Something I think about a lot is how the ~vibes~ of the internet have changed. Sure, I’ve gotten older which certainly changes my perspective over time but we are blessed with the tools to see how these things change. They’re recorded.
I visit the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive, a couple of times a month. I like looking at old sites and seeing what worked and what didn’t work, in that time. Something I often say is that a lot of character of web design has been lost as we’ve all ended up making similar looking sites. Hell, this site is a great example. Not much character here. Perhaps I should be the change I want to see in the world.
Today, I thought to look up some old Twitter accounts from the very first people I followed on Twitter. In this case it’s Larry Hyrb (Xbox Live’s Major Nelson) and Eric Neustadter (a.k.a. The Vowel). I was shocked to see the difference in Twitter of a 12-13 years ago vs. the Twitter of, not only now but probably the past 7 or 8 years.
First of all, I had completely forgotten that you could personalize your background on Twitter. But that was a thing! You could do that. I don’t remember when the feature went away but it must have been a long time ago. Anyway some of the tweets just “feel” better. Not a single quote tweet in the bunch (Not that Larry is out dunking on people on Twitter now anyway, but the “feature” wasn’t a thing.)
I sense 2 things here. The first is, this was before everyone and their own online presence was a brand. I’m no different. My name is in the URL here. But you know what I mean, like…do you ever get the feeling that just random people online want your attention? And for what? I don’t know maybe to sell something in a pyramid scheme. The “For You” pages make everything possible viral content so everyone creates for that, not their own audience. The second thing is it feels like things were once less toxic. Twitter, for sure, has gotten worse over time. That’s well tread ground. And I was in those Xbox Live lobbies many moons ago so I recall people being jerks to each other but at least it wasn’t politicians doing it.
When I see relics of the “old internet” that I like, I try to work them back into my online habits. As example, I really wanted to commit to blogging more this year and this will be blog post 27 for the year! Already 5 more than last year and I was pretty excited about last year’s numbers. So the random thought posts that make the internet more friendly, I’m going to try and do more of that. I’ll likely commit to doing more of that. Probably over on Mastodon.
If nothing else, I hope it creates a more friendly place online. We need more of them.