Ask Lemmy

25987 readers

1762 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

candyman337

[email protected]

110

Why did it used to be so fun to be on the computer? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

i know i know enshififiasdition yeah yeah

but .... it's been so long, it brings a tear to me eye.... what made the old internet so captivating?

check out this graph as well: https://twitter.com/hexprax/status/1758656167893688556

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

In response to the tweet: the years don’t align perfectly but I was a teen around then and I can think of a few explanations:

There weren’t forever wars and it was easy to be optimistic after the Cold War ended
Guns were unpopular (like the assault rifle ban passed Congress in 1994 and it’s hard to imagine that happening today since people fetishize guns now).
Certain drugs temporarily went out of fashion. Heroin and crack, especially, had killed some high profile celebrities and MDMA was the “cool” new drug. Big Pharma hadn’t really started marketing opiates.

Those are just guesses but most people probably didn’t have full blown computers, much less internet, in 1994 so I doubt it had to do with that. Word processors and video game systems were pretty ubiquitous by then but I knew plenty of middle class people who didn’t have home computers that went online.