…when I would wake up on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and just so excited to surf the Internet for the first two or three hours of the day. That’s what they called it back then, “surfing.” Even on 56k modems they likened it to Cheyne Horan shredding swells on mushrooms. I loved it. I could look up every movie I ever watched and read the entire cast and crew. I could listen to MIDI version to the Knightrider theme. I could Instant Message people for hours or even talk to a whole “room” of people about Watership Down. I can even act like I am having sex with one of these Watership Down loving people in a private room that they or I created and then they or I had to search to find so we could both masturbate together. Sure, it probably wasn’t really a girl on the other end but that really didn’t matter. This was a brave new world and it was great.
And it was a bit exclusive too. A lot of people didn’t even know how to use the damn thing. Still others refused to. So it was basically for people who really wanted information or to explore new technology. And that was nice. This sounds elitist and I guess it truly is.
But look at this shit now. The Internet, technologically, is far more superior, faster and vaster, but the way it is used both with that technology and by the users is actually terribly wasteful of time and resources. It attempts to function as an alternative to clerks and reps but lacks much of the agility they provide, when it even works.
Content that should be three to four sentences long is buried under paragraphs of exposition and verbose poor writing. Data that should be at our fingertips is pushed down in search engine results for punditry and commentary. (Somewhat) legitimate news sites have links to tabloid, pop, clickbait sites curiously disguised as headlines.
Pop-up ads, which everybody sort of agreed sucked in like 2003 and browser have built-in controls for them and have, I am pretty sure, never generated a single sale for their advertisers. None that I can prove anyways. I’ve never said, hey Vinnie, that’s a nice pair of boots you got there, where ya get those?” and had him say, “Clicked a pop up ad!” Seriously, that exchange or anything similar has never happened.
And the ads don’t even fucking work. I looked briefly for a set of tires for my truck on the Internet, bought some locally and for the next six months had the Internet trying to sell me tires that it couldn’t figure out I already bought.
Shaming, keyboard courage, doxing, ugh.
The Internet kinda sucks now. Make the Internet great again.
I just want to listen to this…
I miss the good old days when posting on-line required enough technical competence to create and maintain a blog. Back when we all figured out just enough HTML to so whatever we wanted to do. Back when the audience for blogs was mostly other bloggers, which made us a real community (at least in NOLA–certainly after Katrina). The amazing thing is that most bloggers were good writers. Maybe the impulse to write made us blog. Today it’s too easy to post stuff on-line: anyone can create a Facebook account and post bad writing. Now if you’ll excuse this grumpy old man, I need to find my Geritol.