8 ms·

This is something I've always wanted to write about, and I imagine that someday I'll end up with a long article, but basically, it's the idea that the internet

by 101008 1y ago

This is something I've always wanted to write about, and I imagine that someday I'll end up with a long article, but basically, it's the idea that the internet used to be offline by default, and now it's online by default. People used to be offline by default. You had to “connect to the internet.” Open MSN, go into forums and check the latest unread messages, come back from a concert and manually upload the photos to your Fotolog or wherever. Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly. Going to a sports event or a concert? You have to post a story to Instagram from that very place, not when you get home. Someone sends you an email or a WhatsApp message? You’re expected to reply as soon as possible. That’s what I miss most about the internet—the idea and the feeling that I would go online when I wanted to, not that I lived inside the internet 24/7.

nemomarx 1y ago
The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all. It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.
- RugnirViking 1y ago
  honestly ive been thinking about this stuff too. a hypothetical forum you could only log on to read if you idled on a certain page for 15 mins or something would probably have a lot higher standard of discussion and be a lot better for peoples lives, for example. The most minute of barriers requiring you to deliberately and consciously join and leave...
  - Nition 1y ago
    The SomethingAwful forums have been $10 to join since 2001. If you get banned, that's another $10 needed for a new account. Has worked pretty well for 24 years.
  - reg_dunlop 1y ago
    Reminds me of https://diewithme.online/ https://diewithme.online/ which I just learned about. Not exactly the same as your idea, but definitely in the same vein of "only available under a certain condition"
    - xp84 1y ago
      This is most definitely an invitation to abuse your phone’s battery, but at the same time I absolutely love this idea. It’s hilarious to imagine someone eagerly awaiting the chance to log onto the site as the battery dips from 8, to 7, to 6. “Just a couple more minutes…”
- 98codes 1y ago
  It's funny -- before social media, I was more likely able to go find someone to chat with on IRC, a Usenet group, or some purpose-built forum. I knew where my friends were (ICQ, then AIM, then Skype, then GChat), and it worked. Now, it's all fragmented into 1000 Discord servers, and who has the time to dig through it all?
  - hn_acc1 1y ago
    I agree, I feel similarly. There are now 25+ car groups on fbook that I have to subscribe to, because the main web-board / usenet group for that car doesn't get anywhere near as much traffic as it used to. Major vendors are providing support on fbook - which sucks.
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    See, I'm the opposite. I've got a Discord server, which are very much "where my friends are": If I make an acquaintance (or any of my friends do), they get added to the server. Some stick around, and get woven into the social fiber. Some never come back, and eventually get removed from the server during our annual purge. There's maybe 10-20 active people (i.e., people we see at least a couple times a month), a handful of regulars that are that multiple times a week, and then maybe twice all that again of people we hear from once in a blue moon. If I want to chat, I'll hop in voice. If I want to share something I found, I'll stick it in a text channel. There's still plenty of communities on the internet. It's just that the communities worth belonging to are not wide open to the public. Community building does not scale.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
juliansimioni 1y ago
It's wild, and absolutely worth writing about, that at some point in recent years, the concept of "AFK" basically ceased to exist. Yes, we aren't technically near a keyboard most of the time today, but we are never AFK in a conceptual sense. Even when sleeping.
- Deebster 1y ago
  I play badminton, which has games that are about ten minutes long. I've noticed an uptick in the number of times I've had to stop and wait for someone I'm playing with to read a message on their smartwatch. I'm terminally online, but I can disconnect long enough for a game or a film - I seem to be increasingly in the minority.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    Honestly I don't hang out with people like that. If you can't put down your Distractify 9000 to play a game with me, then clearly I am not very interesting to you and it's better for both of us to do more engaging activities with more engaging people. People bristle at this sometimes- they'll ask why we don't hang out as much and I'll explain- and like, I get it, nobody likes feeling called out or criticized, and I don't even mean it as criticism, not really. Your behavior in reaching for your phone tells me that you have more important things to do, and I don't want to obstruct you from them. If those things aren't actually more important, well, then your priorities are clearly out of wack and you should sort that out for yourself. Like just... stop responding to stimuli. Put things in the order in which they are meaningful to you, and then keep that. You're a conscious being, act like one.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - whatevertrevor 1y ago
      I think there's a mismatch of expectations which is a solid reason to pursue friendships elsewhere. I think the other party in scenarios like this probably assumes (incorrectly of course) that youappreciate the break so you can check your phone too. There's definitely something borked with our brains though. I have had multiple people express surprise when I tell them that I will not check any notifications when I'm driving even if I'm stopped at a traffic light for a minute or more. I just don't want to be distracted, and yeah it takes conscious effort sometimes, but it does get easier once you learn from experience that the world will not fall apart if you check your messages later. I even internally reframe it as future candy, which makes me engage more positively with async interactions. But practicing delayed gratification is hard.
joules77 1y ago
Back then Broadcast/Multicast (1 to all/1 to many) was expensive. It quite often resulted in routers and switches catching fire. The chips were too slow. A side effect was we didn't have to deal with what Claude Shannon told us happens if everyone is broadcasting - noise increases - no one is really heard - people speak louder - people repeat messages - everyone is getting their energy drained. Today Broadcast is free. And thats what we see happening.
- jeffreygoesto 1y ago
  We used to relay messages in a mailbox once per day and got all new ones (called "Maustausch" https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MausNet https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MausNet). It was pretty cheap because all group and personal messages came in one compressed batch and you had stuff to read and respond for a day. The BBSes exchanged all messages in a tree call hierarchy, you could reach everybody within that one day hop.
andai 1y ago
No matter where you are, everyone is always connected...
gausswho 1y ago
Like many who lived through this inversion I can absolutely relate. I've culled my notifications substantially and my life is better for it. But I miss that feeling of firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi. I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I don't want any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages when my flow state has subsided. But when I unlock the phone, I want the modem to automatically come back on. I am subliminally tapping into the heyday of AIM. I'm expressing "i'm free. what's up?!". Problem is, it's not an occasion to anyone else out there. Most people always want to be available and I have a hard time understanding why.
- hn_acc1 1y ago
  This. I don't even want my computer to send data / check email unless I tell it to. And I ESPECIALLY don't want it sending telemetry / receiving ads asynchronously.
  - dbcoopr 1y ago
    This is basically how computers in the 80s and part of the 90s worked. I wonder if we could really bring back modems and BBS. How could we make that happen again? I feel like with modern internet, we’re stuck in this streaming TV, social media daze.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      They never really went away, just sort of evolved, but a lot of the old ways were lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System Impulse: We Resurrected Underground 1990s BBS Software in 2025.. With Docker [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422006
  - bmacho 1y ago
    > This. I don't even want my computer to send data / check email unless I tell it to. And I ESPECIALLY don't want it sending telemetry / receiving ads asynchronously. This should be the job of the OS, but ironically the OS is the biggest offender. Should be solvable by a strong firewall/local proxy that blocks everything by default, only allows browser, and has an easy and convenient way to allow some outgoing traffic temporarily.
j45 1y ago
Usable mobile data that was fast enough was one of the tipping points, meeting with the first smartphone that was for the many, the iPhone around the same time.
dylan604 1y ago
> You’re expected to reply as soon as possible. I am happy to disappoint these expectations. I feel no pressure from it whatsoever. Of course, I'm of the age of default offline, so that has a lot to do with it. Remember coming home to a "machine" to check messages? That was glorious even if it too had a glowing red dot that wanted your attention. The always on mentality is not worth it and quite tiresome, figuratively and literally. I know it's different for women, but I've met a few that are really into the always on concept where they never leave the house without full war paint because "you never know who you might meet". I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
liotier 1y ago
> The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly As someone who twenty years ago published his XMPP presence to his web page (http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2006/02/27/jabber-presence-indicator-in-a-web-page http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2006/02/27/jabber...) among other oversharing excesses, I have now swung opposite: online presence indicator is the first functionality I disable when I join any sort of forum and my tablet is almost always silent... Asynchronous interrupts least and unbroken concentration is most valuable, so asynchronous mostly - with exceptions for eligible professional contacts and sentimentally close people.
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
> Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly. I've been reading this on HN for years but I've always been puzzled by it because it's both so different from my personal experiences and seems so divergent from the types who hang out on HN. From around my mid-20s the expectation to be always on in any of my friend groups just evaporated. Until we hit our 30s there was still a general expectation to read socials after work hours but even then as we got older many of us were too drained after work to do much. Then once we hit our 30s the expectation was that our partners, homes, and often kids took precedence. None of my friends are posting Stories on Instagram with their newborns. Now some of my friends do still love being always on their socials but a lot of these friends of mine when not on socials are constantly hanging out at social events or on calls with each other. They'd probably be the neighborhood gossips in an era before telephony. So I'm curious: is this a real problem or is this a bit of a strawman? What sort of social pressure do you actually receive to be always on your socials? Is this related to going on dates?

by 101008 1y ago

nemomarx 1y ago

The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all. It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.

RugnirViking 1y ago
honestly ive been thinking about this stuff too. a hypothetical forum you could only log on to read if you idled on a certain page for 15 mins or something would probably have a lot higher standard of discussion and be a lot better for peoples lives, for example. The most minute of barriers requiring you to deliberately and consciously join and leave...
- Nition 1y ago
  The SomethingAwful forums have been $10 to join since 2001. If you get banned, that's another $10 needed for a new account. Has worked pretty well for 24 years.
- reg_dunlop 1y ago
  Reminds me of https://diewithme.online/ https://diewithme.online/ which I just learned about. Not exactly the same as your idea, but definitely in the same vein of "only available under a certain condition"
  - xp84 1y ago
    This is most definitely an invitation to abuse your phone’s battery, but at the same time I absolutely love this idea. It’s hilarious to imagine someone eagerly awaiting the chance to log onto the site as the battery dips from 8, to 7, to 6. “Just a couple more minutes…”
98codes 1y ago
It's funny -- before social media, I was more likely able to go find someone to chat with on IRC, a Usenet group, or some purpose-built forum. I knew where my friends were (ICQ, then AIM, then Skype, then GChat), and it worked. Now, it's all fragmented into 1000 Discord servers, and who has the time to dig through it all?
- hn_acc1 1y ago
  I agree, I feel similarly. There are now 25+ car groups on fbook that I have to subscribe to, because the main web-board / usenet group for that car doesn't get anywhere near as much traffic as it used to. Major vendors are providing support on fbook - which sucks.
- OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  See, I'm the opposite. I've got a Discord server, which are very much "where my friends are": If I make an acquaintance (or any of my friends do), they get added to the server. Some stick around, and get woven into the social fiber. Some never come back, and eventually get removed from the server during our annual purge. There's maybe 10-20 active people (i.e., people we see at least a couple times a month), a handful of regulars that are that multiple times a week, and then maybe twice all that again of people we hear from once in a blue moon. If I want to chat, I'll hop in voice. If I want to share something I found, I'll stick it in a text channel. There's still plenty of communities on the internet. It's just that the communities worth belonging to are not wide open to the public. Community building does not scale.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

juliansimioni 1y ago

It's wild, and absolutely worth writing about, that at some point in recent years, the concept of "AFK" basically ceased to exist. Yes, we aren't technically near a keyboard most of the time today, but we are never AFK in a conceptual sense. Even when sleeping.

Deebster 1y ago
I play badminton, which has games that are about ten minutes long. I've noticed an uptick in the number of times I've had to stop and wait for someone I'm playing with to read a message on their smartwatch. I'm terminally online, but I can disconnect long enough for a game or a film - I seem to be increasingly in the minority.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Honestly I don't hang out with people like that. If you can't put down your Distractify 9000 to play a game with me, then clearly I am not very interesting to you and it's better for both of us to do more engaging activities with more engaging people. People bristle at this sometimes- they'll ask why we don't hang out as much and I'll explain- and like, I get it, nobody likes feeling called out or criticized, and I don't even mean it as criticism, not really. Your behavior in reaching for your phone tells me that you have more important things to do, and I don't want to obstruct you from them. If those things aren't actually more important, well, then your priorities are clearly out of wack and you should sort that out for yourself. Like just... stop responding to stimuli. Put things in the order in which they are meaningful to you, and then keep that. You're a conscious being, act like one.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - whatevertrevor 1y ago
    I think there's a mismatch of expectations which is a solid reason to pursue friendships elsewhere. I think the other party in scenarios like this probably assumes (incorrectly of course) that youappreciate the break so you can check your phone too. There's definitely something borked with our brains though. I have had multiple people express surprise when I tell them that I will not check any notifications when I'm driving even if I'm stopped at a traffic light for a minute or more. I just don't want to be distracted, and yeah it takes conscious effort sometimes, but it does get easier once you learn from experience that the world will not fall apart if you check your messages later. I even internally reframe it as future candy, which makes me engage more positively with async interactions. But practicing delayed gratification is hard.

joules77 1y ago

Back then Broadcast/Multicast (1 to all/1 to many) was expensive. It quite often resulted in routers and switches catching fire. The chips were too slow. A side effect was we didn't have to deal with what Claude Shannon told us happens if everyone is broadcasting - noise increases - no one is really heard - people speak louder - people repeat messages - everyone is getting their energy drained. Today Broadcast is free. And thats what we see happening.

jeffreygoesto 1y ago
We used to relay messages in a mailbox once per day and got all new ones (called "Maustausch" https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MausNet https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MausNet). It was pretty cheap because all group and personal messages came in one compressed batch and you had stuff to read and respond for a day. The BBSes exchanged all messages in a tree call hierarchy, you could reach everybody within that one day hop.

andai 1y ago

No matter where you are, everyone is always connected...

gausswho 1y ago

Like many who lived through this inversion I can absolutely relate. I've culled my notifications substantially and my life is better for it. But I miss that feeling of firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi. I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I don't want any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages when my flow state has subsided. But when I unlock the phone, I want the modem to automatically come back on. I am subliminally tapping into the heyday of AIM. I'm expressing "i'm free. what's up?!". Problem is, it's not an occasion to anyone else out there. Most people always want to be available and I have a hard time understanding why.

hn_acc1 1y ago
This. I don't even want my computer to send data / check email unless I tell it to. And I ESPECIALLY don't want it sending telemetry / receiving ads asynchronously.
- dbcoopr 1y ago
  This is basically how computers in the 80s and part of the 90s worked. I wonder if we could really bring back modems and BBS. How could we make that happen again? I feel like with modern internet, we’re stuck in this streaming TV, social media daze.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    They never really went away, just sort of evolved, but a lot of the old ways were lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System Impulse: We Resurrected Underground 1990s BBS Software in 2025.. With Docker [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422006
- bmacho 1y ago
  > This. I don't even want my computer to send data / check email unless I tell it to. And I ESPECIALLY don't want it sending telemetry / receiving ads asynchronously. This should be the job of the OS, but ironically the OS is the biggest offender. Should be solvable by a strong firewall/local proxy that blocks everything by default, only allows browser, and has an easy and convenient way to allow some outgoing traffic temporarily.

j45 1y ago

Usable mobile data that was fast enough was one of the tipping points, meeting with the first smartphone that was for the many, the iPhone around the same time.

dylan604 1y ago

> You’re expected to reply as soon as possible. I am happy to disappoint these expectations. I feel no pressure from it whatsoever. Of course, I'm of the age of default offline, so that has a lot to do with it. Remember coming home to a "machine" to check messages? That was glorious even if it too had a glowing red dot that wanted your attention. The always on mentality is not worth it and quite tiresome, figuratively and literally. I know it's different for women, but I've met a few that are really into the always on concept where they never leave the house without full war paint because "you never know who you might meet". I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

liotier 1y ago

> The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly As someone who twenty years ago published his XMPP presence to his web page (http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2006/02/27/jabber-presence-indicator-in-a-web-page http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2006/02/27/jabber...) among other oversharing excesses, I have now swung opposite: online presence indicator is the first functionality I disable when I join any sort of forum and my tablet is almost always silent... Asynchronous interrupts least and unbroken concentration is most valuable, so asynchronous mostly - with exceptions for eligible professional contacts and sentimentally close people.

Karrot_Kream 1y ago

> Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly. I've been reading this on HN for years but I've always been puzzled by it because it's both so different from my personal experiences and seems so divergent from the types who hang out on HN. From around my mid-20s the expectation to be always on in any of my friend groups just evaporated. Until we hit our 30s there was still a general expectation to read socials after work hours but even then as we got older many of us were too drained after work to do much. Then once we hit our 30s the expectation was that our partners, homes, and often kids took precedence. None of my friends are posting Stories on Instagram with their newborns. Now some of my friends do still love being always on their socials but a lot of these friends of mine when not on socials are constantly hanging out at social events or on calls with each other. They'd probably be the neighborhood gossips in an era before telephony. So I'm curious: is this a real problem or is this a bit of a strawman? What sort of social pressure do you actually receive to be always on your socials? Is this related to going on dates?