The cultural momentum that carried on after that ended in 2007. It really does seem to have been the high point but also the end for the internet as it was in my era. I used to participate on half a dozen different forums in that era. People generally footed the bills to run them out of their own pocket. Moderators were volunteers. It was about people who loved something and about community.
It's all about large corporate IP owners manufacturing consensus and armies of bots and PR firms astroturfing everything to push their preferred narratives. Everything is just low quality corporate slop now.
I suppose 2007-2017 was an interesting era for the internet. There was still some freedom on the internet but corporate platforms probably used it as a lure to get to a certain market share and then it was just a matter of time before they could instigate a turn key tyranny. We had a surprisingly good run I suppose. The arab spring was organised on social media. The populist uprisings from Gamergate to Brexit to Trump. The results were pretty sub optimal but the elites had certainly lost control of the narrative and really shit themselves after 2016.
Each successive crisis in the system will be used to crack down on new forms of "misinformation" - medical, political. I'm sure the next will be economic misinformation when people start complaining there is no bread on the shelves and petrol is not available at any price. After that - who even knows.
We're doomed to live in the year 2001 forever.
The cultural momentum that carried on after that ended in 2007. It really does seem to have been the high point but also the end for the internet as it was in my era. I used to participate on half a dozen different forums in that era. People generally footed the bills to run them out of their own pocket. Moderators were volunteers. It was about people who loved something and about community.
It's all about large corporate IP owners manufacturing consensus and armies of bots and PR firms astroturfing everything to push their preferred narratives. Everything is just low quality corporate slop now.
I suppose 2007-2017 was an interesting era for the internet. There was still some freedom on the internet but corporate platforms probably used it as a lure to get to a certain market share and then it was just a matter of time before they could instigate a turn key tyranny. We had a surprisingly good run I suppose. The arab spring was organised on social media. The populist uprisings from Gamergate to Brexit to Trump. The results were pretty sub optimal but the elites had certainly lost control of the narrative and really shit themselves after 2016.
Each successive crisis in the system will be used to crack down on new forms of "misinformation" - medical, political. I'm sure the next will be economic misinformation when people start complaining there is no bread on the shelves and petrol is not available at any price. After that - who even knows.