Ask Lemmy

Public health and the general belief that vaccines work.

There was a brief moment when broadcast television networks just put their shit on the internet for free. Like you just had to go to their website, and then like the whole catalog of Scrubs or something was just there to watch.

Democracy

I'm back in the 70s and 80s we had but we called the dime store. Where a lot of the products were only a dime and then they raise the price to quarter and then raise the price again to 50 cents. And then eventually we ended up with dollar stores. But I mean overall they're all the same junk some good some really really not. But I know when I was younger and poor the dollar store was always fantastic for whatever I needed. Hell even now for things that I can use I still go there and pick it up even though some stuff is $1.25 or more. It's still less expensive than a lot of other places.

The internet’s creative centers pre YouTube algorithm.

Now, not just to make it big, but to get popular, you need someone talking for 10 minutes every week to draw attention - maybe even every day.

That forces hundreds of creators to consider what content can be made lazily with no effort, rather than with skill over the course of a few months. Rewind back to the better days of Flash animations and even my own hobby of Garry’s Mod / Source Filmmaker animations to see a lot of what I mean.

Democracy.

Inbox by Gmail

Adult swim. Was top tier absurdism but slowly degraded into just boring.

The McDonald's Arch Deluxe. I got mine with bacon.

Xbox 360 Multiplayer

Gaiaonline, before it became overrun with men's rights morons, alt-right slimebags, and libertarians.

Dude, Dollar Tree was awesome back in the day. In the early 2010s I got a complete set of dishware there, plates and bowls for $1 each, and the reason they were there was that the ceramic glaze wasn't "perfect." I couldn't tell, I just had some cool looking plates and bowls that lasted me nearly a decade before they finally got scratched and scuffed up enough to bother replacing. Money well spent.

You could get actual glass mugs for a dollar. Bars of Jergens soap for sensitive skin were like $0.70 a bar. All kinds of actually decent kitchenware and housewares stuff for dirt cheap. Was an absolute life saver at the time.

The early mass-adopted Internet, where every company aimed at kids had a website with free games, where everyone who wanted to share about themselves or their interests did so in their own little corner so you could rabbit-hole your way through the link trees, most stuff was non-monetized or had easy-to-block ads, and no tracking of your behavior was really happening.

Software/Apps costing a fixed, one-time amount rather than subscription models for everything

Netflix being the only streaming offering.

The internet.

end of soviet union to 9/11

Pre-algorithm driven social media.

Blockbuster and similar video rental stores. Shit was magical before streaming or even getting movies in the mail.

Pokémon Go. Those first few weeks and months were nothing like anyone could have imagined from a mobile game. People were outside and enjoying a game with other people. I remember seeing videos of people all running because a rare Pokemon had spawned somewhere and everyone was helping each other to get to it.

The game itself was a simple affair anyone and everyone could play with no paywalls or subscriptions. Now it’s just paywalled events, Pokemon locked behind those events and it’s just a slog to play now.

I’m glad I got to be a part of those early days.

Democracy
Human rights
Rule of law

My knees.

Movie theaters. Post-pandemic, tickets are more expensive, cinemas are more run-down, and movie theater etiquette has gone out the window.

Hanging out and house parties after high school let out, with no cell phones

StumbleUpon was what I personally cite as the peak of the internet.

It was a website where you made an account and selected what categories of things you were interested in. Then click the button and it would take you to a random piece of content on the internet related to that. I remember thinking at the time it was like Pandora, but for the whole internet rather than just music. Eventually it got bought and shut down.

Mint would be another one. A free, ad-deiven website with optional premoun features that allowed you to easily link all of your financial accounts. It would automatically categorize transactions, but you could manually change them and change the categories themselves. It worked great back in the early 2010's. Then Intuit bought it and it slowly got shittier. They reduced the visualization options. Eventually a few years ago they shut it down to try to get people to move to a different, paid product. Personally I moved to HomeBank, an open-source self-hosted solution. But it means I need to manually import everything.

The internet without megacorps. Ok, the world without megacorps.

the transparent electronics vibe, the whole y2k was a fast and awsome era

24/7 stores is an easy one, same with the early internet.

Personally, I'd say commuting. People are getting way crazier with how they drive these days, more distracted overall, and just plain stupid.

Windows XP and 7. Before all the “AI”, bloatware and unnecessary features. Oh and that pinball game that was on xp.

Amateur porn.

Now it’s all OnlyFans and Christians doing hate campaigns to shut it all down.