Everything's too like, corporate nowadays on mainstream internet. Like less about being social with others and more trying to sell a product or a brand or something. Those big tech names have optimized everything to extract as much profit as possible from you and your time with ever decreasing benefit to you.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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I agree the internet feels a lot different than the eqrly 2000s, but breaking down what's different I can't pin anything concrete down.
There's pretty much no fundamental differences between how social media was and how it is now. People talk, share interests, get in arguments. What we feel is nostalgia for a wild west internet with less people and rules that will never exist again.
More people use the internet now so more people participate in the conversation. That's how it will be for the rest of human history probably.
but breaking down what’s different I can’t pin anything concrete down.
One big difference is scale. The 2000s Internet was primarily centered around single(ish) interest forums with relatively low user counts. The entire Lemmy-verse, which is itself quite tiny in 2025, is still WAY larger than nearly any of the 2000s era forums ever were.
Another other big difference is why the user base is online. The majority of them aren't participating to discuss a shared interest anymore, they are doing it for general entertainment or to earn money.
Those two things explain nearly all of the change. Way more users congregated into a handful of websites with many of them, including the sites, attempting to get rich doing it.
The 2000s web was a much smaller number of users spread across a zillion websites / forums with nearly all of the users and site operators doing it without money as a motivator.
I guarentee you're not the only one
There are still smaller communities out there. It can be discussed that Lemmy is a small community itself.
More so, Internet has destroyed the spirit of conversation. When I was younger, people found me charming and intelligent when first meeting me after talking for a bit. Now, they can quickly "google" what I say and quickly learn that I am an ass, bullshitting and exaggerating what I don't know, but making it up to keep the conversation interesting.
What “represented the internet” in your opinion?
“Small communities” still exist all over the internet, in far greater numbers than before. They exist on the giant social media platforms too. Discord, WhatsApp, facebook, reddit, etc all have millions of “small communities” on them.
OP is asking about where to find cute, locally owned retailers & you are telling them they can find the same shit at the mall.
No, I’m telling them that the cute, locally owned retailers are in the mall.
Take discord for example - I’m in a small group with like 120ish other people who play an old game online. I also used to be on the subreddit which was small and not garbage unlike the majority of reddit, until I left along with a lot of the others for discord.
The point is there are tonnes of small sub communities on the big platforms. It helps with visibility and user base.
Yes. You are the only one in the entire fucking world.
You really think you're the first one, much less the only one, to say that? Really?
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We have the technology--we can rebuild it
I fucking hate anyone on the internet who starts with "am I the only one..." Its so tired, lazy, lacks creativity, and has a touch of narcissism or inability to be self-aware.
But this!
Holy shit. For anyone to truly think they are the only ones to have considered social media to be such a bad thing with 7-8 billion of us and social media for 20 fucking years.
Absolute garbage. Get a mirror and do some reflection OP. Holy fucking shit.
And for the record.... NOBODY is the only one for anything. Pick a different I tro for once. Holy god damned shit.
I can only hope some twatwaffle responds to me merely saying "This."
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