I’m talking about what they say at 8:20:
Bulletin boards, forums, blogs. The main difference to today was twofold:
For one there were no algorithms fighting to keep you online at any cost – at some point you were done with the internet for the day, as mind blowing as this may sound.
But more importantly: The old internet was very fractured, split into thousands of different communities, like small villages gathering around shared beliefs and interests.
These villages were separated from each other by digital rivers or mountains. These communities worked because they mirrored real life much more than social media:
Each village had its own culture and set of rules. Maybe one community was into rough humour and soft moderation, another had strict rules and banned easily.
If you didn’t play by the village rules, you would be banned – or you could just go and move to another village that suited you better.
So instead of all of us gathering in one place, overwhelming our brains at a townsquare that in the end just leads to us going insane, one solution to achieve less social sorting may be extremely simple:
go back to smaller online communities.
I learned a lot, and made a lot of IRL friends, on various message boards over the years. ADVrider.com used to be a lot of fun but I haven’t checked it out lately. One thing that was cool was looking for vehicle-specific forums, like a forum for EX-500’s or F150’s. These forums were great for keeping whatever car you have running, and were full of knowledge on the problems found in specific cars. A lot of them still exist.
The similarly named AVSForum is still a great resource full of insanely knowledgeable A/V nerds. The 3si forum is still the place to check if you happen to be into Mitsubishi 3000GTs or Dodge Stealths.
I miss my little crew at MarcSeal.com/forum, a small guitar community. I don’t like to brag about my accomplishments, but let’s just say I was a moderator.