Internet users

katy81

katy81

katy81

Associate
Joined
26 Aug 2023
Posts
280
Location
Uk
Hi I first dialed in around 1994. Everything i dialed in inches found a new website or community. The Internet felt boundless.

Since around 2005 or so I feel its gone. Shrunk to a shadow of uts former self. Its been condensed down and down to a few sites. Or "apps" You tube. Fb. Ebay. Amazon. Etc.

Did anyone else notice the same? The Internet condensing in on its self since around 2005. To now 20 years later. Still technically a world wide information exchange. But really you only regularly vist <10 sites or apps?
 
Stop using Google to search, stop relying on Facebook. Use alternative search engines that don't have paid for SEO results. Stop watching YouTube videos that rely on an algorithm to provide you content.

The reason the internet seems the same is because we've all got lazy, we all rely on something telling us what to watch or what to read. You want something interesting? Go and find it yourself. It's out there, just harder to find.
 
2005 is essentially when social media started but I would say didn't really take off for a couple of years. Websites like Geocities, Bebo, Myspace lost users to Facebook.

It's also at this time that, at least in the UK, 'access for all' initiatives started as well as ADSL connections becoming affordable.

Social media is essentially what condensed the internet from how you describe for most people IMO. Particularly Facebook, when it introduced 'Groups'.

For my perspective, car enthusiast websites, went down because starting a FB group doesn't cost anything, easy to create/maintain as it doesn't need someone with particular knowledge.

There are still those websites but few of them and they've gone from 20+ posts a day to 5 in a week which means getting a response takes a long time so people turn back to social media despite a forum being the better option because forums make better knowledge repositories.
 
It's the same for any market, big fish eat little fish until there aren't many fish left. Regulators are meant to protect competition, but they're on the take.
 
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When I got a new car, it felt all new. Not it feels old hat. Same thing. You get used to things. Besides, the internet in 1994 is a shadow of what it is now.
 
I think it was a little later then that it went downhill, peak for me was 2005-2009. There were good forums with their unique character, there were competitive market places that had all the TV, films or music you could ever want, internet speeds were sufficient. Now everything is a subscription in a fragmented market place, content is delivered by algorithm, forums have closed in favour of unsociable facebook groups. And for the last time, I don't want your cookies!
 
UTmaniac said:
Ah, the days of the MSN Gaming Zone and playing Unreal Tournament instagib deathmatch for hours online, while downloading custom maps.
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That was great. What wasn't so great was being so caught up in a game that you forgot to disconnect before the 60 minute mark and then being charged the full call time!

Instagib FTW.
 
EH75 said:
Yeah early noughties was the golden age tbh. Now its all social media echo chambers and clickbait. At least this place is still going.
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I'm old enough to remember direct-dial BBS boards and dialing up for direct IP Doom/Doom 2/Heretic/Unreal Deathmatches. Although LAN parties were a big thing.

I remember our secondary school allowing myself and the sysadmin to install games on the school network for Lunchtime LANs because the head thought it was a good way to get kids interested in IT.
 
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I got online in September 1998 when I started uni on the uni computers, but properly online in early 1999 when I got my first PC in the uni halls of residence. We were on a dual-T1 connection, which was 3Mbit and that was bloody fast at the time.

The golden era imo was 1999 to 2007. I liked how Wild West it was. There were big corps back then too like Amazon, eBay, YouTube, Google, Microsoft and I was fine with those. Forums were commonplace which I liked and felt personal to me. I liked using newsgroups and web directories e.g. dmoz.org and MSN Gaming Zone. Age of Empires II FTW! World of Warcraft was at the tail end of the good days, 2005-2007 era.

I don't miss: pop-up adverts, personal web pages such as Geocities and Fortune City (ad-ridden), dial-up 56k, and the fact that monitors over 17" would cost an arm and a leg.

Regarding year 2005, I would say it was more like 2007 or late 2000s with the introduction of Web 2.0 when it started going downhill. Faceparty, Myspace, Friends Reunited disappeared in favour of Facebook, where YOU become the product and not the other way round. The internet became sanitised yet toxic with politics being platformed on the likes of Twitter/X and Bluesky. Apart from the few remaining forums that are left, Reddit is one of the better sites nowadays. Yes there is politics on there, but you can choose sub-Reddits e.g. gaming/tech and discuss gaming/tech without politics rearing its ugly head. Last but not least, modal overlays are the scourge of Web 2.0 like pop-up ads from Web 1.0. There doesn't seem to be a way of avoiding modals.
 
I do like that once upon a time, all the software I could want was available on HENSA (now the mirror service) and a few good directories would provide all the navigation I could want. Also there was something fun about the variety of URLs. Like we don't have gopher:// anymore.
 
randal said:
Stop using Google to search, stop relying on Facebook. Use alternative search engines that don't have paid for SEO results. Stop watching YouTube videos that rely on an algorithm to provide you content.

The reason the internet seems the same is because we've all got lazy, we all rely on something telling us what to watch or what to read. You want something interesting? Go and find it yourself. It's out there, just harder to find.
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That's the issue - you're quite limited if you don't change your approach.

YT is just so convenient, as is google search etc...

I think social media is a bit of a trap too.

Out of interest what search engines do you use? I've been using DuckDuckGo but often do fall back to Google at times but I'm not on social media so at least I dodge that bullet.
 
Hmm an OG net-vet? There's only one way to tell.


Do you have stairs in your house?
 
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