4 ms·

As someone who was also on the internet already in the early 90s (I expect there are many of us here), I've long found it interesting how much of a social shift

As someone who was also on the internet already in the early 90s (I expect there are many of us here), I've long found it interesting how much of a social shift it's undergone. In the 90s I had online friends that I had never met in person, through various kinds of online games or interest groups. Agora Nomic, the CONLANG/AUXLANG mailing lists, rec.arts.int-fiction, the list goes on. I learned a lot about the world and about people different than me—the line in the OP article about diverse countries and religions felt deeply familiar to me for this reason. But, in 2019, I don't really have anything like that anymore. The internet's a bigger place, but my corner of it feels somehow smaller. With very rare exception, I don't accept friends on FB unless I've met them in person. Sites that I actively participate on are either very large (so they might be diverse but aren't small-group-of-friends-y) or very small and comprised entirely of people I already knew irl. Time marches on and the world changes, I know. But when I reflect on this line of consideration, it really feels like the internet didn't live up to its promises.

nsomaru 7y ago
Blame the spam, scammers, malware and trojans combined with pervasive technical ignorance which conspire to recommend an extremely conservative course of action for laypeople.
INTPenis 7y ago
I'm a bit younger, was a teenager in the late 90s going on IRC and various message boards but I've often mused on the same shift in internet culture. To me it seems like these groups still exist but you have to stay within your age range. For example I hang out with 35-45 year olds on IRC still. And we all have Jabber with OTR or Signal. None of us have much of social media accounts. The kids today still have these little communities, they use group chat just like we use IRC. It might be Discord, Skype, Snapchat or something more obscure but it's still the same old rules of the group chat. It's a tight knit group and the rules that have applied to group chats since forever still do apply. So just because you don't have those connections anymore doesn't mean the culture is all that different. Kids still feel like the main part of the internet (fb, ig) is shallow and meaningless so they band together in their own little communities around special interests or through school and their IRL community. I envy kids today because I see how new trends spread virally between schools just because they have these group chats with each other. For example recently the kids in my town were hacking e-scooters through some trick that was spreading on their group chats. I still have no idea how they did it, I'm out of the loop.
posterboy 7y ago
These small communities grew, disbanded, migrated or merged. Interactions have become quicker, shorter, whereas they were dragged out just killing time with off-topics.
205guy 7y ago
While there certainly have been changes to Internet usage patterns, I think all experiences are still possible. In the early 90's when this mother's group was taking off, my usage of Usenet wasn't very social, it was more like the image boards of today--downloading content and running uumerge if you know about that. Later in the 00's, I got into Wordpress blogging and found some nice communities, as well as created my own. (And I suspect this submission is related to the interesting mommy-blogging submission the other day). I also got on Facebook and reconnected with high school and college acquaintances, but like others here, I mostly restrict fb to people I know personally, so it's not a discovery of new social circles (and I find I don't have much n common with those people but it's nice to share news now and then). I think my most social online communities have come through forums starting in the 00's and continuing to now. HN is a big one for me obviously, but also some local area forums. I moved away from family and friends during this time, and through local forums, I connected with people near me that I didn't know previously. Oddly, even though they were local and we did have a few meet-ups, our connections and discussions online were much stronger. But the closest experience I've had to the international connections of this mother's group has been in the past 2 years through Instagram. I started posting only photos of a niche hobby, and by using and searching for specific hashtags (once I found them), I connected to others doing the same. And they are all over the world, US, Europe, Austalia--mostly English-speaking but not all. I mean, when was the last time you connected with someone from Luxembourg (and I actually once knew friends in Luxembourg but I never communicate with them any more). Granted these Instagram connections aren't as deep as with the mothers group, but through likes and comments we support each other's work and help out with tips and advice. All that to say it's not about the tools, it's how you use them. The key is I use my Instagram account only for this hobby and only to view, search, and post related images and comments. So all my followers and following are related and only in this one community. I do actually browse/consume other topics on Instagram (pretty travel pictures for example), but I do that with bookmarks in a browser, not in the app with my timeline and following.

nsomaru 7y ago

Blame the spam, scammers, malware and trojans combined with pervasive technical ignorance which conspire to recommend an extremely conservative course of action for laypeople.

INTPenis 7y ago

I'm a bit younger, was a teenager in the late 90s going on IRC and various message boards but I've often mused on the same shift in internet culture. To me it seems like these groups still exist but you have to stay within your age range. For example I hang out with 35-45 year olds on IRC still. And we all have Jabber with OTR or Signal. None of us have much of social media accounts. The kids today still have these little communities, they use group chat just like we use IRC. It might be Discord, Skype, Snapchat or something more obscure but it's still the same old rules of the group chat. It's a tight knit group and the rules that have applied to group chats since forever still do apply. So just because you don't have those connections anymore doesn't mean the culture is all that different. Kids still feel like the main part of the internet (fb, ig) is shallow and meaningless so they band together in their own little communities around special interests or through school and their IRL community. I envy kids today because I see how new trends spread virally between schools just because they have these group chats with each other. For example recently the kids in my town were hacking e-scooters through some trick that was spreading on their group chats. I still have no idea how they did it, I'm out of the loop.

posterboy 7y ago

These small communities grew, disbanded, migrated or merged. Interactions have become quicker, shorter, whereas they were dragged out just killing time with off-topics.

205guy 7y ago

While there certainly have been changes to Internet usage patterns, I think all experiences are still possible. In the early 90's when this mother's group was taking off, my usage of Usenet wasn't very social, it was more like the image boards of today--downloading content and running uumerge if you know about that. Later in the 00's, I got into Wordpress blogging and found some nice communities, as well as created my own. (And I suspect this submission is related to the interesting mommy-blogging submission the other day). I also got on Facebook and reconnected with high school and college acquaintances, but like others here, I mostly restrict fb to people I know personally, so it's not a discovery of new social circles (and I find I don't have much n common with those people but it's nice to share news now and then). I think my most social online communities have come through forums starting in the 00's and continuing to now. HN is a big one for me obviously, but also some local area forums. I moved away from family and friends during this time, and through local forums, I connected with people near me that I didn't know previously. Oddly, even though they were local and we did have a few meet-ups, our connections and discussions online were much stronger. But the closest experience I've had to the international connections of this mother's group has been in the past 2 years through Instagram. I started posting only photos of a niche hobby, and by using and searching for specific hashtags (once I found them), I connected to others doing the same. And they are all over the world, US, Europe, Austalia--mostly English-speaking but not all. I mean, when was the last time you connected with someone from Luxembourg (and I actually once knew friends in Luxembourg but I never communicate with them any more). Granted these Instagram connections aren't as deep as with the mothers group, but through likes and comments we support each other's work and help out with tips and advice. All that to say it's not about the tools, it's how you use them. The key is I use my Instagram account only for this hobby and only to view, search, and post related images and comments. So all my followers and following are related and only in this one community. I do actually browse/consume other topics on Instagram (pretty travel pictures for example), but I do that with bookmarks in a browser, not in the app with my timeline and following.