Shoq 🌿Dec 11, 2022

What drove the internet in the 90s and 00s was that it was so cool to be doing good shit with it. Social media was like a giant manure dump all over that culture. We've never recovered.

The Fediverse and the death of Twitter promise a rebirth of that culture, if we don't let the cool kids and a lazy press bury the public in vapid bullshit again.

We wasted 16 goddamn years enduring Facebook and Twitter. In the end, they were both toxic and regressive. Can we please not go back there? Please?

Show threadCassandrichDec 11, 2022
@shoq Can we please also not idealize a mythical past? This is a fundamentally conservative worldview and there was no time in history when anyone but the privileged enjoyed a mythical golden age. Yes Twitter was wielded to do a lot of bad things but it was also instrumental in speaking truth to power and making it so the privileged couldn't ignore injustices they otherwise would have.
Show threadCassandrichDec 11, 2022
@shoq We should be learning from the good and the bad to create systems that will push us into a better world not trying to go back to an imagined better time.
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 11, 2022
@dalias I'm not big on nostalgia, but objectively, it was a better time. Software was erupting everywhere, and big commerce hadn't gobbled everything in sight yet.
Show threadProjectFearlessnessDec 12, 2022
@shoq @dalias
If you want to truly look at this era objectively, you should look at how many people worldwide had access to computers and the internet. The 90's was only a golden era of computing to those few who could afford to be there.
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 12, 2022

@ProjectFearlessness @dalias

Yes, but that's true of anything new. You can't fault early adopters for being early adopters.
There are millions who still can't afford internet access NOW. But back then, the adopters at least cared about that. Now, very few do. I resent that inherent selfishness.

Show threadProjectFearlessnessDec 12, 2022
@shoq @dalias
I'm not sure early adopters is a good choice of words. Early adopters use new things available to everybody before anyone else realises their use. The same can't be said of the internet. Access wasn't equal.
It's cool. Nobody can help their privilege. It would just be nice to hear more acknowledgement that the first 20 years of the internet was really just a handful of privileged elites talking amongst themselves.
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 12, 2022

@ProjectFearlessness @dalias

You've just described the evolution of nearly everything important since the industrial revolution began. The poor didn't get to light their homes with gas or electricity, or sail on steamships, or use telephones and TVS, for quite a while after the privileged elites did. Radio was (at least partially) one of the few exceptions because it coincided with a burgeoning industrial base looking for thing to market.

Show threadProjectFearlessnessDec 12, 2022
@shoq @dalias
No, I just made one observation. Instead of just acknowledging it you seem to be going the really long way round it. If you don't mind, I won't join you.
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 13, 2022
@ProjectFearlessness @dalias
You made a statement that was false. Internet technology was available to everyone who chose to avail themselves of it equally. Whether they knew that or not, or whether they could afford it or not, was and is immaterial. It was no different than where we are now. The Fediverse is here. Most people can avail themselves of it. They just have to know about it and care. Most don't. The same was true for Compuserve in 1984 and AOL in 1994.
Show threadCassandrich
@shoq @ProjectFearlessness I thought you had something interesting to say at one point but asserting that whether someone can afford something (ntm whether they have any way of knowing it might be useful to them, or whether parents or partners might block their access to it, etc.) is irrelevant to whether it's "available" to them is such a laughably bad take I'm not sure you're even trying to be taken seriously...
Dec 13, 2022 at 12:24amWeb
Show threadProjectFearlessnessDec 13, 2022
@dalias @shoq
Agreed. I'm done here. The internet has opened up so many different viewpoints from all around the world that I don't have the time to listen to this one. It's depressingly familiar.