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Selfishly, I hate these things. No one in the 1980s and early 1990s expected the internet to become what it did. I discovered it as a dumb teenager and posted s
by matherial 22d ago
Selfishly, I hate these things. No one in the 1980s and early 1990s expected the internet to become what it did. I discovered it as a dumb teenager and posted some frankly idiotic stuff. I also put my real address and phone number in the signature, because that's how you rolled back then, the entire internet was like 10 nerds.
Now, 35 years later, a lot of other stuff has mercifully decayed, but people keep bootstrapping these Usenet archives as pet projects every year, and there's never an option to opt out. Today, agents make it easier than ever to build a dossier on anyone you don't like, so this data is bound to cause some harm. And I guess when I die, the best-preserved memory of me that my grandchildren and grand-grandchildren will be able to pull up will be snarky posts from a 15-year-old on some unix-related discussion group.
Yeah, I know there's a bunch of posts there that are of genuine historical interest. But I'm just not a fan and I don't mind burning karma to speak my mind.
- ssl-3 22d agoMan, I sure knew 35 years ago that whatever I shared in public was.... public. :) And some of it still is public from way back then -- including dumb and ugly comments, stupid flamewars, teenager stuff, and phone numbers. It doesn't bother me. I don't feel remorseful for having once been a kid and doing some of the dumb things that kids sometimes feel inclined to do, and those landline telephone numbers stopped being relevant to me decades ago.
- CalRobert 22d agoPublic or not 1991 was a very, very, very different time. The idea that some dumb stuff I posted would still be around in 30+ years would have been crazy. (Actually, I wonder if the Prodigy forums got archived...)
- Melatonic 21d agoThose were semi private no ? I would guess not. Although maybe there's an old server sitting in someone's garage with the info
- CalRobert 21d agoI think this is the best we've got - but seems moribund. Relied on finding people's old C:\PRODIGY directories and finding what was cached https://www.prodigyreloaded.com/ https://www.prodigyreloaded.com/
- pheller 17d agoWe're still working on it! It is worth noting that the STAGE.DAT an CACHE.DAT from C:\PRODIGY will never contain things like email messages or forum posts. They will contain things like the pages and program logic that comprise particular parts of the service, and at most parts of the various service database indices and records (e.g., bits of the Encyclopedia, Movie Reviews, that sort of thing). There's a discord server for the project here: https://discord.gg/2GpsEC5JdP https://discord.gg/2GpsEC5JdP
- stackghost 22d ago35 years ago we didn’t have the cultural precedent/zeitgeist of getting cancelled for some stupid shit you wrote on a message board in 1991 so we were less guarded with our opinions.
- ssl-3 22d agoDo we actually have a culture of cancelling people for the things they wrote when they were 12?
- zimpenfish 22d agoNo, and we don't really have a culture of cancelling things for people they say now, either, when it comes down to it because if that were true, Trump would not be president given his long history of [waves hands], a large number of Republican politicians would also be out of work, etc.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- ssl-3 21d agoSo what is it that drives such phrases into common parlance as a description of the apparently-fictitious culture of rote cancellation, might one suppose? I might suggest that "projection" is a primary motivator, although I work to avoid projecting on my own time. (Edit: To disambiguate without vagueness: When some fucking party or other is talking about "cancel culture," they usually seem, to me, to be projecting about their own fucking party's fucking ugly policies and tactics. And in a sane and pure world, I'd like to wish that they'd be recognized as being fucking scumbags for behaving in this way. But it is my observation that we do not always live in a sane and pure world.)
- davidwritesbugs 22d agoI can imagine you’d be embarrassed, I did stupid stuff too, but unless you’re running for Congress you should just say “I was a stupid teenager” and let it wash. Anyone fair minded will dismiss it.
- Gareth321 22d agoThe current social zeitgeist is that one is permanently responsible for everything they ever said, even has a child. All nuance is gone. People are looking for a reason to make someone the enemy, and if you're the enemy, violence is acceptable now. I wish it weren't like this, but it is, so I can understand why people want to stay out of the crosshairs.
- weinzierl 22d agoMy view is the complete opposite. In the 90s I thought the digital revolution and the internet will be so groundbreaking that everything connected to it will be remembered. Moreover storage seemed so cheap, why would we ever want to delete anything. The internet never forgets. Turns out storage wasn't free and the the following generations did not have the same appreciation for everything 80s and 90s, so much of it is lost forever.
- jghn 22d agoSame. It’s hard to understand today, but in a world where search engines weren’t really a thing and almost no one knew what the internet was, the concept of “public” was quite different. Yes, I should have known better in my teenage years about it. And also yes there was no reason for me to expect that everything I wrote would be easily available to some AI panopticon 30-40 years later
- qingcharles 22d agoWild that I put my street address in some of my posts. Those were different times indeed.
- jrflowers 21d ago> when I die, the best-preserved memory of me that my grandchildren and grand-grandchildren will be able to pull up will be snarky posts from a 15-year-old Just make a bunch of really good posts and put your name on them