Post: #1

For people who around my age (mid 20s) and have been active on the internet at least back to say 2005, have you guys noticed a change in the way internet culture in the last few years? When I say internet culture, I'm referring specifically to the culture that grew up around inside jokes that went viral, memes and the like. Think of stuff like Something Awful back in the hey day.

The internet was better back in the mid 2000s when 4chan was actually producing worthwhile content and it was all about YTMND, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and doing things "for the lulz" (wow haven't typed that in forever) It was all about just creating general mayhem and trolling for the sake of trolling and the people who were all part of this were the biggest basement dweller degenerates and bottom feeders in society that you hope that those you loved would never meet in public...and it was awesome. I was thinking about why I haven't been excited about internet culture in the last few years as I was back in my teenage to early 20s and there is just so much more of a hipsterish vibe to everything - with Reddit as most obvious manifestation of this. If the internet is Williamsburg, Brooklyn then 9gag, Reddit, the new Anonymous, Tumblr, George Takei are the Whole Foods and PBR serving bars moving into the neighborhood to gentrify it in preparation for all the hipsters moving in so they can circle jerk each other via re-blogs/shares/re-tumbles or whatever you kiddies on tumblr call it. There's also an annoying tendency for a lot of these internet people to jump on the trendy progressive political cause of the week - remember all the hubhub over Chick-Fil-A?

Post: #2

Was anyone on Fucked Company's forums around 1999-2000? That's where I learned the art of trolling.

Post: #3

I've been using the internet since '98 or '99, back when the local school district first got internet in every classroom. Probably the first website I ever typed into the address bar was Nintendo.com while looking for SNES and N64 cheat codes.

Around the same time at home we got WebTV because my parents couldn't afford a computer with dial-up modem, and a monthly internet bill. Thus my first two or three years of internet access were mostly through school, the library, and WebTV.

I remember the first computer we ever had was a Pentium II with a few gig HDD, that my dad got in trade for a CB radio. This was during the time of Napster. At the time I was a video game nerd so websites like IGN and GameFAQS were oft-visited. Shit, I remember reading about the Game Boy Advance on IGN's website via WebTV a year or more before the Advance was released.

From my own perspective, the internet back then seemed much friendlier and social, and way less commercialized, compared to today.

Post: #4

Yes - I remember back in the day my first real exposure to internet culture was making hacking related groups on yahoo clubs.. I was probably - what.. like 11 or 12? I would go online into forums and chat rooms and meet people and talk about hacking. I used to tell people that I was in my twenties. I remember me and some other people that I met online would try to break into random servers on the internet. Or there were this one program where you would put in a list of usernames you wanted to "hack" and the program would go through a huuuge word-bank (from a text file with millions of words and combinations) and just randomly try all of these different username / password combinations. You could leave your computer on overnight and come back to find that you now had the access info to a bunch of peoples accounts the next morning. There was so much of that back in the mid-late nineties... Good times... Of course, none of this is possible today. Still, I really should have stuck with learning more about that stuff... I would probably be a mad hacker millionaire today... but counter strike happened and I really got into that... And then girls, drugs, sports, etc happened. In many ways I had so much more focus back in those days...

Back then the internet was kind of like a subculture that was an escape from everyday life. It really drew me in as a kid. The problem is that nowadays everything is online. I cannot go through my day without being bombarded by websites, emails, ads etc... That's one reason that the culture has lost its appeal - Its really become mainstream. Another reason, of course, is that I grew up and prefer to live my adventures out in the real world rather than spending hours on the web.

(03-21-2013 09:21 PM)Wutang Wrote:  For people who around my age (mid 20s) and have been active on the internet at least back to say 2005, have you guys noticed a change in the way internet culture in the last few years? When I say internet culture, I'm referring specifically to the culture that grew up around inside jokes that went viral, memes and the like. Think of stuff like Something Awful back in the hey day.

The internet was better back in the mid 2000s when 4chan was actually producing worthwhile content and it was all about YTMND, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and doing things "for the lulz" (wow haven't typed that in forever) It was all about just creating general mayhem and trolling for the sake of trolling and the people who were all part of this were the biggest basement dweller degenerates and bottom feeders in society that you hope that those you loved would never meet in public...and it was awesome. I was thinking about why I haven't been excited about internet culture in the last few years as I was back in my teenage to early 20s and there is just so much more of a hipsterish vibe to everything - with Reddit as most obvious manifestation of this. If the internet is Williamsburg, Brooklyn then 9gag, Reddit, the new Anonymous, Tumblr, George Takei are the Whole Foods and PBR serving bars moving into the neighborhood to gentrify it in preparation for all the hipsters moving in so they can circle jerk each other via re-blogs/shares/re-tumbles or whatever you kiddies on tumblr call it. There's also an annoying for a lot of these internet people to jump on the trendy progressive political cause of the week - remember all the hubhub over Chick-Fil-A?

Post: #5

Not to mention people back then actually had to sit down and type up something if they wanted to convey an idea. Nowadays it seems you can't get anyone get anyone's attention unless can cut what you have to say down to 2 sentences, have one of those sentences be some sort of snarky remark or a meme and you need to attach as an caption to a picture. Also annoying, all those pictures you see featuring some famous person with a quote from them superimposed on their pic.

Post: #6

(03-21-2013 09:21 PM)Wutang Wrote:  For people who around my age (mid 20s) and have been active on the internet at least back to say 2005, have you guys noticed a change in the way internet culture in the last few years? When I say internet culture, I'm referring specifically to the culture that grew up around inside jokes that went viral, memes and the like. Think of stuff like Something Awful back in the hey day.

The internet was better back in the mid 2000s when 4chan was actually producing worthwhile content and it was all about YTMND, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and doing things "for the lulz" (wow haven't typed that in forever) It was all about just creating general mayhem and trolling for the sake of trolling and the people who were all part of this were the biggest basement dweller degenerates and bottom feeders in society that you hope that those you loved would never meet in public...and it was awesome. I was thinking about why I haven't been excited about internet culture in the last few years as I was back in my teenage to early 20s and there is just so much more of a hipsterish vibe to everything - with Reddit as most obvious manifestation of this. If the internet is Williamsburg, Brooklyn then 9gag, Reddit, the new Anonymous, Tumblr, George Takei are the Whole Foods and PBR serving bars moving into the neighborhood to gentrify it in preparation for all the hipsters moving in so they can circle jerk each other via re-blogs/shares/re-tumbles or whatever you kiddies on tumblr call it. There's also an annoying for a lot of these internet people to jump on the trendy progressive political cause of the week - remember all the hubhub over Chick-Fil-A?

You are being overly nostalgic.

The rise of the Red Pill movement, if it can be called a movement, is entirely due to the rapid communication and anonymity afforded by a broad diversity of settings that simply wasn't around half a dozen years ago.

I'm not kidding when I say that I predict, decades from now, history books will attribute the proliferation of online forums and blogs as the pin that pricked the feminism bubble--analogizing Red Pill bloggers and forum browsers as the Viet Cong to feminism's USA.

Maybe the history books will even get to have a "Black Tuesday" or "Lehman Moment" type event where feminism just collapses seemingly over night, instead of the slow decay it feels like now.

We shall see.

Post: #7

Damn, I barely know any of those things you were talking about. I still don't even understand tumbler. I don't even know what 4chan is?

Is that some Chinese Chain joint to compete with P.F Wangs?

I hardly check out any websites anymore. While on the Internet, I spend all my time on:

1. Rooshvforum
2. Rooshs blog
3. G Manifesto
4. Travel sites to look for apartments and hotels and crap, like I am doing tonight, which I hate.
5. Youtube for music or to watch old boxing matches.

That is about it.

I don't even really check out the "click driven" news sites like business insider anymore because it is 99% nonsense.

I don't understand instagram or pinterest or any of those new school sites.

Facebrick and Sh*tter are worthless more or less. Sh*tter is good for when you are in California and you think you felt an earthquake. That's about it.

Post: #8

Albino Blacksheep and the eBaums World rivalry. i miss that.

Post: #9

Anyone remember dialing into a BBS? Trolling the operators of said BBS? Calling long-distance at night to get warez? Prank calling people via modem? Then IRC wars taking over channels and hacking shit?. Befriending the operators and having your enemies permabanned. Trolling girls on IRC sex chat who were probably just other kids your age trying to troll you. I loved all that as a kid, still have a store of text files and random shit I got back then.

There was less to choose from and it was less curated so you took what you could get. Now the big sites are lowest common denominator and voted on by tens of thousands if you go on sites like reddit.

For all the nostalgia it was just my childhood and I'm happy to have the Internet as it is today. For one there are focused, useful communities like this one rather than just general mayhem. You can curate your experience on twitter and stay informed on what you're interested in etc.

Post: #10

The internet was not truly mainstream until Facebook became big in 2005-2006 and wen the iPhone came out in 2007. Before then, the internet was utilized for social purposes mostly by small groups with a niche interest in a specific topic (remember EZBoard forums?). And since you were pretty much forced to be sitting at your computer to utilize the internet, it appealed more to younger, nerdy men who had the time and the inclination to sit around amusing themselves in front of a screen with this new technology.

When Facebook came out, it almost singlehandedly made the internet "cool" to women. Prior to Facebook, women as a group simply were not interested in the internet. It was perceived as something that nerdy young men used, or something was used to do research, email relatives, or at most, to instant message their friends.

Essentially, the internet was not perceived as a "place" with its own culture by the mainstream until the post-Facebook/iPhone era . Until that point the internet had a much more wild west feel, it was less feminine, less inhibited, less corporate. There was also this very widespread feeling at the time that the internet was something revolutionary that most other people hadn't figured out yet, so there was some satisfaction with having discovered it first.

The late 90s-early 2000s internet was basically like living in a boomtown in the early days of a gold rush: mostly inhabited by unruly prospectors, adventurers and risk-taking entrepreneurs. In contrast, the 2013 internet is the same town after all the women, children and elderly have arrived. The party's over. The internet has been "civilized" and commercialized.

Post: #11

I grew up on the internet. A family member ran a local library and I remember when the library was allowed 30 minutes of internet access per month. It was a new thing and horrendously expensive. This must have been 1996 or so. I was never into the countercultural aspects though, mostly just used it for research and information. It's very addictive having access to what feels like reams of information about every conceivable subject. Whatever I was interested in, I'd plug into search engines. Back then, they all had strengths and weaknesses... Altavista had a translator tool, AskJeeves was good if your search was phrased as a question, Yahoo was a good general search engine, WebCrawler was another. Google didn't exist. Mots du jour included things like "hyperlinks" (or "hotlinks,") "World Wide Web," etc. Pictures took forever to load, too, and the quality was not great. When I was in high school I got into gaming and then IT and assumed I'd make a career of it and try to become a CIO or something. Thankfully, I elected not to pursue that path.

It's funny, now I'm in my 20s but I feel like an old codger when it comes to technology. I really don't care for it, I basically only use the internet for some email, this forum, a handful of game blogs, and a bit of research. There are a few unrelated forums that I occasionally read, but don't participate on.

Post: #12

(03-21-2013 09:51 PM)scorpion Wrote:  When Facebook came out, it almost singlehandedly made the internet "cool" to women. Prior to Facebook, women as a group simply were not interested in the internet. It was perceived as something that nerdy young men used, or something was used to do research, email relatives, or at most, to instant message their friends.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote except this part.

What about Myspace?

That seemed like the moment the internet changed for me.

All of a sudden, kids coming up thought that the internet was "cool". It became so widely accepted, like MTV in the 90's or something.

It also became commonplace to "put yourself" out there, and not worry about the consequences of anonymity.

That was the moment I realized I was from a different generation. (Although it amazes me how many people do that stuff now from my generation).

Post: #13

(03-21-2013 09:58 PM)thegmanifesto Wrote:  

(03-21-2013 09:51 PM)scorpion Wrote:  When Facebook came out, it almost singlehandedly made the internet "cool" to women. Prior to Facebook, women as a group simply were not interested in the internet. It was perceived as something that nerdy young men used, or something was used to do research, email relatives, or at most, to instant message their friends.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote except this part.

What about Myspace?

That seemed like the moment the internet changed for me.

All of a sudden, kids coming up thought that the internet was "cool". It became so widely accepted, like MTV in the 90's or something.

It also became commonplace to "put yourself" out there, and not worry about the consequences of anonymity.

That was the moment I realized I was from a different generation. (Although it amazes me how many people do that stuff now from my generation).

Myspace basically fertilized the ground for Facebook to grow on, but its appeal was mostly limited to early adopters and it didn't quite cross into the mainstream like Facebook did, except in regards to promoting the music scene. I distinctly remember Myspace as being regarded as something of a joke by most people I knew in those days, whereas a year or so later everyone was all about Facebook. Myspace was definitely the beginning of the modern social media driven internet, but it didn't really blow up until Facebook got big.

Post: #14

Facebook was more "professional." It was composed of ivy league college students (and then college students in general) and migrated from a way to share parties and pictures among students into the mainstream, as those college students graduated and kept using their facebook accounts to keep up with friends. Pretty soon high schoolers and everybody else wanted to use it, too.

Post: #15

myspace was pretty big in 2004-2008.

Post: #16

I think the internet's been, as mentioned, corporatized. Which sucks. But there are still segments that are good and good things about this. After all, it's helped spread redpill wisdom and the omegas are actually heard and exist somewhere.

Post: #17

I remember when regular people didn't have answering machines. Verbal communications was real time, or by a written letter.

If you wanted to go somewhere, you had to physically move.
One of the chief things to get new input was to listen to a college / underground radio station from another state. I did that many nights, in the dark.

Post: #18

The Internet for me was the best in the early 2000s. I saw a lot of what are now called "memes" in say around 2001-2002 and I laughed at them and had a few inside jokes with mates that I shared them with. Those very same memes resurfaced and went "mainstream" I suppose in around 2010-2011. Every fucker has seen them and it overkills the original thing.

It's how that Harlem Shake thing went viral recently, the Internet gives every person an "in" on a joke regardless of their real life social status. They get to join in and not think for themselves and feel part of something.

I liked it better in the early 2000s, even if the load times were shite and I could only get 30second streams of porn clips. Windows Media Player on repeat - haha!

I used to love reading Maddox back in the day, stickdeath.com, goatse, joke websites and all that stuff before everyone started seeing it all. Hell, I was even using Amazon before everyone at school knew what it was.

The Internet is great for knowledge as shown by this forum and the manosphere, but fuck me there is a hell of a lot of shite and cunts on it.

Give a man a mask and he will tell the truth, give a man a username and he will act like a cunt.

Post: #19

Now is just full of this

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151418527654678

Post: #20

Oh you young kids. I remember when this

was how you had to get internet porn.

Now get off my lawn!

Post: #21

The Internet got "popular" after 2004-2005 before that I was on it for music, beats, and Yahoo Chat rooms trolling bitches to show me their tits. People forget ICQ, Yahoo, and MSM! This was the "Internet" for many people for many years. Girls would spends hours on on MSM talking to people and if somebody posted a link or something then that would be their little exposure to the Internet. Not much has changed though as women just spend time on social media and looking at shoes.

I remember Imeem and Soundclick which were big music sites to upload songs. I had such a great library of music on Imeem and then it got shut down.

I remember shitty Geocities sites, I also remember when DrJays and Karmaloop where the main spots to buy "urban" clothing for a while.

I remember when Ebay first started popping off and the amount of scams I ran on it lol.

I also remember how easy it was to meet bitches on sites like Hi5. I was in HS but it was easy as hell to link up with sluts back then on those early Social Media sites. Nobody knew what to do on those things so getting a girl to come to the under-age club with you was easy as hell back then.

Post: #22

(03-21-2013 11:20 PM)kosko Wrote:  I remember Imeem and Soundclick which were big music sites to upload songs. I had such a great library of music on Imeem and then it got shut down.

Wow. Reading this thread makes me feel like I missed out on everything.

I do remember Imeem though. That was a pretty good music site at that time. I remember Myspace bought them and it vanished.

Quote:I remember when Ebay first started popping off and the amount of scams I ran on it lol.

Like what?

Post: #23

(03-21-2013 10:21 PM)Ovid Wrote:  Facebook was more "professional." It was composed of ivy league college students (and then college students in general) and migrated from a way to share parties and pictures among students into the mainstream, as those college students graduated and kept using their facebook accounts to keep up with friends. Pretty soon high schoolers and everybody else wanted to use it, too.

Agreed. Myspace was mostly used by scene kids and lot of the bro type people. It was a much more low-brow crowd. Facebook brought in the more upper class, SWPL people who would later go on to be part of the "hipster" internet culture that I was complaining about. If you have a Facebook, take a look at the newfeed compared to what you would see posted on the Myspace bulletins back in the hey day of Myspace. From I remember of Myspace it was a lot of silly chain letter posts, club promoters and bands trying to whore themselves out, and just general tackiness. Facebook is all about posting up links to articles to make yourself look educated and well read, statuses where people try too hard to be hip and ironic - basically your stand SWPL stuff.

Post: #24

I had an account on the Arpanet in the 1980s. We had email lists, could ftp, and telnet to connect to computers at other universities. When I tried to get friends to connect to the Internet when it first came out, they told me it was impractical and not worth the time.

Post: #25

(03-21-2013 11:39 PM)thegmanifesto Wrote:  

(03-21-2013 11:20 PM)kosko Wrote:  I remember Imeem and Soundclick which were big music sites to upload songs. I had such a great library of music on Imeem and then it got shut down.

Wow. Reading this thread makes me feel like I missed out on everything.

I do remember Imeem though. That was a pretty good music site at that time. I remember Myspace bought them and it vanished.

Quote:I remember when Ebay first started popping off and the amount of scams I ran on it lol.

Like what?

Things like filing bogus Paypal complaints and would happen is you got your money back AND whatever item you bought. You would say shit got lost in the mail and the seller.. afraid of getting an negative rep point would just refund you the money and call it a day.

Paypal is like Fort Knox now but back then their was a lot of loopholes in the dispute resolution area and Paypal would literally just take money out your account if you were on the wrong end of the dispute.


..Or I'd just tell sellers I was contacting the Canadian Internet Fraud Taskforce (CIFT). It was some fake made up thing but I usually did that when I suspected somebody was trying to scam ME. I had some Asian kid in Stockton once try to rip me off on a pair of sneakers and I used that trick to get my shoes from him I paid for.

With Music I was and still am a big Music head. Not a Music nerd that is pompus with it but I like good music both new and old so the net has always been big on that for me, and I remember how easy you could rip and bootleg exlusive songs. Not for money, but just to throw in your MP3 player and just enjoy for yourself. Sites like Mysapce had backdoors in which you get get their Mp3 files from thier players, and I'll say that Myspace and Imeem for the longest time had alot of great music going on. Alot of artsist relsesed exlsuive stuff on Myspace that never ever got released

This track from Flying Lotus I remember from way back in 2005 and I even asked the dude to his face to release the joint and he does not even remember making it lol.