What do you miss the most about "the internet of old"?

[Boo Man]

WELL AREN’T YOU SPECIAL

I used to get flack for doing this in the early 2010s, but I think people have generally chilled out about it. Don’t ask me why all-lowercase no-punctuation typing is OK, but all-uppercase isn’t…

CAPS LOCK CREW!

Because the generation using forums at the time was the same one bred on cellphones, a lawless place in which complete sentences, grammar and spelling were a capital offense. Reading archived versions of tween and teen-centered forums makes me feel like an explorer coming across a long-forgotten, secret language.

thankfully we now have the grammar police
and spell check

 

[Waffles]

CAPS LOCK CREW!


thankfully we now have the grammar police
and spell check

 

[newageretrohippie]

I CAN"T CONTROL THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE!!!

 

[Boo Man]

I CAN"T CONTROL THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE!!!

 

[OWG]

things i miss from the internet of old would be the aforementioned blog culture but also just everything smaller back then and there was just better content back then as a result because for example if you wanted to look up on how the "rear poop extractor" developed by "Bangooley Corp" for their Bangerian Stock Car program worked you would usually find a decently researched and fun to read article about it on an enthusiast's blog, today on the other hand you might find that but you are also more likely to be bombarded with suspiciously high view count videos titled "How Bangooley Corp came to Bangerian Stock Cars... AND WON" with some utterly obnoxious thumbnail and then you watch it only to realize its HORRIBLY researched and somehow he isnt being made fun of in the comments(which is to do with how YT's comment system essentially just facilitates echo chambers) and is in fact being CELEBRATED
you can find ENDLESS examples of what i just described and i want to say that every little thing involved in this is vile

 

[miguk]

For the record, ® and ™ can be typed rather than created with an image.

There are sites out there with detailed info on obscure things still. Wikipedia is still alive, and various other sites continue on. It's just that more people are doing it through monetizable platforms like YouTube now. That's a double edge sword, of course; on the one hand, if visuals help more for the specific task than just text, it's better. On the other hand, YouTube is an asinine algo-hell, so you're just as likely to be led away from what you want as you are to be led to it.

 

[OWG]

For the record, ® and ™ can be typed rather than created with an image.

There are sites out there with detailed info on obscure things still. Wikipedia is still alive, and various other sites continue on. It's just that more people are doing it through monetizable platforms like YouTube now. That's a double edge sword, of course; on the one hand, if visuals help more for the specific task than just text, it's better. On the other hand, YouTube is an asinine algo-hell, so you're just as likely to be led away from what you want as you are to be led to it.

i know and i did mention you can still find that sort of stuff but the fact that it exists and i have to deal with so much misinfo coming from these things when i talk to people about things makes me a bit pissed, i also just really hate the echo-chamber nature of youtube it's frankly a strange state