I have been online for 30 Years.
Three. Zero. Congratulations to me.
When I first got on dial up in 1996, my parents genuinely had no idea what they were exposing their 9 year old latchkey child to. The internet raised me because I was on the World Wide Web every single day. Ask Jeeves, Yahoo Answers, and LiveJournal taught me English and diversity. There was no supervision, of course. Rule34 was just part of the culture that you learn to dodge around. Yep, it was a glorious time to lie about being 21/F/California.
I have not logged off since.
Well, it was only in recent years that I started adopting “no tech days” mostly because I don’t want to answer work emails when I’m on vacation, or I’m just sick of all the algorithms.
Maybe I’ll make separate posts to expand on these but here are 4 things that younger me from 2006 would be surprised about 2026 internet:
- What in the world happened to the sense of community? The algorithm killed it and everyone is just a product.
- What is up with the rise of moral policing? The algorithm boosted it and no one remembers the late 2000s strikethroughs and blackouts.
- Why are people sharing their real names and locations on the internet so willy nilly? What happened to stranger danger…
- What do you mean 1GB is not enough space???