5 ms·

The internet was certainly a lot lower stakes and fun in the 90s and early 2000s. We had fun taking over the mic and singing karaoke in Yahoo chatrooms, watchi

The internet was certainly a lot lower stakes and fun in the 90s and early 2000s. We had fun taking over the mic and singing karaoke in Yahoo chatrooms, watching albino black sheep, and playing flash games on kongregator. Even early Facebook was just making funny groups and posting in each other's walls. None of those activities really had me envying anyone else. I remember the first thing that made me feel worthless and unaccomplished was TED talks! I agree the problem is that it's hard to separate our online life from our offline life now.

theclansman 4y ago
Yeah same, the internet of early 2000s was a super cozy place for me, I remember everyone at first was like "wow it's so amazing how you can be someone else online," now the internet is just a giant window to your life. I remember my mom telling me to never share any info about me online, now everyone has their entire lives uploaded, full name, face picture, phone number, it's all there. Funny thing is it didn't actually get any less dangerous, people just decided that if everyone did it then there's no problem.
- ratww 4y ago
  That's also how I remember it. It changed when Facebook became popular around me. Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter (my group of friends had it way before Facebook) were all about "nicknames" and random pics as avatars. But a strange thing happened with people I knew was that after FB's "Real Name Policy". Anyone who kept using a pseudonym was viewed as outdated at best, sometimes a downright weirdo. Only people part of Twitter/Tumbler niche communities kept using fake names. I also remember around the 2010s a "friend of a friend" bragging about reporting someone using a nickname to Facebook and having Facebook accept the report and force the person to change. Interestingly, some teens that I know are sort of going back to that. They don't have Facebook, if they have Instagram, it is just random pictures of objects, more like Tumblr was, no interest in being influencers.
  - neuralRiot 4y ago
    I suggest you to read “The transparency society” from Wun-chul Han
- juanani 4y ago
- pixodaros 4y ago
  Its a common misperception that "everyone has their entire lives uploaded", because humans are subject to availability bias. I recently spent some time living with young university students in a non-English-speaking European country, and most of them had one social media account (generally locked or pseudonymous) plus text apps. Data brokers are not able to collect and resell anything they please in most civilized countries. Always remember that the Internet and social media are dominated by people who put an unhealthy amount of time and energy into the Internet and social media. Those people are not real, any more than the old-media commentariat and their taboos are real. Most people are much less visible because they have lives.
  - thawaya3113 4y ago
    What do you think they’re doing in text apps? Why do you think Facebook bought WhatsApp Sure, your WhatsApp conversations are end to end encrypted. Except if you’re in a group conversation. Or if you have the on by default backup turned on.
    - pixodaros 4y ago
      IME, mostly one on one chats with people they know IRL. Several of them are very serious about not being photographed without consent and time to prepare.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Yeah... But we also saw countless dicks on Chat Roulette and watched terrorists sever heads of journalists on LiveLeak and talked to plenty of perverts on AIM. It wasnt all peaches and candy.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  True, there was some crazy shit out there back then, but we were also more in control of our own circumstances. If you don't want to see dicks on Chatroulette, don't use Chatoroulette. Or use it, but leave when you see a dick. Some creeper on AIM? Block them. If they keep making new accounts to come back, create a new account and invite your friends to that one. With bigger social media, the social cost of not being where your peer group is is high. Things are engineered to try and limit your exposure to the crazy stuff but it's still out there and in higher volumes than ever before. It's also much harder to avoid now if somehow an algorithm decides you should see it. And you can't just create a new account and leave a dead one behind you, or at least it's much harder.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Everyone remembers the first time they saw Goatse.
  - waste_monk 4y ago
    Back when I was a fresh-faced youth I recoiled in disgust. Now when I see it I greet it as an old friend, a wistful reminder of a time when the internet was still largely wild and untamed by corporate interest.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      I was genuinely sad to find out that the guy died a while back, but then was relieved to find out that it was just a meme and that he's still alive.
      - bonoboTP 4y ago
Eupraxias 4y ago
And here it is, perhaps the actual issue: TED talks. And everything else, that is, all of the information of the information age, including social media. Life for kids and everyone is drastically different from what it was just a few decades ago, because we have drastically different access and exposure to information, in general. This has changed the human experience. I suspect it is because I have not looked hard enough, but I do not see enough about how much this has changed us. We try to pinpoint specific aspects, like social media, but I rarely see discussion about how just the raw exposure and access to information has changed us. The value of knowledge is decreased, because it is accessible to everyone. This fact changed how people find their place in the world, find meaning and purpose, make social connections, etc. How much did this change us? I believe it has completely altered the human experience. Technology only hits this hard a few times every 1000 or so years. Gunpowder, printing press, electricity, internet. We're in the midst of a big shift now. Here's an example: consider magic and sleight of hand. Until easily accessible information, the method of 'doing a trick' was arcane knowledge. This was the case for thousands of years. Knowledge was generally obtainable, but you had to go out of your way to get it. No adult believed in magic, but the fuzziness around the knowledge was enough to allow the audience to suspend belief that something wondrous happened. This aspect of wonder is now rare. To what degree is the lack of access to wonder a root cause of the decline in teen mental health? For what it is worth, I was that person in 2007 who warned everyone I knew about social media, for the exact reasons we are now discussing.
- bcrl 4y ago
  The value of knowledge has not decreased, and I would say that knowledge is more valuable than ever. What has decreased is the quality of much of the information that is widely available. For certain searches or websites people are likely to be driven towards misinformation and sites promoting conspiracy theories. The signal to noise ratio of much information is now more noise than signal. Click bait is the perfect example of this. You see an ad telling you about a story that sounds interesting, so you click the link. Suddenly you are drawing in to a website with 1 sentence of text per page that you want to read surrounded by crappy ads and pop-ups. You want to know how the story panned out, but are overwhelmed by the garbage. Lesson learned, but how do I teach Google to stop showing me that crap? Personally, I think this all comes down to the cost of publishing. When a publisher had to shell out real money to print a book by an author, there was an incentive for the publisher to hire editors that did a good job of making sure the books they printed were of value (the same applies to newspapers). When the marginal cost of putting a news story on a website is $0, there's not really any point in hiring an editor anymore. The same parallel exists in the phone network today. Back in the 1980s when it cost $0.34 per minute to make a long distance call, the people calling you probably thought twice before calling. Today's VoIP networks charging less than a penny a minute have enabled farms of robocallers to harass you with garbage calls. The near zero cost of international calls means that call centers in poor countries can profitably harass the elderly in rich companies with endless new scams. Again, the same pattern exists with videos. 20 years ago a slickly produced video took time and money to produce. Now any teenager with a phone or laptop can throw a bunch of clips together, add some voice over and hit publish without spending a penny. The only path I see forward from here is that this entire situation will get worse. Technologies like GPT-3 are amazing, but they come with a cost: it becomes cheaper to write walls of text. People will use it or perhaps are using it to create websites devoid of real content. Search engines that are already having trouble distinguishing between real thoughtful content and the wasteland of content farms will have an even harder time to produce relevant results for search requests. I hate to say, but we were better off when the cost of people's attention was much greater than $0.
Rury 4y ago
I think you underline the problem. Comparing yourself with others and envying is a source of unhappiness. Social media allows for this, as do TED talks. But I think another factor is the sheer existence of our ancestors. As more time goes on, the more history there is with more people having achieved great accomplishments. Younger generations will naturally just have more to live up to (with the potential to feel depressed if they don't).
- marc_io 4y ago
  So we must all change our concept of “greatness”. Perhaps more effort to embrace and value what is considered “less” rather than always trying to level up.

theclansman 4y ago

Yeah same, the internet of early 2000s was a super cozy place for me, I remember everyone at first was like "wow it's so amazing how you can be someone else online," now the internet is just a giant window to your life. I remember my mom telling me to never share any info about me online, now everyone has their entire lives uploaded, full name, face picture, phone number, it's all there. Funny thing is it didn't actually get any less dangerous, people just decided that if everyone did it then there's no problem.

ratww 4y ago
That's also how I remember it. It changed when Facebook became popular around me. Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter (my group of friends had it way before Facebook) were all about "nicknames" and random pics as avatars. But a strange thing happened with people I knew was that after FB's "Real Name Policy". Anyone who kept using a pseudonym was viewed as outdated at best, sometimes a downright weirdo. Only people part of Twitter/Tumbler niche communities kept using fake names. I also remember around the 2010s a "friend of a friend" bragging about reporting someone using a nickname to Facebook and having Facebook accept the report and force the person to change. Interestingly, some teens that I know are sort of going back to that. They don't have Facebook, if they have Instagram, it is just random pictures of objects, more like Tumblr was, no interest in being influencers.
- neuralRiot 4y ago
  I suggest you to read “The transparency society” from Wun-chul Han
juanani 4y ago
pixodaros 4y ago
Its a common misperception that "everyone has their entire lives uploaded", because humans are subject to availability bias. I recently spent some time living with young university students in a non-English-speaking European country, and most of them had one social media account (generally locked or pseudonymous) plus text apps. Data brokers are not able to collect and resell anything they please in most civilized countries. Always remember that the Internet and social media are dominated by people who put an unhealthy amount of time and energy into the Internet and social media. Those people are not real, any more than the old-media commentariat and their taboos are real. Most people are much less visible because they have lives.
- thawaya3113 4y ago
  What do you think they’re doing in text apps? Why do you think Facebook bought WhatsApp Sure, your WhatsApp conversations are end to end encrypted. Except if you’re in a group conversation. Or if you have the on by default backup turned on.
  - pixodaros 4y ago
    IME, mostly one on one chats with people they know IRL. Several of them are very serious about not being photographed without consent and time to prepare.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Yeah... But we also saw countless dicks on Chat Roulette and watched terrorists sever heads of journalists on LiveLeak and talked to plenty of perverts on AIM. It wasnt all peaches and candy.

bluefirebrand 4y ago
True, there was some crazy shit out there back then, but we were also more in control of our own circumstances. If you don't want to see dicks on Chatroulette, don't use Chatoroulette. Or use it, but leave when you see a dick. Some creeper on AIM? Block them. If they keep making new accounts to come back, create a new account and invite your friends to that one. With bigger social media, the social cost of not being where your peer group is is high. Things are engineered to try and limit your exposure to the crazy stuff but it's still out there and in higher volumes than ever before. It's also much harder to avoid now if somehow an algorithm decides you should see it. And you can't just create a new account and leave a dead one behind you, or at least it's much harder.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Everyone remembers the first time they saw Goatse.
- waste_monk 4y ago
  Back when I was a fresh-faced youth I recoiled in disgust. Now when I see it I greet it as an old friend, a wistful reminder of a time when the internet was still largely wild and untamed by corporate interest.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    I was genuinely sad to find out that the guy died a while back, but then was relieved to find out that it was just a meme and that he's still alive.
    - bonoboTP 4y ago

Eupraxias 4y ago

And here it is, perhaps the actual issue: TED talks. And everything else, that is, all of the information of the information age, including social media. Life for kids and everyone is drastically different from what it was just a few decades ago, because we have drastically different access and exposure to information, in general. This has changed the human experience. I suspect it is because I have not looked hard enough, but I do not see enough about how much this has changed us. We try to pinpoint specific aspects, like social media, but I rarely see discussion about how just the raw exposure and access to information has changed us. The value of knowledge is decreased, because it is accessible to everyone. This fact changed how people find their place in the world, find meaning and purpose, make social connections, etc. How much did this change us? I believe it has completely altered the human experience. Technology only hits this hard a few times every 1000 or so years. Gunpowder, printing press, electricity, internet. We're in the midst of a big shift now. Here's an example: consider magic and sleight of hand. Until easily accessible information, the method of 'doing a trick' was arcane knowledge. This was the case for thousands of years. Knowledge was generally obtainable, but you had to go out of your way to get it. No adult believed in magic, but the fuzziness around the knowledge was enough to allow the audience to suspend belief that something wondrous happened. This aspect of wonder is now rare. To what degree is the lack of access to wonder a root cause of the decline in teen mental health? For what it is worth, I was that person in 2007 who warned everyone I knew about social media, for the exact reasons we are now discussing.

bcrl 4y ago
The value of knowledge has not decreased, and I would say that knowledge is more valuable than ever. What has decreased is the quality of much of the information that is widely available. For certain searches or websites people are likely to be driven towards misinformation and sites promoting conspiracy theories. The signal to noise ratio of much information is now more noise than signal. Click bait is the perfect example of this. You see an ad telling you about a story that sounds interesting, so you click the link. Suddenly you are drawing in to a website with 1 sentence of text per page that you want to read surrounded by crappy ads and pop-ups. You want to know how the story panned out, but are overwhelmed by the garbage. Lesson learned, but how do I teach Google to stop showing me that crap? Personally, I think this all comes down to the cost of publishing. When a publisher had to shell out real money to print a book by an author, there was an incentive for the publisher to hire editors that did a good job of making sure the books they printed were of value (the same applies to newspapers). When the marginal cost of putting a news story on a website is $0, there's not really any point in hiring an editor anymore. The same parallel exists in the phone network today. Back in the 1980s when it cost $0.34 per minute to make a long distance call, the people calling you probably thought twice before calling. Today's VoIP networks charging less than a penny a minute have enabled farms of robocallers to harass you with garbage calls. The near zero cost of international calls means that call centers in poor countries can profitably harass the elderly in rich companies with endless new scams. Again, the same pattern exists with videos. 20 years ago a slickly produced video took time and money to produce. Now any teenager with a phone or laptop can throw a bunch of clips together, add some voice over and hit publish without spending a penny. The only path I see forward from here is that this entire situation will get worse. Technologies like GPT-3 are amazing, but they come with a cost: it becomes cheaper to write walls of text. People will use it or perhaps are using it to create websites devoid of real content. Search engines that are already having trouble distinguishing between real thoughtful content and the wasteland of content farms will have an even harder time to produce relevant results for search requests. I hate to say, but we were better off when the cost of people's attention was much greater than $0.

Rury 4y ago

I think you underline the problem. Comparing yourself with others and envying is a source of unhappiness. Social media allows for this, as do TED talks. But I think another factor is the sheer existence of our ancestors. As more time goes on, the more history there is with more people having achieved great accomplishments. Younger generations will naturally just have more to live up to (with the potential to feel depressed if they don't).

marc_io 4y ago
So we must all change our concept of “greatness”. Perhaps more effort to embrace and value what is considered “less” rather than always trying to level up.