[api]

Back then people just didn’t take the kind of edgelording the OP is talking about seriously. When you saw a Nazi white supremacist following the left hand path and quoting Michael Acquino you rolled your eyes for the most part.

Same goes for wacky conspiracy stuff in the 90s. It felt (and mostly was) harmless and full of in jokes going back to discordianism and such fnord.

It was before absolutely every popular sentiment, subculture, belief system, religion, ideology, etc. had been politically weaponized by big data driven propaganda farms in the employ of political parties and nation states.

We thought the media was “controlling us” back then. We had no idea how much worse it would get.

I thought of a good summary of our condition today: “culture is a dark forest.” Any idea or culture that shows itself will be detected and invaded by the all seeing eye of the data driven propaganda machine.

I really think the future is private enclaves, closed forums, etc. with strict rules to try to keep out not just trolls and idiots but more importantly bots. We are living in the twilight of the open Internet, at least as a medium of any kind of meaningful communication. All that will be left on the “clearnet” is a social media influencer hustle culture driven hellscape where half the participants are bots anyway.

[ineptech]

I think you're right and prescient, and I'm sad that it's happening now that I'm old. In my 20s I had hours and hours and hours to burn on forums and BBSes and muds and such, and found my way in to some cool communities. I loved participating in them, the in-jokes, and even some of the drama involved.

But those places are all moribund now, and the modern closed equivalent of those communities on decentralized services that I would love to be a part of are, by definition, closed to me because I've got a demanding job and kids and stuff. I might have enough time to participate in such a community, but nowhere near enough to try out a bunch and find one where I'd fit in. And an invite is unlikely, because if I were a part of a great closed community I'd be very cautious about bringing in outsiders.

But for younger people, with more time to join a group, participate for a while, realize it's not the right fit, try another one, etc, until they find a tribe they mesh with, I think what you're describing is spot on - meaningful online interactions will be driven out of the public eye, and traditional social media will grow to resemble Linkedin even more than it already does.

[ineptech]

...and fake edit to add, part of the great thing about the 90s and early 2000s online communities is how unfiltered they were. A forum devoted to politics is a terrible place to discuss politics; the battle lines are already drawn and there's nothing to do but fight. But if you join a forum devoted to sailboats because you like sailboats, and hang around long enough to make friends, and end up discussing politics, a) you will hear opinions you've never been exposed to before, and b) since they're coming from people you already somewhat know and like, it's less likely to devolve into a flamewar.

[Karrot_Kream]

> I really think the future is private enclaves, closed forums, etc. with strict rules to try to keep out not just trolls and idiots but more importantly bots. We are living in the twilight of the open Internet, at least as a medium of any kind of meaningful communication. All that will be left on the “clearnet” is a social media influencer hustle culture driven hellscape where half the participants are bots anyway.

I think we're already starting to see this. Mastodon, Gemini, Discourse, forums, resurging interests in NNTP, FidoNet, etc. Even the public generally prefers group chats, Discords, TikTok, Snapchat, or to some extent IG because they're more private than FB or Twitter. I think creating a "global village" was interesting and empowering for most of humanity as a new thing that humans were capable of doing, but we all quickly realized that you can put a million people in a room together, but they won't have much to talk about together.

I have no doubt that private communities are going to be the future.

[api]

> I think creating a "global village" was interesting and empowering for most of humanity as a new thing that humans were capable of doing, but we all quickly realized that you can put a million people in a room together, but they won't have much to talk about together.

I have a much darker view. I think the global village was too easy a target for computer assisted large scale data driven con artistry.

Like I said: dark forest. All open systems with free entry will be destroyed by spam and abuse. No exceptions.

I feel like Qanon and January 6th was the end of the global village dream for many. The general public is just not ready to swim in a pool full of sharks using military grade psychological warfare on them. Why would they? Now it will only get worse since I’m sure every party and nation state is working on their own version.

I see a future where open social media is basically just propaganda shills and bots with armies of brainwashed followers fighting trench warfare forever… like a partly human version of DDOS botnet wars.

[SubiculumCode]

Its may be hard to swallow, but I suspect you are 100% correct in your prognosis. The open internet is a national security threat whose days are waning...at least between geopolitical rivals.

[empressplay]

There were heaps of private BBSes in the 80s and 90, many of those were pirate sites but some were run by art groups for their members, churches and so on. So private digital spaces are not new by any means

[Karrot_Kream]

Sure I'm not saying they're _new_. I was too young for the BBS era, but I visited plenty of private or semi-private forums in the 90s. I just mean that, in hindsight, I think most of us will view the Facebook-style concept of the "global village" as an unstable aberration of the 2000s rather than the primary way to socialize as many tech folks optimistically believed back then.