Ya, WWW became a matasticised cancer of stupid right onto people's eyeballs for profit over society seeing how to keep its poop in a group, replaced w/ AI diarrhea. Shitification has been miniaturized & 'democratized'. No shit it's not "The Jetson's", moreso 'The Debtsons' 'Ideocracy R' US.' crap.

In case you haven't read it yet, @catvalente.bsky.social has a whole *series* on this concept in her usual elegant blend of structured reasoning and batshit fury. catvalente.substack.com/p/move-fast-...

We didn't know it, but we were in a race with the internet. We had time to update our education systems to cope with it, but fumbled and we lost the race. Now kids can barely read out of highschool. Next to no critical thinking(need to be told what to do, always). Read what teachers are saying. grim

Buddy, the generations that got brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News supposedly had these skills.

Yes, they had the outdated 'skills' that weren't/aren't enough to cope with the internet. Instead of jumping into action, they shrugged their shoulders and called it a fad(in the 90s). Surprise! It wasn't a fad and has become a hulking uncontrollable juggernaut that will destroy all in its path.

So you think the better part of a century of people have had no critical thinking skills taught in school?

In terms of the internet? Of course. What little of media literacy they pick up in school, is not enough to cope with the unending onslaught of the net. I ain't been in school for a loooong time, but judging by what the teacher forums are saying, the kids are cooked.

What do you mean "in terms of the Internet?" They've either been taught critical thinking skills or they haven't

I'm not smart enough to put in words that make sense. Its a different mindset to be 'on guard' in meatspace vs cyberspace. They were prepped for meatspace and given NOTHING for digital. The kids have a different outlook on the net than even x/mils, maybe even early z. I'm dumb and suck at words.

Yeah I'm a little confused You mentioned critical thinking but also reading level of the kids and then media literacy? I don't think distinguishing phishing and fake news takes any different critical thinking from snake oil salesmen and yellow journalism

I sell antiques and there is a college, nearby. The students buy film cameras and digital cameras like crazy. I think many of GenZ realizes we need to go back to simpler times.

That is true Same with phones gameboys ps2/3 or what ever number it is

They’re up to 5 now. And yet they still have no good games.

Bring back the modem.

youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0?...

My partner set this sound as his voicemail, people get confused. He doesn’t get spam messages though. 😅

Or any voicemails really. 😂😂🤣🤣

bhhhhhhhh,,,,dootdeetdotdeetdootdeetdootdot,,,grrbxxxbrrrrfskbxhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgerdungerdungxxhxhhhhhgxhhhhhhhh

yup. the connect sound !! .. that's it alright !!

Mine was in the laundry room. In the garage 😂

You are onto something here, Señor! youtube.com/shorts/VtNle...

That can be said when cable first entered the households.

And letting it follow us around all day and all night!

Same as landline rotary phones before that. The invention of the 30 foot curly cord was the beginning of the slippery slope.

Aided in no small part by news leaving its dedicated time slots and becoming a 24/7 thing.

Maybe it started when the phone had access to more than one room?

I never carry a phone. If you want to talk to me, use my landline.

Mom picks up the phone and you lose your connection. 😫

Only another 8 hours to go till that .BMP picture you are downloading arrives.

It’s absolutely NOT related to high speed porn.

It was all downhill after the "internet" stopped looking like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlVh...

And you could only use the phone OR the internet

Humans weren’t meant to know how fucking stupid so many humans are

Damn this might be right… 🤯

I think it started when you no longer had to use your landline to see your email.

Society lost its shit many times before the internet ever existed.

Hahaha a Real good one?

Take me back! It was better! Your work day and your private life were two separate things.

With peak times so we all couldn't be on together at that

Hello! We are The Unity Center Cincinnati, supporting families through peer support, education, and creating a friendly environment. Please help us spread positive energy by liking and following our account! 💙✨ #SupportFamilies #CommunityCare

It was letting those damn phones free from the wire that kept them captive.

Well, American society. It's information overload suffered by a society that isn't well educated, and accustomed to information limited by personal relevance. Here, they literally taught us how to identify misinformation and media bias during computer lab in Grade 9. Back in 2004...

Back when the internet had a bedtime and shared custody with the landline haha

The damn dial up connection had me doomed as a teenager trying to have a social life. My dad was a computer engineer for Unisys, man was always online.

My father was an engineer, too. "Stay off the phone for the next few hours. I'm downloading a 1MB file."

I was always in trouble for making a call and interrupting whatever he was doing.

Or when you quickly put the phone back on the receiver hoping it wouldn't mess it up, but it always did. After enough times, he just went and got a second phone line just for the computer.

That’s exactly what he did! I mean, it was a yellow kitchen phone with a rotary dial, and a 32 foot cord. The cord didn’t quite reach my bedroom down the hall, but pretty damn close. 😆

We moved so many times, but the phone was ALWAYS in the kitchen. My sister and I knew just how long the cord was so we could fight and mom couldn't stop us while she was on the phone. "Mhmm. Okay. B'bye." That's when we ran. Lol

kind of wild to think it took an hour to tap out 8,000,000 1s and zeros in glorified Morse code. 2400 baud (bits per second) was my starting point. and that does work out to 8.6 megabits per hour. it's strange to me that it was that low. A "CD quality" analog audio stream is 1 million times that.

maybe I'm just over estimating the average line quality. I do know that DSL went over pots lines and gave about 100 times that bandwidth. I think ISDN was a precursor and both just required like a higher quality line connection? perhaps it was limited by carrier multiplexing.

Ah, I missed that sound. It was the satisfaction of entering a new world and being connected to all. Then five minutes later mom would need to make a call. The internet, The whole reason I got my own landline in my room.

I remember how "simultaneous voice and data" was a big deal in the '00s, and yeah it was basically a repeat of the broadband revolution on mobile. But like many, I hadn't even noticed the problem. I already made fewer voice calls in favor of texting and email by then. Voice lost pretty early.

Phones in particular really did us in imo

society really lost its shit when they passed Citizen's United.

Funny how this allowed people like Musk and Zuckerberg to dominate so many lives. I don’t think these 2 would have ever become so powerful without cheap and easy Wi-Fi.

i didn't even use the internet until 2000 since they said computers would end the world in 1999

Nice. So true.

It’s its… 🙄

I miss having stationary phones.

Truth

That is because you got the internet over the phone line. When you were on line your phone rang busy to anyone who called. This created many many issues in families. If you were wealthy enough you had a second phone line installed for the internet. We never did. We waited many years for cable.

We’ve got so smart we’re killing our selves and don’t know it

We used to have to pick between the phone or the net and the computer sounded like robots being tortured when we made it connect to the web.

Bring back dail up!

The truth in this is as depressing as it is enlightening

Hear me out- the conspiracy the world would end in 2000…not quite but the world as most of us knew it certainly changed drastically starting right around 2000- internet, social media, cell phones etc- sure feels like the beginning of the end of a lot.

I was working at a cell phone store between college classes when 9/11 happened. In hindsight that one sentence maybe encapsulates my generational tech experience.

We had to take turns! You had a limited amount of time to be online. Then you had to leave the computer so your brother could have his turn. Then we had to go, like, read a book or something.

We put the whole house on the internet so we could talk to it and ask it questions. Humans work really hard at being lazy.

Word

"Society really lost it's shit" FULL STOP!

Those are the truest words I've seen in a while

Ain't that the truth!

Ya know, I never really thought of it like that.

The sweet spot was 2006 pre-iPhone; full desktop internet, Motorola mobile flip-phone, but leave home for awhile and get away from it for awhile.

I remeber having the 1st commercial grade cell phone plan which was Tracphone. Motorola phones were the only choice.

I had to pull out the little antenna to make a call or the signal would get lost in the midtown high rises.

My Motorola Vader phone was THE phone to carry bitd.

Yup. Mine looked very much like that. Internet was home on the Mac. The best of digital times.

I loved my Nikon 35mm digital camera + iPhoto, iTunes + iPod, all run from my iMac in a corner of the living room. Golden years ended when I had so many photos iPhoto wouldn't start and an upgrade to iTunes scrambled my playlists. All downhill from there.

Yeah, in 2002 I was finally able to ditch dial up on my pots line and get cable. Allowed me to sit on my cell phone and chat with friends while playing MMOs and Unreal. And then when I left the house the world was unsullied by the wider internet and social media

The best of times.

Take out the George w bush of it all and everything that's come from it (trump) it really was.

Yes. Speaking digitally. Not politically.

Craigslist was around in 1996

Yes, and back then it still had Casual Encounters.

Still does

Nah. Long gone. From wiki: On March 22, 2018, Craigslist discontinued its "Personals" section in the United States in response to the passing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which removes Section 230 safe harbours for interactive services knowingly involved in illegal sex trafficking.

Internet cafes if you absolutely HAD to look up something or check for important email.

A good road warrior always knew the best internet cafe in every foreign city.

I was getting red envelopes from Netflix in 2006 and was likely binging all of the X-Files. Absolutely 2006 was the best it ever got. I can't think of one thing since then I like.

Yeah, at this point I'm as overwhelmed as the system bus in that old desktop tower Mac was.

There is no way I would want to go back to traveling internationally without my iPhone. Makes everything soooo much easier and way less shit to carry. But then I don’t use most of the social apps so it’s really just a utility for me.

I hear you. I used to lug a shoulder bag the size of a small cooler just for my camera bodies, lenses and photography stuff.

In my house we still have one room for it. It's doable if you try hard enough to make it happen! I scream at that screen to turn off but it won't turn off

I love this exchange

back in those days it ran on souls of the damned, now it drains peoples souls directly on prolonged use

Watching that little box saying it was dialing up and the little lines going and you're like thank God, soon I can play Ultima Online and then the phone rings!!!! This is new walking uphill in the snow both ways to school.

Ah, Ultima Online… the only MMO that I ever gave a damn about. Good times.

Right?

Ho dic gairebé cada dia.

I think the problem is the speed. Opening a website or loading an image used to be a serious commitment.

Makes you almost miss that whirring dual up sound and the spinning wheel of death You’ve got mail

Soooooooo what I’m hearing is bring back AOL so I can use up all my free hours.

It's the count of criminals in parliament and evil mainstream "news" imo. The Internet, when free, is a godsend.

the perfidious australians invented wifi so that everyone else would stay up late talking to them

Best conspiracy theory ever. But I think you’re right. Australians and Japanese. My dad worked for 🇯🇵 mnc and our house was always up.

TV/online has evolved into something which will destroy many humans. Those who can adapt and learn some kind of "filter" for dealing w/ propaganda 24/7 streaming directly to your brain will survive. Weaker souls will sit forever doom scrolling, eventually turning into puddles of couch goo.

Smart phones. The end of us all. I typed this on an iPhone.

Ban WiFi and data. The only way to connect to the Internet should be via Ethernet as god intended. And only one computer per household for goodness’ sake.

I guess that's it. Ya that was the moment. I've been wondering when it was, but ya, the internet is too powerful for the human mind, now that it's been let out of that one room, we are NEVER squeezing it back in. It's in the air now.

I remember the days. 🤣

A couple other things ruined the internet, the main ones being social media, search engine optimization, and AI slop. And all three of those are about perverse incentives breaking social systems. In hindsight, we should have had economists, sociologists, and ethicists regulating tech since Mosaic.

I remember a Sprint commercial from, presumably, over 20 years ago, making fun of people staying inside to use the internet, and promoting smartphones as liberating you from the computer. Whoops.

Hello 👋 Nice to meet you Hope you’re doing good

We have no TV. We don't use devices in front of the kid. She's 3.5. She's reading @ 10 year old level. Children with TVs in their bedrooms was the start. Children with computers/gaming systems in the bedroom was the middle. Not surprising that parents and children staring at devices is the end.

I had ready access to at TV, computer, and gaming console as a kid. I also read above my grade level. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing isn't it?

You're here to fight about me bragging about my kid? Fuck off then.

When we took it away from scientists and academics using it to share research and actually ideas, and turned it into entertainment

I wish I had a house because I want to do exactly that. We need more friction

Human brains develop a lot more slowly than information technology we never stood a chance

You got it 💯

Everything used to exist within its own context, now it is everything everywhere all at once and I don't think our brains are biologically equipped for this

Amen

I remember the glorious early nineties on the internet, most of the people on the internet were decent nerds. You could expect reasonable intelligence and mostly people behaved or misbehaved in places designed for it.

👍

Yep, as I sit in my bedroom scrolling on my phone. I really need to get a dumb phone. 🫣

When video clips of people walking into fountains and poles hit AFV, that was a great indicator that we should have eased off on pocket-technology. In 2016, Pokémon Go issued warnings due to safety risks, too. We have seen a few red flags subtlety waving. youtu.be/LRrd5KZvgLA?...

Email was in beta mode when I was in college - we could only message people within our university (wisc.edu go badgers!). A friend was like, why would I go all the way to the computer lab to email my roommate or whoever, this will never catch on! I wish he’d been right honestly

People are ruled by their phones. They walk with heads bowed as if in worship, their gaze rarely leaving the screen, crossing streets, stopping in the middle of rush hour Manhattan sidewalks to obey their phone. Whoever is on the other side of that device owns them.

In 20-30 years just about everyone who understands that the internet is not needed to live a happy & successful life will be dead. It's super useful but to be absolutely dependent upon it is not smart. One Carrington event and it could all dissappear, leaving countless humans unable to function.

if the grid goes out the only survivors will be hillbillies and GenX and older

That’s why I keep this handy-dandy 1990s encyclopedia.

Here’s another good one. 🙂 www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-big-bo...

Agree. And nobody is planning for that. Thanks for putting your neck out. The internet is our greatest vulnerability. And we have twits in charge of safeguarding it. I regret my teens having phones in early 2000s. I think it affected their mental health in negative ways. All doing well, thankfully.

Idk if if it's on the bright side or not but at the least hundreds of millions don't have any access to the internet and likely will be okay if a Carrington level or greater event occurs. I think the Amish would do just fine. The greater our tech the greater our vulnerability and few talk about it.

Exactly. The indigenous people also will do OK. I don't have money, and I wonder, if I did, where would it be safe? I'd buy land with a well for my adult kids. Maybe the Amish will adopt me 🤣

This is a valid point. Not only one room, but in my experience that room was a family room or shared room where everyone could see what you were doing at any given time while online. #returnofthedailup

And you absolutely should be kicked off the Internet when your mom picks up another extension. {^}*]+=#€&]]]%^ NO CARRIER

It was all over as soon as nobody could check our history (or see if it had been deleted or not).

Yeah

I had this convo with my wife yday weirdly, the internet should have liberated us, greater shared knowledge / work from home etc but it’s become a cesspool which is poisoning society’s mind. Still, never mind hey.. have a great day 😃

That's true. Whoever was in there would come back out a little bit wacky with some strange things to talk about, but the rest of the family could absorb it without taking too much damage. Then it would be somebody else's turn.

All we needed was AIM

Hello 👋 Nice to meet you Hope you’re doing good

The internet was one of the best inventions and it was one of the worst inventions.

Nailed it.

cat's out of the bag and there's no way to put them back in.

When I was in college, only the rich kids had their own laptops. Most of us went to the computer lab at the library to use the internet.

I was in college in the late 90’s - all we had was the computer lab. I asked students in my teacher ed course if they could imagine college without a laptop and they were like, did you type on a TYPEWRITER?!! 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Oh before wifi. Yeah the computer was in the corner of the house near the phone line for AOL

Bring back the dial-up modem! and the daisy wheel printer!

yeah its getting really bad, more are realizing it.

I always thought it was when LMFAO broke up.

Ah, the good ol' days of dial up modems and AOL! Back when dinner time was about conversation, because no one was scrolling on smart phones. I may be wrong, but yes, I think we were happier then.

We may have to drive it all the way back to libraries.

And the internet machine had three large pieces connected by half a dozen cords and weighed at least 50 pounds.

There sure were a lot of family fights over the phone line, though.

Accountability lost.

And, more so, when we let kids have their own laptops that they carry around 24/7. It has ruined the younger generations. They have little ability to interact with other humans anymore. The young adults who work at Target seem incapable of basic human interaction. They're like robots. It's very sad.

Starting to feel like Y2K was our second chance to not make this mistake 😆

It's somewhat natural to blame technology for society's failures, but its rarely to actually blame. People blamed TV, Radio, and even printed books long ago. But it's always people weaponizing these things for ulterior motives to blame.

Hello 👋 Nice to meet you Hope you’re doing good

This sounds a lot like: "Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people."

The thing that makes the Internet unique is that it allows people to bypass the social strata that dictates behavior. You weren't finding "KKK TV" and even Klansmen knew they had to hide their faces. The Internet let them find echo chamber groups that normalized fringe behavior and removed shame

This ^

And having it not tie up the phone line for the entire household

You couldn’t internet when mom was on the phone, and mom was always on the phone.

We were spoiled with dads business line. We had internets and cell phones early. But that screeching in pain to dial up is missed.

Yep, here we are with our internet down...no TV, no radio, no morning alarm, NO HOT water. 🤦

It started with allowing Children to have a TV in their Bedroom.

That's what they said about books, magazines, telephone, radio, television, etc.

youtu.be/k1BneeJTDcU?...

furthermore, this was the room: bsky.app/profile/fain...

When smartphones became a thing for the majority of people in the world our entire society started to collapse because people stopped interacting with each other out in public.

Yup. People stopped using their actual brains.

Destabilize the 1% Ditch your smart phone

...wow. ...alrighty then

That is the understatement of the year.

It's like the internet went from "tool" to "way of life"

Is it hypocritical of me to be “liking” this post while on the toilet?

Hello 👋 Nice to meet you Hope you’re doing good

Why can’t that be your one room? 😉

Smart phones ruined the Internet. Suddenly it became the shit boomers used to fax each other

When we went from one TV in the living room with 4 channels to one in every room feeding us 300 channels of mind numbing garbage 24/7. youtu.be/nRnNDkHb0MU?...