5 ms·

What makes the nostalgia misplaced?

• irrational 3y ago
  Nostalgia is for good things. I surfed the web for the entirety of 1999. It wasn't good.
  • HeckFeck 3y ago
    I'm not convinced that it is much better in this decade: - paywalls & 'login to see more' - autoplaying videos that follow you whn you're just trying to read an article - cookie banners - artificial loading throbbers - horrible intrusive tracking - an advertising corporation also has the near-monopoly on browsing - we have more bandwidth but apparently need 5Mb of javascript just to render text - mobile first design, meaning much lower information density - walled gardens like discord, facesbook, twitter, reddit storing content in inaccessible, unarchivable form There were problems then but there were fewer headaches and fewer exhausting battles just to stay sane.
    • account42 3y ago
      - content farms that wreck the signal to noise ratio, getting much much worse with "AI" now - unchecked astoturfing and referral-laundering "reviews" - everyone being on walled gardens that restrict what can be hosted (both content and format)
  • nrb 3y ago
    I have plenty of fond memories of browsing the web in the late 90s as a teenager: things like huddling around the glow of the CRT with a friend playing Yahoo pool, printing out absurdly long gamefaqs for the RPGs of the era, and keeping up with the latest happenings in Ultima Online on UO Stratics. The technology was not the best, but there were a ton of great things on the web of that era. I don’t yearn for a return to that ecosystem but reserve the right to remain sentimental about it.
• shermantanktop 3y ago
  Nostalgia is the opiate of the elderly. Taking small sips before you get truly wizened is sometimes harmless, which I think is the case here. Too big a sip leads to yelling at clouds.