I miss the internet

As the title says, I miss the internet. No, I haven’t been away from my computer, my tablet, or my phone for a while. I haven’t given up being a tech addicted brat. I just mean that the internet that we have today is not the internet I used to know.

I didn’t grow up on the internet. There was no world wide web when I was a kid. Email was barely getting standardized when I was born. You couldn’t view pictures online when I first got connected unless you had a rare but specialized client or knew a few tricks. You had to download the file to your computer using a file transfer protocol like X, Y, or Z modem, then use a utility to view them. There was no video to be found.

More importantly, there wasn’t nearly as much negativity, hate, misinformation or outright lies on the internet.

My internet thrived on dozens of different services, enabling people to chat with one another. While that still can be done, perhaps even more efficiently than in those days, the mediums are now saturated with messages of anger and hate no matter the subject. On my internet, two people that vigorously disagreed with one another could still maintain civility and discuss the subject without threats, SWAT’ing, or even foul language. Perhaps people were just better on my internet and in my youth.

The problem with the internet came with the eased ability to access it. When it was difficult to find an internet service provider and few people even heard of the internet, people valued the contacts they made and communications they had. There was little or no spam in those days, and people made valiant efforts to provide facts and truth on the services back then. Sure, there was still illegal activity even then, the Usenet newsgroups were just as filled with illegal content as they are now, but more often than not, the internet was a welcoming place, friendly to most if not everyone.

Then along came the web, providing an ease of use the internet hadn’t known, and binding together or replacing many of the services we’d known. With ease of use came more users, with more users came the bullshit humanity always drags along with it. Hate. Greed. Lies and deception. Crime.

I’m not saying I don’t like the last twenty years worth of development on the internet, but I am saying that it would be a lot better place if people would stop being the worst people they can be on it and in the real world, and start trying to be civil again. Stop the hate; there’s no reason to hate or hurt anyone. Listen to opinions other than your own or those that agree with you. Even if you don’t change your mind, there’s almost always something to learn and have less to fight about because you have put in some effort to understanding. Stop the pointless hate of celebrities that acted in some movie you didn’t like; they probably didn’t write their parts, they just played them out. If you don’t like it, don’t see it or its franchise if it has one. Don’t make celebrities into gods… For fucks sake, no one should become rich and powerful because someone stole or leaked a tape of them having sex!

Try to be better people. That’s what I’m saying. Try to be better people and that will translate and transform the internet. Please. I miss the way things used to be.

Update March 11, 2019: It seems that the father of the web doesn’t disagree with me.

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