[flandry93]

> "People talk about 'Eternal September' as if to imply ... that the culture of the internet rightly belonged to those people alone, and that everyone who joined afterwards were part of the web's degradation and downfall".

Yes, that is exactly correct. The people who made the web, and built a beautiful space were the 'rightful owners'. A few outsize capitalists then saw that they could extract value from this made world -- and make themselves rich -- by encouraging and enabling colonization of that once peaceable space. It was a form of cultural theft and appropriation -- indirect through corporate marketing and lawyers.

If we follow the argument of 'diversity everywhere', no culture could be any culture anywhere because it would "lack diversity". One grey world is not a win.

The existing pre-93 culture was wholly supplanted and destroyed by the "new and improved" "higher quality" culture that replaced it. Of course, that estimation of 'better' and 'higher' is evaluate from the mindset of the colonizers -- not at all from the perspective of whomever came before.

Moreover, its not just the corporate profiteering -- that just opened the door for all of the colonizers. It is all of the self righteous fake "representative" identity virtue signaling that goes with it. Capitalism and wall street corporate profits enabled an entire world of trolls -- who then use the claim of colonization on others to hide their own prior actions in kind. And this is an improvement?