I was going down memory lane, I graduated in 96. But Internet culture of the mid 2000s to mid 2015. Seemed like there was always some stand out video or event ranging from chocolate rain video, nyan cat, amazing horse, I like turtles, why does the Internet seem so stale lately? I just realized a lot of this fun stuff stopped around 2014 or became less prevalent the closer we get to events that started dividing us, like gamergate, Trump canidancy in 2015. God this last decade has just sucked and it just keeps getting worse. How did we go to so much hope and promise to where we are now? Even reddit sucks now
To oversimplify a complex multifaceted question: money went online. Pre-2000s and early 2000s was dominated by self-hosted community sites, like forums. It was often a personal sacrifice to host them, rather than a business like with modern social media platforms like reddit, YouTube, etc.
I’ve often preferred to stick away from the middle of the internet, the smaller community sites are so much better than for-profit grifter-filled addiction machines. When I see a few people (less of them now) saying “Lemmy is too slow/dead”, I think about the sites I love that get 10 posts a week. One particular board occasionally has some new kiddo arriving to a thread and asking a question to (or getting annoyed at) a post made over 10 years ago. And since these aren’t sites dedicated to sharing things that other people make, they develop their own cultures. Anyone there to advertise and make money will leave dimeless, anyone there to insert political propaganda will be ignored or laughed at and banned.
Lemmy has some shared traits, and some of the benefits are glaringly apparent when we compare to reddit, but it’s still largely a content sharing site more than a creative community.
My issue is those “smaller communities” for my niches withered away, lost in the depths of SEO and attention machines.
I’m not innocent there. I stopped participating in many in lieu of Discord and Reddit which, in hindsight, I feel sick about. But the draw of phone pings and algorithms and critical mass is very powerful, and that temptation didn’t exist a long time ago.
Exactly this. I’ve been running forums since I was a teen in the mid-00s and I’ve still got one. It’s much smaller than it used to be, but some of us have known each other for twenty years. It’s harder to find us, but occasionally someone still wanders in.
Everything got enshitified to increase shareholder value.
Check out neocities. It has some of the fun again.
Theres a lot of corpo trash out there. Find the fun.
Ah, neocities, had a site there for some time, it’s very good. It truely revives the feeling of “surfing on the web” that geocities gave with thoses 88x31 buttons, thoses flashy gifs and thoses bright colors everywhere.
It was at around 600000 websites not long ago and got beyond 1 million recently, seems like it’s blowing up in popularity (I hope for the better).
when I was a kid I cared deeply about making a super awesome, aesthetically-pleasing site but I had no life experience or knowledge to actually put on it. Now later in life, I have some meaningful things to put on there but I couldn’t give a hoot about aesthetics. I don’t even see the point of using CSS.
I will. I did a nostalgia trip tonight because I had a panic attack when I realized this year is my 30 year class reunion. I have no intentions of going in a class of 28, the 5 that I remained in contact with went hard core maga including my best friend. The other not very close but will talk every few months or so.
Just freaked my self out, HS literally feels like a lifetime ago. Hell my mid 20s to 30s feels like a lifetime ago. I need to invest more in myself now I’ve realized
I’m unsure the exact pinpoint moment, but I know that when Google acquired YouTube, it was like a warning sign of what is to come.
And when tech companies began to become more aware enough to take advantage of a not-so tech savvy government, much less a barely tech savvy populace of people, that started a march for corporatization to take hold on the internet. Things gradually began to just stop being fun.
Simply put - we were the frogs in the boiling water as techbros took advantage of all of us, acquired anything it could, then regulated everything to match their standards.
The platforms changed. Thats how I see it personally. Everything went from niche forum sites to consolidated social media silos. And the culture moves at break neck speed. I graduated in 2013, and for my circle back then I was still using forum sites but did manage to make group chat groups so we can still, and do, keep in touch.
You’re right, the culture does move too fast, and it’s too broad and segregated. The plus side is that you can find content for almost any niche interest, but that obviously comes at a cost.
Like for example take Reddit. I’ve been in small subs that grew too big for its own good. It’s always saddening to see them being riddled with bots and scammers and little to no effort to move away from them. Some managed to police and gatekeep better, but still stuck in reddit with no plans to move away.
I would like to be the change that I want to see and bring some of the community there, to the fediverse, but I don’t think I have the mental capacity and fortitude to take that role. I’ll just content to comment here and there for now. Never say never, as they say.
Corporations found out you can make money on the internet and social media consolidated the internet ecosystem.
Assholes found out they could make money by continuing to be assholes. That’s literally what ruined the net and where we are as a society right now.
Until we make it so acting like a Nazi is no longer profitable or safe, I don’t see shit getting better
67
aaayyyyyy six-seveehn!
In the beginning, we were weirdos doing it for fun. It was a hobby. Now there’s a bunch of people trying to make a living from content generation. It’s a job.
This here is certainly it. All the main popular content is from people pandering to algorithms. The old silly stuff was made from genuine whimsy, because making money from being an “influencer” or “content creator” wasn’t even a thought.
Now, social media has the undertone of trying to get rich to sell some product or get a sponsor. It’s not everyone, but even those who aren’t looking for money or fame end up mimicking the same algorithm-seeking behaviors, just because that’s what the internet is filled with.
The mid-2010s was where “reaction content” and “cringe compilations” and drama bait started gaining traction. People were being rewarded for disrespecting/harassing creatives, who subsequently began withdrawing from these increasingly-toxic spaces. This was beginning to wane in the early 2020s IIRC, but now has come back with the “dramaslop” plastered all over YouTube.
There are still content creators who don’t pander to the algorithm, but you don’t see them.
Access and inundation. In the burgeoning days, not everyone could use an image editor or video editor. Animating was not simple.
Now, everyone has an AI helper and wants attention.
Add to it that there are more and more professionals making content for profit, a decade before AI reached this stage. Memes and viral videos became marketing opportunities.
Everything from the real world found its way in.
With the evergrowing flow of users, normality became the expectation. The internet bar club disappeard to become real life 2.0, and in real life, you are supposed to use money, and inner jokes don’t work. We went from “you shouldn’t post personal information to the internet” to “If you don’t put your real life profile on the internet, you are a weirdo who tries to escape real life”. The new world has been claimed by the old.
Though, in an easier way than in real life, you can become a cyberhermit. Leave social media, and even though there are a lot less people out of here, if you find active forums or chatrooms, you’ll find some everlasting internet culture.
It was never really gone, just got hidden by money and large scale hypersocializers.
Pleroma is a fediverse service where there are way less people than here, but it is more “childish” (make me think of very early 2ch-4chan). You have also misskey, though they mostly speak japanese there. For anon culture, you have still IRC, and some little open chatrooms through the fediweb. Though it’s hard to find similar places to early 4ch that aren’t nazi paradises.
Good luck out there!
Though it’s hard to find similar places to early 4ch that aren’t nazi paradises.
Yep. Finding the small scattered imageboards which ban or reject politics and combat spam is difficult, but rewarding. And they tend to be special-interest focused sites, like erischan or lainchan, so they’re not all going to be interesting to everyone. trashch /comfy/ is a possible counter-example.
@TheGuyTM3 @Nebraska_Huskers Do you think that too much of the real world is mirrored to the internet and it is a problem? If so what do you think would be an ideal way for a typical user to interact with the internet?
Occasionally there is still some meme that stands out and lasts for a few weeks or more. See Skibidi Toilet or 6 7. But mostly it became much less interesting because everything is monetized now.
Most of the ones you mentioned were before 2010. I believe internet culture started dying with Gangnam Style. That’s when thing have gone mainstream and not an inside joke anymore.
But yes, real world events also kinda ruined everything.
Monetisation is absolutely the core of the problem.
I’m not disagree with you but those are two trash memes you used as examples
I agree that Skibidi was trash. But 6 7 is honestly kinda funny because no one really gets it, it’s not annoying and you can sneak it into regular conversations without notice, while anyone who’s in on it can have a giggle. That’s true internet culture if you ask me.
I try not to be too judgmental because it’s just a new internet generation and I’m old.
Join a shitposting group? Join a Chan board? Join a BBS forum?
The big problem for a lot of people is actually finding those cool little niches to hang out in
Same as back then 🤷
I suppose what I’m getting at is, do you have any specific recommendations?
It’s down to your preferences
YouTube went from cool place to share your videos to a corporate hell hole of cancerous monetized bullshit.
I still remember being confused by the concept of people making money on videos. It really wasn’t that long ago…
My dad was pushing me to do it when I was a LEET PRO GAMER but I told him theres no point, nobody can ever make money like that, ill just get a job.
5 years later, when my skills had faded, apparently what made me a loser back then is actually worth millions.
Im still fuming.
Imagine being told in the late 80s by your teachers that computers will never be prevalent and you won’t make money off of them. Goes along with you will never have a calculator with you at all times. And in the early 90s our computer science teacher saying nobody will ever need more than 64mb of ram.
And ya as a gamer from back then I’m pissed. I want to go boot up some unreal tournament now.
Weird al explained it well, the rising culture is less monolithic, the reason he hasn’t made more music lately is because his references become comparatively more niche the less monolithic everyone’s cultural focus is.
Weird al explained it well
Where?
In an interview or something, a bunch of years ago.
Exactly lol
Wise Al
