I miss the camaraderie of the old internet
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r/nosurfu/I_Like_Vitamins (289)

My family first got a computer in 2007 when I was a twelve year old and I remember how different it was. It was so easy to make friends, and people were a lot more social and normal. You could easily find someone to have a chinwag with on RuneScape, YouTube or any of the dozens of forums. I can still remember most of my old RuneScape buddies and sometimes I wonder what they've done with their lives. There were also games like Tribal Wars where you could basically roleplay as a lord or something and be a part of a big community oriented clan. Without the social aspect, I highly doubt these games would've been as fun. Maybe because all of my generation hadn't grown up with smartphones and the high power internet we've had for years.

I went on Old School RuneScape when it came out in 2013 and there were some other nostalgia players. I could tell before they even told me just because they could talk normally. Eventually most of us logged out because the novelty wore off. Having checked in a few times over the years since, it's like everyone has been progressively lobotomised. The average player is asocial or they just talk utter shit. Clan chats are just full of people talking about sex, pornography, Trump/Biden, etc.

The same goes for much of the rest of the internet, especially YouTube. I miss the old channels and the ability to message and become friends with people. Now, comments sections read like a horde of bots commenting similarly structured responses and the videos are hardly just people uploading fun; it's all about the dollar. It's as though the human soul has been exorcised from the internet "community".

I have nobody to rant to about this and nothing really constructive to post, I just miss how things were. It's quite hypocritical to be have posted this on Reddit of all places, seeing as it's one of the swords that cut down the good old forums. However, I digress. It's bittersweet to have grown up in the last generation before the internet boom.

Comments (55)

I can relate to this. I first got on the internet in the late 90s in middle school. It was a different world for the first 10 years of the internet for me (ā€˜98 - ā€˜08) than the last decade. The centralization and monopolization of the internet ruined it. The early internet was probably much like some places out west in the early pioneer days. Then people moved in and paved over everything and filled it with McDonalds and shopping centers.

Back then an ordinary person could make a website, and other people would actually visit it. Anyone remember Webrings?

I love this metaphor!

This is very similar to how a company feels really good when it's small, as more people are recruited it's just difficult to maintain the culture. Or any culture for that matter.

It's hard to stay cohesive.

This. I think that is the problem not only for the Internet, but real life too. It's harder to make and keep friends, and families drift apart... That's what I've been thinking... Like everyone is a stranger to everyone.

ā€œWhenever something is wrong, something is too big.ā€ -- Leopold Kohr

2007 was still pretty late-ish.

Early 2000s was the golden age.

Having said that though, everything pre-smartphone (ie before 2010) was golden age.

I feel this...I miss old school forums myself. I know there are still a few out there but things have changed. I remember when I checked the YouTube trending page one day and was pretty creeped out to see how it had changed to be so obviously manipulated. It used to be random shit, a few more popular channel videos, but you'd actually see a variety of things there depending on what was trending. Now it's surreal how fake it is. I was reading about "dead internet theory" the other day, and feel like it's fairly accurate. Just depends on the degree - obviously there are some real people out there but more and more of the \~content\~ of the internet is AI-created and bots. Reddit must be full of bots. It's bleak, and I really miss what the internet used to be.

dead internet theory

Honestly this feels pretty accurate. I'm surprised I never noticed.

I was reading about "dead internet theory" the other day, and feel like it's fairly accurate. Just depends on the degree

It's not really a theory anymore, the internet IS dead. AI and bot generated junk now outnumbers real content, and this "spam" has been driving real human disengagement as well as devaluing click-based ad views for a few years now.

Facebook in particular has been busting their ass trying to find more reliable ways to verify that their data comes from real humans, and from what I've been hearing on the grapevine, some of their bigger customers are growing unconvinced. This is their entire business model under threat, if they can't convince customers that their data comes from real people, then their "product" will become worthless.

In other words, this is the beginning of the end of the "internet people engage with", as we know it. There's an arms race going on between big data and botting, which big data are gradually losing. Soon what we'll be left with will be a system not unlike TV-on-demand.

Interesting points, thanks for responding. As I was reading though this made me wonder if the push from advertisers and big data might be enough to eventually turn the tides on bots? Theyā€™re the ones with the money after all - what good is the entirety of the internet if they canā€™t guarantee their influence on actual humans?

I donā€™t fully understand what you mean by the conclusion that the internet will be like tv on demand. Wouldnā€™t mind hearing more if you feel like expanding on what you envision as the end result!

Well right now the internet is largely built on the idea that it is at once a repository for human knowledge, a forum for discussion, and a platform for media. My assessment is that the first two are being eroded, and that this will continue to the point that they'll basically be made useless. Once that happens, the internet will be a platform for media and little else, so streaming services basically. Even then, how much of that will you trust? How will you know if it isn't all a deepfake? Because once we get there it really ceases to have any value beyond sheer entertainment factor.

We've already seen steps in this direction with the kind of websites that pop up when you search for things like "how do I change the oil in my car?". Instead of getting useful results, you get bot generated clickfarm sites that have essentially made google useless. Right now these scrape info from other websites, but there's a creeping phenomena in which the bots are scraping other bot-created pages because they can't tell the difference. This is what we're going to continue to see with AI, it won't answer the question, it will just either ramble incoherently or it will tell you that you shouldn't drive a car because it's learned that cars are bad. We aren't creating better search algorithms fast enough to deal with this and it's already driving disengagement from the web.

People underestimate, or are unaware of the coming crisis with AI. They think it will be this thing that we can use to enhance old WW2 footage or to drive their car for them, but what it will do instead is just make everything fuzzy and shit. AI will write and print books but they'll suck, it will deepfake news broadcasts to the point that there will be no good way to transmit information, it will create newspaper sites that don't actually exist but will have hundreds of AI journalists writing for it all reporting on things that never happened. AI is about to completely eradicate our ability to discern reality on the internet, and that will spill out into the real world.

I'm not sure what we're going to do about this, honestly. I don't think anyone is thinking about how it will affect public trust in information. I don't know of any solutions being developed. One way we could potentially fix it is by developing ways to verify that no AI was involved, but it's hard to envision how that would go without being extremely privacy-invasive or potentially exploited by AI.

I won't lie, this shit has the potential to push us back into the dark ages as a species. We could well have to go back to machine-printed books and newspapers, distributed by hand only. It may be necessary to physically dumb down our technology so that we can trust it again. Until AI is made illegal globally, there's a good chance that things will get very bad before they get better.

Reddit must be full of bots.

Quite a few; they're surprisingly easy to setup in things as simple as JavaScript/node.

While there are bots, but a lot of it is that a lot of people are just mundane and predictable. I feel like the proliferation of skinner box mobile games and their associated trashy advertisements are a clear example of this. They exist because it works.

Same with much of the braindead content you see especially on Tik Tok. It's easy to blame bots but a lot of it is just dumb people.

It's not an either/or.

Itā€™s coming back! Old-school HTML website communities made a big comeback in 2020. Iā€™m making a neo-cities site and posting photos of my cats and tamagotchis and Sims characters. Itā€™s so fun! I love following links on other peoples sites and finding the craziest things. People are so creative. Try it out and have fun!

They are? Where? Just neo cities?

I havenā€™t explored outside of neo-cities, but Iā€™ve been going down a rabbit hole of nostalgia the past month and I love it. I think I made a neo-cities account and just typed in some interests (tamagotchi, pokemon, cats, silly shit) and I could see websites that were similar.

So many millennials have revamped their old 00s sites. They are like time capsules. Itā€™s a blast!

Got any links? I'd love to see.

Yes babe I got you. You have to view all of these sites on a laptop though, mobile view ruins the experience.

Letā€™s seeā€¦

teddybear-halo.neocities.org is girly and fun! Iā€™m a fan of sites with the kawaii aesthetic so I can only really speak to those. But she has a huge page of links and there is some weirdddd stuff. Start there and just click links and see where it takes you. Itā€™s like a nostalgic treasure hunt.

Thanks for this! Refreshing to see an oldschool-style website out there

Thanks for this! It inspired me to start a neocities site of my own :)

Oh I'm usually on a laptop or desktop. I'm old school :P Thank you! That's very cute. Neocities really is nostalgic.

Itā€™s so fun! She has a bunch of links to old games and also some creepy websites that used to be fun when I was in middle school. Enjoy šŸ’œ

Old-school HTML website

The WWW was a late-comer to "The Net". The Internet had existed for about 15-20 years before the World Wide Web became a thing.

Reddit is probably the closest thing to the old Usenet that was the biggest part of the internet back then: Thousands and thousands of newsgroups (forums) discussing anything and everything, in probably 50 different language areas.

I miss the video comments/replies on YouTube. People used to make responses to creators content and it was freaking lovely.

I hate being on the internet now because it's all just too much. Too negative. To 'similar' too cringey

And every other creator who started small either getting shamed into apologizing a thousand times for being imperfect and then quitting (or turning into a money grubbing sociopath). Jenna Marbles quitting youtube the way she did was a like a gut punch - she was right to apologize and change her content of course, but nothing is ever enough for some people until anyone with a glimmer of a conscience is sucked dry over past mistakes and then quits.

In the early 2000s I was a part of this rpg forum for Final Fantasy and we just had a small group of people all over the world, but we were pretty much all friends and added each other on AIM and messaged. I often wonder what all of them are up to. The site was so much fun, I remember coming home from school and being excited to get on there. lol.

Final Fantasy people are the best people.

I miss the old art YouTube. I hate the commentary crap thatā€™s been happening with the art community their. I refuse to download tik tok. Admittedly I am sort of glued to Reddit. Itā€™s also the subscription services as well. I have a bunch of them! Of course I donā€™t watch anything and give things a chance?? Iā€™m tired of being invested in series that have weak endings. :/

The key to what happened is one word you wrote - dollar. In its literal and metaphorical sense, everything now is about maximizing profit, maximizing income, maximizing popularity, maximizing likes etc. etc.

That's why most of internet content, comments, videos are similar or similarly structured - because whatever turns out to be popular is copied and multiplied to make some kind of income - literal money, fame, popularity, points, upvotes etc. That's why you have the same youtube emoji face with circles and arrows thumbnails, the same sponsorship (Raid Shadow Legends) and youtube comments are nowadays 95% memes trying hard to be funny.

Back then it was all about just being there, making friends, making acquiantances, just simply discovering the web and trying many new things, no matter what was currently popular, because nothing was - everything was new and interesting. Now you have "couple" of most popular websites that monopolized Internet (YouTube, IG, Fb, Google, Reddit etc.) where everyone fights for attention and internet points. Of course these websites are designed purposefully to hypnotize people, addict them and make them part of this game.

This is why today's internet is no longer fun. It's no longer about the exciting discoveries and sharing them with people you know personally or via internet. Now its all about who screams the loudest, it's literally a rats' race.

Weird that you mention this, because only yesterday I first heard of the dead internet theory: https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-theory-most-of-the-internet-is-fake.3011/

TLDR, lots of people have the same thoughts as you, and there's evidence that the bots online are now outnumbering the humans.

YES! I think about this often. Growing up I had tons of internet friends that came naturally. I would come home from school every night and play Runescape or Club Penguin to chat with all my friends. When I got a bit older YouTube became everything. I loved how you could customize your page and make super long bios. Honestly, I feel like it had more MySpace / Tumblr vibes back in the day. I would come home and log on just messaging friends and watching music videos for HOURS. And then on Facebook and even Twitter, it was so easy to make friends with internet strangers. I used to have extremely close connections. It was glorious. I miss it so much nowadays. No friends. Only followers.

true man especially about YouTube I'm much younger then you but I also agree. I was 4 in 2007. I miss the old genuine YouTube channels.

I was just thinking about this a few days ago. I played Ogame and it was like you said. I was a kid (14-15 yo) and I remember everyone being nice to me, helping me with attacks, defenses, better players (and much older) teaching me strategies... it was amazing, and never ever felt toxicity. Even from the players I attacked/attacked me.

One of the reasons I am quitting social media and more or less being on the Internet is the toxicity there is everywhere. I feel there is nowhere nice and comfy

History shows a typical progression of information technologies: from somebodyā€™s hobby to somebodyā€™s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartelā€”from open to closed system

-- Tim Wu

Before they realised they could get richā€¦

Imagine how someone who had their first email address in 1987 feels. I had that, I had BBS's, use-net. Hell, even Compuserve wasn't horrible, though fuck AOL.

It's been a long strange trip, with a very unpleasant ending.

I still believe that the good people are out there. And I still think it's overall a great force for good, to connect people and ideas.

But they've been overwhelmed by the commercialized shit; sell a fake view of the world, make a buck, get people pissed off and outraged, mostly at each other. Everything is owned by shitty people who just want to watch the world burn, and they can use their ownership to make sure it fucking happens.

Dude I feel this 100% - I grew up in the 90s/2000s on the internet. I used to "surf" the internet. Playing random flash games, finding new websites, joining forums and starting my own little Yu-Gi-Oh! forum because ProBoards was a thing and was easy to set up for a 12 year old. I felt like you could do anything and talk to anyone and go on about your personal life offline separately. I spent countless all nighters playing RuneScape and browsing GameFAQs just to see what cool cheat codes were out there for video games. As I got older I found myself spending hours watching YTMNDs and would casually lurk on 4chan. I feel like after 2005 the internet started going downhill. It happened slowly, but by 2010 I no longer felt like the internet was what it used to be. You can't do anything without being tracked to the 10th power. Everything is "Sign in with facebook/Google/etc.?" so that you can be tracked. It also bothers me that when I'm not searching for any specific information, I find myself constantly switching between Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Reddit on my desktop PC and can't think of anywhere else to go. That's my fault really but it just reminds me of how far away we are from the late 90s/early 2000s internet. I really miss the days of OG Memes that if you mentioned them in public no one would know what you were talking about (shout out to O RLY?)

People actually ā€œtalkedā€ on Halo and Call of Duty as well. I agree, shits not the same man

Well, times change. The wildwest days of the internet are over.

It still exists. It's just not on social media. Go to smaller hobby dubs or websites with dedicated forums. That's where you'll find the good ones. The most obnoxious people are drawn to the highest platforms.

Delete your the folder C:\Windows\System32 to speed up your computer was a common troll in the 90s.

The internet wasnā€™t a safe or friendly place. The community was much better though because it wasnā€™t as commercialized or dominated by just a handful of large corporations, who want to keep you on their website.

It was a much more intimate Internet back then. I joined around 1991 using 'store and forward' inter-node transfers with UUCP. Use a 1200-baud (or maybe only 300-baud) modem to dial-up to your up-line once a day and see if there were any usenet or email files up there waiting for you.

That was around the time those new-fangled "abcd@xyz.com" email addresses were becoming popular instead of the 'place1!place2!place3' system of email addressing, and just before that new 'WWW' thing with the Mosaic Browser.

I remember the buzz when somebody said, "Hey, I've just heard that there's now a whole million nodes on The Net". We thought that was almost unbelievable. And the wonder when one of the local guys sent an email to the States and he got a reply back within 10 minutes.

Justin TV (RIP) still pisses all over Discord (et al) for me.

Didnā€™t Justin.TV get replaced with twitch?

Kinda but it wasn't really the same whatsoever then everyone jumped in and,, well,, you know

Maybe its just about volume. There are now so many more millions of people active, that the whole thing just ends up being clogged up with sh*t. I do not want to be xenophobic, but I think I heard that people in India and China are keener to get on Facebook when they get online, than they are to do anything else with their mobile phone.

I remember making friends online. Me and my friend did it alot while playing Quake. Heck, we were part of a genuine community. It actually seems like now, if you're not a pro-gamer, or an YouTube celebrity, you're not really going to gain access to the genuine online community.

RIP internet.

I completely agree man. Those were the days.

I relate to this so much. I used to be play DotA online as a teenager. I remember having clan buddies and weā€™d be playing all night and be on call, talking shit, it was a really good time

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I see comments like this all the time, its okay to admit that things change with time. Not everythings the same forever, does that scare you or something? Not to be mean, its just if you think the internet is the same today as when the poster was 12 youve got perception problems.

2007.

Fuck, Iā€™m old.

I too miss being able to call people faggots without being chastised. /s

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Being able to friend and message people on YouTube was one of the greatest things in my life as a kid. I met so many cool people and still talk to one on occasion. I and many other people could have so many new friends if those features were still around, since there's a lot of cool people I've spoken to in comments but it never leaves there. It's so sad :(