Post AV3F7jWWfPKirIGHiK by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
(DIR) More posts by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
(DIR) Post #AV3CavacaJy0ofPHLU by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T17:23:07.696145Z
12 likes, 15 repeats
HN comment thread about Mastodon: guy talking about the early 00's chats and forums as barely thriving and only being used by a few people until Facebook came and brought the mainstream online.Another answers that the net was already thriving for him back then. He gets dismissed with "Many of us software devs are a different sort".Dude. It was everyone from children to soccer moms to my grandma. The primary draw at the time was email and once they got that they also visited forums and set up terrible GeoCities homepages about their cat. Yahoo! was exploding, Amazon was starting, pets.com was collapsing and people wouldn't shut up about eBay.Non-techies were very much online in the 00's and they didn't need a centralized social network to do it.It's so weird go see recent history being rewritten like that, this is barely 20 years ago.
(DIR) Post #AV3DESK2os33d1V9I8 by socketwench@hackers.town
2023-04-26T17:26:55Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome Sometimes I wonder if by "didn't exist" or "wasn't mainstream" they mean, "couldn't be effectively profited from due to decentralization".
(DIR) Post #AV3DESvcZA6dVZ59rU by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T17:30:10.463641Z
3 likes, 1 repeats
@socketwench probably that too? They just forget things existed before Facebook. Its like this weird memory effect. I had a guy once tell me, completely serious, that Facebook allowed people to connect online for the first time.I stared at him for like 10 seconds before reminding him we used to talk over ICQ.His face just just went :meowSurprised:
(DIR) Post #AV3DjNYsZNxjqABZ3o by socketwench@hackers.town
2023-04-26T17:32:02Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome This also reminds me of my thought that techbros have the desperate need to deify CEOs...
(DIR) Post #AV3Dn75pk0ZxvGNdzs by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2023-04-26T17:36:05.894942Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome Heck, if you check BBS: The Documentary, a lot of the people in it aren't techies, there were even commercial BBSes.I'm from '98 so I didn't know the BBS era, but older people quite often talks about chatting on BBSes before internet was there, in fact Internet adoption apparently lagged here in France because of the widespread adoption of the Minitel (basically cheap/gratis hardware terminal for BBSes).
(DIR) Post #AV3E3GqZFDjqo4wbJY by puniko@mk.absturztau.be
2023-04-26T17:39:29.285Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome@poly.cybre.city most people have memories connected to this sound from times way before facebook
(DIR) Post #AV3EkMc5gFoX8wiliS by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T17:47:14.829149Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lightning oh god I moderated a modestly popular local channel at the time, still carrying the battle scars :meowPeek:
(DIR) Post #AV3F7gRo6UmBJn1yRU by drwho@hackers.town
2023-04-26T17:39:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome I don't think most of them think of it as such, but it's the Reality Distortion Field. They spin a story internally that they mistake for history, and act toward everyone else like it's history.
(DIR) Post #AV3F7h3NqmplCKbz0q by mdhughes@appdot.net
2023-04-26T17:46:18Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@drwho @Polychrome It is news for ycombinator. If they admitted for a second that they've been a negative influence on the world, they'd quit and never come back. And that'd impact their 401Ks.
(DIR) Post #AV3F7jWWfPKirIGHiK by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T17:51:00.615058Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@puniko that's a 56k baud, pretty sure! That wide spectrum sweep is a tell:win3_terminal: :blobcateyes:
(DIR) Post #AV3H3HYwsnLstCOsXA by PhenomX6@fedi.pawlicker.com
2023-04-26T18:13:02.884245Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
Yes, but on the other hand in 2007 something that would eclipse the Eternal September happened: Apple released the iPhone. Suddenly the person who fumbled around with the computer was now online, anywhere. Unlimited data plans died off because iPhone users were making up 3% and taking up 40% of data in 2009...and also iPhones were trendy like iDEN and Motorola Razr phones were. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-dec-10-la-fi-iphone10-2009dec10-story.htmlhttps://www.reuters.com/article/urnidgns002570f3005978d80025773700587657/att-drops-unlimited-data-plan-impacts-iphone-owners-idUS370135499520100603A few years later, the entire third world seemingly was online.
(DIR) Post #AV3HiXAbl9nhASgYjY by maxmustermann@shitposter.club
2023-04-26T18:20:34.229177Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome @socketwench I've never used that dystopian crap to begin with. In what universe was faceberg the only thing that allowed those idiots to be online?
(DIR) Post #AV3HnCCN9tvlZcjY6i by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T18:21:17.160869Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lordbowlich and then there was stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2MgjPrSVX0?t=1090
(DIR) Post #AV3IrOYFGzx4zuWxyi by iramjohn@mastodon.social
2023-04-26T18:27:04Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome And don't forget AOL and their free coasters, I mean CDs. I think the early 00s was past their prime (You've Got Mail came out in 1998); AOL brought the mainstream online a decade before Facebook.
(DIR) Post #AV3IrP973vRUqFmPRY by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T18:33:19.853353Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@iramjohn in the US, yeah. In my country email was the main reason everyone rushed online in the 90's.
(DIR) Post #AV3PLJCYKO28ol20I4 by CrazyMyra@mastodon.social
2023-04-26T19:28:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome I was on BBS in the early 90s and still have techbros on Mastodon treat me like I'm a novice. Dude, I've been on "social media" for 30 years đ
(DIR) Post #AV3PLLdDIEY2M1WK7k by kaasbaas@social.oevents.co.za
2023-04-26T19:40:19Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@CrazyMyra @Polychrome "ASL?" anybody??I mean common, IRC (mIRC) was bumping, even down here in internet-deprived #SouthAfrica , yonks before Zuckie started work on his pervy lady ranking system.And no, it was def not just tech nerds!
(DIR) Post #AV3Yu2rHyvEPqziwKG by Hyolobrika@berserker.town
2023-04-26T21:33:06Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lanodan>MinitelWasn't stuff like that all centralised?@Polychrome
(DIR) Post #AV3Z3LlD4eDD5EJjSS by Hyolobrika@berserker.town
2023-04-26T21:34:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@PolychromeI was five twenty years ago. I didn't have the internet.@gabriel
(DIR) Post #AV3ZKxNCU3r0ezTyds by thatguyoverthere@shitposter.club
2023-04-26T21:37:57.470116Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome watching history being rewritten in near real time made me more of a skeptic than I ever imagined possible.
(DIR) Post #AV3ZNhQyCZse5uYO7U by thatguyoverthere@shitposter.club
2023-04-26T21:38:29.855723Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @Polychrome @gabriel I had 2 kids.
(DIR) Post #AV3a5lfdoMvFyYQgHg by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2023-04-26T21:46:02.125025Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@Hyolobrika @Polychrome AFAIK there was centralisation on 3615 and few other short and so easy to remember numbers that you could compare to TLDs like .com but you could dial any number.Issue of the Minitel is more that it's a terribly dumb client, you just have a screen and keyboard. And you can't really reprogram it to make a BBS server, specially because the link is asymmetrical (which is why some compare anti-self-hosting ADSL links to the Minitel).
(DIR) Post #AV3bBZ0tsoHEPbhVRY by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2023-04-26T21:58:18.281891Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @Polychrome Plus of course the purely streaming model of "you'll own nothing" as the minitel doesn't allows to save on say a floppy (or cassette tape).
(DIR) Post #AV3bSz6a80XSFyfIEy by Hyolobrika@berserker.town
2023-04-26T22:01:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lanodanThat's a decentralisation issue though.@Polychrome
(DIR) Post #AV3bUihU5kdPxPkm7E by MischievousuTomatosu@boks.moe
2023-04-26T22:02:09.439910Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@PhenomX6 @Polychrome thank you based apple
(DIR) Post #AV3byqL4FydWKpdFWC by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2023-04-26T22:07:11.107212Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @Polychrome Yeah but it's not clear cut. The phone network is decentralised and so was the Minitel protocol based on it.But the client hardware meant for it is worse than like a smartphone.(IIRC the protocol was open, people with better hardware didn't have that limit as emulators on PCs have been a thing, probably also was for other platforms like the Amiga)
(DIR) Post #AV3hbu0p23junCbfcm by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-26T23:10:39.564911Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@CrazyMyra my MOD music collection hails from my BBS days! :ablobcatbongokeyboard:
(DIR) Post #AV4BymUGAqxojsCXo0 by johntimaeus@sysad.ninja
2023-04-26T23:20:32Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome The first "big" contract my consulting company got in the late 90s was to build a monster Usenet server for Time-Warner/Roadrunner. Microblogging was something lots of people did, and the majority were not techish at all. (believe me, I also worked second tier helpdesk -- def not techs.)
(DIR) Post #AV4CCzntSZ8y5tAADo by billyjoebowers@mastodon.online
2023-04-26T20:12:53Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome Whatâs really weird about this narrative that Facebook invented the internet is that almost no one I know has ever been heavily involved in Facebook, and most people I know have never done much social media at all. Tech people really refined the art of climbing up their own asses in the last 20 years.
(DIR) Post #AV4CEeWlXFdygawRKC by ASY8L4pBqnh8eJ7uJE.moon@akiba.social
2023-04-26T20:14:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome @socketwench all the cool kids were at ICQIn my country, Orkut was so big that it took years to Facebook take over, and it only happened after Google made some terrible mistakes
(DIR) Post #AV4CEf4nUirkO8rcMy by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-04-27T04:53:49.492075Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@moon @socketwench đ» "uh oh"
(DIR) Post #AV4CI0VYGkGLj3yPJI by docmagnificent@mastodon.social
2023-04-26T20:33:03Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome It ignores just how popular things like livejournal or hell even newsgroups were.
(DIR) Post #AV4CLnc49c6etJpQae by xinjinmeng@dragon.style
2023-04-26T21:00:27Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome How soon they forget America Online. https://youtu.be/bjP4s7UUnK8
(DIR) Post #AV4CX3zFcHOKrM2ndQ by kawaii_usoiya@worm.pink
2023-04-26T21:23:05.809873Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome Maybe the fine dissidents of HN werenât on the pre-Facebook internet, and therefore think no ânormalâ person could do it?These are the people who think that the pinnacle of intellectual discussion is âwhich web framework is best web framework, and why is/isnât it Rails?â So itâs probably for the best to adjust expectations. Thereâs a lot of incompetence projection that goes on there.Shame for them, weird niche forums were great and Iâm here for their inevitable return.
(DIR) Post #AV4CYIPnSTmdth34Yy by StabbyCutyou@mastodon.social
2023-04-26T21:27:11Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome the idea that online chat/forums/etc were not "thriving" in the early 00s is absolute lunacy.Icing on the cake is the self aggrandizing bullshit about "devs".