I'm glad I miss the '90s-00s internet

Wednesday. September 18, 2024 - 7 mins

A reply to I Wish I Didn’t Miss the ’90s-00s Internet.

I’m older than I care to admit to myself. . . but this is a good thing. I’m in the prime of my life by all measures other than physical. Throughout the entropy of life, I’ve watched technical advancements accelerate, much like the generations before me.

The internet today

Today, I ignore social media as much as possible. Over the years, thousands of hours have been invested in various online communities stretching back farther than Geocities. We watched as the founders of platforms “made it”, without ever realising that we were watching the decay in real time.

The creativity of the old internet was like a drug. Create something. Share it. Receive praise. We never knocked each others work. The crappyness was a part of the charm. A charm that has distilled into the memes we see today, from their humble origin in a single post. Its cool to be there at the birth of such a throwaway, yet worldwide, cultural phenomenon.

We cared about the web rings connecting our internet garden to the world. We curated page rank, back when the world was figuring out what the S in SEO was as about. We crafted¹ the aesthetics of our web presence to give a certain impressions. We played by the societal rules that made our online communities a fun place to inhabit.

From these early days, the most fun was had through short form content. Forums became the town square of the internet, and the hub of conversation. The constant stream of threaded conversation, carefully moderated by the admins, flowed by. The only real difference to today is the lack of an algorithm. You had to find the content. But the individual posts . . . most were forgotten in seconds. Even today I couldn’t tell you much about what I read in a hacker news thread a few days ago.

Wandering around the forums, you’d get to see brief glimpses of who someone was. You can tell a lot about someone by their forum signature. Some were organised, some were detailed, some were funny, and some were niche. I’m many ways, this was one of the information droplets that help paint a picture of another forum user. Signatures were always a good conversation starter, if you felt they could be part of your social circle.

I’m glad I was around when people were creating in a more personal way on the web. Sure, most writing on the web was pure drivel, but through rose tinted glasses we remember the diamonds. Whilst there was no way to easily check the validity of what someone said, the comments usually highlighted the obvious BS. We might not have had to worry about gaming SEO, but there were plenty of ways to game the system to garner attention.

Bump thread.

Today, I love the thrill of finding a new blog to subscribe to. It feels like there are so many more nowadays, and the quality is so much higher. Unfortunately, social provides the main source of eyeballs, meaning they’re just hidden amongst the noise.

Forget all that.

It’s never been easier to create something meaningful with a computer, and learn how to do it.

The barrier to entry has never been lower for sharing something online.

Setting up a blog, vlog, podcast, forum, or community is possible for anyone familiar with using a computing device and the desire.

There’s more opportunities to earn from online creativity than ever before.

The platforms are still free (for the most part). The tools are still free (for the most part). If you wish, you can totally eschew big tech by choosing an open source alternative, an option only possible thanks to the collaborative spirit that birthed the early web. There are non-creepy social platforms inhabited by people like us, only they don’t have the marketing budget to garner millions of users.

Thankfully.

It’s nice to be a part of a smaller community. Kinda feels a bit like the old times. A platform with 1000 engaged users can be a pretty pleasant place to be. . . it’s just a shame that this happens hidden away on Discord today rather than in the open. We shared our knowledge to better humanity in some small way, whilst still curating community connections.

If your goal is millions of views for what you create, you’ll need to learn how to game todays system. And you’ll face an uphill battle. One that you’ll dedicate your life to in order to feed the algorithm in hope of its eventual blessing. Your website is only a part of that picture, and likely a very small one.

Otherwise, trust the process. Create interesting things and share then openly.

People will find it.

And people will follow you.

They may even blog a reply :)

A creative resurgence?

When I look back at Geocities, I’m glad we left that era behind.

It looked awful.

Creative. Sure. But garish and overloading.

We’ve learned so much more about presenting our work online in the years since, and thanks to modern tooling we don’t need this outlet any more. There are far better mediums for your creativity, and ones that can be long lived, meaningful, and owned by you. . . but there’s always neocities for those weird ideas.

Just remember. Geocities went away. So will Neocities someday. As will every other platform but your own.

The 90’s-00’s generation remembers when Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram et.al. were the altruistic output of a generation that grew up with the prototypal internet. Today, these platforms are seemingly collapsing under the weight of greed and shareholder expectations.

It’s easy to feel that it all went wrong somewhere. To be fair, it has by some measures. You might not yet realise the source of the fire of our platform based woes. You may be to entrenched to spot the wider problem. But as soon as you begin to ignore social media, and consider online privacy, you’ll find things have never been better. The whole isn’t worse, it’s just that the platforms you grew up alongside have morphed out of recognition and no longer serve your interests.

Thankfully, you’ve spotted this at a young age.

You’ve decided to not be the product.

You won’t waste your time creating assets for free only to be packaged up and sold as part of someone else’s product. You’ll take advantage of being part of the best placed generation to tend their own internet garden.

Learn from the mistakes and successes of my generation to create the internet you want. Mine, like the ones before, have built the network, tools, and technologies. We put a computer on every desk, made communication instant, allowed information dissemination to be possible in the most hostile of conditions, and put the worlds knowledge in everyone’s pocket.

We didn’t notice what social media was doing until it’s too late.

But your generation has noticed.

Your generation now get to choose what you do with it. We’re set in our ways whilst you’re still carving yours. Along the journey, encourage and enable others to make the “right” decisions. Don’t look down on someone else’s addition. Show them the alternative so they know where to head when they’re ready for recovery. Use your tech skills to the benefit of the people important in your life. Perhaps even take steps towards helping replace the social media in your family’s life.