Wacky 90s fads [SMBC]

One could argue it did work, just a little too well. In 1995 forget trans rights, gay marriage was just starting to become a question and about half of white people were still against interracial marriage. As the one atheist kid in that era, I was certainly an outlier and society still regarded it as a default that everyone was religious. Basically only black people were worried about whether police were beating people up too much and for the vast majority the only question was why we weren't being harsher on criminals. Society's views on things have changed very rapidly as a result of being able to access information very easily.
I think what we're seeing today is not a result of the internet, but a reaction to the result of the internet. Things have changed too fast for some and there's basically a cultural luddite movement.

3/4 here, never was interested in tamagotchis lol

There was a window where the internet was a huge positive.
That ended 10 to 15 years ago.
Kinda coinciding with social media apps.
- It's almost like corporations took over the internet, monetized it, and deployed every possible tool to convert it into an addicting advertising platform without any regulations or standards, driving up social contention, misinformation and propaganda because the more rage you can instill in the population the more "engagement" everything will get.
- Smartphones were a bad idea. Social Media got large swaths of the population addicted to screens, increasing insomnia and anxiety. Unhealthy fads like the "girls pushing each other into eating disorders" and the whole "men are all bad" mainly spread through social media. The benefits of communication and knowledge-gathering/-spreading could have also been achieved with stationary devices. It claims to "connect" people, but made them lonelier. The loneliness pandemic is real.
  The internet and commercial computer technology should have stopped developing before 2008. Since then, it's just adding to the enshittification. The newest bloatware is AI and the claim that it could "replace human workers". What's next? When will be abandon commercial computing technology for free and open source alternatives?
  
  I mean it has to make some money at some point and that makes it a matter of time until enshittification starts.
  If your social media site does not need to make any money, it can also be unskewed in information, not sell your data not advertise etc.
  No interest in keeping you engaged. That was maybe the driver algorithm that fucked up modern life.
  
  Even moot has said it's the smartphones, internet access in your pocket is just a recipe for disaster
- thats when the MBAs took over from the nerds because there was way too much money, and somehow not enough.
  
  Remember the days when the CEO of tech/manufacturing was actually an engineer or PhD researcher. Not many companies have that nowadays.
- It feels like there are few things that enshitification^TM doesn't impact.

Grunge music being described as "wacky" is the wackiest thing here.
Also: David Bowie foresaw the internet's negative effect way back in 1999 like a god damn prophet.

I mean, the internet went to shit when we all centralized around enormous corporate gatekeepers like Facebook and Twitter instead of the personal websites of yore, so I feel like that sentiment still tracks
- Many things contributed to the downfall of internet.
  Corporations: not much to say about it. All they want is more users and all they want is more money.
  Ads: because everyone wants money. I am making a tutorial? I want people watching it to give me money. I am making a website? Money. I have free time I can watch some ads to earn money! Then corporations go in the middle: That guy is making tutorial I can put ads in it, give him a small fee and the rest for me!
  Centralization: as you said, instead of millions of forums people just go to reddit.
  Privacy: People not only don't care about it, they are willingly giving it away for free, and the big corporations profit.
  The selfhosting movement is the light in the tunnel, but it's really dangerous out there and good actions can bring bad people and they can absolutely ruin your setup.
- Personal websites didn't die because of social media, the simple fact is no one wants to run their own server... I run my own server and can tell you it's a money sink much like a boat.
  
  I pay $100/year for hosting, who are you using?

As someone from 90s, we were told not to trust the internet.
- Yea, I remember when everyone thought putting your personal info on the internet would get you murdered. Then MySpace came out and everyone quickly forgot all that.
  
  myspace still used aliases. facebook was the actual shit stack

The "This machine kills fascists" sticker that John Green put on his laptop for his Crash Course World History series has not aged well at all

The Internet was incredible until the corporations colonized it
- The internet is a great example of the capitalism to fascism pipeline.

My mom almost bought me a tamagachi in the 90s. I say almost because what she actually bought me was a cheap knock off.
What I remember most about it was my friend showed me their tamagachi, and it's born as an egg.
Then I remember what mine was born as.
Imagine seeing this pixel art gorilla, and then he sees a second pixel art gorilla wearing a skirt. Then you see the closeup of the male gorillas face, and he wiggles his eyebrows exitedly.
The next thing you see is a pixel art of a sperm attacking an egg. In a knockoff tamagachi meant for children. I was 13, so I was old enough to know what I was seeing, but it definately had some real WTF vibes. Let's put it this way. I'm 41. I remember nothing else about that tamagachi besides seeing pixel art gorilla sperm.
That's all. I just wanted more people to know about chinese knockoff tamagachi with gorilla sperm.
- Now tamagochis have evolved to smart watches where you are the tamagochi it seems
- This might be the very first time anyone has ever typed "pixel art gorilla sperm". I mean unless you've told the story before.
- Sounds like you got a better Tamagotchi.
- I feel enlightened!
- This isn't the ones that was box shaped and had two terminals on the top to connect to others so you could fight them?
  All I knew is I threw my dinky dino in a tree in my front yard and he lived there for years.
  
  Me and my brother had those.

Oh that's right, in the Internet's early days people thought it would do what they also thought television would do in its early days. But then the Internet did the same things television did - became an advertising platform and and dumbed down its addicted users. Maybe when the next communications breakthrough comes we'll realize... lol nah of course we won't.
- The technology isn't the problem. People are the problem.
  
  I agree. That's why we can't make predictions on the impact of tech based on the best things it could do. We have to be realistic and visualize what assholes will do with it, especially since we keep letting them be in charge of everything.
- One of the first people to see the potential of television in its early days was actually Adolf Hitler. He hoped that one day there would be one in every town. And now the internet is doing what he hoped television would do.

The internet felt like the beginings for a star trek utopia. All the worlds knowledge for all to access. Never really thought about it being sectioned off and limited for anything of quality and then being loaded with crap to sift through. Never thought that it could be filled with propoganda and be used to control whole sections of the populace.

We thought the internet would change the world. It did, but the world changed the internet, too.

The internet in its original concept was great. Unfortunately it wasn't shaped around profit, so it was quickly remodelled.
- It's important to note the internet is just fine. What was taken from us was the Web. This means we can build something new and cut corpos out of it and no I'm not talking web 3 that was just a grift
  
  Like the gemini protocol, or the fediverse
- I remember watching a TV news report in the mid 90s, before Amazon, Netflix, Google even. AOL was a big thing and people with personal computers at home were mostly just messing around. There wasn't a lot of e-commerce. The news anchor was lamenting that all these people playing on their computers were just a wasting their time "browsing," as if no activity has value unless it can be monetized.
- Yeah. The ones holding the cables started shouting Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things. And when that worked, they figured out how to make us stop talking and start buying.
  
  Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things
  I can never tell if that person is writing in that style ironically or not.

The Internet was so much better in the 90s.
- It was slower, the graphics were basic, and we could get knocked offline by someone picking up a telephone. But damn, it really felt like reaching out and touching the world for the first time. It took so long for my mom to understand that yes, I can be chatting with friends online at 2am. She would always ask, "Why aren't they asleep?" and I'd have to remind her that other time zones exist.

It turned out that gatekeepers were the only ones keeping the hoard of idiots and rubes off the Internet. RIP quality free content.
- I find quality free content everywhere. I mean, maybe not this post, but most things I see are free from quality.

Now when I see someone saying 'gatekeepers are the problem', I assume they were kicked out of somewhere for being a bigot.
- Depends on who the gatekeeper is. Would you assume the same about someone being kicked out of twitter/x?
- Nah, I was just grousing about it yesterday on a cooking discord where somebody was trying to gatekeep the protein used in tacos. Using chicken in your taco isn't "incorrect" and they can fight me.
  
  Using chicken in your taco isn't "incorrect"
  Show them this lol
  https://www.cocinafacil.com.mx/recetas/tacos-de-pollo
- Perhaps it always has been...

It was a nice dream at least.

Yeah the internet was actually a tool developed by the US to spread ~~propaganda and brain-wash people abroad~~ democracy and freedom of expression (slight /s)
- Yeah the internet was actually a tool developed by the US defece agencies to speed up communications
  FTFY
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
  The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense.

Yep, the world would be so much better if we got all our news from cable TV.
- In parts, yes. TV does not have the same ability to respond to your actions. It can't change the program for you specifically to cater to your individual habits. It can't create the same feedback loop that social media algorithms have that push people further and further into extremist views.
  
  Fam, stop giving away startup ideas for free! You're sitting on at least three winners there! /s _kinda

My daughter got a tamagotchi with like a colour LED screen that does way more than the ones we used to have, somehow they seem less fun to me, maybe cause they’re like $80 and I’m now the one buying them
- You can buy what looks to be the OG on Amazon for $20 if you're so motivated. Odds are you can find them at other retailers too.

Giga Pets > Tamagotchi
I’ll die on this hill.

When I first started working I did some temp work. One of my bosses asked me to look after her niece's Tamagotchi. I'd not had one so didn't have a clue what I was doing. Anyway, I killed it within a day.

The gatekeepers moved to control the internet.

Grunge is not a fad. And for the record Eddie better and mark langlain ,,,however you spell it... Are the last front men standing from the grunge era
- I have bad news about Mark Lanegan...
  
  wow he died 3 years ago almost to the day.

Yeah, that third one was a mistake.

Got my brother a 25th anniversary Digivice for Christmas =D

I feel fooled.

Grunge was not wacky
"This song has 2 notes"
... Grunge was not that wacky

Wide-leg jeans are an 80s thing. They were already phased out in the 90s.
- Nah, middle school me really wanted a pair of Jncos, which were a 90s and early 2000s fad.
  
  Yeah I think they come back into fashion every so often.