[estearum]

Curious how old you are?

There was definitely a sweet spot if you were in highschool or college in like 2004 - 2010 (so born something like 1986 - 1994?) where online social media was almost painstakingly manicured to mirror real-life social dynamics.

Many people remember the drama of deciding who your "top friends" were on MySpace.

[semitones]

This was my experience - when I was in high school was right around the time that Facebook started to replace Myspace. Who you were friends with online and who/how many people liked your photos was a big deal, and it very much mirrored the actual IRL dynamics/relationships we had in school - what happened online was directly related to what happened in real life. Around 2013 it felt like that started to change as the social media sites shifted more towards algorithmically recommended content, like joke sites and videos, with some ads. At that time it was still fun to watch it and share it with friends, because it was so new.

[trollbridge]

Yeah - MySpace accurately mirrored high school circa 2004, and Facebook accurately mirrored college circa 2007 (complete with it being elitist where it was hard to get into when it first launched, just like real colleges).

But that was 20 years ago.

[al_borland]

I worked at the IT help desk at my college when Facebook was first rolling out. We’d constantly get high school seniors calling up to try and get their college email address early, just so they could register with Facebook.

None of my friends at the time used it (or even MySpace) and I didn’t even have an account, so I found this very odd. The first time I realized it may have actually been popular was when a couple sorority girls came in and wanted me to make an account to friend me… not to actually be my friend, but because they had a contest on who could get the most friends. I did not make an account that day, and it told me everything I needed to know about how shallow the connections were. Those were in the glory days, 2004-2005, and it was already pretty shallow in certain circles. It only went downhill from there.

[_whiteCaps_]

For me it was when Facebook sent the C&D order about the Whopper Sacrifice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whopper_Sacrifice

[austin-cheney]

I was in college at that time and I did not get this feeling in any possible way.

Instead I can remember online topic focused forum boards, of which some I had numerous daily interactions with the same people over years. These online forums made no pretense about replacing real life social dynamics and yet they were still so much better for real social experiences than the social media that replaced them at that time.

To me social media has always felt artificial for people who shout into a vortex hoping for attention.

[cjrp]

It's been downhill since FB removed pokes.

[jezzamon]

I think they're still there, but deeply hidden in their menus

[wraptile]

I regret not taking advantage of this sweet spot. In that time I took a strong stance against Facebook etc. due to privacy violation and consolidation of the web - who knew that it would get a million times worse and my boycott meant absolutely nothing.

At least I got to experience irc, forum boards and other early group chat apps - that was some of the best internet experience. Early Reddit was incredible as well.

It's sad that today's youth will likely never get anything remotely similar to this.

[Insanity]

I was in high school when Facebook took off in my country (2008). And fair enough, first few years were maybe more “social-ish”. I left the platform by 2012 though.

Might also say more about me and my social behaviour than the social media platforms themselves, I never cared about it too much.

[hinata08]

personal blogs, tumblr, forums, BBS, some kind of irc and platforms like Discords remained active throughout the 2010s to actually be social

a bunch of ppl turned to Facebook as it was just what the mob did, but it still required to be active in groups indeed

[bamboozled]

I think early instagram was like this for about 12 months.