[groby_b]

Oh, how soon they forget. Remember geocities?

And before that, there were many fountains of ignorance to be found on Usenet (alt.* :), Archie, Gopher...

It was in general a smaller community, and that kept the amount of drivel small, too. But it wasn't all as rosy as you seem to remember.

[smacktoward]

Yeah, when the 2000 Web was flourishing, all you heard about from the neckbeards was how the same people had killed Usenet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

To a certain degree every generation thinks the Net it grew up with is the Real Net, and the Net that came afterwards is a wasteland.

[brigade]

Are you arguing that the Eternal September effect doesn't exist? Because having been seen the effect first hand in no less than a dozen different online communities over the years, I can confidently say that it very much does exist.

But this is in regards to specific sites and communities; "The Net" has long since become too large to be considered a single community.

[majormajor]

Yeah, my experiences on the late-90s, early-2000s internet don't support the idea that some level of technical aptitude correlates to a desire to share anything other than drivel.

Timecube, dancing babies, blink/marquee tags, MIDI music backgrounds on yet another "hey look at these pictures of the new muffler I put on my car!" site... ah, the good ol' days.

I honestly haven't noticed any increase in drivel, as a proportion of overall content, on the web now compared to when I first got on in 1998.