this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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Lost among the "internet sucks now, it used to be better" discourse is that the old internet was heavily moderated. The laissez faire parts of the old internet were known as the seedy corners of the web. Social media and its modern derivatives like lemmy take on that latter philosophy.
It's no wonder it's chaos every where. The libertarian tech bros have really impressed their world view on everyone. So the prevailing philosophy is these "digital town squares" should be absolute free speech zones. Except town squares in real life do not work like this anywhere. At least not in most liberal democracies. In real life there is bureaucracy. There are police, fire, ambulances. There is the simple matter of neighborly social contract. You cannot go into a real life town square and do whatever you want. You cannot just up and fight strangers, engage in lewd acts, set up encampments or what have you without permits. In the same way internet requires structure. Counter intuitively it used to have a lot more of it on account of sites being run by a real human being. Not the mega conglomerate investor groups feeding off ad/engagement profits.
Those users unfamiliar with the old internet yet pine for the good old days would have hated it. Power hungry mods is a meme as old as the internet itself. It's a necessity of the internet. Hardly anybody gets banned for being an asshole anymore. Sometimes (often more like) people need to be forced offline so they can go outside.
Say something dumb in an IRC channel? Get banned.
The good ol' days when I was young and irresponsible and got banned for it. I learnt how to converse with people online through this. Talk shit, get banned. I also feel like I forgot some of this on later platforms.
I hated it at the time, but like most learning experiences, grown to appreciate it later. I can't believe I had free and unmoderated access to the internet's back in the early 2000s. Shout out to those mods for putting a teenager in their place!
TL;DR - A millennial goes on a tangent about the good ol' days.
I remember being permanently or temporarily banned as a kid/teenager with simple messages like "go outside". Mostly for being too rude or annoying, or edgy. As teens and kids often are.
Idk if it's a thing on Lemmy, but I'm all for extended temporary bans for simply repeatedly being a dick to others.
The "old internet" for me was something like 2006-2012. And I agree, people who pine for it probably couldn't hack it in 2024, it was racist, it was homophobic, and threads went off the rails with people giving unsolicited advice on how to please your gf, but it was fun, it was dynamic, often complete strangers behind phpBB nicknames felt more real than your closest friends on Instagram do now.
I yearn for those days. Not because I particularly want to deal with racist, homophobic idiots, but because I miss the dynamic internet before mega social network sites. I miss the nuance, people knowing each other on forums and whenever someone who's known in the community would post something that on surface level is banhammer-worthy per the rules, the community would talk it out and the hammer would fall when people call for it, not always strictly adhering to the rules. And yes, that did produce the power-hungry mods. But it's not like much has changed.
I feel like I'm going off on a tangent. I just miss the randomness.
I recently had a chat with a new colleague about how you can't joke with a lot of Zoomers about race/nationality/sex because they don't perceive nuance. I think it's a cultural thing imprinted by the internet content coming from America. We're both from Eastern/South Eastern Europe and people don't immediately get their panties in a knot over offensive jokes because they realize that a racist-sounding joke does not make the person racist. And I feel that's the state of the internet now too, and it's ok, but I miss the sharp edge that it used to have.
I also miss the weird smileys.
tldr a child gives us his wisdom lmao
first by mocking and then by doing the thing he mocked
well played asshole
the internet only existed for like eight years before you started using it and you pine for your past but shit on those who were alive for the first part
just fuckin retarded man, snap out of it and quit being a cunt
Your comment nicely illustrates OPs observation.
Anyone can feel free to disagree with me or poke at inconsistencies in what I wrote, I know they're there, but I don't have the time to write an essay. But calling me a retarded child while misinterpreting what I said is exactly the kind of aggressive commenting I believe OP is pointing out.