Before big tech...

submitted by georgetasker from self.Introductions

I'm old enough to remember the days before big tech arrived, before spam raised it's ugly head. There were many usenet newsgroups on various topics all text based. At that time there were only about two million internet users.

In some forums flame wars were all the rage. These were the days of thick skins and asbestos suits. And then came big tech. In 2006, within that year came youtube, facebook and a host of other sites. I stayed away from FB for three years until a real life friend of mine told me of all the acquaintances from our collective past were showing up online. The days of censorship were way into the distant future and we just enjoyed communicating with friends.

Then around five years ago "hate speech" made its presence felt. Since then I've been spanked with increasing frequence to the point that about once every two weeks I'll get the attention of the Trust and Safety council. The days of convenient easy communication with anybody at all in the world are over thanks to the delicate snowflakes that big tech now pander to.

It's time to go back to the old infrastructure where there are much smaller numbers but also greater freedom.

I have bigger dialectic and rhetorical guns than my opponents.

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[–]Intuit 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And before that (for us common folk), bulletin board systems (BBSes). Some even survived through the Internet. Also AOL's walled garden was around somewhat before big tech.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Your attitude and view of the internet are most certainly welcome on saidit! I'm glad you've found us.

I miss the old internet too.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Participation in social media is an option for people. It's not mandatory! I have never participated in any of it and run a profitable business and had a host of friends all along. Sure if I had a business that necessitated social media for advertising purposes then I might have to employ someone to engage with it, but I certainly wouldn't have to do that myself. People crying about the changes to these platforms [changes that were inevitable] are like heroin addicts complaining about the purity of the fixes they have to buy. it's bullshit! Just leave and get a genuine life for yourself instead of a virtual one.

Here we are, on the old internet, right now today. What's wrong with this? Why do people crave for a big shitfest site like faceplant anyway?

[–]Kubrickian 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Ah yes the 1.0 Internet of the mid to late 90's. There was a gold rush of website jobs everyone I knew was getting paid more money than they ever made before for putting up simple HTML pages. Netscape was the browser and Altavista was the search engine. Kids working nearby at AOL were millionares over night and cashing out their stocks to buy ranches and travel abroad in their early 20's. Then one day this Search tool called "google" appeared in places like the Washingtonpost.com and shortly after a huge recession shift for the worse.

[–]madcow-5 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I liked the 2.0 internet.

Could pirate any software or digital entertainment with ease, internet culture truly felt underground, social media was in its infancy to the extent it existed, you could escape the internet because you weren't carrying it in your pocket everywhere you went, people didn't rely on it for all social interaction including dating.

[–]Kubrickian 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When you used to have to assemble all the numbered pieces of a file together with rar or something like that.

[–]solder0 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When I was a little boy, a friend of a relative was using an oldschool bbs, and I only realized what it was like twenty something years later. My history with online interaction was on the gamefaqs forum, so I got used to censorship from the very beginning. However, I also learned how to circumvent it, and ultimately wind up in places with less of it, such as 4chan.

Even though I did wind up on myspace, my 'community' there overlapped with others such as somethingawful, and break. Yeah, it's kinda like who you grew up with. They either grew up, died, or moved on in some other way. Those times....I miss them a lot. Sure, there was some bad with the good, but mostly, it just was.

Edit: Welcome to saidit. :)

[–]danamiller 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

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