Was it like this during the first dotcom bubble? I was a highschooler back then. No, because the internet had obvious practical potential to pretty much

Was it like this during the first dotcom bubble? I was a highschooler back then. No, because the internet had obvious practical potential to pretty much anybody who'd ever used a computer before. And if somebody didn't get it yet you could show them a webpage or something. You could pull up a news site - "see, it's like your regular newspaper, except on the computer... plus a zillion other online newspapers, and weather, and shopping" etc. Very few people would fail to get the general concept (even if they had no interest in it) after a few minutes of that. Ordering things from a catalog over the phone (Sears, etc) had existed for a century already, and online shopping was a fairly obvious extension of that. The internet was also an idea that all manner of media had primed us for. Since, what, the 1950s? 1960s? movies and television and World's Fairs had all been promising us that someday we'd be able to do actual useful shit through our TV screens and that computers were "the future." So once that all arrived it all felt pretty obvious. Both to tech-savvy types, and the general populace. But... Web3? There's nothing simple you can show an Average Joe. Even most tech-savvy people I know fall somewhere between thinking it's utter garbage and having no clue what it is on any kind of practical level. That's something you absolutely did not hear from tech-savvy folks in the 90s.