Am I the only one who thinks social media has destroyed the spirit of the internet?
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What was the state of the internet in 1994 that it would cause such resentiment?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Eternal September refers to September 1993, when a popular internet service provider (AOL) provided easy access to Usenet for its users, which immediately threatened the existing culture and lowered the quality of discourse.
Before this, September was only a temporary problem as a new batch of college freshman would arrive and be unaccustomed to the place.
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What was the state of the internet in 1994 that it would cause such resentiment?
wrote last edited by [email protected]"A cultural phenomenon during a period beginning around late 1993 and early 1994, when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users."
"The flood of new and generally inexperienced Internet users directed to Usenet by commercial ISPs in 1993 and subsequent years swamped the existing culture of those forums and their ability to self-moderate and enforce existing norms. AOL began their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users.
Hence, from the early Usenet community point of view, the influx of new users that began in September 1993 appeared to be endless."
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
There are still smaller communities out there. It can be discussed that Lemmy is a small community itself.
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Not social media per sé, but definitely "the algorithm" that was introduced around ~2014 and has been tweaked by the likes of Cambridge Analytica to now provide us with endless ragebait.
MySpace was social media and had none of the toxicity.
MySpace was social media and had none of the toxicity.
Usenet was Social Media and it had allllll the toxicity.
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Social media back then was making stuff you thought was cool and having friends and other weirdos across the Internet also enjoying the same things as you.
Social media today is juicing the algorithm to generate the most views, regardless of whether you like the content you're producing or not.
Social media back then were also referred to as social NETWORKS. A network implies collaboration and interactivity, media are more linear, having a sender and a recipient.
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"A cultural phenomenon during a period beginning around late 1993 and early 1994, when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users."
"The flood of new and generally inexperienced Internet users directed to Usenet by commercial ISPs in 1993 and subsequent years swamped the existing culture of those forums and their ability to self-moderate and enforce existing norms. AOL began their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users.
Hence, from the early Usenet community point of view, the influx of new users that began in September 1993 appeared to be endless."
I think that you left out the part that explains why it's called September. Every year, when first-year university students got their hands on the internet for the first time, they would rampage through the noble message boards with their barbarian netiquetteless ways. Many dreaded the annual influx of newbies, and their worst nightmares were finally realized when the internet was opened up to the greater public.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click "surprise me..."
It's a search engine that only spits out "real" webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.
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I agree the internet feels a lot different than the eqrly 2000s, but breaking down what's different I can't pin anything concrete down.
There's pretty much no fundamental differences between how social media was and how it is now. People talk, share interests, get in arguments. What we feel is nostalgia for a wild west internet with less people and rules that will never exist again.
More people use the internet now so more people participate in the conversation. That's how it will be for the rest of human history probably.
but breaking down what’s different I can’t pin anything concrete down.
One big difference is scale. The 2000s Internet was primarily centered around single(ish) interest forums with relatively low user counts. The entire Lemmy-verse, which is itself quite tiny in 2025, is still WAY larger than nearly any of the 2000s era forums ever were.
Another other big difference is why the user base is online. The majority of them aren't participating to discuss a shared interest anymore, they are doing it for general entertainment or to earn money.
Those two things explain nearly all of the change. Way more users congregated into a handful of websites with many of them, including the sites, attempting to get rich doing it.
The 2000s web was a much smaller number of users spread across a zillion websites / forums with nearly all of the users and site operators doing it without money as a motivator.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
Yes. I'm a big fan of lemmy. I hope peertube gets going I feel it will be like the original YouTube
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It's not social media per se. It's capitalism. The Internet was this vast frontier, where you could meet anyone. Little communities formed, we all just talked, and self-regulated any bad behavior. It was a gift economy, we all freely shared knowledge, files, culture.
In the past 20 or so years, economies of scale took over. Corporations bought up the server space and aggressively shut down small communities. Community is discouraged, keep scrolling and click on the ads! Marketing killed the internet.
Came here to say exactly this. Capitalism breeds consumerism - and consumerism destroys everything.
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Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click "surprise me..."
It's a search engine that only spits out "real" webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Thank you for sharing. It's painful to realize in hindsight that those websites were peak internet.
They lack polish, but they were all a labour of love. No enshittification, no selling things, no corporate influence, no shit posting.
Everything had a purpose, every post took effort, and it was all about sharing experiences or knowledge.
I really miss that internet.
EDIT: correcting gibberish 🤭
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My reflection on that period would lead me to suggest it was the mass "normie" invasion of nerd-space and the promotion of low-effort participation. I don't remember anything specific about that particular timeframe, though.
The internet was better when it wasn't big enough to be worth monetizing. And the signal to noise ratio has generally grown exponentially with participation. Which makes sense if you think about it.
My reflection on that period would lead me to suggest it was the mass “normie” invasion of nerd-space and the promotion of low-effort participation. I don’t remember anything specific about that particular timeframe, though.
So ultimately the sentiment has never changed?
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Not the only one, but it's the walled garden platform approach.
The idea (from around 2010ish) was that every platform is an app and every app is everything. A company buys up other smaller companies until you have a payment system, a marketplace, a VOIP system, advertising, job posting boards, 4 different waya to share media, etc. etc.
While the tech world sold this as, and actually viewed this as, some organic online super village, it wasn't. It was a series of shit stripmalls adjacent to a Walmart in a shitberg town on a big freeway linking other shiberg towns with Walmarts. Sterile, restrictive, one size fits all dipshits kind of garbage. There's a kind of person that thrives in the parking lots of Walmarts and stripmalls in shitberg towns, and they thrive on social media, too.
Lemmy reminds me more of early internet as well, but also refined by the common language of those platforms as a common starting point. It's a niche, and it's not for everyone. But it is for you, welcome.
wrote last edited by [email protected]There's a kind of person that thrives in the parking lots of Walmarts and stripmalls in shitberg towns, and they thrive on social media, too.
Well put. I'm old school Tripod days (if anyone remembers what that was). I've seen social media go from "A/S/L?" to "like & subscribe" and everything in between. It was never that clean, and the lot lizards were always lurking.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
What “represented the internet” in your opinion?
“Small communities” still exist all over the internet, in far greater numbers than before. They exist on the giant social media platforms too. Discord, WhatsApp, facebook, reddit, etc all have millions of “small communities” on them.
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Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click "surprise me..."
It's a search engine that only spits out "real" webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.
Needs moar webrings.
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What “represented the internet” in your opinion?
“Small communities” still exist all over the internet, in far greater numbers than before. They exist on the giant social media platforms too. Discord, WhatsApp, facebook, reddit, etc all have millions of “small communities” on them.
OP is asking about where to find cute, locally owned retailers & you are telling them they can find the same shit at the mall.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
It's not destroyed, it's just no longer dominant.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
I guarentee you're not the only one
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Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click "surprise me..."
It's a search engine that only spits out "real" webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.
If I had a lot of money I would fund the creation of a new search engine. It would operate entirely on a white list model. And every website on it would be reviewed by people, for people. No posts from any social media site would be allowed; only small webpages. To be featured in the engine, sites would have to have verifiable human origins. So personal blogs made by real people or small businesses with actual physical addresses that can be fully verified in the real world. In order to get your business featured, you would have to apply, and someone would physically have to visit you in order to verify your authenticity. Oh, and any website that uses AI in any form would simply be ineligible to appear on the search engine.
Yes, this would result in a drastically reduced pool of potential sites, but what remains would be absolute gold.
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Not the only one, but it's the walled garden platform approach.
The idea (from around 2010ish) was that every platform is an app and every app is everything. A company buys up other smaller companies until you have a payment system, a marketplace, a VOIP system, advertising, job posting boards, 4 different waya to share media, etc. etc.
While the tech world sold this as, and actually viewed this as, some organic online super village, it wasn't. It was a series of shit stripmalls adjacent to a Walmart in a shitberg town on a big freeway linking other shiberg towns with Walmarts. Sterile, restrictive, one size fits all dipshits kind of garbage. There's a kind of person that thrives in the parking lots of Walmarts and stripmalls in shitberg towns, and they thrive on social media, too.
Lemmy reminds me more of early internet as well, but also refined by the common language of those platforms as a common starting point. It's a niche, and it's not for everyone. But it is for you, welcome.
The idea (from around 2010ish) was that every platform is an app and every app is everything. A company buys up other smaller companies until you have a payment system, a marketplace, a VOIP system, advertising, job posting boards, 4 different waya to share media, etc. etc.
You're describing AOL. This is nothing new. And just as AOL failed and faded, so will the social media giants.
