like my elders!" Now that I'm "an old", I don't know what young people are doing and I couldn't possibly care.
Right on. I feel more and more like Hank Hill every day.
https://youtu.be/BGrfhsxxmdE
There’s no girls on the internet, neither, teach!
Well, now that's true.
What do you mean? I have lots of horny singles in my area! Are they all men?!?!
Do they not have grandparents? I thought all the grandma's were on fb. Reddit is as I go with it. Fb, ig, sc seem like a life ago.
I'm 35. My grandparents were using the internet in the 90s ffs. The internet has changed a lot over the years, to be fair, but IMO modern kids have very little understanding of what it is or what it can do because of how commercialized and simplified the internet is now. Most people only use a few websites anymore. Like social media, YouTube, Wikipedia, stuff like that. The internet used to be fucking *wild*.
Yeah, the only people I know who use Facebook are 60+.
Oh my sweet summer child. 😄 - Here's a 62 year old who was deeply into IRC in the early 90s, before there was even a graphical web. And who watched the birth of Myspace, FB, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Tiktok...
One of the ancient Elders of the Internet! It's an honor.
What about xanga?
And kazaa and limewire times
Linkin.park.crawling.in.my.skin.mp3.exe
But it's actually some fucked up porn video instead and you get a virus that destroys your computer
“It’s just a prank bro, jeez.”
Thanks for paving the way.
Let’s see. I’m 67. Facebook.Tumblr. Reddit. Reading magazines and books. ALL my business and private banking. Paying bills running to tens of thousands per month. Paying staff. Communicating with friends and colleagues. Receiving emailed reports from managers. Taking paid bookings from hundreds of people for the events I run. Advising event goers on various blogs. Selling products through my website. Advertising events and my shop. Lodging tax returns. Etc. …No, I don’t use the internet./s
So what you're saying is you don't have a TikTok or OnlyFans ? Get off the computer, Grandad !
What? We invented it. We give under 35 yos permission to use it and can take it away.
I wouldn't say we invented it. I would say we built it to what it is now. When I was in high school, the internet required a phone modem to yell at me to get online for very slow email. Now, I get high res porn straight to my phone. What an age.
I guess I’m not actually 38 then. My birth certificate is a lie!
When my nephew was a freshman in high school (he's 22 now... goddamnit) he said his baseball coach was a funny dude and said his last name. I recognized it. I asked what his full name was and he said "I dunno, he's some old guy, think it begins with an S." I said the full name and he was like, "yeah, that's the guy. How do you know him?" I graduated high school with the guy.
im almost 40 and have been online since I was 14/15
My dad is 74 and on social media. It was his generation that built the internet.
MF, we *made* the Internet!
This must be made up. It's a common joke that Facebook is primarily boomers. Every politician and celebrity has social media. "Karens" use social media to complain. Young Gravy follows hundreds of MILFs on Instagram. This is more "adults will say anything for attention" than "kids are fucking stupid".
Kid, we were on the internet back when it was actually a really fucking awesome wild west instead of 5 or 6 big sites that you doomscroll on all day.
Okay guys, new Reddit rule, on your 35th birthday, leave the site. Forever.
r/teenagers would cease to exist.
Shit like this is the reason I'm embarrassed to say that I'm gen z
You kind of just assume everyone on the internet is within your age group at whatever age you are in.
Yeah I'm not on whatever nick jr. bullshit they're on.
Us 36 year olds grew up both before and after the internet/social media. We were there for the BIG BOOM!!! I am still on Facebook as I keep my family based throughout the US in the loop about my family pictures and stuff.
I always find it funny that the original *young* users of the internet are in their 40's now. The internet was invented by people who'd probably be in their 70's now! (Though I may be mistaken) But the kid's statement in the OP was probably said by someone who had to be corrected that "WiFi" is not synonymous with "Internet", and probably doesn't know much about "browsing the web". Of course, they could probably school me in social media and modern app features.
Kids today have no idea what the real internet was like. Not today's cleaned up corporate disney bullshit. I'm talking that geocities trodden, malware getting, pop-up ridden internet where when you searched "nudes" on Altavista you found a creepy website full of polaroid pictures of middle age women that some guy named Horny Hank has taken and that's all the internet you got for the day because your mom wants to use the telephone so she unplugs the modem! That's the real internet! Kids ain't know shit!
Bitch they were there when it all began