I have this opinion and these days I get mocked for it. I don't have any words to describe it myself very well. The best way I think to is that the world seemed

I have this opinion and these days I get mocked for it. I don't have any words to describe it myself very well. The best way I think to is that the world seemed far less atomized. "The internet" was a place where it didnt matter what you looked like, or your gender, or your name, or your politics (at least in the circles I ran in). Really, we only knew each other by our handles and that was enough. On the rare occasion you might actually get to know someone in real life. But at that point it didn't matter - you already KNEW them. Of course it wasn't all cupcakes and unicorns. The internet was a more dangerous place. But where you belonged was sort of your "gang" and that's what mattered in the wild west of old internet. Even things like forum raiding, IRC raiding, trolling, etc were done (mostly) in a more lighthearted matter. And when people tried to "normalize" a forum/IRC/whatever they were clowned on until they left. I dunno if the term "fuckin normies" adequately describes it. But perhaps it's a start. Once non-technical people started proliferating the internet the experience became so much worse. Forums got worse and were replaced by social media giants. That brought about people thinking it was normal to identify each other by their actual biological and physical traits. From there, it descended to what we have today. An "internet" dominated by 4 or 5 companies that is primarily a medium by which people are easily parted with their money. I feel like you need to walk on egg shells everywhere and I can no longer be myself anywhere. I also miss the old internet. I miss how willing people were to talk. How simple things were (IRC, email, usenet, forums), and how all you needed was just a ton of passion about something to fit in SOMEWHERE. I miss how crude, and often hilarious, the trolls were. People are just mean now. Now, I feel like I fit in nowhere. Maybe I'm just getting old.