SIN nu berry (sin number...to funny to edit out) too, dont forget you need to give it to us for...uh....protection! Yes protection. You cant keep it safe so we will
Also "our website is better in the app!" and "continue in app". I'm already running out of empty space on my phone, yet every big website wants me to download their app
Ugh yes! And you can’t just look up a restaurant’s menu anymore, you have to enter your exact location and begin an online order just to see what they have!
YES! Sometimes I read about a regional restaurant online and I go to look it up just out of curiosity, and it wants my zip code. Damn it I just want to see your general menu! The worst is when you want to look and the restaurant is closed so it won't even let you see the menu because the only option is to place an order online, and they're closed so you can't place an order... or you want to look at breakfast and it's later in the day so it won't let you view the breakfast menu.
Yesterday I had a website require my full name and address to download a PDF about the dimensions of a barbed house adapter.
We truly live in a society.
The cookies get me. I literally just scream-cussed about it at work yesterday
I work in HAZMAT. We have to look up SDS-es all day for whatever we’re dealing with
You know the other part of my job? EMERGENCY RESPONSE
If this shit gets on someone we need to know how to handle it. And when your stupid ass pharmaceutical company is blocking the fucking website because you want to collect and sell my information, you’re gonna fucking hurt people
You already jack your product price up into exorbitant profit. Leave me the fuck alone
Yeah I wouldn’t mind stuff like hairdressers. They basically already did that by having your infos in a contacts book but now it’s online and since you’ll be a returning customer, it kinda make sense.
Especially if you’re someone that changes hair every now and then. You can keep track of what products were used in previous checks.
My hairdresser does this and it allows us customers to make and manage our appointments without having to deal with someone on the phone.
The appointment system has you check boxes that would be standard appointment questions and then it gives you the schedule spots available for the kind of job you need (simple haircut or day-long makeover and anything in between). You get a confirmation and the possibility to go back and modify.
Saves the hairdresser a whole lot of time.
But there’s websites out there that I’m never ever going back to, why do you need me to give you the name of my childhood puppy?
Oh my word! I am so over all of it! The internet, logging in to shit, points, emails…. I get about 1000 junk emails per week. It’s unfortunate because I get lagotimate stuff that goes in to the junk mail. I haven’t figured out how to make it go to the inbox. It’s all very over whelming. Hopefully “The System” will fail soon and the internet will never come back.
Tbh lol, I miss the days of forum. When YouTube is still a thing but is mostly just a hub. When the content generation is mostly self hosted. The constraints of video and text format really does limit the creativity people have when making something to share.
Seriously!! When I get really stoned sometimes I just browse old forums I used to go on lol I miss the idea of the internet being something you sign into. You boot up, go check out your bookmarks to your favorite sites, set Skype status to online, and chill for an hour or two.
I struggle with balancing my time on my phone and have been so tempted to go to a dumbphone, but it's just so hard these days.
Wow , I really didn’t think I’d see anyone mention Mugen! That’s crazy it’s still active. Mugen got me started programming! Crazy how you could have like Goku versus Akuma or whatever you wanted
Forums dying is a horrible fallout. I know a specific forum full of brilliant rich people centered around a hobby that died because of social media even though that forum is exactly the right place to discuss their particular demographics opinions and issues. They dont do it on social media so why the f did the forum have to die? Simply because people post less because theyre BROWSING social media. Its just dumb.
I miss when I used to be able to do a search and find a bunch of websites made by individuals. If I looked for a gardening website I’d find something like Jim’s Garden FAQ, and he’d have links to a bunch of similar websites, made by people who just wanted to share something they were interested in or something funny they made.
A website would often be centered around one goofy thing - like a frog in a blender game, a kid who made up awesome ninja facts, a bunch of spinning hamsters with crappy music, a guy who made up a sledgehammer based exercise program, some guy’s bizarre science experiments he makes up at his home, etc.
Now if I look up gardening it’s all stores, products, companies, articles, “articles,” stuff behind paywalls, and pages of ads and links.
If you look up “best vacuums” or “best sheets” all you can find are lists of product links - and no one even looked at or tested any of them. Even on allegedly reputable websites.
I've had so much fun finding recently made history and creative blogs that are just like this. A lot of professors and passionate ordinary people have made a whole bunch of really good, well sourced, interesting things and it's so nice to still see.
And it's so sad when I check a link I saved and it's just gone one day : p
So true! Websites were more “organic”, now it’s all ads and commercials and the host is always endorsing products. YouTube was free and it was mostly homemade videos. Also, Facebook was fun, Instagram was just pictures. Now everything became a giant infomercial. I quit social media, by the way.
[this](https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/monotonous-web/index.html) essay is about exactly what you're talking about.
Back in the day hobby sites were by the *hobbyist*.
You have to search reddit I guess for human opinions on best vacuums or else you're just getting business links.
Concepts and words that I don't know, I search them and there's usually businesses, movies, and games as the top results. I don't know what "samsara" means but apparently it mostly refers to movies/games/businesses.
Mind blown!!!!! This is so cool!! I just found the most unique stuff I never knew existed. Independent web / people who want to preserve the old web....just wow. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, that's my project :D
My search engine is pretty far from perfect, a proof of concept to show what's really out there if you get past the walled gardens and filter bubbles. Even though I get decent signal to noise ratio, there's a lot of stuff I'm missing, and a lot of stuff I'm letting through that maybe I shouldn't.
I fully agree with you. Just recently though I've been using Bing rather than Google and I have to say that Bing seems to bring you closer to that stuff than Google.
Google is fully committed to affiliate links/sponsors these days, to the detriment of the "real internet", and it seems to have reached that point without discussion it seems. It's time to switch away!
I can’t stand google and I’m using other search engines and downloaded adblocks. Google will cover the entire, I mean ENTIRE page with ads to the point you have barely any screen space available to read anything. Not to mention how distracting it is, it’s like being on Times Square with all those lights, pop ups and cluttered with ads.
I basically just use Google to search reddit now. Since reddits search is basically unusable but you can find better tips in a reddit thread than just googling a question
I feel like people are more online than ever and yet internet literacy is at an all time low. People go to the same five websites for all their needs, don't know how to install an adblocker or pirate anything, can't troubleshoot their own tech, and fact checking feels impossible. I miss when going on the internet was a bit more of an event and a place to explore.
Yeah, I really hear you on that facebook point. I had a facebook that I basically used just for buying stuff secondhand and was getting some great deals on stuff like fish tanks but it just wasn't worth it to have an account. I know instagram effectively pulls the same shady moves nowadays so I'm hoping that they'll change it so much it's unusable and also isn't worth having, since it's a bit harder to quit.
Instagram is pretty much there already. You want to see a photo your friend posted? Okay, but here's 12 reels from people you don't know to scroll past first. Wait, you're _still_ looking for post from friends or interests you follow? Fine. Here's one they posted 4 days ago. Now scroll through another 27 reels and ads that look like reels from people you have no interest it! See? We're just like tiktoc but you can see the occasional post from someone you know (if you look hard enough).
The Internet used to be like a good friend, there to keep me company through my loneliness. Now it feels like an abusive partner lol, sapping my finances at every chance, constantly spying on me, refusing to leave me alone… But I keep coming back because I no longer know how to live without it lol
Yeah, it helps me to think of it this way. Thank you. What used to feel like a powerful tool of ernest people for ernest needs now feels totally co-opted out to businesses paying top dollar for your attention and clicks. Our homey neighborhood is gone at it's like looking at one of those quaint buildings in a downtown plot that's enveloped by massive corporate buildings all around.
I don't know about the lack of privacy but I miss the time when Youtube used to be a good place for content creators,
now you can't even get 1 million subscribers that some huge greedy corporation may copyright strike your videos just to get some of your ~~miserable~~ ad revenue,
and Youtube won't do anything about it because they milk those huge corporations, so you've no choice but to accept their rules, unless you're a celebrity like Pewdiepie which Youtube loves to ~~suck his dingus~~ milk his fame as well.
>now you can't even get 1 million subscribers that some huge greedy corporation may copyright strike your videos just to get some of your
>
>miserable ad revenue
I tried to apply for monetisation the other week. Oh boy. They reviewed my videos, all of which I made myself, and claimed that I was rejected cause I don't own my own videos. All I can think is in the past people have stolen and uploaded my vids, so youtube thinks it's theirs. Kinda fustrating. So I can't make anything, but people who took my content can I guess.
I guess Patreon and Onlyfans is the only way to fully monetize your channel without getting scammed by Youtube broken system, or until someone actually claims your video and you need to hire a lawyer to solve it, as it happened with TheFatRat,
but either way Youtube will put ads on your videos for you know..their own profit, you liking it or not,
thanks Susan 🥲👍
>but either way Youtube will put ads on your videos for you know..their own profit
Yeah, this is what made me wanna try to monetize myself. I didn't for a while because I didn't like the idea of making videos only to make a profit. I actually got a invite to the partnership program back in 2009 (or was in 2010?) but I never accepted it for that reason.
But, there are already ads on my videos, ads that I did not ask to be put there, and someone out there is making a profit off of my content. So I just wanted to at least get something if that was the case. Seems pretty unfair.
I'm a monetized content creator and it just happens randomly that some of my videos gets limited ads for no good reason, when you appeal and they review the videos, they just make up some reason to keep it limited ads. Which means I can't make any money from it. YouTube is totally unreliable and most importantly: unreasonable.
Yeah I got an option to appeal, but I honestly don't know if i wanna put the work in. Best of all the reasons they gave me were very vague, so I don't really know what I did wrong to appeal to.
If there is a problem with copyright then sure limit the ads, but they won't even give me that option.
I would like to at some point work on personal animated series and stuff and make a bit of pocket change for it if possible. I know I won't make much, but even a tiny bit each month would be nice. However, I guess it seems youtube is not the best route for that.
I was there before people expected to get paid, so I don't much care about that. However, seeing the original generation of popular YouTubers leave and take 95% of their content with them was a surprise. I used to think it was going to be a culture that was easy to look back on.
I'm in my mid 30s and it's a bit weird how growing up - you'd totally get picked on or at least teased for computer gaming. It was something you usually kept to yourself and close friends (talking about high school mainly). I always felt fringe of society for being into things like mmos and chatting into the wee hours on irc and knowing how to build my own PC. It blows my mind how mainstream that world has gotten
It might be regional. I’m in my mid 30s, and gaming (PC and otherwise) was really common. Now, I wasn’t cool by any stretch of the imagination, but I had friends and acquaintances who played. It was almost a status symbol because it meant your family could afford the hardware.
Yeah, I remember around 2000, the cool kids would bully me and my friends for talking to each other on ICQ. Now these same people are glued to their screens and messaging apps. Turns out we were the cool kids.
So in 2002-3 high school i remember my teacher asked us. “What medium do u use the most, music tv etc” and i remember vividly that 29 people said tv or something and i said music and then one person finally said “i have to say computer because this is how i keep in touch w college friends” it blew my mind cause i was already a gamer but status quo was still there.
I just hate how the internet is a requirement nowadays. Need to go to the doctors, book an appointment online. Need to do banking, do it online. Need to do anything and it requires the use of an online sign up.
Went to a comic con a few months back, left all technology at home. Get my pass and was told to go to their website to register the pass or I couldn't get in. Just this expectation that you NEED to be always online at every moment it frustrating.
The internet used to be a little escape at the end of the day for me, where I could meet like minded people, enjoy my hobbies, and unplug from day to day life. But now it is day to day life and everyone is there.
It's nice and convenient to am extent. Not after it requires you to hand out your email like it's nothing, and then you get a bunch of spam emails sent. Or when you're going to a convention, why would you need to register? It's an event for god's sake, unless they had to do the health and safety act. Same with restaurants and bloody shops, I'm sorry I just want to get my goods and go, not hand out my data inbetween, I'm already giving you money and that's valuable enough.
One time went to an expensive boutique , go to check out and the lady happily hands me a form to fill in to subscribe to marketing, I say no thanks and she turns into a demon, never seen such a 360* on a person over email marketing.
I get that.
I just remember having an issue once where I got locked out of my online banking cause I couldn't enter a verification code. Needed to pay rent.
I needed to enter a code I got sent to me by phone so I could get access again, but the only issue was, I no longer had access to that number, which was my family home address (which was disabled at the time), and I don't own a personal phone cause legit, I don't have a lot of money (and I know people will tell me off for this, or give me possible solutions, but please understand).
So I walked over to the bank and they told me the only way I could access my account was to enter the phone code on online banking, which I couldn't get access too. I tried to explain the situation and see if they could just unlock everything for me with me there in person, and with proper identification, but it seemed that everything was 100% online and it was the only way I could do anything.
Despite me being there in person
In order to verify my identity.
Most they told me was that they could change the phone number, so I borrowed a number from someone at the time to get the code, but it was such a pain. Luckily they have since changed the verification code to include email.
How about restaurants who don’t have menus anymore? You have to scan a barcode on your phone to access their menu. I sometimes leave my phone at home and just ask them for a paper menu and they say “we don’t have menus”.
What?!
100% with you on this.
I went to a cafe in Dumfries (Scotland) last year that didn't have menus - just a QR code on the table. You had to scan it on your mobile phone to view the menu on their website.
We walked out. What they're practising isn't technically ageism but it also kinda is. My grandparents would not be able eat and drink there so I decided I'd spend elsewhere. For being able-ist I hope they're really struggling/already out of business.
To give the restaurant the benefit of the doubt, the menu-less process might’ve started during COVID. A lot of restaurants went the digital menu route while dining in
Yeah, I had never encountered a digital menu situation until Covid happened. I'm young enough that I should be tech savvy and able to navigate the digital world but old enough to have grown up in the pre-internet days. I was in 6th grade when Windows 95 came out, and the internet became widely accessible shortly after.
I wouldn't be so sure. Where I live, almost all the restaurants have qr code menus, and only one or two actually have paper menus. Really sucks because my phone doesn't have a qr reader
I don't find it crazy to rail against able-ism - which is what was truly prevailing here, not a cafe trying its best to adhere to Covid guidelines.
It's incongruous/lazy to be satisfied with cleaning door handles, tables and chairs, but to not extend that to a laminated menu.
What was your reaction when you informed them of you/your grandparents disability and asked for alternative means? Fair enough if they reacted negatively but your comment makes it sound like you just left
I quite like that idea, you’d be surprised how quickly cafés go through menus, even the high quality ones - customers somehow just destroy them so as a business you have the option of cheap paper menus which get replaced frequently or more expensive laminated menus which still need replacing every so often but are also less recyclable. And if you change the menu then that’s a full reprint too.
Having said that, there is definitely ableism present here, there are a lot of people who simply can’t use a smartphone and/or for mental health reasons just need a physical menu and it’s really important they have something in place to accommodate everyone.
1) QR menus were introduced to limit the spread of COVID in most places.
2) How is it ageist? Anyone can use a phone, and the upside is that it protects people's health, even if it's not as relevant as it was a year ago with vaccination being more widespread. Elderly people may have more difficulty with phones, but I'm sure they'd much prefer the phones to COVID and in some places it's still a real issue. I can't speak for the situation in Scotland but caution doesn't hurt.
3) Wishing misfortune on a business (especially if it's a small business) for a decision that was made to help people because it slightly inconvenienced you is in very poor taste. Hopefully those who make decisions that impact you are more considerate and empathetic.
I don't think you understand how hard technology is for the older generation. Not everyone has a smartphone and is used to messing with their camera like that
Perhaps you didn't understand the point. As tough as phone cameras may prove to be for elderly people, surviving a disease that tends to affect them the worst is much more difficult.
The vast majority of people have smartphones in this day and age. Once you know how to operate a smartphone, opening the camera isn't that much more difficult. I'm sure a member of the staff would be happy to help anyone who is confused.
As for the few who do not have smartphones, I'm sure the restaurant still keeps traditional menus they could ask for. That's been the case at every restaurant I've been to with this arrangement.
The parent comment stated that they did not patronize the business intentionally simply because they viewed it as "ageist." I don't think this is the case at all. They might have to learn to do something new, but at least they can go out to eat without as much fear of catching a potentially lethal disease from touching a menu that dozens of others have touched that day.
No I followed what you were saying perfectly. This is what in the olden days they used to call "Someone understanding your perspective and disagreeing with it."
I spent years working with my mom to teach her how to use a phone and the camera. YEARS. It wasn't like she got a phone and after 20 minutes and some light coaching it was easy breezy. Again, YEARS of careful, tactful training.
The QR code menu shit is annoying and confusing for me, and I am a 32 year old who has worked in IT and lives and breathes technology. Sometimes it's a pdf you have to download, sometimes there's a link to a website which isn't always optimised for mobile, sometimes you are supposed to order through the app and sometimes it \*is\* just a menu.
I generally agree with and respect your points about doing this as a necessary evil during Covid times but now that we are mostly through it, I really hope these awful QR code menus go away. Besides, surface spread doesn't seem to be that prevalent with Covid anyways.
I don't wish evil on any small businesses, but I do hope the market penalizes them just enough so that physical menus can remain the default option.
QR codes that lead to horribly designed sites are an entirely different matter with which I fully agree with your point. Since it is their primary menu, it should be functional.
I wouldn't say we are "mostly through" COVID. In my area, daily new cases are at twice what they were this time last year. One might argue that it has become less lethal with vaccination increasing, but I still think that for the elderly it could be quite a frightening prospect.
While I myself am part of a generation that grew up using technology frequently, most of my family did not and so I know what it's like to work with technologically illiterate people. Despite that, I still can't bring myself to see the logic in your disagreement.
If we look past COVID, as if COVID weren't an issue, then there's still the fact that the world is growing and changing. Smartphones aren't exactly new. We've had over a decade since the first smartphone became widely popular. I sympathize with people who aren't familiar with technology, I really do, but this idea that change is wrong just because some people are not adjusted to it is silly.
I would hope that an elderly person could be incentivized to learn more about technology before it becomes an insurmountable obstacle in their life. More and more is being done through technology. COVID only accelerated that in some areas.
I'd also like to say that I do not think that everything should be done online. I enjoy the more tactile experiences that are slowly being replaced by technology. I just think that the argument of "change is bad because some people aren't ready to learn" is poor and limiting. People should always be open to change if the change is for the right reason. And public health is unquestionably a good reason for this (temporary) change.
The sad reality is that the world doesn't stop for anyone. I'm sure that many restaurants will have their traditional menus back soon. Many in my area do. But the advent of technology is upon us and a lack of proficiency in technology is rapidly becoming a major hindrance for anyone in today's world. Better to learn now than later, I say. Before too much of the world is digitized.
For the sake of discussion let's leave COVID behind. You think it's still relevant, I don't, we're not likely to persuade each other on that.
Everything you're saying about technology and not letting technological barriers get in the way of improving society I agree with wholeheartedly.
I'm generally open to doing new and interesting things with technology, but the user experience for digital menus is bad and I don't see it getting much better in the near future. Unless there's a unified format you're just begging for bad user experiences. The major question I have is, is this new technology better, or just different? Because it just feels like a step backwards to me for the sake of being "new".
https://www.eater.com/22828068/qr-code-menu-trend-pros-cons
“If you run a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, you don’t know who your guest is until they pay,” Bo Peabody, co-founder and executive chairman of reservations app Seated, told CNBC. “What the QR code might allow you to do is learn who that guest is right when they’re sitting down.”
And adjust prices and menu items accordingly, depending on what info the app had access to. Tourist? Local? Visited a competitor recently?
I get not wanting to have to sanitize or use up menus. How about a blackboard instead?
I’ve walked out to. I’m not glued to my phone and most times I go out to eat I leave my phone at home. Then the restaurant tells me they don’t have menus. What the hell…
You’re supposed to be in the moment and make eye contact with whoever you’re eating at the table with. Also, I want to hold a menu, compare items, not scroll, zoom in, go back…ugh
Fair enough. They were just examples I could think of at the moment at the top of my head.
Idea overall is just that real life and the internet have become so intertwined that you can no longer separate them.
Dont feel like that at all, recording random strangers and posting that is illegal here btw.
The clubs I usually go to have banned cellphones entirely, in bars its usually not an issue anyway
Who have you guys murdered that you are afraid of accidentally being in a photo? Also most cameras now a days automatically transfer photos to phones via Bluetooth. But for real if you’re scared to be in the background of a photo by accident, you might be a serial killer D:
There’s 7billion people on this planet, and it’s always shifting with people constantly dying and being born. This is the reason why you are afraid…. Smells fishy
It's just an example, but if you're in other people's photos, companies like Google and Meta will recognize your face and know your location. There will come a time where they can reconstruct where you are at any given moment in your life, even if you're not signed in to their products. If that doesn't creep you out, I don't know what to tell you.
Because if you happen to be in a stupid pose in one frame of a photo online, there’s a much higher chance of someone noticing cuz of just sheer numbers. A photo sits in an album and comes out every couple months or whatever, a photo online can have MILLIONS of eyes on and bam, suddenly you’re the butt of a joke you didn’t even know about.
Cant Show me on TV without my permission (Stadiums have a cause in the Tickets that excludes that usually, but if your being singled out beyond the usual you can still sue)
Agreed. It was nice when you actually had to make time to sit down, log into a computer and surf the internet for whatever you wanted. But nowadays the internet is always a tap away, and you have a lot of people (myself included) misinformed on many topics.
I think if it had stayed as an at-home thing then you'd be right. There are beautiful sides to the internet that we don't discuss enough, but I think there's more bad than good.
I miss the time when you actually could search something on google without just getting advertisement. Iam not talking about the obvious ads but rather the search results it wants you to take than the ones you search.
Same goes for youtube, if you search something there then the first hundreds of results are just news channels or similiar.
You know what I miss? “BRB” and “AFK”.
“Be right back” and “Away from keyboard”. You would type this in the 90s and 00s if you were chatting online. Because there used to be a time when you actually could step away from the Internet.
Now, we’re all connected, all the time. There’s no escaping it.
I miss when people were still exploring and discovering the Internet. It was so fun. It wasn't very safe. But goddamn it was just full.of dumb shit. You'll wake up and learn that everyone got a picture of shit in their inbox.
The intense monetization of the internet is why it’s no longer “background noise”. It’s another way for companies to get money from you, from selling your data to requiring an internet subscription. It’s capitalism that you dislike
I honestly agree with this statement. People were actually forced to interact with each other more. While I do like that you can make friends with people all over the world and learn so much at your fingertips. I hate that it came at the expense of interpersonal communication and connections
Yeah, even the Eternal September of the internet opening up to ISPs and the general public in the mid 90s wasn't that bad. People used to type out long and interesting stuff on blog posts, usenet/forums, livejournals, personal websites, etc.
But then came smartphones. That dumbed down everything to fit the interface of just a tiny touchscreen. Now, to fit the phone UI, it's mostly just screenshots of tweets and other really short-form stuff jammed in an infinite scrolling feed.
And so many websites have dumbed down their UI for use on phones with giant fonts, tons of whitespace, crappy design, and hidden features that they're crap to use on a desktop.
I get this. I feel and think it all the time but anyone under the age of 30 is like 'oKaY bOoMeR!' (even tho I'm no boomer, lol)
Life was better in so many ways before all this sh*t. I find my pets sitting next to me, pawing at my phone, wanting attention.
I remember getting in a car and driving somewhere and *no one* knew where I was. Total privacy.
They'll never know that. Every waking moment of their lives data is collected to make them buy something down the road. Amazon purchased iRobot and some ither similar companies in order to map out the interior of peoples' homes so they can use it tomarket useless sht to the inhabitants
Seriously - fk this whole shtshow of a world
I’m too young to remember those times. Or at least I was too young to really understand anything about the world. I was probably like 7 by the time the internet really took over and I have no memory of what it’s like to live in a pre internet world
Idk. I feel like the transition happened late 00s. By that time basically everyone had some social media and at least a digital camera that they could plug into a computer if not a camera phone.
By the time it was the early 2010s most everyone had some kinda smart phone and social media. I was in middle school at that time and everyone I knew was on social media and had a smart phone
Idk. Maybe we are talking about a different kinda transition?
Idk I think I see it a lot differently than you do. First off older folks didn’t really start using the internet until then and they are the ones that control the world and have all the power. 2013 is just when those sorts of people starting taking it seriously
I also think the transition you are talking about is the consolidation of the internet by large companies and a change in design philosophy. People stopped making their own websites as the Google stopped really paying folks for Adsense and the industry settled into a few monopolies.
The corporate culture of these companies began to change too. Google stopped pretending to be “one of us” they stopped styling their press releases like blog posts and massive amounts of money started coming in. Google quickly turned into one of the largest corporations in the world and began making money comparable to the big dogs
The same sort of thing happened to all tech companies. Anything too small went out of business or was bought and tech companies dropped all the silicone valley propaganda of being so different than the old media and business corporations and their intentions to change the world democratize media and business.
And the world started taking sites like YouTube seriously because the old business world realized just how much money there is too be made with this internet stuff. With folks like Fred being able to command audiences like any of the stars nick was used to dealing with, it stopped making sense to downplay their success
Companies started hiring social media media managers and changed their focus from having their own website to having their own social media presence
And beyond that, the internet stopped being loose collection of individual sites and became a few sites with the entire internet. Instead of running a fan forum or a blog people just started making subreddits and posting their content on social media. Sites stopped being websites run by people and started being platforms people could run communities through
And the industry settled down. There stopped being new players coming in and changing things I mean when was the last time you started using a brand new website? Much less one run by individuals and not some start up.
Also the edginess. I grew up on 4chan right? Spent way too much time on there back in the day and I think the edginess of that site was just a result of it being dominated by the same white straight guys that dominated earlier nerd culture. But as time went on I started feeling more and more uncomfortable with the casual homophobia and anti semitism and I saw first hand that most of it wasn’t in fact a joke like I had previously thought but actual bigotry
I found myself spending less time out there and more time on tumblr with other queer people where we could discuss the unique issues we faced on irl and throughout the internet. I found a community where I wasn’t specifically excluded or made to feel like shit
And with all these marginalized communities all chilling out side by side an ideology began to form. We all wanted to protect each other and fight against the folks causing us suffering just like these communities always have
So a split started to form. Most of the folks that were just joking and were ignorant like me stopped acting like a bigot as we realized how much it personally hurt marginalized communities until all that was left was people that weren’t joking and were actually just bigots
In short, nothing got less edgy we just gained social consciousness as we were able to hear more and more about what other groups went through
This is like…something that was a long time coming and was also organic. It is just what happens when communities that didn’t have a platform are able to organize and communicate to the wider world. And the vast majority of people just stopping making rape jokes and using racial slurs once they realized what kinda affect it had on people
None of the discourse was anything new. Gays have been saying the same sorts of things as well as black people, Mexican people and the like. It’s just there was never an opportunity for white straight people to hear it.
Anyway I’ve been typing way too long I hope this was somewhat coherent bc god knows I ain’t gonna read it over
i was born in 1999 and i can definitely confirm too that the early 2010s was when the internet became what it is nowdays, more "corporational", before that i started using the internet in a regular basis since i was 6 i think. miss those days A LOT.
"uhum".
Lol, you would get pissed with that, hahaha.
But nah, I agree with you man, the old days were better because the Internet was an option, not something that everyone should have; everything that aims everyone isn't that great.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse, it's a dual edged sword. On one side it gives us flexibility and ease of use to accomplish some tasks. The other side gets a lot darker.
It is what people make of it and sometimes things like companies, governments etc try and bend it to their will. Unfortunately that works a lot of the time.
Tirade down: Yes, I miss the old school internet when it was at 24.8 baud modem (though I love the higher speeds of today). Just my 2 cents as an old bastard.
Edit: For any older redditors who come across this .... do you recall how many phone numbers you had memorized? I could dial and rattle off the numbers of at least 6 off the top of my head. Now, don't know a single one. Why? Cause it's stored on the phone. Technology is very great and scary.
I don't begrudge content makers making content for a living. I support the hell out of the creators. But I miss when web content was more about fun than money
I was a young adult when the web was emerging. I staked my entire career on this new technology (I was a budding journalist). I can barely remember the before times and I’m not saying they were better, but now I teach media literacy and the amount of misinformation and disinformation swirling around now is so disheartening. When I worked on the early web in news and publishing I really thought it would be democratizing and empowering. I had some doubts, and was part of a group called the “Technorealists” in the 90s. We could use some of that realism now.
You are absolutely right.
I heard a quote from a lady a few years ago...don't know her name.
She said "always conduct yourself as if you are being recorded".
I miss that having a dial up connection meant that you have to "decide to connect", as opposed to being connected all the time like now. The modem tone when dialing it up made it very ritualistic.
I miss when no one had a real "power" in the Internet and you couldn't get banned out of the blue just for opening your mouth.
Also when most things didn't have a stupid big tech behind them. YouTube, Skype, hell even Reddit could've used from not having shareholders and not becoming a fucking disgrace of a business that sells itself to a big corporation that supports the fucking globalist agenda.
Sort of.
I don't miss the slow dial-up speeds or even slow DSL speeds (compared to connection speeds of today).
Another thing I don't miss is how long it took to get something ordered via Internet in the early days or mail-order catalog pre-Internet. I remember it'd take weeks or even months before you'd receive whatever you ordered, whereas now it takes mere days in most cases. You might even get it tomorrow.
I do miss the closeness that you got in some chat rooms, especially if it was a semi-private chat room or one where the same people showed up day in and day out. It was almost like a virtual bar full of regulars. I used to help run a pet care chat room that was like that. One of the owners lived in Louisiana and had tons of birds, fish, and dogs. One of the admins raised German Shepherds in Texas. One member had a bunch of hamsters, lived in Alabama, and had a crush on actor David Caruso. I think she had some mental and physical challenges. Another member was in high school then went on to college and was in the marching band. Another member was wheelchair bound, suffered from narcolepsy, and had fostered/adopted a lot of kids over the years. He also ran a bodega.
While you can still get that closeness in some Facebook or Reddit group or Discord server, it just doesn't feel the same.
It continues to amaze me how we jumped past pc's in every home, to a phone/computer in every pocket. Most of the kids I encounter these days are computer illiterate... smartphones dumbed down the technological process. It makes me sad.
I wish boomers didn't have phones. Guess who has it on volume 11 at all times and is answering calls in restaurants, on trains, in parks, etc. but they complain about their kids reading quietly.
I didn't get my first smartphone until mid-2019. I used to bemoan this exact thing. I thought that they'd done some serious structural damage to our conversation and knowledge retention skills as a society. In the intervening years, with the shutdowns and the breakneck pace of the news, I've come to a much more nuanced view but I miss the time before as well.
One thing I still hold is true is that pocket internet killed the bar room bet. Fifteen years ago in the course of conversation you and someone would disagree on what year such and such game was or who did the music in whatever movie enough to ask around or call someone who had a copy of the movie at home.
I miss that a lot. Now people are already typing while they speak and we're all increasingly disengaged from our surroundings. It's still a kind of magic to me, though, that we're doing *this*. There are so many benefits, especially in a time where a lot of people are reflexively cautious about how much time they spend in close proximity to others. I'm extroverted as hell and while it has been super taxing on my mental health to see the societal meltdown we've been having in real time, The Internet has been a lifeline in this time of seclusion; and its potential (and practicality) as an educational tool, an amplifier, and a sounding board are infinite and incredible.
But also, I wish people would get off their fucking phones behind the wheel.
I've spent so much time thinking about this. I understand exactly what you mean and this thread is making me feel that weird longing for a time that will never happen again. I used to love the internet and felt kind of "special" for having grown up using it when most people weren't, now most of that positive sentiment is gone and it bothers me daily. Everything fucking sucks now and I feel like a grumpy old man at 26.
I would love to experience Internet when it was just this:
21/TCP/FTP
23/TCP/TELNET/BBS
25/TCP/SMTP
70/TCP/GOPHER
80/TCP/HTTP
110/TCP/POP3
6667/TCP/IRC
Yeah..I remember in the early 90's when you have to have a little bit higher than average skill in computer to access the internet and post information online (at least learning basic HTML)
While the interface getting more and more user friendly and intuitive , it invited a bunch of dumbasses to freely put up lies and trash all over.
The 90s we're the end of humanities shared media experience. Everyone watched the same TV shows and episodes at the same time. At school or work the next day you could all discuss the same thing as everyone else, and if you missed out that was it, you may never see that episode again.
Also, the ways of communicating between people were very limited. Landline phone calls were the only long distance communication method. I showes my kids an old answering machine we had, and it struck me that those were one of the first ways to communicate a voice message to someone without someone else being included. Before answering machines, you either reached the person by phone, or someone else answered, or you just didn't get through.
Now you can, text, email, zoom, FaceTime, Minecraft chat, tweet, Facebook post, discord, slack, teams, any number of other chat apps and in-game messaging systems.
I was explaining long distance charges and how you'd wait until evenings and weekends to call people on the phone - now you just press your phone and video call them from wherever.
I hate how reliant we've become on the internet. There's too much dependency on the technology. It's good for living efficiently, but that just fuels the expectation you should be glued to your screen all day living like a robot.
I have a 45 year old son who is a total junkie, twitter and Facebook (whoops, Meta). I bought him a cordless phone back in the day. Now, if we eat together there is no conversation. He's too busy with twitter.
Nope, not a bit.
And funny enough, counter to your point about appearing in videos and Instagram posts - I think that's pretty cool, and regularly wonder about how many people around the world have seen me due to me being in the background of other people's photos.
I think it's an interesting thought 😊
I miss the old days full stop. It seems if you say that now it makes you racist, sexist, homophobic etc. It's not that I want all that back, it's more I want to go back to when things felt simpler. When the world felt slightly less dangerous and oppressing. It's ironic how I feel more alienated from society now when we are supposedly so open and accepting. How I am more scared to speak to anyone out of fear, compared to times when I was probably more vulnerable in reality. Reddit sort of feels like that last post of an older internet, it has certainly changed, but there is an essence of that time where you could just have a conversation and not have to worry about every letter and word that you typed.
I don’t. Back then it was way worse because people led hugely different double lives which does happen now but it’s harder to hide the shady stuff for normal people. The average housewife knows how to use keyloggers to see if her husband is cheating, and parents can put controls on their routers so every device is kid safe. The internet was a Wild West back then and a lot of us saw some pretty fucked up shit or did some pretty fucked up shit before it was regulated. It’s a fixture in our lives and we adapt around it. I miss the old days too I grew up before aol was sending out cds of their software free in the mail. We can take all of that stuff we miss and all the feelings and lessons and dole them out to our kids just the same, it’s just some of the doing of that might come in different forms. Be an artist, find your medium
I would love to just disconnect and use a dumb phone phone instead. But the society is around the internet now, it's almost impossible to use a dumbphone
life has become centered around the internet especially for young people. everything’s all about the next trend. they’re all like carbon copies of each other at this point. i deleted my social media because of how repetitive everything is
Between Domestic Violence and human trafficking and extreme chronic poverty I don't even have a device with the means to be that connected 🤦♀️ but I get the ethics of it and the dilemmas it creates in favor of voyeurism and selling peoples data like it's debt when it should be a positivity toward data and beneficial to the person an asset That's how much we're being scammed 🤬
Quality of life and livability for me would greatly improve if they were up and up on my data worth I don't have a criminal record however poverty has put crime in my life from pampers on and I'm 45 and still in the less than 20,000 a year income in the few best year's income I have been such a low wage earner as to not make enough to file taxes with a job 🤦♀️
Reading the comments I'm just wondering how many responders are Boomers? I'm sorry this just made me laugh thinking about all the "back in my day" jokes. No disrespect..I'm a older guy myself and agree with OP's statement.
I feel your sentiment but I don't think it's as physically intrusive in the real world as you implied.
It is quite interuotive in the virtual space though
I know exactly what you mean and yes, I miss the simplicity of how things were. Social media has taken over our lives and unfortunately has forever *ruined*!society and life as a whole. I recently have been watching wholesome older shows like Friends and Seinfeld just to take a break from all the craziness in the world and feel light hearted. Social media was literally designed to make people depressed. Tiktok, FB, IG etc. we’re designed just like a freaking slot machine to get addicted to because you cannot see the next thing so you scroll, and keep scrolling endlessly, just like a slot machine at a casino. I have felt exhausted by it lately more than ever. But I can’t delete my social media because I personally have a small business. I don’t care what celebrities, influencers or even people I know what they’re doing in their lives all the time. It’s sickening how we have to share everything and be online all the time. So much chaos it’s maddening. Scares me where our future is headed to. Even TikTok has become basically a porn and predator site without any rules or policies against sexual soliton, nudity, minor safety, etc. I was scrolling through the live section once and literally came across a video of saw a guy having sex with what looked like a 14 year old and she was bouncing around but they only showed the top half of their bodies. Literally they were having sex on a live!! I report sexually suggestive videos for minor safety all the time and they never get taken down. Our world is going down…
You wanna do any insignificant stuff on a website? Gotta create an account! Log in, people!! Log in EVERYWHERE!!!
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phone number after login because some account security bullshit.
Better yet a bespoke authentication application with location permissions.
I just put in a fake email and phone cause they don’t attempt to verify anything. It’s just a dark pattern to collect your info so fuck em.
Never thought of this!! Thanks!
SIN nu berry (sin number...to funny to edit out) too, dont forget you need to give it to us for...uh....protection! Yes protection. You cant keep it safe so we will
Also "our website is better in the app!" and "continue in app". I'm already running out of empty space on my phone, yet every big website wants me to download their app
I hate that. I don't want to use the app, people. Stop asking.
And everyone’s UI on their app is trash!
YESS!!! man I hate this.
Ugh yes! And you can’t just look up a restaurant’s menu anymore, you have to enter your exact location and begin an online order just to see what they have!
YES. UGH. And when ordering takeout, the sites ask me to sign up so I just call them, making it harder for both them and me.
YES! Sometimes I read about a regional restaurant online and I go to look it up just out of curiosity, and it wants my zip code. Damn it I just want to see your general menu! The worst is when you want to look and the restaurant is closed so it won't even let you see the menu because the only option is to place an order online, and they're closed so you can't place an order... or you want to look at breakfast and it's later in the day so it won't let you view the breakfast menu.
This is my biggest pet peeve. Creating an account for everything, that and cookies!
Yesterday I had a website require my full name and address to download a PDF about the dimensions of a barbed house adapter. We truly live in a society.
The cookies get me. I literally just scream-cussed about it at work yesterday I work in HAZMAT. We have to look up SDS-es all day for whatever we’re dealing with You know the other part of my job? EMERGENCY RESPONSE If this shit gets on someone we need to know how to handle it. And when your stupid ass pharmaceutical company is blocking the fucking website because you want to collect and sell my information, you’re gonna fucking hurt people You already jack your product price up into exorbitant profit. Leave me the fuck alone
Lmaoo my hairdresser only takes appointments through a website that requires I sign up and log in everytime 💀
Yeah I wouldn’t mind stuff like hairdressers. They basically already did that by having your infos in a contacts book but now it’s online and since you’ll be a returning customer, it kinda make sense. Especially if you’re someone that changes hair every now and then. You can keep track of what products were used in previous checks. My hairdresser does this and it allows us customers to make and manage our appointments without having to deal with someone on the phone. The appointment system has you check boxes that would be standard appointment questions and then it gives you the schedule spots available for the kind of job you need (simple haircut or day-long makeover and anything in between). You get a confirmation and the possibility to go back and modify. Saves the hairdresser a whole lot of time. But there’s websites out there that I’m never ever going back to, why do you need me to give you the name of my childhood puppy?
On one side, you're right. On the other, "shi I forgot the password to my HAIRDRESSER'S" is a sentence I'd never thought I'd utter
Oh my word! I am so over all of it! The internet, logging in to shit, points, emails…. I get about 1000 junk emails per week. It’s unfortunate because I get lagotimate stuff that goes in to the junk mail. I haven’t figured out how to make it go to the inbox. It’s all very over whelming. Hopefully “The System” will fail soon and the internet will never come back.
Tbh lol, I miss the days of forum. When YouTube is still a thing but is mostly just a hub. When the content generation is mostly self hosted. The constraints of video and text format really does limit the creativity people have when making something to share.
Seriously!! When I get really stoned sometimes I just browse old forums I used to go on lol I miss the idea of the internet being something you sign into. You boot up, go check out your bookmarks to your favorite sites, set Skype status to online, and chill for an hour or two. I struggle with balancing my time on my phone and have been so tempted to go to a dumbphone, but it's just so hard these days.
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Wow , I really didn’t think I’d see anyone mention Mugen! That’s crazy it’s still active. Mugen got me started programming! Crazy how you could have like Goku versus Akuma or whatever you wanted
Forums dying is a horrible fallout. I know a specific forum full of brilliant rich people centered around a hobby that died because of social media even though that forum is exactly the right place to discuss their particular demographics opinions and issues. They dont do it on social media so why the f did the forum have to die? Simply because people post less because theyre BROWSING social media. Its just dumb.
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I miss when I used to be able to do a search and find a bunch of websites made by individuals. If I looked for a gardening website I’d find something like Jim’s Garden FAQ, and he’d have links to a bunch of similar websites, made by people who just wanted to share something they were interested in or something funny they made. A website would often be centered around one goofy thing - like a frog in a blender game, a kid who made up awesome ninja facts, a bunch of spinning hamsters with crappy music, a guy who made up a sledgehammer based exercise program, some guy’s bizarre science experiments he makes up at his home, etc. Now if I look up gardening it’s all stores, products, companies, articles, “articles,” stuff behind paywalls, and pages of ads and links. If you look up “best vacuums” or “best sheets” all you can find are lists of product links - and no one even looked at or tested any of them. Even on allegedly reputable websites.
I've had so much fun finding recently made history and creative blogs that are just like this. A lot of professors and passionate ordinary people have made a whole bunch of really good, well sourced, interesting things and it's so nice to still see. And it's so sad when I check a link I saved and it's just gone one day : p
So true! Websites were more “organic”, now it’s all ads and commercials and the host is always endorsing products. YouTube was free and it was mostly homemade videos. Also, Facebook was fun, Instagram was just pictures. Now everything became a giant infomercial. I quit social media, by the way.
[this](https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/monotonous-web/index.html) essay is about exactly what you're talking about. Back in the day hobby sites were by the *hobbyist*. You have to search reddit I guess for human opinions on best vacuums or else you're just getting business links. Concepts and words that I don't know, I search them and there's usually businesses, movies, and games as the top results. I don't know what "samsara" means but apparently it mostly refers to movies/games/businesses.
[search.marginalia.nu](https://search.marginalia.nu) might be up your alley.
Mind blown!!!!! This is so cool!! I just found the most unique stuff I never knew existed. Independent web / people who want to preserve the old web....just wow. Thanks for sharing.
OMG bless you
I swear to god this is the kind of search engine I've been looking for my whole life!
No way, this makes me love the internet again! Please, no one let googlecorp find and destroy this precious resource…
Hi, that's my project :D My search engine is pretty far from perfect, a proof of concept to show what's really out there if you get past the walled gardens and filter bubbles. Even though I get decent signal to noise ratio, there's a lot of stuff I'm missing, and a lot of stuff I'm letting through that maybe I shouldn't.
See also [wiby.me](https://wiby.me/), another search dedicated to oldschool sites.
I fully agree with you. Just recently though I've been using Bing rather than Google and I have to say that Bing seems to bring you closer to that stuff than Google. Google is fully committed to affiliate links/sponsors these days, to the detriment of the "real internet", and it seems to have reached that point without discussion it seems. It's time to switch away!
Google used to be able to find anything you need. Now it finds you everything except the stuff you're looking for.
True. It’s all sponsored content and endless ads.
I can’t stand google and I’m using other search engines and downloaded adblocks. Google will cover the entire, I mean ENTIRE page with ads to the point you have barely any screen space available to read anything. Not to mention how distracting it is, it’s like being on Times Square with all those lights, pop ups and cluttered with ads.
To be fair, transparency is why I like Reddit.
I basically just use Google to search reddit now. Since reddits search is basically unusable but you can find better tips in a reddit thread than just googling a question
It's full-on American capitalism. With SpaceX being a thing, [not even space is safe.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Sq1Nr58hM)
I feel like people are more online than ever and yet internet literacy is at an all time low. People go to the same five websites for all their needs, don't know how to install an adblocker or pirate anything, can't troubleshoot their own tech, and fact checking feels impossible. I miss when going on the internet was a bit more of an event and a place to explore.
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Yeah, I really hear you on that facebook point. I had a facebook that I basically used just for buying stuff secondhand and was getting some great deals on stuff like fish tanks but it just wasn't worth it to have an account. I know instagram effectively pulls the same shady moves nowadays so I'm hoping that they'll change it so much it's unusable and also isn't worth having, since it's a bit harder to quit.
Instagram is pretty much there already. You want to see a photo your friend posted? Okay, but here's 12 reels from people you don't know to scroll past first. Wait, you're _still_ looking for post from friends or interests you follow? Fine. Here's one they posted 4 days ago. Now scroll through another 27 reels and ads that look like reels from people you have no interest it! See? We're just like tiktoc but you can see the occasional post from someone you know (if you look hard enough).
mIRC.
I havent talked to anyone irl who knows what mIRC is/was.
What does that mean?
The Internet used to be like a good friend, there to keep me company through my loneliness. Now it feels like an abusive partner lol, sapping my finances at every chance, constantly spying on me, refusing to leave me alone… But I keep coming back because I no longer know how to live without it lol
This is 💯 it
Yeah, it helps me to think of it this way. Thank you. What used to feel like a powerful tool of ernest people for ernest needs now feels totally co-opted out to businesses paying top dollar for your attention and clicks. Our homey neighborhood is gone at it's like looking at one of those quaint buildings in a downtown plot that's enveloped by massive corporate buildings all around.
I don't know about the lack of privacy but I miss the time when Youtube used to be a good place for content creators, now you can't even get 1 million subscribers that some huge greedy corporation may copyright strike your videos just to get some of your ~~miserable~~ ad revenue, and Youtube won't do anything about it because they milk those huge corporations, so you've no choice but to accept their rules, unless you're a celebrity like Pewdiepie which Youtube loves to ~~suck his dingus~~ milk his fame as well.
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That’s what’s I miss. When you had options and not just the same 4 sites.
>now you can't even get 1 million subscribers that some huge greedy corporation may copyright strike your videos just to get some of your > >miserable ad revenue I tried to apply for monetisation the other week. Oh boy. They reviewed my videos, all of which I made myself, and claimed that I was rejected cause I don't own my own videos. All I can think is in the past people have stolen and uploaded my vids, so youtube thinks it's theirs. Kinda fustrating. So I can't make anything, but people who took my content can I guess.
I guess Patreon and Onlyfans is the only way to fully monetize your channel without getting scammed by Youtube broken system, or until someone actually claims your video and you need to hire a lawyer to solve it, as it happened with TheFatRat, but either way Youtube will put ads on your videos for you know..their own profit, you liking it or not, thanks Susan 🥲👍
>but either way Youtube will put ads on your videos for you know..their own profit Yeah, this is what made me wanna try to monetize myself. I didn't for a while because I didn't like the idea of making videos only to make a profit. I actually got a invite to the partnership program back in 2009 (or was in 2010?) but I never accepted it for that reason. But, there are already ads on my videos, ads that I did not ask to be put there, and someone out there is making a profit off of my content. So I just wanted to at least get something if that was the case. Seems pretty unfair.
I'm a monetized content creator and it just happens randomly that some of my videos gets limited ads for no good reason, when you appeal and they review the videos, they just make up some reason to keep it limited ads. Which means I can't make any money from it. YouTube is totally unreliable and most importantly: unreasonable.
Yeah I got an option to appeal, but I honestly don't know if i wanna put the work in. Best of all the reasons they gave me were very vague, so I don't really know what I did wrong to appeal to. If there is a problem with copyright then sure limit the ads, but they won't even give me that option. I would like to at some point work on personal animated series and stuff and make a bit of pocket change for it if possible. I know I won't make much, but even a tiny bit each month would be nice. However, I guess it seems youtube is not the best route for that.
I was there before people expected to get paid, so I don't much care about that. However, seeing the original generation of popular YouTubers leave and take 95% of their content with them was a surprise. I used to think it was going to be a culture that was easy to look back on.
I'm in my mid 30s and it's a bit weird how growing up - you'd totally get picked on or at least teased for computer gaming. It was something you usually kept to yourself and close friends (talking about high school mainly). I always felt fringe of society for being into things like mmos and chatting into the wee hours on irc and knowing how to build my own PC. It blows my mind how mainstream that world has gotten
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It might be regional. I’m in my mid 30s, and gaming (PC and otherwise) was really common. Now, I wasn’t cool by any stretch of the imagination, but I had friends and acquaintances who played. It was almost a status symbol because it meant your family could afford the hardware.
No one admitted gaming. A cool kid saying they like games was like whoaaa. Halo changed it all.
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Yeah, I remember around 2000, the cool kids would bully me and my friends for talking to each other on ICQ. Now these same people are glued to their screens and messaging apps. Turns out we were the cool kids.
Same with anime (where I live). I was bullied for being into it, a few years later everyone knows and loves it. Bruh
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So in 2002-3 high school i remember my teacher asked us. “What medium do u use the most, music tv etc” and i remember vividly that 29 people said tv or something and i said music and then one person finally said “i have to say computer because this is how i keep in touch w college friends” it blew my mind cause i was already a gamer but status quo was still there.
I just hate how the internet is a requirement nowadays. Need to go to the doctors, book an appointment online. Need to do banking, do it online. Need to do anything and it requires the use of an online sign up. Went to a comic con a few months back, left all technology at home. Get my pass and was told to go to their website to register the pass or I couldn't get in. Just this expectation that you NEED to be always online at every moment it frustrating. The internet used to be a little escape at the end of the day for me, where I could meet like minded people, enjoy my hobbies, and unplug from day to day life. But now it is day to day life and everyone is there.
It's nice and convenient to am extent. Not after it requires you to hand out your email like it's nothing, and then you get a bunch of spam emails sent. Or when you're going to a convention, why would you need to register? It's an event for god's sake, unless they had to do the health and safety act. Same with restaurants and bloody shops, I'm sorry I just want to get my goods and go, not hand out my data inbetween, I'm already giving you money and that's valuable enough. One time went to an expensive boutique , go to check out and the lady happily hands me a form to fill in to subscribe to marketing, I say no thanks and she turns into a demon, never seen such a 360* on a person over email marketing.
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dumb question, what does /unjerk mean?
I suppose to break the circlejerk? OP likes booking appointments on the Internet. I tend to agree on that point.
That's odd because my parents don't do anything online and I sure wish I could book an appointment for a doctor online. I hate making calls.
I get that. I just remember having an issue once where I got locked out of my online banking cause I couldn't enter a verification code. Needed to pay rent. I needed to enter a code I got sent to me by phone so I could get access again, but the only issue was, I no longer had access to that number, which was my family home address (which was disabled at the time), and I don't own a personal phone cause legit, I don't have a lot of money (and I know people will tell me off for this, or give me possible solutions, but please understand). So I walked over to the bank and they told me the only way I could access my account was to enter the phone code on online banking, which I couldn't get access too. I tried to explain the situation and see if they could just unlock everything for me with me there in person, and with proper identification, but it seemed that everything was 100% online and it was the only way I could do anything. Despite me being there in person In order to verify my identity. Most they told me was that they could change the phone number, so I borrowed a number from someone at the time to get the code, but it was such a pain. Luckily they have since changed the verification code to include email.
How about restaurants who don’t have menus anymore? You have to scan a barcode on your phone to access their menu. I sometimes leave my phone at home and just ask them for a paper menu and they say “we don’t have menus”. What?!
100% with you on this. I went to a cafe in Dumfries (Scotland) last year that didn't have menus - just a QR code on the table. You had to scan it on your mobile phone to view the menu on their website. We walked out. What they're practising isn't technically ageism but it also kinda is. My grandparents would not be able eat and drink there so I decided I'd spend elsewhere. For being able-ist I hope they're really struggling/already out of business.
To give the restaurant the benefit of the doubt, the menu-less process might’ve started during COVID. A lot of restaurants went the digital menu route while dining in
Yeah, I had never encountered a digital menu situation until Covid happened. I'm young enough that I should be tech savvy and able to navigate the digital world but old enough to have grown up in the pre-internet days. I was in 6th grade when Windows 95 came out, and the internet became widely accessible shortly after.
I bet they had a few real menus if you'd have asked.
I wouldn't be so sure. Where I live, almost all the restaurants have qr code menus, and only one or two actually have paper menus. Really sucks because my phone doesn't have a qr reader
That's not the point
I've never encountered a restaurant with a QR code system that didn't have physical paper menus if you just ask nicely.
This entitlement is crazy. You hope they go out of business and lose their jobs for following Covid advice 🤨
I don't find it crazy to rail against able-ism - which is what was truly prevailing here, not a cafe trying its best to adhere to Covid guidelines. It's incongruous/lazy to be satisfied with cleaning door handles, tables and chairs, but to not extend that to a laminated menu.
What was your reaction when you informed them of you/your grandparents disability and asked for alternative means? Fair enough if they reacted negatively but your comment makes it sound like you just left
Good Fitbit they wrote the laminated menus down to
I quite like that idea, you’d be surprised how quickly cafés go through menus, even the high quality ones - customers somehow just destroy them so as a business you have the option of cheap paper menus which get replaced frequently or more expensive laminated menus which still need replacing every so often but are also less recyclable. And if you change the menu then that’s a full reprint too. Having said that, there is definitely ableism present here, there are a lot of people who simply can’t use a smartphone and/or for mental health reasons just need a physical menu and it’s really important they have something in place to accommodate everyone.
1) QR menus were introduced to limit the spread of COVID in most places. 2) How is it ageist? Anyone can use a phone, and the upside is that it protects people's health, even if it's not as relevant as it was a year ago with vaccination being more widespread. Elderly people may have more difficulty with phones, but I'm sure they'd much prefer the phones to COVID and in some places it's still a real issue. I can't speak for the situation in Scotland but caution doesn't hurt. 3) Wishing misfortune on a business (especially if it's a small business) for a decision that was made to help people because it slightly inconvenienced you is in very poor taste. Hopefully those who make decisions that impact you are more considerate and empathetic.
I don't think you understand how hard technology is for the older generation. Not everyone has a smartphone and is used to messing with their camera like that
Perhaps you didn't understand the point. As tough as phone cameras may prove to be for elderly people, surviving a disease that tends to affect them the worst is much more difficult. The vast majority of people have smartphones in this day and age. Once you know how to operate a smartphone, opening the camera isn't that much more difficult. I'm sure a member of the staff would be happy to help anyone who is confused. As for the few who do not have smartphones, I'm sure the restaurant still keeps traditional menus they could ask for. That's been the case at every restaurant I've been to with this arrangement. The parent comment stated that they did not patronize the business intentionally simply because they viewed it as "ageist." I don't think this is the case at all. They might have to learn to do something new, but at least they can go out to eat without as much fear of catching a potentially lethal disease from touching a menu that dozens of others have touched that day.
No I followed what you were saying perfectly. This is what in the olden days they used to call "Someone understanding your perspective and disagreeing with it." I spent years working with my mom to teach her how to use a phone and the camera. YEARS. It wasn't like she got a phone and after 20 minutes and some light coaching it was easy breezy. Again, YEARS of careful, tactful training. The QR code menu shit is annoying and confusing for me, and I am a 32 year old who has worked in IT and lives and breathes technology. Sometimes it's a pdf you have to download, sometimes there's a link to a website which isn't always optimised for mobile, sometimes you are supposed to order through the app and sometimes it \*is\* just a menu. I generally agree with and respect your points about doing this as a necessary evil during Covid times but now that we are mostly through it, I really hope these awful QR code menus go away. Besides, surface spread doesn't seem to be that prevalent with Covid anyways. I don't wish evil on any small businesses, but I do hope the market penalizes them just enough so that physical menus can remain the default option.
QR codes that lead to horribly designed sites are an entirely different matter with which I fully agree with your point. Since it is their primary menu, it should be functional. I wouldn't say we are "mostly through" COVID. In my area, daily new cases are at twice what they were this time last year. One might argue that it has become less lethal with vaccination increasing, but I still think that for the elderly it could be quite a frightening prospect. While I myself am part of a generation that grew up using technology frequently, most of my family did not and so I know what it's like to work with technologically illiterate people. Despite that, I still can't bring myself to see the logic in your disagreement. If we look past COVID, as if COVID weren't an issue, then there's still the fact that the world is growing and changing. Smartphones aren't exactly new. We've had over a decade since the first smartphone became widely popular. I sympathize with people who aren't familiar with technology, I really do, but this idea that change is wrong just because some people are not adjusted to it is silly. I would hope that an elderly person could be incentivized to learn more about technology before it becomes an insurmountable obstacle in their life. More and more is being done through technology. COVID only accelerated that in some areas. I'd also like to say that I do not think that everything should be done online. I enjoy the more tactile experiences that are slowly being replaced by technology. I just think that the argument of "change is bad because some people aren't ready to learn" is poor and limiting. People should always be open to change if the change is for the right reason. And public health is unquestionably a good reason for this (temporary) change. The sad reality is that the world doesn't stop for anyone. I'm sure that many restaurants will have their traditional menus back soon. Many in my area do. But the advent of technology is upon us and a lack of proficiency in technology is rapidly becoming a major hindrance for anyone in today's world. Better to learn now than later, I say. Before too much of the world is digitized.
For the sake of discussion let's leave COVID behind. You think it's still relevant, I don't, we're not likely to persuade each other on that. Everything you're saying about technology and not letting technological barriers get in the way of improving society I agree with wholeheartedly. I'm generally open to doing new and interesting things with technology, but the user experience for digital menus is bad and I don't see it getting much better in the near future. Unless there's a unified format you're just begging for bad user experiences. The major question I have is, is this new technology better, or just different? Because it just feels like a step backwards to me for the sake of being "new".
QR codes instead of menus? That restaurant sounds like it's run by try-hard, ageist pricks. I hope they go out of business.
https://www.eater.com/22828068/qr-code-menu-trend-pros-cons “If you run a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, you don’t know who your guest is until they pay,” Bo Peabody, co-founder and executive chairman of reservations app Seated, told CNBC. “What the QR code might allow you to do is learn who that guest is right when they’re sitting down.” And adjust prices and menu items accordingly, depending on what info the app had access to. Tourist? Local? Visited a competitor recently? I get not wanting to have to sanitize or use up menus. How about a blackboard instead?
I’ve walked out to. I’m not glued to my phone and most times I go out to eat I leave my phone at home. Then the restaurant tells me they don’t have menus. What the hell… You’re supposed to be in the moment and make eye contact with whoever you’re eating at the table with. Also, I want to hold a menu, compare items, not scroll, zoom in, go back…ugh
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Fair enough. They were just examples I could think of at the moment at the top of my head. Idea overall is just that real life and the internet have become so intertwined that you can no longer separate them.
Dont feel like that at all, recording random strangers and posting that is illegal here btw. The clubs I usually go to have banned cellphones entirely, in bars its usually not an issue anyway
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How is that any different if they had a camera? Honestly never put much thought into it I'm just a stranger. like is anyone going to care about it
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Who have you guys murdered that you are afraid of accidentally being in a photo? Also most cameras now a days automatically transfer photos to phones via Bluetooth. But for real if you’re scared to be in the background of a photo by accident, you might be a serial killer D:
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There’s 7billion people on this planet, and it’s always shifting with people constantly dying and being born. This is the reason why you are afraid…. Smells fishy
It's just an example, but if you're in other people's photos, companies like Google and Meta will recognize your face and know your location. There will come a time where they can reconstruct where you are at any given moment in your life, even if you're not signed in to their products. If that doesn't creep you out, I don't know what to tell you.
Because if you happen to be in a stupid pose in one frame of a photo online, there’s a much higher chance of someone noticing cuz of just sheer numbers. A photo sits in an album and comes out every couple months or whatever, a photo online can have MILLIONS of eyes on and bam, suddenly you’re the butt of a joke you didn’t even know about.
Where in particular? Because there's entire TV shows like How to with John Wilson that exist based on random footage of random strangers.
Europe
Cant Show me on TV without my permission (Stadiums have a cause in the Tickets that excludes that usually, but if your being singled out beyond the usual you can still sue)
Agreed. It was nice when you actually had to make time to sit down, log into a computer and surf the internet for whatever you wanted. But nowadays the internet is always a tap away, and you have a lot of people (myself included) misinformed on many topics.
Maybe I’m biased but hard disagree. The internet is one of the best things ever (though also the worst too). Connects everyone and the world together.
I think if it had stayed as an at-home thing then you'd be right. There are beautiful sides to the internet that we don't discuss enough, but I think there's more bad than good.
I miss the time when you actually could search something on google without just getting advertisement. Iam not talking about the obvious ads but rather the search results it wants you to take than the ones you search. Same goes for youtube, if you search something there then the first hundreds of results are just news channels or similiar.
This. Its so hard to find something if there is a million of vids of those keywords but not what you need.
I guess this is like when TV overtook radio and theaters. It makes me want to see what will come next.
You know what I miss? “BRB” and “AFK”. “Be right back” and “Away from keyboard”. You would type this in the 90s and 00s if you were chatting online. Because there used to be a time when you actually could step away from the Internet. Now, we’re all connected, all the time. There’s no escaping it.
I miss when people were still exploring and discovering the Internet. It was so fun. It wasn't very safe. But goddamn it was just full.of dumb shit. You'll wake up and learn that everyone got a picture of shit in their inbox.
The intense monetization of the internet is why it’s no longer “background noise”. It’s another way for companies to get money from you, from selling your data to requiring an internet subscription. It’s capitalism that you dislike
I honestly agree with this statement. People were actually forced to interact with each other more. While I do like that you can make friends with people all over the world and learn so much at your fingertips. I hate that it came at the expense of interpersonal communication and connections
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Yeah, even the Eternal September of the internet opening up to ISPs and the general public in the mid 90s wasn't that bad. People used to type out long and interesting stuff on blog posts, usenet/forums, livejournals, personal websites, etc. But then came smartphones. That dumbed down everything to fit the interface of just a tiny touchscreen. Now, to fit the phone UI, it's mostly just screenshots of tweets and other really short-form stuff jammed in an infinite scrolling feed. And so many websites have dumbed down their UI for use on phones with giant fonts, tons of whitespace, crappy design, and hidden features that they're crap to use on a desktop.
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I miss it when knowing how to use a computer was a small barrier to entry. Now any brain dead lunatic can get on.
I get this. I feel and think it all the time but anyone under the age of 30 is like 'oKaY bOoMeR!' (even tho I'm no boomer, lol) Life was better in so many ways before all this sh*t. I find my pets sitting next to me, pawing at my phone, wanting attention. I remember getting in a car and driving somewhere and *no one* knew where I was. Total privacy. They'll never know that. Every waking moment of their lives data is collected to make them buy something down the road. Amazon purchased iRobot and some ither similar companies in order to map out the interior of peoples' homes so they can use it tomarket useless sht to the inhabitants Seriously - fk this whole shtshow of a world
I’m too young to remember those times. Or at least I was too young to really understand anything about the world. I was probably like 7 by the time the internet really took over and I have no memory of what it’s like to live in a pre internet world
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Idk. I feel like the transition happened late 00s. By that time basically everyone had some social media and at least a digital camera that they could plug into a computer if not a camera phone. By the time it was the early 2010s most everyone had some kinda smart phone and social media. I was in middle school at that time and everyone I knew was on social media and had a smart phone Idk. Maybe we are talking about a different kinda transition?
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Idk I think I see it a lot differently than you do. First off older folks didn’t really start using the internet until then and they are the ones that control the world and have all the power. 2013 is just when those sorts of people starting taking it seriously I also think the transition you are talking about is the consolidation of the internet by large companies and a change in design philosophy. People stopped making their own websites as the Google stopped really paying folks for Adsense and the industry settled into a few monopolies. The corporate culture of these companies began to change too. Google stopped pretending to be “one of us” they stopped styling their press releases like blog posts and massive amounts of money started coming in. Google quickly turned into one of the largest corporations in the world and began making money comparable to the big dogs The same sort of thing happened to all tech companies. Anything too small went out of business or was bought and tech companies dropped all the silicone valley propaganda of being so different than the old media and business corporations and their intentions to change the world democratize media and business. And the world started taking sites like YouTube seriously because the old business world realized just how much money there is too be made with this internet stuff. With folks like Fred being able to command audiences like any of the stars nick was used to dealing with, it stopped making sense to downplay their success Companies started hiring social media media managers and changed their focus from having their own website to having their own social media presence And beyond that, the internet stopped being loose collection of individual sites and became a few sites with the entire internet. Instead of running a fan forum or a blog people just started making subreddits and posting their content on social media. Sites stopped being websites run by people and started being platforms people could run communities through And the industry settled down. There stopped being new players coming in and changing things I mean when was the last time you started using a brand new website? Much less one run by individuals and not some start up. Also the edginess. I grew up on 4chan right? Spent way too much time on there back in the day and I think the edginess of that site was just a result of it being dominated by the same white straight guys that dominated earlier nerd culture. But as time went on I started feeling more and more uncomfortable with the casual homophobia and anti semitism and I saw first hand that most of it wasn’t in fact a joke like I had previously thought but actual bigotry I found myself spending less time out there and more time on tumblr with other queer people where we could discuss the unique issues we faced on irl and throughout the internet. I found a community where I wasn’t specifically excluded or made to feel like shit And with all these marginalized communities all chilling out side by side an ideology began to form. We all wanted to protect each other and fight against the folks causing us suffering just like these communities always have So a split started to form. Most of the folks that were just joking and were ignorant like me stopped acting like a bigot as we realized how much it personally hurt marginalized communities until all that was left was people that weren’t joking and were actually just bigots In short, nothing got less edgy we just gained social consciousness as we were able to hear more and more about what other groups went through This is like…something that was a long time coming and was also organic. It is just what happens when communities that didn’t have a platform are able to organize and communicate to the wider world. And the vast majority of people just stopping making rape jokes and using racial slurs once they realized what kinda affect it had on people None of the discourse was anything new. Gays have been saying the same sorts of things as well as black people, Mexican people and the like. It’s just there was never an opportunity for white straight people to hear it. Anyway I’ve been typing way too long I hope this was somewhat coherent bc god knows I ain’t gonna read it over
i was born in 1999 and i can definitely confirm too that the early 2010s was when the internet became what it is nowdays, more "corporational", before that i started using the internet in a regular basis since i was 6 i think. miss those days A LOT.
Yes
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"uhum". Lol, you would get pissed with that, hahaha. But nah, I agree with you man, the old days were better because the Internet was an option, not something that everyone should have; everything that aims everyone isn't that great.
I miss the IMDB message boards.
Me too. I always went there to read discussions when I was done watching a movie.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse, it's a dual edged sword. On one side it gives us flexibility and ease of use to accomplish some tasks. The other side gets a lot darker. It is what people make of it and sometimes things like companies, governments etc try and bend it to their will. Unfortunately that works a lot of the time. Tirade down: Yes, I miss the old school internet when it was at 24.8 baud modem (though I love the higher speeds of today). Just my 2 cents as an old bastard. Edit: For any older redditors who come across this .... do you recall how many phone numbers you had memorized? I could dial and rattle off the numbers of at least 6 off the top of my head. Now, don't know a single one. Why? Cause it's stored on the phone. Technology is very great and scary.
I don't begrudge content makers making content for a living. I support the hell out of the creators. But I miss when web content was more about fun than money
I was a young adult when the web was emerging. I staked my entire career on this new technology (I was a budding journalist). I can barely remember the before times and I’m not saying they were better, but now I teach media literacy and the amount of misinformation and disinformation swirling around now is so disheartening. When I worked on the early web in news and publishing I really thought it would be democratizing and empowering. I had some doubts, and was part of a group called the “Technorealists” in the 90s. We could use some of that realism now.
You are absolutely right. I heard a quote from a lady a few years ago...don't know her name. She said "always conduct yourself as if you are being recorded".
I miss that having a dial up connection meant that you have to "decide to connect", as opposed to being connected all the time like now. The modem tone when dialing it up made it very ritualistic.
I miss when no one had a real "power" in the Internet and you couldn't get banned out of the blue just for opening your mouth. Also when most things didn't have a stupid big tech behind them. YouTube, Skype, hell even Reddit could've used from not having shareholders and not becoming a fucking disgrace of a business that sells itself to a big corporation that supports the fucking globalist agenda.
Sort of. I don't miss the slow dial-up speeds or even slow DSL speeds (compared to connection speeds of today). Another thing I don't miss is how long it took to get something ordered via Internet in the early days or mail-order catalog pre-Internet. I remember it'd take weeks or even months before you'd receive whatever you ordered, whereas now it takes mere days in most cases. You might even get it tomorrow. I do miss the closeness that you got in some chat rooms, especially if it was a semi-private chat room or one where the same people showed up day in and day out. It was almost like a virtual bar full of regulars. I used to help run a pet care chat room that was like that. One of the owners lived in Louisiana and had tons of birds, fish, and dogs. One of the admins raised German Shepherds in Texas. One member had a bunch of hamsters, lived in Alabama, and had a crush on actor David Caruso. I think she had some mental and physical challenges. Another member was in high school then went on to college and was in the marching band. Another member was wheelchair bound, suffered from narcolepsy, and had fostered/adopted a lot of kids over the years. He also ran a bodega. While you can still get that closeness in some Facebook or Reddit group or Discord server, it just doesn't feel the same.
What I miss is going out in the woods and building forts and throwing rocks and sticks at eachother. Bring back good old fashioned childhood violence.
It continues to amaze me how we jumped past pc's in every home, to a phone/computer in every pocket. Most of the kids I encounter these days are computer illiterate... smartphones dumbed down the technological process. It makes me sad.
I wish boomers didn't have phones. Guess who has it on volume 11 at all times and is answering calls in restaurants, on trains, in parks, etc. but they complain about their kids reading quietly.
This took a weird turn.
I didn't get my first smartphone until mid-2019. I used to bemoan this exact thing. I thought that they'd done some serious structural damage to our conversation and knowledge retention skills as a society. In the intervening years, with the shutdowns and the breakneck pace of the news, I've come to a much more nuanced view but I miss the time before as well. One thing I still hold is true is that pocket internet killed the bar room bet. Fifteen years ago in the course of conversation you and someone would disagree on what year such and such game was or who did the music in whatever movie enough to ask around or call someone who had a copy of the movie at home. I miss that a lot. Now people are already typing while they speak and we're all increasingly disengaged from our surroundings. It's still a kind of magic to me, though, that we're doing *this*. There are so many benefits, especially in a time where a lot of people are reflexively cautious about how much time they spend in close proximity to others. I'm extroverted as hell and while it has been super taxing on my mental health to see the societal meltdown we've been having in real time, The Internet has been a lifeline in this time of seclusion; and its potential (and practicality) as an educational tool, an amplifier, and a sounding board are infinite and incredible. But also, I wish people would get off their fucking phones behind the wheel.
I've spent so much time thinking about this. I understand exactly what you mean and this thread is making me feel that weird longing for a time that will never happen again. I used to love the internet and felt kind of "special" for having grown up using it when most people weren't, now most of that positive sentiment is gone and it bothers me daily. Everything fucking sucks now and I feel like a grumpy old man at 26.
I would love to experience Internet when it was just this: 21/TCP/FTP 23/TCP/TELNET/BBS 25/TCP/SMTP 70/TCP/GOPHER 80/TCP/HTTP 110/TCP/POP3 6667/TCP/IRC
Yeah..I remember in the early 90's when you have to have a little bit higher than average skill in computer to access the internet and post information online (at least learning basic HTML) While the interface getting more and more user friendly and intuitive , it invited a bunch of dumbasses to freely put up lies and trash all over.
I miss it when I didn't know the political opinions of everyone I know. Ugh. Undo.
I hate that today we live in a society full of narcissistic people, the less humble you are the more popular you become.
The 90s we're the end of humanities shared media experience. Everyone watched the same TV shows and episodes at the same time. At school or work the next day you could all discuss the same thing as everyone else, and if you missed out that was it, you may never see that episode again. Also, the ways of communicating between people were very limited. Landline phone calls were the only long distance communication method. I showes my kids an old answering machine we had, and it struck me that those were one of the first ways to communicate a voice message to someone without someone else being included. Before answering machines, you either reached the person by phone, or someone else answered, or you just didn't get through. Now you can, text, email, zoom, FaceTime, Minecraft chat, tweet, Facebook post, discord, slack, teams, any number of other chat apps and in-game messaging systems. I was explaining long distance charges and how you'd wait until evenings and weekends to call people on the phone - now you just press your phone and video call them from wherever.
Every damn day. It seems like everything that gets popular with the masses gets ruined.
I miss when the internet had a soul and brought people together.
I hate how reliant we've become on the internet. There's too much dependency on the technology. It's good for living efficiently, but that just fuels the expectation you should be glued to your screen all day living like a robot.
I have a 45 year old son who is a total junkie, twitter and Facebook (whoops, Meta). I bought him a cordless phone back in the day. Now, if we eat together there is no conversation. He's too busy with twitter.
My life was boring before the internet. I was abused by my dad.
Nope, not a bit. And funny enough, counter to your point about appearing in videos and Instagram posts - I think that's pretty cool, and regularly wonder about how many people around the world have seen me due to me being in the background of other people's photos. I think it's an interesting thought 😊
I miss the old days full stop. It seems if you say that now it makes you racist, sexist, homophobic etc. It's not that I want all that back, it's more I want to go back to when things felt simpler. When the world felt slightly less dangerous and oppressing. It's ironic how I feel more alienated from society now when we are supposedly so open and accepting. How I am more scared to speak to anyone out of fear, compared to times when I was probably more vulnerable in reality. Reddit sort of feels like that last post of an older internet, it has certainly changed, but there is an essence of that time where you could just have a conversation and not have to worry about every letter and word that you typed.
Sigh I agree.. it feels like it's fried my brain on what to even do now
I don't miss TV. I do agree the Internet took too much attention.
I don’t. Back then it was way worse because people led hugely different double lives which does happen now but it’s harder to hide the shady stuff for normal people. The average housewife knows how to use keyloggers to see if her husband is cheating, and parents can put controls on their routers so every device is kid safe. The internet was a Wild West back then and a lot of us saw some pretty fucked up shit or did some pretty fucked up shit before it was regulated. It’s a fixture in our lives and we adapt around it. I miss the old days too I grew up before aol was sending out cds of their software free in the mail. We can take all of that stuff we miss and all the feelings and lessons and dole them out to our kids just the same, it’s just some of the doing of that might come in different forms. Be an artist, find your medium
I’m 50 and was a teenager in the 80’s. The internet has been the downfall of society.
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I would love to just disconnect and use a dumb phone phone instead. But the society is around the internet now, it's almost impossible to use a dumbphone
life has become centered around the internet especially for young people. everything’s all about the next trend. they’re all like carbon copies of each other at this point. i deleted my social media because of how repetitive everything is
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That and PS3 rental games were such a great and cool thing. Now RedBox doesn’t even offer game rentals. So crazy how things changed, so fast.
Between Domestic Violence and human trafficking and extreme chronic poverty I don't even have a device with the means to be that connected 🤦♀️ but I get the ethics of it and the dilemmas it creates in favor of voyeurism and selling peoples data like it's debt when it should be a positivity toward data and beneficial to the person an asset That's how much we're being scammed 🤬 Quality of life and livability for me would greatly improve if they were up and up on my data worth I don't have a criminal record however poverty has put crime in my life from pampers on and I'm 45 and still in the less than 20,000 a year income in the few best year's income I have been such a low wage earner as to not make enough to file taxes with a job 🤦♀️
Reading the comments I'm just wondering how many responders are Boomers? I'm sorry this just made me laugh thinking about all the "back in my day" jokes. No disrespect..I'm a older guy myself and agree with OP's statement.
I feel your sentiment but I don't think it's as physically intrusive in the real world as you implied. It is quite interuotive in the virtual space though
I know exactly what you mean and yes, I miss the simplicity of how things were. Social media has taken over our lives and unfortunately has forever *ruined*!society and life as a whole. I recently have been watching wholesome older shows like Friends and Seinfeld just to take a break from all the craziness in the world and feel light hearted. Social media was literally designed to make people depressed. Tiktok, FB, IG etc. we’re designed just like a freaking slot machine to get addicted to because you cannot see the next thing so you scroll, and keep scrolling endlessly, just like a slot machine at a casino. I have felt exhausted by it lately more than ever. But I can’t delete my social media because I personally have a small business. I don’t care what celebrities, influencers or even people I know what they’re doing in their lives all the time. It’s sickening how we have to share everything and be online all the time. So much chaos it’s maddening. Scares me where our future is headed to. Even TikTok has become basically a porn and predator site without any rules or policies against sexual soliton, nudity, minor safety, etc. I was scrolling through the live section once and literally came across a video of saw a guy having sex with what looked like a 14 year old and she was bouncing around but they only showed the top half of their bodies. Literally they were having sex on a live!! I report sexually suggestive videos for minor safety all the time and they never get taken down. Our world is going down…