Not sure if this will make sense, but the 90s were the calm before the storm. They were the last breath before the plunge. Nobody was there to police you for words or anything else you did.
The 90s were the last time people existed before the internet connected us and exposed us to one another without edges. We were innocent because we didn’t know we were wrong. The Web being introduced in 1996 was the modern day apple being eaten in the garden of Eden. After that, we all learned shame.
~I’m sure l’ll be corrected shortly for some mistake I made above.
Nobody was there to police you for words or anything else you did.
On cue, i’d like to correct you on this.
After my fellow goth friend alvin was seen wearing a skirt on the weekend, our high school paid a christian youth group to lecture our entire grade. Their leader said they used to believe they were real actual vampires, but when his friend came home wearing a skirt, that’s when he knew they’d gone too far and turned to jesus.
The satanic panic was also still going strong - i played d&d in the 90s.
People have always been trying to police others for some bullshit. It’s easier online, but we got it done plenty before that.
I think that’s only one shard of a bigger picture. And it wasn’t woke, it was political correctness
The 90’s were pretty PC if you lived in a diverse area. LGBT was handled a little… Awkwardly, but in general things were pretty live and let live, people started adjusting to different cultures
Those areas were the first to colonize the Internet, because they were places with people and money.
That’s where the PC came from, when all the racist backwaters connected to the diverse cultural centers, and people were like “holy fuck, how can people be this racist?”
It started an effort to scrub out racism everywhere, where these already generally tolerant people panicked at the thought of being seen as a bigot
It was misguided from the beginning, it made all the public shaming superficial and based on word choice. It didn’t shame the racism like it should have
The nineties were kind of accidentally sex-negative in how acceptance was peached. I remember a lot of media back then being like, “It doesn’t matter who you are with as long as you love them.”
Yeah, that’s cool and all, but what about the people you just want to fuck? I don’t think many people in the nineties were ready to accept people can fuck whomever they want and as long as there is consent it’s cool.
Not hide, make them need to understand how computers and critical thinking works before being able to use it.
Barriers to entry have always existed for most hobbys and forums. When capitalists decided to monetize the internet, they tried and succeeded making the internet barrier non existent.
The barrier to entry would’ve been way higher on the “understanding computers” front than “critical thinking”. I feel like that might’ve made the tech-bro trend worse in the long run.
Which still side steps the inevitability of social media.
understand how computers and critical thinking works
These are two very different things.
Being comfortable enough with computers to use anonymous forums - say, 4chan - does not neccesarily imply critical thinking skills and does not stop people getting unneccessarily upset at the harmless behaviour of others.
I do often like to think the world would be on a better trajectory if we did the internet and social media differently to jow and actually have done it. Tech is so dystopian nowadays. (And hey, I suppose that’s why we’re all here)
There are other bad things that happened independently of the internet - certain wars and crises - but how people respond to these things and how they treat & see one another would be fundamentally different. It’s hard not to look back at the 90s and pre-2010 as utopian. (Maybe that’s just a zoomer thing.)
As a slightly tired example: I
spoiler
don’t think Donald Trump would’ve won his 2016 election if the state of internet and social media had remained frozen in a 90s or 2005 status. It was the braying of voices online that “managed” that crisis away for him. And, compared against the way many people talk to one another online, things like “grab her by the pussy” didn’t shock people that much. In a world where you find out about that moment from cable news it has a lot more weight I think. For all people.
Not sure if this will make sense, but the 90s were the calm before the storm. They were the last breath before the plunge. Nobody was there to police you for words or anything else you did.
The 90s were the last time people existed before the internet connected us and exposed us to one another without edges. We were innocent because we didn’t know we were wrong. The Web being introduced in 1996 was the modern day apple being eaten in the garden of Eden. After that, we all learned shame.
~I’m sure l’ll be corrected shortly for some mistake I made above.
On cue, i’d like to correct you on this.
After my fellow goth friend alvin was seen wearing a skirt on the weekend, our high school paid a christian youth group to lecture our entire grade. Their leader said they used to believe they were real actual vampires, but when his friend came home wearing a skirt, that’s when he knew they’d gone too far and turned to jesus.
The satanic panic was also still going strong - i played d&d in the 90s.
People have always been trying to police others for some bullshit. It’s easier online, but we got it done plenty before that.
Akshually.
I think that’s only one shard of a bigger picture. And it wasn’t woke, it was political correctness
The 90’s were pretty PC if you lived in a diverse area. LGBT was handled a little… Awkwardly, but in general things were pretty live and let live, people started adjusting to different cultures
Those areas were the first to colonize the Internet, because they were places with people and money.
That’s where the PC came from, when all the racist backwaters connected to the diverse cultural centers, and people were like “holy fuck, how can people be this racist?”
It started an effort to scrub out racism everywhere, where these already generally tolerant people panicked at the thought of being seen as a bigot
It was misguided from the beginning, it made all the public shaming superficial and based on word choice. It didn’t shame the racism like it should have
The nineties were kind of accidentally sex-negative in how acceptance was peached. I remember a lot of media back then being like, “It doesn’t matter who you are with as long as you love them.”
Yeah, that’s cool and all, but what about the people you just want to fuck? I don’t think many people in the nineties were ready to accept people can fuck whomever they want and as long as there is consent it’s cool.
Fair point, I think that’s pretty accurate
That’s a great observation, spot on.
Of course it is. It was just a wistful moment as I was waking up. Everyone is proving my point, though.
I agree with that. You were gesturing at something that’s just true, how can you know the full picture without comparing perspectives?
Counter point, the apple was social media.
Anonymous forums that had a barrier to entry of needing to be tech savvy worked really really well.
It was the dumbing down of software this did us in.
If a perfect world requires that we hide it from 99% of the population… that’s not a perfect world, it’s an echo chamber.
Not hide, make them need to understand how computers and critical thinking works before being able to use it.
Barriers to entry have always existed for most hobbys and forums. When capitalists decided to monetize the internet, they tried and succeeded making the internet barrier non existent.
The barrier to entry would’ve been way higher on the “understanding computers” front than “critical thinking”. I feel like that might’ve made the tech-bro trend worse in the long run.
Which still side steps the inevitability of social media.
These are two very different things.
Being comfortable enough with computers to use anonymous forums - say, 4chan - does not neccesarily imply critical thinking skills and does not stop people getting unneccessarily upset at the harmless behaviour of others.
I fully agree hence why I think the barrier to entry to go on 4chan is waaaay to low these days and it was much better in the 90s.
How did the apple grow? The fruit doesn’t form a tree from its stem.
Yes but the tree was not the problem in genesis, eating the apple was.
We can go as far as to say it’s God’s fault for not restricting them (especially since he should have predicted the future).
Internet would have been fine without the money parasites trying to monetizing everything by maximizing engagement (rage).
I do often like to think the world would be on a better trajectory if we did the internet and social media differently to jow and actually have done it. Tech is so dystopian nowadays. (And hey, I suppose that’s why we’re all here)
There are other bad things that happened independently of the internet - certain wars and crises - but how people respond to these things and how they treat & see one another would be fundamentally different. It’s hard not to look back at the 90s and pre-2010 as utopian. (Maybe that’s just a zoomer thing.)
As a slightly tired example: I
spoiler
don’t think Donald Trump would’ve won his 2016 election if the state of internet and social media had remained frozen in a 90s or 2005 status. It was the braying of voices online that “managed” that crisis away for him. And, compared against the way many people talk to one another online, things like “grab her by the pussy” didn’t shock people that much. In a world where you find out about that moment from cable news it has a lot more weight I think. For all people.