That's not it at all. The internet used to be a multitude of small sites. A true bazaar made by individuals, visited by individuals in their web browsers.

Now it is all the 5 biggest platforms trapping users in their apps and doing their best to wall everything off.

some things about AIM are better. on discord, you express yourself with a monthly fee and now the member list is full of distracting animations. on AIM (and myspace), you had to learn some HTML to format the song lyrics in your bio just right.

People used to have social lives and meet and make friends and go out before apps or broadband. In the dialup days the internet was an addition to an already completed life. Facebook and iPhone was where things started to go to shit. Suddenly everyone was permanently online instead of just the cool people. And their brains all went to mush and they forgot how to relate to other people and have a life.

Well, then the Internet wasn't a capitalist shithole. It was only a shithole.

I almost cried reading the explanation.

Really, because I'm more nostalgic for having hope for the future.

Fuck that, I'm nostalgic because there was an actual aesthetic with character. "Modern" flat UIs are boring and flat.

"Nostalgia" is not really reserved for great times, just different times. Is just reminiscing.

In addition, AIM was great at the time because it was the first "messenger". It was instant without the clunky and slow interface of email that for some reason we continue using 30 years later. It's not better in any way.

I could only get AOL in my town back in 1995 or so. Back then you had to pay… by the hour? The minute? Something like that. And AOL wasn’t a 24 hour service, it would shut down each night and kick everyone off.

No, it's because it wasn't full of bots and shitty content created solely for the purpose of generating clicks. People created content to have fan and share their passion, not because they wanted to be a professional influencer.

For the majority of people the internet used to be a room, a place you went and accessed a device.

The device wasn’t mobile, we usually didn’t carry around the thick laptops of the time around.

At first using the device would disconnect the phone, and you couldn’t carry it around easily.

As times changed and it’s mobility shifted it became more and more commercially viable and then it was invaded by corporate interests.

Now it’s not just a room, it’s everywhere and it’s allows all sorts of powerful groups to exert influence over every single person that connects with it

everybody knows its the nostalgia for GEOCITIES AESTHETIC

Tbh the indieweb and fediverse have me feeling this way these days. I look forward to getting home and checking my forums and messages, just like I used to after school.

This and the old internet was largely non-commercial compared to today. It was the "small" internet of passionate nerds, academics, and techies who needed an outlet for their passion. I remember being confused when I learned the ".com" was intended for commercial web sites only, because most personal websites people had were ".com"

With Prodigy Internet, you get on, you get the information you need, and you go do something with it.

I have a 20 year old coworker I constantly ask probing questions about what it's like never having not had the internet. It's so weird.

I mean crushing boredom isn't a thing anymore because of it, which is cool and I can acknowledge that. But there's also something very dystopian about it and clearly it's having pretty serious negative effects on society, politics in particular. So yeah....not really sure how to feel about it.

I just went camping and put the goddamn thing in a bag for 4 days and forgot about it. Friends and I only brought the internet up once during the trip to joke that we hoped when we got back into reception we'd find out he had died. It's funny cuz I don't even need to say who.

The internet was much better before people figured out how to make money off of it.

I miss the old internet because it was a time you could meet up with old friends and connect and stay in touch with each other.

A few things changed, though. First, enshittification of services. You used to go on Facebook and just SWIM in the lives of other people. Now it's just promoted content. Second--related to the post--is rage was recruited to encourage engagement. Third, people's behavior online shifted towards tribal identification, towards rage baiting the other side, towards performativity; and I honestly don't know how much of that I can lay at the feet of Mark Zuckerberg.

I also miss the old internet because truly random things had a chance to make the rounds. Cracked.com had some of the finest writing I've ever read. Nowadays with SEO and official tie-ins (Forbes.com has a deal with Google), the only way to be seen is to spend money, and the only reason to spend money is to make money, so most everything online is now directly or indirectly an advertisement. AI only accelerated this process.

I think this is why Reddit became as huge as it did, because the weirdness still had a chance, and because people want to talk to each other. And now we have Lemmy.

We keep making and finding new islands as the waters continue to rise, but we used to roam the plains.

Smartphones ruined the internet.

When you needed to sit at a computer, use a keyboard, and spend a bit of time to write out thoughtful content, the quality of the discussion and community on the internet was so much higher. With smartphones, they had to dumb down the UI, consolidate content and reactions into likes and emojis, and generally just had to deal with smaller, more unsubstantive and rage-baity comments.

Plus, there's just the undeniable fact that computer users are more tech-savvy than people who only know how to use a smartphone. Making the internet smartphone friendly opened the floodgates up to a sea of low-quality engagement.

Before smartphones, we would go outside, live our lives, then come home and see what happened on the internet that day. When the internet started following us around in our pockets on crippled devices that are designed for consumption and cheap-ass engagement, that's really when the internet went to shit.

ASL?

Nah, I'm nostalgic for the time when a chat was just a chat, not a signal to be analyzed, monetized, advertised, and propagandized.

No, I lived on the Internet it was my connection out of a small town into the wider world.

What’s making the Internet shit was capitalism monetising everything and making us a product just to use it.

Can confirm, 39 year old here. The internet was fun from the mid 90s to mid 00s. People made content for fun, educational purposes, or to provide a service someone needs or would find useful. You "went on the internet" to chat with weird strangers and download media. It was fun. Now almost my entire life is the internet - my job, errands (banking, shopping, appointments) relaxation time (tv shows on streaming service, music and podcasts in one app). And in each of those things, bombarded with ads, privacy invaded, personal data stolen... we are way too reliant on the internet

... eventually, you logged off.

Maybe you logged off. Quitters.

I've been considering getting rid of my mobile data for this reason and force people to call or text.

Sometimes I get done of posting on Lemmy and I go out and take pictures.

One of the core features of AIM was an away message. I'm not here, fuck off.

Even better was if someone sent a message and then you set yourself as away.

Based J3NNA_88

Logging off? Perhaps. I was on dialup a lot longer than most people I know, but for me, it’s the ad-driven surveillance capitalism and ever present grift of everyone seeking to monetize their interactions that didn’t exist back then.

GenX version of the internet:

https://youtu.be/ckc6XSSh52w

Then log into a BBS.

ASCII Pr0n and 8 bit music...

Well put. Also it was novel and less sinister.

Actually, it was geocities that made the internet so much fun

Excuse me, AIM and MySpace were that cool

Some of y'all need to go camping more.

That said the 'old' Internet had a much better signal to noise ratio before the eternal September.

The other part was you could see what people were up to and behave accordingly. Someone could be offline or busy so you'd know if you'd get a response or if you should or shouldn't talk to them.

Now if it's 1am I hesitate to message people since it might wake them up or something.

Very poetic but that was absolutely not what made the internet great. It was the culture and content. Everyone was just excited to make and share things with this cool tech.

Personally I thought the internet was better before it existed. 😁

Hmm I almost get it but I'm still kind of perplexed by this attitude because you absolutely can still set boundaries, the tools to do that are there, and I think increasingly people are choosing to do that.