alt Hacker NewsI don't know where this nostalgia is coming from. "The Internet" has never been this super perfect place on a pedestal some people make it sound like. The Internet is what you make of it. Not more, not less.
Replies
curious_cat_163 • today at 8:08 PM
Agreed.
Also, it is not a monolith. There are parts of the internet (arguably like HN) that are off the charts when it comes signal-to-noise ratio, for me personally.
Analemma_ • today at 9:10 PM
If people are being honest, the nostalgia comes from a time where people only had to interact with other high-income, high-education, broadly-cosmopolitan technology enthusiasts similar to themselves. The moment the internet become used by everyone, including the riff-raff, it suddenly become "not fun".
I was there in the early days (90's, early 2000's)
It was categorically, undeniably better--that's where the nostalgia is coming from.
There are lots of reasons why this happened (and those are interesting questions.) But simply denying that it was better doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.