14 ms·

Jarred was probably young when the internet was first taking shape, and every generation shares the feeling that things were better in their youth (aka the Gold

• general8bitso 8y ago
  Darkweb?
  • mav3rick 8y ago
    Reddit ?
• beezischillin 8y ago
  A lot of online communities today are unbearable tho as everything's become so politicised. It started really wildly happening around 2013-2014 where no community was to remain a zone without some minority of users politicising it for attention. It was probably something that also happened before that but it somehow became really prevalent, at least. And often that took the fun out of it. I kind of think fondly of those times. Now of course this is just anecdotal, but that's what I've experienced in most communities I used to frequent and perhaps lots of other people here did too. In fact, it's something I really appreciate here on HN, the tone of discussions is rather pleasant and on topic and it's very rare to see people intentionally driving it into the ground, although in contrast to something like a Facebook group it's a lot less personal.
  • weinzierl 8y ago
    >It started really wildly happening around 2013-2014 where no community was to remain a zone without some minority of users politicising it for attention. It was actually in September 2013 when it started ... or was it September 1993 ...? Uh, oh, how time flies, never mind.
    • beezischillin 8y ago
      Time does indeed fly. I was born in 1993 :)
    • adfm 8y ago
      September 1993 sounds reasonable. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/22/us/dispute-over-computer-messages-free-speech-or-sex-harassment.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/22/us/dispute-over-computer-...
    • cvwright 8y ago
      Eternal September may have started in 1993, but it's arguable that we've been at a whole other level of badness since 2016 -- "Eternal November".
  • rootusrootus 8y ago
    As someone who has been interacting online since FidoNet was a thing, I have to say ... this is a problem as old as humans. There were plenty of politicized discussions back then, plenty of contentious people, plenty of trolls. In some ways the vibe was different, but really, it wasn't better. Or worse, to be honest.
    • wolco 8y ago
      The real names make it worse.
  • tenpies 8y ago
    I distinctly remember a discussion about Something Awful's slogan ("the internet makes you stupid") and how it was actually a keen observation about the internet. Pre-internet you would have people with really bad ideas. These people were so obvious to any normal person that bad thinkers generally shut up because sharing their bad ideas meant being socially ostracized or at least getting shunned. But then you add the internet, and all these radically bad thinkers find each other and their ideas almost seem normal amongst their type. They not only normalize bad thinking, but they also push for even more radically bad thinking in an effort to out-do each other. End result, you end up with a vociferous contingent of town idiots who don't realize they are town idiots because they only listen to fellow town idiots. Add advertising companies who function on a metrics-first approach, and those town idiots dictate how companies act.
    • Baeocystin 8y ago
      This SMBC from 2013 illustrates the issue as well as anything. And all joking aside, I think it is 100% accurate, and a real problem that we don't yet have a solution for. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07
      • bargl 8y ago
        So true. We need more people to be loud in the center.
        • sparkie 8y ago
          There are people being loud in the center who are still incorrectly labelled as "far right" or some other meaningless label and targeted for deplatforming. Unfortunately, politicization is inevitable when double standards exist in moderation. If you're going to have rules, they need to be applied evenly. We've seen that several of the internet giants are incredibly inconsistent in their approaches to banning content or users from the two sides of the political spectrum. Nowhere seems to be safe, including HN.
          • 8y ago
  • komali2 8y ago
    >without some minority of users politicising it for attention What does "politicising" mean, and how do you know their motives? If you mean what I think you mean, i.e. women for example standing up for their right to be included in historically male-led organizations (say, a SDR club), I must admit skepticism - perhaps what you are witnessing isn't "doing something for attention," but instead "demanding to be treated as an equal?"
    • dmurray 8y ago
      > What does "politicising" mean, and how do you know their motives? Example right here. For better or worse, some people will try to make everything about their pet issues. It doesn't really matter if their motives are good when every single discussion gets dragged into the 2010's version of Godwin's Law.
      • komali2 8y ago
        ... The OP gave no example, so I had to make a guess. In my experience, people that complain about "groups getting politicized" generally mean "a minority joined and was upset when we weren't inclusive." Perhaps I should have simply left it at the question, but the internet is a frustrating place to have dialogues like that - clarifying every tiny point before running out of space for a counter argument.
        • ehnto 8y ago
          He meant you were the example. I am not saying it was your intention, but the way you mentioned a particular issue and then added your opinion on the issue in your comment is one way people inject their beliefs into otherwise unrelated conversation. I know you needed an example to make your point, but the grandparent was trying to make a point of your comment.
  • borgidiom 8y ago
    I remember it always being political. Back in 2002 most of the posts in the Command and Conquer Generals forums where various views on if Bush should invade Iraq or not. That community died the day EA banned political discussions.
    • spiritcat 8y ago
      The day EA killed Westwood Chat and it's active community and replaced it with their hideous in-game matchmaking was I think the day the internet stopped being fun and weird for me. Or I maybe just lost my internet innocence, seeing Big Game come in and decide on a whim to toss in the bin the place where I spent most of my after school time. Also where I learned how to un-ban myself by editing the right registry key. :D
  • komali2 8y ago
    >A lot of online communities today are unbearable tho as everything's become so politicised. It started really wildly happening around 2013-2014 where no community was to remain a zone without some minority of users politicising it for attention Can you help me understand your argument by giving examples of what this means? What is "politicising" and what communities have you seened ruined by "some minority of users politicising it for attention?"
    • dlivingston 8y ago
      > what communities have you seened ruined by "some minority of users politicising it for attention?" Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Tumblr).
      • komali2 8y ago
        How so?
        • dlivingston 8y ago
          IMHO (in Twitter's case), it is very much an echo chamber where dissenting opinions are not tolerated.
          • komali2 8y ago
            Just exploring the subject here, please don't feel attacked: what would "not be tolerated" mean, and what sort of opinions could be considered "dissenting?"
    • grkvlt 8y ago
      It seems like "politicising a community" means "people with ideas I disagree with have joined" or something similar.
    • NietTim 8y ago
      A recent example from reddit: An influential person in a small community came out as trans and preferred to live as a women now. The OP who wanted to bring this to the attention of the community and wrote: > Given the misogynistic reputation that the community has, I think it would be good for people to go out of our way to send a message or say something about how her coming out is a positive thing. Que the comments being about this inflammatory statement and not about what the post was meant to be about, and for good reason. People that criticised OP were met with angry replies and stuff like this: > Lotsa male white fragility all over this thread. 2 hours later another user made a solid post highlighting nothing but her, her achievements and detailing just how influential she has been and still is for the community, the comments were nothing but praise, positivity and celebration. IMO a pretty good example of something being politicised for no reason and directly being a detriment to the community.
  • ryan-allen 8y ago
    > In fact, it's something I really appreciate here on HN, the tone of discussions is rather pleasant and on topic I've been a member here since 2008, 10 odd years! It has been quite consistent, and an almost daily visit for me since joining. I don't know how they do it but I am glad that they do.
• Baeocystin 8y ago
  ...and sometimes, things really were better, too. Regressions happen, and the Eternal September is real. This does not mean that there aren't wonderful things available in today's web environment, too. There is no one to blame other than the natural evolution of a system. But something was lost, and it is ok to miss it.
  • xtracto 8y ago
    > Regressions happen, and the Eternal September is real. Now that UUCP time has come and gone, I wonder if Usenet might have returned to its once former glory. It would be a really good place for technical conversation.
    • FPGAhacker 8y ago
      Well, it's google groups now, right? It's a decent ready-to-go forum. I only used it for the clojure groups, but then the clj community discovered slack. All that useful topically categorized awesomeness now must be mined from worthless slack logs.
      • floren 8y ago
        Usenet still exists independent of Google Groups. Google provides an interface for users to post on Usenet groups, at least until they decide to stop supporting it, but you don't need Google at all to get on Usenet: http://www.eternal-september.org/ http://www.eternal-september.org/
  • cortesoft 8y ago
    But 'Eternal September' describes what happens to a particular platform, as something moves from niche to mainstream. There are new niche things that take their place, but people are often at a point in their lives where they aren't seeking out the new niche stuff anymore.
    • Baeocystin 8y ago
      >There are new niche things that take their place, but people are often at a point in their lives where they aren't seeking out the new niche stuff anymore. Speaking just for myself, here, but this has not been my experience. In my opinion, that interest in the early internet was a niche was essentially orthogonal to what it offered. It just so happened that the mindset of folks who would be attracted to the early offerings was a small portion of the overall population. But it wasn't the fact that the group was comparatively small that was what was interesting.
• dblock 8y ago
  + https://www.are.na/ https://www.are.na/
• agumonkey 8y ago
  I think it's only partially a feeling. new ~lands have: - no regulations (yet) - lots of unknowns - very few hidden motives That said, the duration of this state is probably quantifiable. Everything has these traits at first, until human stay for a while, then organization naturally takes place, taking the virginial beauty off at the same time. I've read that some antique cultures believed in burning things to the ground. I wonder if that's not a useful thing.
• NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  There's been a real qualitative change too. It was October 27th, 1994, and it was Wired's fault. The same year those bottom feeding lawyers decided to bombard Usenet with their green card spam. The first banner advertiser was AT&T: http://thefirstbannerad.com/ http://thefirstbannerad.com/ Less room for fun, more room for tracking and click through rates.
  • oska 8y ago
    I agree. Push advertising is toxic (and not just on the web).
• CalRobert 8y ago
  I think, weirdly, I have a harder time finding communities around that sort of thing now. I mostly read HN. Where would I go to find something like HN for, say, sustainable living? woodworking? cycling infrastructure? A lot of it is, if nothing else, subsumed in to a Facebook group, or a slack group, etc. Do you have any advice on finding it?
  • Baeocystin 8y ago
    The best I've found is small subreddits. Which is not ideal, because discovery is a giant PITA. Much like the split between /r/trees and /r/marijuanaenthusiasts (the /trees subreddit was first founded by people who were talking about weed, and people who wanted to talk about actual trees were a little nonplussed at the whole thing, thus creating /marijuanaenthusiasts and using it for tree-talk) most of the better communities are using a name that is not immediately obvious, so that they aren't oversaturated from the get-go. It's a difficult problem to solve.
    • floren 8y ago
      The bigger problem with reddit, in my experience, is that 95% of the comments on any given post are pure garbage filler. Joke chains as far as the eye can see.
      • kps 8y ago
        Reddit is structually doomed to be dominated by fluff. • Discourages long-running discussions by burying (and ultimately locking) older content • Discourages coversation in favour of fire-and-forget comments by making it impractical to continue where you left off • Gamification of content (not quite as bad as some sites that grant extra privileges for scores, though) • Numerically larger groups can bury content they would prefer others not see
        • yesenadam 8y ago
          HN has every one of those features also.
• jressey 8y ago
  The Internet was better because it was not yet another way to spoonfeed culture to a complacent populace. The Internet was for interested people, now it's for everyone. It is not better now. I mean sure the video is HD but the content is usually garbage.
  • systematical 8y ago
    Maybe the internet was just new. And then it got old. Then your mom started using it. The first album is always the best. By the fifth album the band just sucks.
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > just find a community today that shares those properties How? I can't even search for shit anymore without being drowned in results that have nothing to do with what I searched for, but are kinda-sorta similar and get visited a lot more often.
• wuliwong 8y ago
  I think this is closer to what I think has happened. The internet is used by such a large percentage of the population that "weird" sites now are going to be smaller in relation to sites that appeal to "the masses." The ratio of "weirdos to non-weirdos" on the internet today is significantly smaller than the mid 90s. "The masses" were very underrepresented online back then. :)
• hinkley 8y ago
  This is the most obvious Golden Age Fallacy I saw in Jarred's text: > MySpace showed the world that if you make powerful and complicated tools (like coding) accessible to anyone, people are smart enough to figure out how to use them. My own experience with MySpace was that every page I landed on looked like a dumpster fire. I can't recall a single person who exhibited competence in using the tools MySpace gave you. Everything was always poor contrast with a cockeyed layout.
  • binarymax 8y ago
    I'll have you know, good sir, that my myspace page was a glimmering magnificent work of art with perfect composition and excellent color balance.
  • Izkata 8y ago
    That's their whole point - each page was individualistic, people were trying crazy things and showcasing their own personal style. The one thing that it wasn't was bland.
  • rchaud 8y ago
    > My own experience with MySpace was that every page I landed on looked like a dumpster fire. Reading this, I finally get what people mean when they say "But Snapchat is supposed to have an unintuitive UI". I was big into editing Myspace HTML back in the day. There were simply so many possibilities. The design was an extension of your style, howrver crude and unfinished it might have been.
• TheRealPomax 8y ago
  A little confused by the word "just" in that sentence. How is finding a community not an almost guaranteed to fail undertaking these days?
• _the_inflator 8y ago
  Yep, absolutely agree. For the Netscape generation MySpace was annoying, for the newsgroups fun ended with IRC. Anyone tiktok-ing around couldn't care less about MySpace and the codeblog rant. The real fun is, that you can make the internet fun. So the codeblog's shoot was a nice PR stunt, but that's it.