Before it became dominated by three massive conglomerates? The Internet used to be like a Bitcoin of ideas, removing third parties from their intrusion into our intellectual "commerce". But we willingly allowed Zuckerberg, Page, and @jack to have control. A cautionary tale.

Here's a throwback to those halcyon days. One can see what the Internet once was and what it might have been.

http://www.links.net/

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

There was never a great Internet.

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Yes. I was young, but I remember thinking of the internet as this place of infinite possibilities. It was the feeling that I was interacting with something that hadn't been explored... like if we had discovered a new continent or something. It was really cool, and I'm sure part of that was being 12, 13, 14 years old and having an imagination. Still, I doubt kids today feel similarly. They are just using a few monstrous websites and don't even realize or care that there are other websites out there.

I think they also see the internet ad an extension of real life much more than we do/did, but that's a different discussion.

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I agree with this.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I remember feeling exactly the same way. There were all these little odd corners and bizarre sites that somebody out there thought up and cared about enough to put out there. You just had to discover them. There is still some of that that exists, but it has largely been destroyed or at least relegated to something very few will see. Most independent bloggers gave up freedom for convenience and went to someone else's platform.

Looking at Justin Hall's site makes me simultaneously happy and sad.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The internet is almost an endless supply of business opportunities.

The editorial part is still an endless opportunity as well.

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Those things are still there.

They're at reddit or 4chan or twitter or wherever instead of geocities.

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Well said.

Bonus points on how it basically became a tracking tool of the entire population.

I just saw an article that smart tv manufacturers are starting to sell televisions at a remarkably low margin because selling the data on your viewing habits is more valuable than the profit on televisions.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Stay your lane Bro

Somewhat related, Amazon is listening to you fuck:

https://medium.com/swlh/alexa-play-some ... 56df19613f

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Not me, I'm married with three kids. Its listening to arguing and baby shark requests. If someone at Amazon wants to jerk off to that...have at it.

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Interesting. I assumed there were issues with my television and computer but not something like that.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I was watching Jeopardy last night on Netflix and someone said 'I'll take Literature for 400, Alex' and Alexa chimed in that she didnt know the answer but I did so FUCK TECHNOLOGY! Hank 1 - Skynet 0

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Dialup bulletin boards were way more fun than the internet. Msgboards used to be more esoteric by default; try to imagine this place if only one person could be online reading and/or posting at a time. There'd have to be some kind of quality control otherwise one proper round of JLN/LTG could take up a whole day/night worth of content.

There was also that much more of a sense of community where you could casually start a thread like "can anyone help me get a bag of weed?" cuz the forums weren't "public" like these are. There tended to be more closer knit / cliquish groups like that.

That and you haven't lived til you're trying to wank it to JPGs downloading on a 28.8 modem. Talk about anticipation, eh? Plus there was something oddly fulfilling about getting on one of the proper pirate/watez boards and having enough credits to queue up downloading a game like rise of the triad while you slept...

...although as far as dialup internet goes, believe it or not the AOL warez scene was far and away the best thing going. You could forward e-mails with attachments ad infinitum, so people (even me) wrote AOHell clones with massmail scripts where people in a chatroom could !trigger signing up for massmails that would be tens to hundreds of apps, games, etc... And then just keep what you want, delete the rest, and resumable downloads FTW!

bonus = if you used a generated MasterCard to sign up for your free trial the account would last for a month or two, as opposed to the usual ~3-4 days you'd get out of the ol faithful 4250 prefix VISA =]

(And, of course, you got the cmaster.exe / "credit master" to bullshit your first AOL/internet accounts from one of those HPAVC dialup bbses you made the rounds on =)

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I remember getting a 14.4 and only one board getting up to 9600 and that still beat the shift if 2400. Hell, my brother had an old 300 baud modem. That was painful. It’s been a long time, luckily Files were small back then.

I never had any romantic delusions about it. For years in the early nineties, it simply meant Lexis/Nexis, which was expensive unless you were on campus.

And then came dial up AOL.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Well that just ruined my day. Thanks!

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Alexa, play back the sex from last night.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I dont remember anybody promising me anything

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What's a website

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That is classic Jet.

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Elections have consequences.

Jet wins this thread.

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Did you read this too? https://thebaffler.com/salvos/404-page-not-found-wagner

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Bryant Gumbel at a loss...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJku_CSyNg

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You don't have to hook the smart TV up to the Internet. It can't phone home without Internet access.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

Soon they will have 5g built in.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That’s a pretty insufferable article despite my agreeing with some of the points, mainly because it’s by a 25 year old who sounds like one. Fuck outta here with your internet nostalgia from *checks notes* you being 5 years old.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

FF’s promise was for hooked on phonics tapes and a dad who cared. So the Internet has been tough.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Ouch. Swing and a miss big man. Love my dad and never had much of a problem with phonics.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul