listen. ai hav to crank up the typing quirk 2 le max fur dis wan and chull c wai. im all fur the wave of y2k nostalgia that seemz 2 be bubbling up but wan ppl say "kids today will never know what it was like pirating anime on limewire and getting viruses, now they just get groomed on amino" they sound fuckin stupid. like actually fucking dumb. ai bet like 40% of your friends got groomed, and guess wat kids still pirate anime its just comickally easy now. they still hav cringe fandomz fur bizarre intellectual propertiez that seem niche, they just dont make any sense 2 us just like arf things didnt make sense to the old guard in2 idk elfquest and pern or watever. they still make dance videoz and amvz and pmvz and fmvz and ytpz, theyre just called tiktokz. dont boo me, chu know im right.
but ai do think we hav lost a lot in 20 yearz. ai just hav a diffurent theory. so wats actually diffurent? in the website era, the internet felt like it wuz ourz. we didnt hav 2 (ok maybe we should hav) worry about big corporationz and the advertiser-friendly lamestream becoming all-encompassing or data security (anywan remember six character passwordz?) or fascists using the internet 2 organize. anxiety about 9/11 and the west's image of the world wuz there, starting from 2008 thingz started to get a lot more "politickol", but ai dare say that it didnt feel like the world wuz getting worse, at least 2 us.
the way the newz media gets at the phenomenon im trying 2 describe iz by negatively portraying tiktok and instagram and their effectz on the youth, mostly woof accuracy but not usually helpfully or woof a solution, bcoz there rly isnt wan under a strictly capitalist paradigm. they dont rly talk about the way thingz used 2 b, bcoz they dont hav the framework in witch they can analyze wat it meanz that thingz used 2 be diffurent.
that bein sed, liek, ya ai hav 2 largely agree woof the conclusion that itz all about hao the social media the young wans are growing up on iz designed. itz actually about da numberz. liek, ya, hai skool acualy kinda fuckin suxxed on a lot of levels bcuz efurrywan wuz either trying 2 b "normol" or the most clique-archetypal in their little clique, but we didnt hav numberz 2 quantify and directly compare arf social stature with arf peerz. we had dum little wolf rp proboardz known 2 like 20 individuoles that fizzoled out wan the skool year started again. we had post countz and friendz listz. we had forum rep scores, fur fox sake. (and ya those suxxed 2, witch if anything demonstratez mai point.) another way in witch social media has taken the magik out of the internet is by replacing moar organick formz of discovery with algorithmz, tho ai think on that wan its debatable if we actually wan 2 go back.
it wuznt perfect by any stretch- it wuz low tech and inconvenient and even more unsafe, and a lot of the warning signs of the future were there. but ai think, wan talking about wut parts of the old internet we acualy wan 2 bring bak, we hav 2 understand da structure of wai they disappeared 2 begin woof.
2009 introduced the like button 2 facebook, and the retweet button 2 twitter. the retweet button wuz a way 2 increase screen time on a platform that had no adz (witch would change the following year) and was bleeding insane amountz of money, and the like button wuz a way 2 collect data 4 advertiserz. in 2010, instagram glamourized and yassified the selfie with itz filterz, and tacitly encouraged the conflation of number of likez woof fashionability. in 2011, facebook introduced a new default news feed order by number of likez. in three short yearz, everything we curse about modern social media wuz rolled out. the new way wuz simply incompatible woof the old way.
much like the supermarket, venture capital backed companiez came in, offured a more convenient and much more profitable way of doing thingz, drove everywan else out, and then added adz and enshittified it. and that iz what happened to the internet. im sure the death of mom and pop businessez also signified the death of many public spacez, but the social effect seemz especially strong woof regardz to the internet, enuff that chu can characterize "social media arrivez => old internet diez" as a similar system to "the automobile destroyz walkability => big business dominatez the new geography", or even "e-commerce arrivez => the mall diez", a sort of crossover episode if chu will. convenience and consolidation at the cost of social health.