[chinchilla2020]

I miss the long posts that explain a thoughtful, technical, essay on a subject. I vaguely remember from the ~2010s internet reading some very informative posts on bulletin boards and reddit.

Mostly gaming stuff, but there was some great work on math, science, and DIY. Today even the "Reddit gold" posts are garbage by the standards of those days.

[OfSanguineFire]

Once phones became the default device for browsing and commenting on Reddit, comments began to grow shorter. (Some people might claim they can type on their phone just as comfortably as on a keyboard, but this clearly isn’t the case society-wide.)

The sad thing is that even if you are using an actual keyboard and type well, you look like a weirdo on Reddit today if you type longform text. I have seen someone posting merely a couple of solid paragraphs get reactions like “LOL wall of text bro”.

The average person’s use of a phone today is also one reason why it’s not easy for PhpBB-style communities to make a comeback.

[milkytron]

> The sad thing is that even if you are using an actual keyboard and type well, you look like a weirdo on Reddit today if you type longform text.

I still do this on occasion if I think what I have to type is worth reading. But usually when I do, I include a tl;dr to act as a hook/summary to get my main point across.

[emodendroket]

I remember a lot of similar thoughts and remarks at the time about the Internet ca. 2000, so I feel like maybe people are just getting older. When people dig up old Something Awful posts from 2002 they aren't as funny or engaging as I remember but I was a kid when I first saw them so they isn't surprising.