8 ms·

Note the year. 2014 was a very different time on the internet.

by tyho 4y ago

manimino 4y ago
What made internet culture change so much after 2014?
- janlaureys 4y ago
  The change started well before 2014 but social media mostly.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  The second Eternal September, directly related to the rise of social media, which I think was ultimately fueled by the mass adoption of smartphones. Before, the Internet was mostly inhabited by people who wanted to do something specific, and were at least minimally invested - they had to actively use a computer to access things on-line. Nowadays, the Internet is inhabited mostly by people ready to judge you while sitting on a bus, because their phone buzzed them a notification that their friend retweeted a story about some stranger being outraged that some other stranger retweeted a link to your SE question.
  - dwringer 4y ago
    I think of that more of an eternal Summer of 2007 since that's when the iPhone came out, and anecdotally the shift in society was well underway by 2010. I'm not sure we could use this to explain things are necessarily that different today than in 2014. I am tempted to think the amount I have used social media and my smartphone has actually declined since 2014, and in the case of facebook I suppose it considerably has, but I'm not sure I haven't just replaced it with other compulsive clicks. So in that sense I must agree things have probably escalated a bit, but I can't point to a single event over the past decade to create a turning point.
    - pard68 4y ago
      I agree, 2007 is closer to the epicenter. However, I also think the shift away from social media and cell phones is rather uncommon. I have had no social media for almost a decade, but we are few and far between.
      - titzer 4y ago
        People still "have" it but it's mostly a ghost town. That's maybe a function of your friend group, but I have a feeling that younger people do not use Facebook for dating and adventure like they did in, say, 2008 (when I got an account).
      - IIAOPSW 4y ago
        Does reddit without the redesign count as social media? if not I've been off since 2011. If so, why doesn't hn count?
        hunter2_ 4y ago
        Not by my definition: A main difference between {MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.} and {reddit, hn, chronological forums, etc.} is that the former heavily rely on following/friending (i.e, establishing your social network) while the latter do not. Thus, the latter are not "social media" in the sense of media existing in a social network. Also, I find that when replying to something in the former I'm thinking about the person (I know them, in some sense) and what they said, while in the latter I'm thinking almost exclusively about what they said (I probably don't know the person). The latter lacks that social element.
      - HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago
        [flagged]
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        No personalized feed, no "friending", no statuses, no social network. If every forum qualifies, you're using the term so broadly that it's useless. That's what everyone else understands, which is making it seem to you like they're missing something you see. They're not.
  - eezurr 4y ago
    Surprised I havent come across any sites that are computer-only. Seems like it would be a good natural filter.
- brigandish 4y ago
  I would say it changed after 2016, the Brexit vote and Trump winning the presidency seemed to signal to the big social media companies that they needed to make changes, and this spread to many other sites too, perhaps with social momentum or perhaps simply because Google or Facebook et al can limit a site's audience if it won't act in a certain way.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  The kids grew up. It's not really the internet that changed much, but the people being active on the Internet and responsible for content and sites simply became older, more opinionated, more educated, sometimes more damaged. Society simply matured and people stopped playing around.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Things got corporate. What was once a bunch of individual sites, forums, chatrooms, etc., is now concentrated on a few companies (facebook, google, reddit,...), which are not that interested in content, but more into advertising and pleasing advertisers, and earning money, and advertisers, and ads and money, and less on their users. This meant that everything had to be policitally correct (unless it was deemed acceptable to target a specific group), moderators got more powers, more thought bubbles and echo chambers... and now everything is going slowly downhill.
  - HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - bumby 4y ago
      >Nearly 90% of all purchases are made by women for women and children. Hate to be that person, but do you have a source for that claim? According to a quick search of BLS data, single men outspent single women on food and cars, and comparable amounts on entertainment. Women spent more than men on clothing, but men outspent women overall. [1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm
      - Larrikin 4y ago
        When a comment seems ridiculous, it's usually worth looking at the posting history to see if the account should be taken seriously.
      - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        Those numbers were from multiple business magazines not that long ago (well not as high as op above used but very high still) eg: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridgetbrennan/2015/01/21/top-10-things-everyone-should-know-about-women-consumers/#7679f9d6a8b4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridgetbrennan/2015/01/21/top-1... > Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence. Influence means that even when a woman isn’t paying for something herself, she is often the influence or veto vote behind someone else’s purchase. Also this https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy > Women make the decision in the purchases of 94% of home furnishings…92% of vacations…91% of homes… 60% of automobiles…51% of consumer electronics
- notduncansmith 4y ago
  I think 2016 was a big turning point for US (and to some extent global) culture, where politics became a 24/7 spectacle for many that had been previously disengaged. I think all that energy then carried over to lots of pursuits that people didn’t take too seriously before.
- golemotron 4y ago
  Humor was made illegal around 2014.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
OwlsParlay 4y ago
I don't think it was that different on the internet per se, but SE itself was relatively young at that point and more lax with its own rules. This early period is when you also had funny answers for bad questions, like using RegEx to parse HTML. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...
- mcv 4y ago
  I also recall answers solving simple problems with an overuse of jQuery. Some answers got comments "not enough jQuery".
VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago
This is something I’ve been contemplating way too much lately. I’m 37, but I look back at the internet I don’t really remember anything feeling like an overnight paradigm shift. But, revisiting moments like this buttocks post are like relics frozen in time — and I definitely feel like things are different and more streamlined in the internet now. The internet became a streamlined hate-filled echo chamber so slowly that I never saw it happening.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  It was a slow process, usually following money; you see it in communities like Stack Overflow and even moreso Reddit, the latter of which started out as a "bastion of free speech", but after a while they started to crack down; first on hate subreddits and speech, then de-prioritizing NSFW content from /r/all (the only way to get everything without publically subscribing to porn subreddits) (and I'm sure that will be removed entirely if they want to go public). I'm not sure what happened to SO, I can imagine their intent was to improve quality and reduce duplication - both bad for e.g. Google ratings or returning users. But the funny posts made it a living community. Removing the fun parts of a site like that makes it sterile. I mean there's still e.g. codegolf, worldbuilding or the D&D spaces that are kinda funny sometimes.
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    You're overlooking the obvious answer: some people think humor itself is offensive.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - CodeMage 4y ago
      I wouldn't call that "obvious". For starters, it's incomplete. Yes, "some" people think humor itself is offensive. I would wager that there have always been some people like that, since humor itself was invented. How does that relate to what happened to Stack Overflow? To make your answer complete, you have to connect the remaining dots, and there are multiple ways to do that. Thing is, none of those ways are "obvious". For example, you could posit that the majority of people find humor offensive today, as opposed to 2014, but I don't see any evidence that's even true, much less obvious. More likely, you're implying that the majority of people who have influence over Stack Overflow's tone consider the humor itself offensive. If that's obvious to you, it sure isn't to me.

Note the year. 2014 was a very different time on the internet.

by tyho 4y ago

Note the year. 2014 was a very different time on the internet.

manimino 4y ago

What made internet culture change so much after 2014?

janlaureys 4y ago
The change started well before 2014 but social media mostly.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
The second Eternal September, directly related to the rise of social media, which I think was ultimately fueled by the mass adoption of smartphones. Before, the Internet was mostly inhabited by people who wanted to do something specific, and were at least minimally invested - they had to actively use a computer to access things on-line. Nowadays, the Internet is inhabited mostly by people ready to judge you while sitting on a bus, because their phone buzzed them a notification that their friend retweeted a story about some stranger being outraged that some other stranger retweeted a link to your SE question.
- dwringer 4y ago
  I think of that more of an eternal Summer of 2007 since that's when the iPhone came out, and anecdotally the shift in society was well underway by 2010. I'm not sure we could use this to explain things are necessarily that different today than in 2014. I am tempted to think the amount I have used social media and my smartphone has actually declined since 2014, and in the case of facebook I suppose it considerably has, but I'm not sure I haven't just replaced it with other compulsive clicks. So in that sense I must agree things have probably escalated a bit, but I can't point to a single event over the past decade to create a turning point.
  - pard68 4y ago
    I agree, 2007 is closer to the epicenter. However, I also think the shift away from social media and cell phones is rather uncommon. I have had no social media for almost a decade, but we are few and far between.
    - titzer 4y ago
      People still "have" it but it's mostly a ghost town. That's maybe a function of your friend group, but I have a feeling that younger people do not use Facebook for dating and adventure like they did in, say, 2008 (when I got an account).
    - IIAOPSW 4y ago
      Does reddit without the redesign count as social media? if not I've been off since 2011. If so, why doesn't hn count?
      - hunter2_ 4y ago
        Not by my definition: A main difference between {MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.} and {reddit, hn, chronological forums, etc.} is that the former heavily rely on following/friending (i.e, establishing your social network) while the latter do not. Thus, the latter are not "social media" in the sense of media existing in a social network. Also, I find that when replying to something in the former I'm thinking about the person (I know them, in some sense) and what they said, while in the latter I'm thinking almost exclusively about what they said (I probably don't know the person). The latter lacks that social element.
    - HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        No personalized feed, no "friending", no statuses, no social network. If every forum qualifies, you're using the term so broadly that it's useless. That's what everyone else understands, which is making it seem to you like they're missing something you see. They're not.
- eezurr 4y ago
  Surprised I havent come across any sites that are computer-only. Seems like it would be a good natural filter.
brigandish 4y ago
I would say it changed after 2016, the Brexit vote and Trump winning the presidency seemed to signal to the big social media companies that they needed to make changes, and this spread to many other sites too, perhaps with social momentum or perhaps simply because Google or Facebook et al can limit a site's audience if it won't act in a certain way.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
The kids grew up. It's not really the internet that changed much, but the people being active on the Internet and responsible for content and sites simply became older, more opinionated, more educated, sometimes more damaged. Society simply matured and people stopped playing around.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Things got corporate. What was once a bunch of individual sites, forums, chatrooms, etc., is now concentrated on a few companies (facebook, google, reddit,...), which are not that interested in content, but more into advertising and pleasing advertisers, and earning money, and advertisers, and ads and money, and less on their users. This meant that everything had to be policitally correct (unless it was deemed acceptable to target a specific group), moderators got more powers, more thought bubbles and echo chambers... and now everything is going slowly downhill.
- HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - bumby 4y ago
    >Nearly 90% of all purchases are made by women for women and children. Hate to be that person, but do you have a source for that claim? According to a quick search of BLS data, single men outspent single women on food and cars, and comparable amounts on entertainment. Women spent more than men on clothing, but men outspent women overall. [1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm
    - Larrikin 4y ago
      When a comment seems ridiculous, it's usually worth looking at the posting history to see if the account should be taken seriously.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      Those numbers were from multiple business magazines not that long ago (well not as high as op above used but very high still) eg: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridgetbrennan/2015/01/21/top-10-things-everyone-should-know-about-women-consumers/#7679f9d6a8b4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridgetbrennan/2015/01/21/top-1... > Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence. Influence means that even when a woman isn’t paying for something herself, she is often the influence or veto vote behind someone else’s purchase. Also this https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy > Women make the decision in the purchases of 94% of home furnishings…92% of vacations…91% of homes… 60% of automobiles…51% of consumer electronics
notduncansmith 4y ago
I think 2016 was a big turning point for US (and to some extent global) culture, where politics became a 24/7 spectacle for many that had been previously disengaged. I think all that energy then carried over to lots of pursuits that people didn’t take too seriously before.
golemotron 4y ago
Humor was made illegal around 2014.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

OwlsParlay 4y ago

I don't think it was that different on the internet per se, but SE itself was relatively young at that point and more lax with its own rules. This early period is when you also had funny answers for bad questions, like using RegEx to parse HTML. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...

mcv 4y ago
I also recall answers solving simple problems with an overuse of jQuery. Some answers got comments "not enough jQuery".

VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago

This is something I’ve been contemplating way too much lately. I’m 37, but I look back at the internet I don’t really remember anything feeling like an overnight paradigm shift. But, revisiting moments like this buttocks post are like relics frozen in time — and I definitely feel like things are different and more streamlined in the internet now. The internet became a streamlined hate-filled echo chamber so slowly that I never saw it happening.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
It was a slow process, usually following money; you see it in communities like Stack Overflow and even moreso Reddit, the latter of which started out as a "bastion of free speech", but after a while they started to crack down; first on hate subreddits and speech, then de-prioritizing NSFW content from /r/all (the only way to get everything without publically subscribing to porn subreddits) (and I'm sure that will be removed entirely if they want to go public). I'm not sure what happened to SO, I can imagine their intent was to improve quality and reduce duplication - both bad for e.g. Google ratings or returning users. But the funny posts made it a living community. Removing the fun parts of a site like that makes it sterile. I mean there's still e.g. codegolf, worldbuilding or the D&D spaces that are kinda funny sometimes.
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  You're overlooking the obvious answer: some people think humor itself is offensive.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - CodeMage 4y ago
    I wouldn't call that "obvious". For starters, it's incomplete. Yes, "some" people think humor itself is offensive. I would wager that there have always been some people like that, since humor itself was invented. How does that relate to what happened to Stack Overflow? To make your answer complete, you have to connect the remaining dots, and there are multiple ways to do that. Thing is, none of those ways are "obvious". For example, you could posit that the majority of people find humor offensive today, as opposed to 2014, but I don't see any evidence that's even true, much less obvious. More likely, you're implying that the majority of people who have influence over Stack Overflow's tone consider the humor itself offensive. If that's obvious to you, it sure isn't to me.