What is the difference between the current internet and the late 2000s internet?

[Sir I]

It could be about speed, content, "feeling", everything.

[Yumetou]

The biggest thing that has changed is centralization, and the attitude of the people using the net. During the 90s and 00s, you needed a level of expertise to use the internet safely. Computers were expensive and could be very technical. It was the only way to keep your hardware safe from malware, viruses, hackers. As an example, one forum I adored was hacked by a person pretending to be an edgy version of the administrator. A beloved figure in early Zelda fan fiction. This person terrorized the site with ramblings, images of gore and hardcore pornography. Modern software is so complex and updated so regularly that that is not usually an issue.

I can't tell you how much more varied and vibrant websites were back then. Today, there is usually one or two websites you think of for a given service or fandom. A Youtube for videos, a Facebook or Twitter for messaging, Discord or Skype for chat. It was different back then. There wasn't just shrinemaiden.com and moriyashrine.org. If a fandom was large, you could find dozens of moriyas or shrinemaidens. There were forty Zelda forums at one time, each with their own style and appearance. Some would compete with their legacy, how old they were and how many memes, compositions or fanfics they had. Others did so with a novel design, or unique features like a news feed with inside connections. All of these were fan made and maintained. There was no worries about appeasing advertisers or funders, because everything was paid for by the owner or fans. This gave fan sites an authenticity back then. Today, everything is commodified, thanks to Google adsense.

Mind you, just because there were so many didn't mean all or even most were good. Some were very inactive. Months without a new post or user. Some were overcrowded. Some just had trash mods or users they'd let bully other people. Some were just old and barely worked. But if you looked, there was a site out there that fit you perfectly.

 

People were also much more guarded over who they interacted with online. As kids, my family and friends were told you should never give your real name, appearance, ethnicity, your birthday, age, the state you lived in. Even on well regulated forums (most members of which were preteens and teens), there was always some older guy there who was from your state and thought you should totally meet up. All that changed when Facebook became a thing. Suddenly, posting your real name, address and age were not only permissible, but encouraged. The old rules of guarding your identity on forums were lost as a wave of new users were encouraged to join the site. This in turn kickstarted the era of data collection, where companies harvested user data in order to sell to advertisers and government entities. Its to the point some people don't bother hiding their identity. 'Why bother, they know all this already'. There isn't really any sense of privacy or ownership of your information, and this is not going into government data-collecting...

[Sir I]

@Yumetou, so do you think that the current internet is better than before? And if not, when you've the chance, will you go back to the 'Golden Age' of the internet?

[KorosKoros]

I'd say 2008 - 2016 were the TRUE "Golden Years" of the internet.

Now an days everyone is anti social. Both in online gaming and on forums. Its honestly kinda sad. Also back then there was a lot less censorship and internet laws.

Edited August 27, 2023 by KorosKoros

[Yumetou]

3 hours ago, Sir I said:

@Yumetou, so do you think that the current internet is better than before? And if not, when you've the chance, will you go back to the 'Golden Age' of the internet?

I think the internet as it was, was objectively better. Even with viruses and hackers, and a higher bar to entry. Since people are forced together onto a few large platforms, they don't have any investment in them. Can you think of one person who would willfully give Reddit or Facebook money to keep existing? People did that for sites that look a lot like Moriya today, because it was made by a fan for a fan. Now, most people invested in something find it as a channel or a submenu in some massive network like Youtube or Twitter. Money has also made many things online a lot more cynical. Even hobby channels on Youtube or Instagram use terms like 'engagement' and 'retention' when discussing their channels. Though I can respect a guy who pursues his passion as his career, those are very sterile terms to describe someone.

That's actually one reason I decided to get into Touhou. I followed a couple meme pages. The meme pages linked to a couple small lore channels. And none of them had any ads. They were all made because the creator just loved Remilia and Suwako, or Perfect Cherry Blossom and Subterranean Animism.

 

There's also what @KorosKoros mentioned. There is a lot more censorship online these days, especially since the internet went from an American controlled institution to a global one. Corporations and governments have realized with the centralization of the net, its easier to manipulate and influence people. Its not really working anymore, but instead of building their own sites, most people seem to just be checking out. Fortunately, it looks like the current era of the internet is dying off. Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been constantly losing money and users, while Reddit appears to be imploding. Twitter is either evolving into its final form or is in its death throes. With their death, that hopefully means more communities will spring up in the wild, not beholden to these massive corporations which are so easily pressured.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Yumetou

[Sir I]

@Yumetou, do you feel that the modern internet is more depressing than ever before?

Edited August 28, 2023 by Sir I

[Nyoko]

On 8/27/2023 at 10:05 PM, KorosKoros said:

I'd say 2008 - 2016 were the TRUE "Golden Years" of the internet.

Now an days everyone is anti social. Both in online gaming and on forums. Its honestly kinda sad. Also back then there was a lot less censorship and internet laws.

Those days were the most fun I had living... likely because they were simpler times for me.
Though I wouldn't say that everyone is anti-social on the internet. Just that they're too scared to accidentally step on a bureaucratic landmine saying something.
In fact, the culture I've witnessed is eerily similar to the culture in my country of residence: where they'd complain about their untimely demise if it was possible.

Then again, I never was a part of any online gaming community or any forums, so what do I know?

[Sir I]

So, how do you feel if popular social medias die out, @Nyoko? And are you going to be happy?

[Nyoko]

1 hour ago, Sir I said:

So, how do you feel if popular social medias die out, @Nyoko? And are you going to be happy?

That's a grand old question there.

Popular social media, in which I include Youtube, dying out would eventually close down the wealth of cross-cultural information and content there is; simply because it requires a lot more legwork to get it. Also, memes would have a harder time spreading, which is a shame really. It's a language in and of itself that most people understand even through dialectical differences. Then again, the forums that would inevitably spring up in the absence of such popular media like twitter, tumblr, etc. are likely to cause a resurgence of the memes.

For the good that would happen from Tik-tok and similar sites shutting down, Brain-rot would be a lot less common, which would ultimately lead to benefit for the world. Human tenacity at acquiring a comfort they already had would also likely make forums like the ones in the 90s pop up, though now with regional variants like an European Touhou site and an American Touhou site. It'd also be easier to learn languages due to the decentralization that would happen. There would now be a french Touhou forum, a dutch Touhou Forum, a German Touhou Forum, ...

My answer?
I'd be happy because the perceived reality that happens in that scenario is one where I must work more to use the internet, and more work for a hobby is a good thing most of the time, at least for me. I would also have a lot more motivating force behind learning languages, rather than one or two lingua franca and my native one. Those languages will cause the amount of books I can read to increase, and the requirement for translators to exist will increase, leading to the job of translator being asked for more. My prospects for getting a job I want to get should increase would this scenario play out.

[Nekoko]

Internet before was like a limitless sandbox 

[Yumetou]

On 8/28/2023 at 9:50 AM, Sir I said:

@Yumetou, do you feel that the modern internet is more depressing than ever before?

 

I'd say so. I've lost a lot of interest in gaming over the past few years. The reason why is simple. The first is I am constantly pressured to socialize with strangers who I will never see or interact with again. It doesn't matter if its a modern multiplayer game or Twitter. The bulk of the mainstream gaming market is multiplayer experiences, and the bulk of mainstream internet culture is social media. As previously discussed, the fandoms on places like these aren't grassroots fan movements. The subreddit for a Zelda game isn't operated by a lifelong fan who made fanart and does cosplays, its a powermod who manages dozens of other subreddits.

The second, is everything is already discovered, and it happens quickly. Sure, I could explore and experiment with gameplay methods on a game like Fortnite, but I'll just get stomped by anyone who is playing in the optimized playstyle they found in r/fortnite in thirty seconds. Sure, I could ignore gameplay tutorials and LPs to beat Touhou 19 in my own time. But I'll miss out in discussions about the plot and gameplay. By the time I get to it, discussion about the game might be dead. I think this constant crowd rush for novelty and optimization is not at all healthy. Especially if its for things which are hobbies done to relax.