Missed that by almost a decade. I just feel that there is a lot of nostalgia for the old times whereas nothing is actually preventing people from doing what was done before.
Replying a bit transversally here, but I was on IRC 18 years ago and still am every day. Any game you have played before can be played now, easier than before, heck we are just organizing Worms I tournament. Youtube is still full of funny stuff and reddit communities exist, RSS didn't go anywhere and there are many many hobbyists blogs out there still.
Sure stuff got piled on top of all that but nowadays it's easier, cheaper and more accessible to do what we were doing "back then".
Search engines are preventing what was done before.
Yahoo search would bring up sites on geocities, or small indy sites, for pretty much any topic.
For instance, in the mid 90's you could search for the band "Green Day" on yahoo, and get all sorts of personal fan pages. Now it's 100% corporate crap results.
Independent users no longer have the 'reach' as the corporate users do. We used to share cool things via word of mouth on IRC or AIM or ICQ. Now people just share memes on facebook.
The overarching issue with the modern internet is how "serious" it's become. It used to be a wasteland for the tech savvy. It didn't have to be grand or important. It turned a hang out at high school lunch into a white tablecloth business meeting because "someone might see this later that won't hire you." And of course the fact that most people spend the whole time on one single website (Facebook) means that independent communities are dead, and all communities worth a damn now (because of, you know, people actually using them) are sterilized and controlled by a handful of Tech Lords.
I ran a website and accompanying forum from early highschool to well into college, about 8 years or so. It was mostly a large circle of friends but it organically attracted randoms from all walks of life. Once Reddit and Facebook took over, that was that - no one used it anymore, and certainly no one stumbled upon it.
It's not just growing up that changed the thinking on this (ie. "the good old days"), because I think the internet was still awesome in 2012, and I was well into my 20s at that time. That was only 8 years ago - it's not nostalgia speaking here.
Sounds like modern search engines know the score. I'm kind of kidding.. only kind of. If you search for non-corporate content you get more non-corporate results, although admittedly less than in the past.
Than you know the internet used to be fun. Social drama isn’t what made the internet fun, it was the unique corners and pockets you could explore. IRC especially so.
My whole point is that none of the fun that was there before died. It got overshadowed by popular stuff but IRC, Forums and personal blogs are still out there. I know because I use all of them daily.
Replying a bit transversally here, but I was on IRC 18 years ago and still am every day. Any game you have played before can be played now, easier than before, heck we are just organizing Worms I tournament. Youtube is still full of funny stuff and reddit communities exist, RSS didn't go anywhere and there are many many hobbyists blogs out there still.
Sure stuff got piled on top of all that but nowadays it's easier, cheaper and more accessible to do what we were doing "back then".