It's so difficult to explain this to people who weren't there, too.
"Doomscrolling?" that wasn't a thing.
"Doomscrolling?" that wasn't a thing.
Reposted from
This is Me
The web actually was a lot of fun before monetization ruined everything.
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Now Neocities exists, which is a lot like Geocities but with slightly better tech and somehow no banner ads.
Proprietary websites almost feel ancillary now. A lot of websites don't even post news blogs on their own sites.
And then...Facebook. That was the beginning of the end.
The internet felt wild and magical - a perfect escape for an isolated small town teen. Really broadened my horizons!
Kids today didn’t know what they missed. Okay tbh the technology sucked, but it was more about — the bright spirits, the joy of discoveries, the awe of knowing people just like you even if 1000s of miles apart. Those things.
you'd clicky-click your way around and wander from webcomic sites to hyper-specific forums to fanfiction aggregators to blogs dedicated to sparkly GIFs with quotes from someone's favourite book
and "social media" was Livejournal blogs and website guest books
https://www.cameronsworld.net/
Many of the old sites have vanished because it was no longer worthwhile to maintain them, but one CAN simply obtain a server and split costs with a few friends and set up little websites of one's own with no grubby corporations at literally any time.
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-oral-history-of-the-hampsterdance-the-twisted-true-story-of-one-of-the-world-s-first-memes-1.4958325
The closest thing I had to doomscrolling was Fark and that's pretty benign by today's standards.
And then you were done with the internet for a while. It didn't follow you.