42
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Coming of age at the dawn of the social internet (LiveJournal, AIM, and other pre-Facebook internet things)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/coming-of-age-at-the-dawn-of-the-social-internet
Super relatable for me, a millennial who grew up with LiveJournal, Deviantart, and Neopets. In this excerpt from his book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, Kyle Chayka describes the transition from the "fragmented", "DIY", anonymous web of the 90s and early 2000s, to the big-social-media-dominated, real-face-real-name-internet-profiles web of today:
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I feel this so much. I'm still pretty addicted to social media scrolling, but I've been proactive in trying to engage more with "alternative" social media instead-- such as Tildes and Pillowfort. I really value how these sites are purely community-supported, the feed is mainly chronological rather than algorithmic, and they respect data privacy. I've also recently discovered 32-Bit Cafe, a hub for "tiny web" / "personal web" advocates sharing resources to make the web more expressive, fun, and creative rather than a giant advertising machine.
As someone else who read the article and went "oh shit, it me!", thanks so much for the additional links! I quit Facebook and Twitter years ago, but Reddit remains my one guilty hanger-on I can't seem to quit. Pillowfort and 32-Bit Cafe look delightful! I've been dipping my toes into Discuit as well, and so far I've been enjoying the vibe of the community there.
I've joined Discuit too but haven't been so active there! Are there any particular communities there you'd recommend?
If you get into Pillowfort here are a couple of links to help you get started there!
A guide to the Pillowfort experience
Active communities
Ooh, thanks, that's helpful! :) I'm really liking Discuit's photography and art adjacent communities so far, including of course everything cat related, but also the one of a bunch of pictures of skies and naturecore. I've left the political type discs as I think tildes does a better job of in-depth discussion. There's definitely a bunch of fairly dead communities too, so I guess we'll see how things pan out!
Nice thank you! Ok then, I'd also recommend these PF communities for you :)
moss and more
cloud enthusiasts
I really liked this article! I'm a little too young to have been on the internet in this era, but reading about people's experiences with it like this make me wish I'd have been around to experience it as well. It seems a lot simpler and easier to just "turn off" at the end of the day before returning to your real life, whereas now that isn't such an easy option, especially with the advent of phones. The internet and social media are so integrated into everyday real life that being fully disconnected from it now makes you an outlier, sometimes to a point of feeling excluded from real life conversation and activity for not being online in your off time (in my experience at least).
Something I do wonder about though is how much people idealize the past, seeing the old web through rose coloured glasses. Was it really as great as it's made out to be? There are certainly a lot of aspects of current day internet that aren't so great, I think anyone on this site would agree with that, but I can't help but think about the bright side as well. Rather than reinforce the pessimistic "everything is terrible" notion that underlies most social media right now, maybe we could acknowledge the positive and negative aspects of the old and new web? Not trying to imply you're pushing that idea OP, but more of a general thought I had.
You're here on Tildes so you are experiencing a semblance of the old Internet! The other communities I mentioned in my initial comment are also places where you can feel this too. :)
I think the reason why it's so important to discuss the negative effects is that these big tech corporations (the ones who dominate the Internet) hold so much power in the world, and obscure so much of their negative effects. But one thing I do like about the Internet currently is that because people are talking about these problems, there's already a pushback against big tech, so there are now places like Tildes, and I hope there will be more. I agree that it's not good to idealize the past, and I don't think we should just try to bring back the old Internet. But we can definitely adopt and revitalize some things from it, like the idea that webpages don't have to follow standardized grid layouts, and the diversity that comes from not being dominated by just a handful of big platforms. Personally I feel hopeful and excited discovering more and more of the "tiny web" emerging now.
You raise a lot of good points! I’m really enjoying that more and more people it seems are starting to be interested in bringing back tiny web type platforms, and more platforms like this are popping up. There’s a joy in discovering new websites that I don’t feel like I’ve experienced in a long time that has been returning occasionally- like with the one you linked! It’s really cool, thank you for sharing :)
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/JFYQV
The article wasn't good, but I do remember seeing a title that matched what I was going through before nuking all of my major social accounts.
"It's ok to grieve the loss of social media".
It hit me like a ton of bricks as I hadn't yet accounted for how little changes over the years had altered the whole experience.
More addictive, less fulfilling, and worse of all, more nasty and reductive. Innocence lost.
Great job quitting big social media cold turkey!! I'm not quite there yet but maybe someday.
if you haven’t done it, get into your ICQ account. When i did it, i didn’t know anything beyond my number, had no access or idea which email address i used, etc. they asked me to name a few people on my contact list. i used my ex-wife and some generic names and boom! success.
i got on and three or four people were logged in, which was surprising.
facebook really stripped the personality out of the internet.
Oh wow! I'll have to check if I still have my ICQ number written down somewhere!
just over a decade ago I woke up with these numbers in my head. I couldn't figure out what it was for, then it dawned on me that it was ICQ.
I loved ICQ. I'm surprised its still going... maybe it'll get more love now that the client is opensource -- haha