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by centizen
4462 days ago
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I think that you are absolutely right that the web has changed, but I think that it's pretty easy and cliche to blame 'Murican media on it. It's inevitable that things like the internet are going change for a multitude of different reasons - to blame any one seems shortsighted. People were making the same claims about Endless September and the AOL invasions; but the internet adapted and became something else. In one case, it turned into the internet you remember as the "original". The internet has changed, but to try to make a claim that there ever was an "original internet culture" is to miss what the internet is and always has been, an amorphous mass of people, constantly changing and evolving into something else based on the technologies available to it. I loved the net of the 90's and even the early 2000's as well, and I miss it and remember it fondly. But to try to say that it was the original internet; you might as well just be yelling "Get off my lawn". And even then, the BBS folks might want a word with you. |
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However the output of the american media in the 2000s and 2010s, a media that is heavily influenced by capitalism has definitely shaped the internet and the worldly culture into its current form.
The internet is an amorphous mass of people, yes. But in the earlier days not everyone participated like you are "programmed" to do in our current society. Comparisons could be made with the early aviators or sailors, it is true that these things existed and were new in their relative eras and that everybody knew about them. But that doesn't mean everybody felt the need to explore these technologies. So, as the type of people changes that usually uses the internet, (from students, software people and mostly male teenagers that have an urge to explore it, to more corporate people and just about anybody) the content also naturally changed and the mental/emotinal rewards those original people once got when they visited 'teh intehrnetz' are not the same as they once were.
Look at a game like Utopia for example (you know the old browser based strategy game that was created by mehul). It was all about calculations and working in synergy with other people from all over the world (also somewhat about backstabbing, abusing and hacking of course). It was one of the bigger online browser games there was back then. If you compare to current online games like farmville and candycrush it's nothing the same and the types of people are nothing the same, why? Because it was different sorts of people that usually browsed the web back then. So yes, there was and has always been an original culture online that has gradually been merged with the mainstream people which has evolved internet into its' present form, and I don't disagree or agree with that, I just state it as a fact.