So he's like 60? Because that shit hasn't been the case since the 80s.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Me earlier today while showing my kid a chat transcript from the 90s with Chris Cornell in which he answered my question: "there were only a few of us on the Internet back then, so there's like 50 of us in this chat room. Today there would be hundreds of thousands of people trying to get in"
And then, the Eternal September.
Even before then, I'm not so sure going on the Internet (or any BBS, or ARPANET, or Usenet, or whatever) actually appreciably made anyone smarter. Made us all better at bickering about Star Trek, sure. And better at constructing ASCII cows and pirating software.
For instance, The Temple of The Screaming Electron had an entire subforum literally entitled "Bad Ideas." I am intimately familiar with this because I moderated it for several years. You can trust me on this one, we were all morons back then, too.
The tipping point was when smart phones with inexpensive internet access became common. Before that, the least intellectually curious among us rarely had computers or internet.
I'm not saying that everyone was smart on the internet back then, but when you have to be somewhat enthusiastic to even figure out the internet, owning a computer and troubleshoot it. Now all you have to do is clicking on a symbol on any phone.
I agree with this statement. I was a heavy user of "Redditisfun" app for ten years. The amount of reading and learning was a lot. But ever since they killed 3rd party apps I haven't use Reddit, the original app is unbearable. And I feel like I'm getting dumber as I don't exercise that access to information enough now. I've just made a Lemmy account and trying to find my supply here, so far so good :)
I agree with your assessment of Reddit. I've been on Lemmy since the Reddit API debacle, and part of why I've stuck around is that I find that it scratches the same itch that Reddit used to. Glad to have you here.
Reddit is and has been going downhill fast. There were benefits to it being embraced by the masses but also huge downsides. The admins made decisions that negatively affected the experience of using Reddit (like refusing to let subs disable voting even when it made alot of sense) because they wanted to maximize engagement by any means necessary. But taking reddit public was the final nail in the coffin. Now they hand out temporary and permanent bans not because their rules were actually violated but to protect their stock price and corporate reputation.
Also a 3rd party app refugee, here (Relay for Reddit). Glad to have you with us! Enjoy your time here, make sure you avoid the Tankie instances if you can help it (i.e. Hexbear, LemmyGrad, Lemmy.ml) and I think you'll come to like the slower pace of things here.
I am also an RIF refugee. Lemmy isn't the same high, but it's a pretty good methadone.
I'm so old that I remember when Usenet said that eating the Americium sensor inside fire detectors could give you psychic powers. The Internet has always been a place where you need a big grain of salt for everything.
Ahh, but you knew that there was Americium inside a fire detector. Or what Americium is. Or a fire detector. Or fire.
People have been shit posting as far back as BBS
never heard that one before xD
A/S/L?
14/f/cali
Chris Hansen rubbing his hands together waiting for a reply
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
51000/Unknowable/Bowels of the Earth
Into bowel stuff? Niiiiiiiiice/
19/Never/Slovakia
I was born after 9/11, internet still made me smarter.
But also it made me more aware of the injustices around the world, and more depressing.
ignorance is bliss, as they say
Mood can I choose to be ignorant or does that come with the over consumption of propaganda
I'm so old I remember using an ancient encyclopedia to research space for a school project, where it had illustrations about what they thought colonies on Mars would look like in 1985.
That could have been the 90's if your school was under funded.
As a fellow old that sounds familiar. Though the details of my parents Encyclopedia Britannica collection are lost to the mists of time.
it had illustrations about what they thought colonies on Mars would look like in 1985.
Interesting that it didn't predict them for the year 2000 like the flying autonomous cars in my uncles book from the 70s.
Must have been back when the only way online was by having access at university.
Regression towards the mean. The early internet was IT professionals, then students, as it became easier to access the level of education of the average user has dropped.
That ended in the early 90s. Dial up Internet was increasingly common as the decade progressed. And as more people piled on, Internet discourse turned political to match the tone of national media.
You had high profile reactionary bloggers pissing and shitting all over the place during the Clinton Era. It was just so segregated from the general public that most people didn't care.
Wasn't until the Bush Era when people really started losing confidence in broadcast news and turning to bloggers for independent opinion.
The civilian internet was originally a tool for universities to communicate. It spread from there.
I remember my dad telling me he had inter-office emails at work in the mid 1980s
The information super highway became the validation super highway
The barrier to entry was more difficult.
Mean I get the idea, but when you can filter crap for facts then it still helps and gives you lots of info, like how to set up a new router, change a filter (take your pick of what).Just don't go down the opinion stuff.
I assume I'm too old and just don't see half the crap others see cause they realize I'm old and ornary like an alligator, imagine that gives people an idea of age heh.
when you can filter crap for facts then it still helps and gives you lots of info
The Internet never gave you this ability. It allowed you to silo yourself off from other media and exist in an echo chamber.
In certain instances of media panic (post-9/11 Muslim hysteria, immigration hysteria, fad diet hysteria) you can maintain your sense of sanity by conversing with people who aren't also drowning in manufactured consent.
But you could still find plenty of crap in these communities. Whether it was liberalist blindness to an increasingly reactionary public opinion or more niche hysterias rearing up in place of mainstream hysterics (TikTok people panicking over micro plastics while the news was wiping the general public up over transgender athletes), you still had plenty of crap and no real filter for it.
The modern Internet isn't different in function nearly so much as it is in content. The floodgates opened and all the Late Night Crime Blotter / FOX News Two Minute Hate / Dumb Sports Guy Opinion came crashing through.
I don't wanna know it, rather focus on the facts. So you can go ahead and call me dumb