Yeah, I want to interact with people who are making/sharing stuff for the love of the game, not trying to be influencers or sell me something.

That last line is a powerful analogy and exactly how it feels.

Internet tech companies have perfected the art of enshittifying a service. Internet services these days practically follow a playbook of, 1.) hook users, 2.) build a walled garden, 3.) exploit users. Basically the EEE of the user-driven web. Pretty much every company at this point, both old and new (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Reddit, TikTok, Discord, Twitter, Netflix) follow this exact pattern.

Modern UI design, dark patterns, deprecating services while raising prices, "install our app!", etc. We didn't have this in the days of IRC, Usenet, all that other good stuff before corporate web came around.

AKA, the Internet matured and became corporate like every other form of media before it.

Very nicely put

Yeah, it was cool exploring the space without being monitized.

And when chat logs were just saved as text files on your PC.

The old internet was decidedly anti-commercial.

yeah once you found a niche community you had knowledgeable people that would at least reply by the weekend, and expert advice would be free just because some guy was happy a stranger liked the same things.

❤️

My mom then: don't put any personal information on the internet!

My mom now: I just need to put my social security, credit card info, and full street address and I can see which Seinfeld character I'm most like!

Still is

I was using the Internet at a time when people took it being non-commercial completely seriously. You never saw ads because, as a community, we had decided that ads were not allowed. It was completely decentralized, so you might be running your own server, but if you put an ad on your server other people would get mad at you for it. This was pre-WWW and then a bit of the early days of the WWW.

Then there was a period where ads, commerce, shopping, etc. were possible and permitted. But, that was still the minority of things. There were thousands of web pages full of mythology and folklore for example, that people had just put up because that was something they were interested in. Running a web page cost you next to nothing, so there was no need to put ads on it. You could use Yahoo to find those sites, and I guess Yahoo was commercial by that point, but if it had ads they were small and unobtrusive.

Over time, things got more and more commercial. You saw ads more and more often. But, at least then it was ads on static content, or ads on a forum or something. It wasn't an infinite algorithmically-generated feed optimized to keep you engaged.

There was a lot to like about that super early non-commercial Internet. But, I don't think that was the peak moment though. Some ads and early for-profit services made it better. I think the thing that really wrecked it was the lack of competition. When there are 100 commercial services fighting over your attention, they can't collude, you can boycott one, etc. When there are 5, you basically have to accept whatever they give you.

It's not figuring out but just waiting until there are more non-nerds moving in that new market and then start monetizing as the market reaches critical mass for their particular niche.

... To post on Lemmy?

Bring on NomadNet!!!!!!

or Gemini Protocol,

They're both great retro, but sadly they're largely missing interesting content ;(

I remember the day that the Old Internet died for me.

I saw my buddy was online on AIM, and I messaged him looking to shoot the shit. But he had just gotten a smartphone, and was logged into AIM on his smartphone, and it was not a good time for him to be shooting the shit because he was out and about doing stuff. So he was like “what do you need? I’m busy”.

Which is not something anyone had ever told me on AIM before. If you were on AIM you were by definition bored and looking to shoot the shit.

I guess we grew up too.

Ground Zero BBS Tri-cities Washington Sysop Nemesis checking in. I can confirm I had fidonet mail before email was a thing. Playing door games and posting on the wall for all to see. Great times.

I put off getting a smartphone until like 2015. I was 21 and was one of the last of my friends not to have one. My argument against it was precisely that: "I don't want to be online all day and I know that's exactly what's going to happen."

I didn't even buy my first smartphone. My sister gave it to me. It stayed in the box for six months. I so so did not fucking want it.

Smart phones ruined everything. It was fun when I was the only one, hyperbole. I had smart phones while my peers in grade school finally started getting hand me down flip phones. I was like this is great; playing Zelda on a gameboy emulator, or on the next phone that had the same specs as my first pc and playing Duke Nukem 3D. Being able to browse the internet.

Now it's devolved to a chain collar on your neck as you're expected to answer the phone all the time and even places of work require you to have a phone to use their cr'apps. Scan this QR code. Ram this up yass, oh wait. At this point I hate phones. I plan to switch to a garmin watch with phone capabilities. I mean 95% is just spam these days for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

We could create forums that can only be logged on to using a desktop browser. Sure, some mobile users with basic tech savvy could install some spoofer that still let them access the site. But that's still mission accomplished. You're still requiring some technical competence.

You had to log off when someone wanted to use the phone

Crushing boredom is absolutely still a thing. I guess you could move it over into mind-numbing boredom if you really wanted to get pedantic. If anything, it actually makes boredom more likely. The internet has caused a severe amount of overstimulation in most people, and so now things that they used to take enjoyment in mean nothing to them.

I thought you meant the internet was a he

Do you have any recommendations for good forums?

I was more of a Yahoo Messenger and ICQ, AIM was for the adults.

clunky and slow interface of email that for some reason we continue using 30 years later

Email is actually great, it's the original fediverse - anyone can start a server and interoperate with everyone else. With a decent client it doesn't need to be clunky either, although with 90% of people stuck in webmail I can understand why people think it sucks.

They literally said in the opening sentence: "the best thing about early internet wasn't AIM or MySpace"

The post isn't about individual technology at all, but how relationship with technology changed.

This is the right answer. Also the internet hadn't been overtaken by big companies and bots. And law makers was just starting to understand what it was, so it wasn't censored left and right. It really was a magical time.

We're still living in the Eternal September. It used to be that there was a certain etiquette to being online. Don't ask a question someone else already asked, don't pretend to be an authority on something you're not, and so on. Then September 1993 happened. Suddenly there was a much bigger new cohort of internet users who needed to assimilate to the culture. It was an endless cohort of people who didn't know how to behave. October came around more new user, November, December were the same. The change didn't happen quickly. It took decades but it started then.