Its just so MEH nowadays on the interwebz!

[Graham Carter]

Back in the day (late 90's early 00's) "computing" was fun. You were discovering new ways to chat online, new ways to download stuff, testing beta copies of Operating Systems, getting excited when your colleagues told you about ordering VCD disks from overseas! 

MP3's were cutting edge and you felt like a hacker, grabbing tuneage from the interwebz! Then there was IRC... you felt like you were breaking into the pentagon, issuing obscure commands into MIRC to "download stuff'. Torrents came along and again you were considered and internet God downloading operating systems, applications, movies, games!

Before google came along, you were a zen master by discovering sites like metacrawler for hauling enclopidiea like results from the fledgling interwebz.
Then you were heralded godlike for being able to rip and burn dvd's using ripping software etc

Now, since google, youtube, Netflix, Spotify... everything just became so easy to acquire, the key word being subscription based content!
What with the big content provider players and "broadband" there are no challenges any more on the interwebz   

"Before" on any given day, I personally would be multi-tasking with torrents, mirc, chatting on ICQ and MSN Messenger, ftp client sharing stuff etc
Now its like a web browser constantly open to a handful of sites, Spotify playing music, and perhaps a twitter feed running in the background

Its just so MEH nowadays on the interwebz
#midlifeinterwebzcrisis

[Mutoh]

I feel like you can still do a lot of that today.

[Froody129]

Meh, I see where you're coming from, I really do, but it's so much more efficient nowadays. I don't want to have to sit in front of the computer all day to get stuff from it. (Doesn't stop me from doing it )

[Graham Carter]

50 minutes ago, Mutoh said:

I feel like you can still do a lot of that today.

True but back then it was more like the wild west without big corporations breathing down your neck. 

 

 

[Majinhoju]

I do miss that era.  

It was also the era of the fan site.  So many fan sites were up and they all had their booming online communities. There tons of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and other little gaming fan sites. I actually made a bunch of online friends (some real life friends too) from all the online communities I joined back in the day.   Fast forward to today, most of those sites are now gone.

[2FA]

Sounds like a case of rose colored glasses.

[linustouchtips]

19 minutes ago, Majinhoju said:

I do miss that era.  

It was also the era of the fan site.  So many fan sites were up and they all had their booming online communities. There tons of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and other little gaming fan sites. I actually made a bunch of online friends (some real life friends too) from all the online communities I joined back in the day.   Fast forward to today, most of those sites are now gone.

http://www.geocities.ws/chubbyskateboarding/

[Majinhoju]

Oh wow, I remember Geocities.  Oh the nostalgia. 

[AshleyAshes]

I actually feel like this a lot.  The 'exploration' of the internet is largely gone.  It's not necessarily BAD but it's a lot less fun if that makes any sense.  What I mean is that with the internet today you can GET the information.  There are Wikia's and archives for anything so you can find most of the information you'd want in a snap.  No more crawling through the internet though obscure fansites or tech cites for specific nuggets of information.  Not to mention 'communities' online have largely solidified around social media or massive sites and services.

Even this forum right here is basically a relic.  Time was EVERYTHING had a forum, fansites had forums every dinky webcomic had a forum and they all had ACTIVE communities.  I've seen even 'big' webcomics have their forums fade and die.  And these forums were often really just islands, they only had maybe 50 or so very regular users at MOST but that was more than enough to keep alive.  Now a days that could never sustain itself with only a few exceptions.  The fact that LMG managed to maintain an active forum is a feat in itself.

[Majinhoju]

1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

I actually feel like this a lot.  The 'exploration' of the internet is largely gone.  It's not necessarily BAD but it's a lot less fun if that makes any sense.  What I mean is that with the internet today you can GET the information.  There are Wikia's and archives for anything so you can find most of the information you'd want in a snap.  No more crawling through the internet though obscure fansites or tech cites for specific nuggets of information.  Not to mention 'communities' online have largely solidified around social media or massive sites and services.

Even this forum right here is basically a relic.  Time was EVERYTHING had a forum, fansites had forums every dinky webcomic had a forum and they all had ACTIVE communities.  I've seen even 'big' webcomics have their forums fade and die.  And these forums were often really just islands, they only had maybe 50 or so very regular users at MOST but that was more than enough to keep alive.  Now a days that could never sustain itself with only a few exceptions.  The fact that LMG managed to maintain an active forum is a feat in itself.

^^ definitely this.

There was a real community feeling to those forums.  I didn't just feel like I was chatting with strangers but felt like I got to know them.

I actually made plenty of friends at the time.  Some I just chatted with on msn then lost contact with them when social media took over.  Some I've added on Facebook and still kept in contact.  Some became real life friends, one even became my wife, haha.

[Blasteque]

I think it's perspective.  It was exciting because you were learning.  At least, that's the way it was for me.  I was till learning things in the '90s (like windows) which made it exciting, but the '00s got "meh" for me pretty quickly.  Remember when you had to download a hundred media players to play anything (quicktime, realplayer, divx, etc.)?  Rose colored glasses.

 

I think the '80s and early '90s were more exciting.  You haven't lived until you've had to sort out IRQ conflicts in DOS.

 

Man, I feel old...

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, Majinhoju said:

^^ definitely this.

There was a real community feeling to those forums.  I didn't just feel like I was chatting with strangers but felt like I got to know them.

I actually made plenty of friends at the time.  Some I just chatted with on msn then lost contact with them when social media took over.  Some I've added on Facebook and still kept in contact.  Some became real life friends, one even became my wife, haha.

I have one friend I've known online for ten years.  Met t hem in some small close knit community that has since dissolved.  After all those years I was even helping them review sample scripts as they applied for a job at a YouTube company.  They got the job and I helped out with moving there so they could get their 'big break'...  ...ALL SO THEY COULD BREAK AN IMAC PRO! (True story)  All that from making friends on some dumb IRC channel with maybe 20 regulars.

[Ithanul]

There still the fun searching side of the Internet, but now requires to get away from the comfort of the current search engines.

 

I find fun in moving around in IRC chats and servers still (there still some very big ones around).  Though, depending on links and hops in there.  One can wind up going down the rabbit hole pretty fast.

 

But yeah, the Internet in the 90s was wild like before Yahoo and Google and the rest kind of mainstream it.  There still a wild side part of the Internet, just have to being willing to go searching and diving into that part.

[Canada EH]

17 hours ago, Graham Carter said:

MP3's were cutting edge

Yes I remember those days, beyond mosts life span on here tho.

Napster was thing and we'd all go crazy downloading a bands entire album library.

Modems made sounds.

In todays dollars a computer would have been $15,000

 

MS DOS Prompts

[Tsuki]

i know exactly how you feel.

there is still some fun to be had browsing TOR, but its just not the same

[Canada EH]

What has scared me for the last 10 years is knowing the Facebook and Google sell all of your data. Whats even more frightening is even if you never signed up for faceplant or foogle they still gather data on you. NSA and CSIS probably scrape that data. Its a new day in age, even tracking you on your cell phone.

[ManOverboard1224]

Those were the days! I miss feeling like being in the digital wild wild west. I miss OLD Newgrounds and myspace. I liked the "minimalism" of facebook when it first started but now i miss creating my own HTML backgrounds. I guess those were the old days that we can never get back to.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

It's inevitable: steam-powered steel horses were more exciting than Deutsche Bahn

AC vs DC debates, coexisting engine and fuel types for cars... Experimentation is the most fun stage, but for something to reach the masses in a useful manner, it tends to get industrialized and streamlined a lot. I'm sure there must be room for experimentation around the internet, it's just that the concept of internet itself used to be 100% experimentation. Now it's a service, in the same boring but useful sense electricity or running water are services (and once upon the time were exciting, revolutionary ideas). You need to get more specific than "internet" these days to find something young and evolving.

[Graham Carter]

I was an AOL user (uk) back in the day, and one downside was that you were charged per minute for both your AOL time and phone time.

That said, AOL was the equivalent then of what facebook is now.. in that you never had to venture outside of AOLS application as everything was at your fingertips from games to stuff for sale, chat, news music etc

 

Ironically the internet has come fill circle from the AOL days!

 

 

 

[DildorTheDecent]

>interwebz

 

stop

[Graham Carter]

3 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

>interwebz

 

stop

I own the .co.uk

https://www.whois.com/whois/interwebz.co.uk