how it feels to be on Lemmy rn

tteok@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 3403 points –
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Honestly I just jumped to Lemmy after dndmemes sent me this way and it feels like I'm delving into early internet forums back in the day, fresh and new and full of excitement for the future

I know exactly what you mean. Fresh optimism. For fun, not for money or algorithms.

Fresh optimism for the communities and the new apps all being furiously worked on right now. I’ve got Memmy, Mlem, and Voyager all installed currently and watching the rapid development of each is a hell of a lot more interesting than the one Reddit app that’s been dogshit since they bought it and stuffed it full of ads and is only getting worse.

I should just probably try them all but do you have a preferred one so far? Currently using Memmy but honestly I finally dove back into something like this after a proper year without Reddit, to see how this community is doing and to see what the vibe is like.

Remember when forums would let you put unsanitized HTML in your signature and people exploited it to flood them with pop ups and redirects? Lemmy's bringing that back, too!

Came for the decentralization, stayed for the nonconsensual lemon party redirects.

I was on a forum looking for something once and someone had a flash game as their sig. It was like Portal The Flash Version but the gun was on a rail. And the dimensions of the flash viewport were like a typical sig, so it was pretty interesting just to play a game in such a strange aspect ratio. Not really relevant to anything but I haven't thought of that in a really long time.

put an old man face on that kid and you've nailed it

I think fediverse users are on average much older than other social medias. I often see polls on mastodon and the most prominent groups are very often the 35-45 year olds. I feel like im in the minority of my age (19) caring about free software and it makes me sad that nowadays tech has to be so dumbed down because even the young can't use computers just like my grand parents. It's crazy how my classes most people only knew how to open instagram, but they had no clue how to save a word document

You might be right. I'm new here but so far I'm amused and surprised by the amount of 'classic' memes going around.

I think for many of us in the mid 30s early 40s it boils down to having experienced a version of the Internet where content was king, not personality. Anyone could get their website out there but it was what you put in it that mattered, not who put it there (unless you were an actual celebrity). You could bump into all sorts of new information just by clicking from link to link. Then we saw and experienced first hand the rise of the search algorithms, the echo chambers, click bait and the cult to fluff that social media became pretty much since the beginning.

The Internet we have now is certainly shinnier but only the way plastic is. When I look at the information being churned out and that gets passed around more often I can only think about it in terms of pollution. The equivalent of styrofoam pellets being manufactured for single immediate use that cover the information sphere and that just end up making people's life worse in the long term. Twitter, Meta and the like (none holds a candle to TikTok though) are no different from the factories that have been spilling poison down the drain for decades. The latter pollute our physical space, the first pollute our emotional an mental environments.

I honestly don't think I'm being a grumpy old fart (though I am). This is the reason I preferred reddit a while ago and why I now came here. It sort of feels like those days when 'browsing' was about stepping out of your own world experience and into completely different ones.

End of rant. Thanks if you made it here. :)

Yes Geocities web rings with rotating skulls was the content king!

Or maybe people rapping in AOL chat rooms

Sure, yeah trash is trash. If that's how far you wanted to go you'd have plenty of it. But the web didn't necessarily trend towards it. Plenty of other spaces where to go. Later, in the mid-late 2000s marketing saw how eagerly people swallowed trash and so the race to the bottom took speed. Most of the web today is aimed at the lowest common denominator. The rotating skullz are but the grand-daddies of the Tiks and the Toks IMO.

Totally, many early forums and bulletin board systems had good discussion, it wasn't all trash at all! But, there was also a lot of trash. The internet has always been a weird mix of wonderful information and genuine useful tools, and a blazing dumpster fire of shit, on fire.

Honestly, I think we have better content nowadays, but said content is harder and harder to find. At the same time, said content probably gets more and more viewership as well.

I feel like if I was born in the 90s, I would've killed to have content like Kurtzgesagt or LinusTechTips or Wendover or NileRed or Adam Ragusea etc etc. Although you had your Bill Nyes and Mythbusters and whatnot, there couldn't have been a way to make high-quality content without the resources and reach that a platform like YouTube offers today.

You're not alone. Most people I know don't even sort their files into directories anymore, they just search for it (particularly in cloud storages like Google Drive).

In fact, when I took the introductory computer engineering course at my HS, the teacher made everyone sort their Google Drive files as an assignment.

I just found out that people use search on thier computers to find files and have no idea where anything is located. It hurts just thinking about it.

And paradoxically they refuse to use search engines to find anything on the Internet.

I completely lost control of my folder structure after keeping all my old backups (before i had a network storage) on HDDs and later copying them over as Backup-Pc-X, Backup-Pc-Y, etc. I should clean up since years. But hey, so far the search worked :D

That I can understand. I have a folder on desktop I dump everything into that's loose to sweep under the rug. Desktop23. Desktop22, etc. And these folders go back years on my external drive. They will not be organized ever.

But I have the feeling you understand where things are supposed to go. The people I'm talking about have zero idea what's in thier computer.

I have been ill this year and as I am pretty limited in what I can do, I am finally sorting stuff properly. It is just that I usually don't delete anything. Every time I change a device I dump stuff based on file type on folders either on cloud, device or external HDD thinking I will come back to it. Instead, I never come back. And because of my work, a bunch of stuff is pretty depressive so sorting a decade of files and images I would want to forget feels impossible. But I am making a dent.

Digital detritus = SO not important. … i mean RELATIVELY. Trust me.

Go live your life, insofar as you are able to, friend :-)

Find an actual sharing group like #BuyNothingProject or #ToolLendingLibrary or something crew to kick it with.

or https://shareable.net for reading (been ages since I checked it).

How do they find anything on the internet without using a search engine? (I used to love Stumble Upon!)

They ask other people in forums, and wait for an answer.

Same, my first semester we had a course litterally about creating word and excel documents, how to format text etc... in a software engineering program. Or other example, (2nd year, 2nd semester of the year on a 3 year program) last semester, we had a semester team project that we had to give at the end. At first, I litterally had tell them how to commit changes to the github repo, because they only did it though the web UI. How they got this far into the program I honestly have no clue as we litterally had a course in the first year that had a few classes dedicated for proper git usage

What the fuck is wrong with people, first cutlery just being flung in a drawer any which way, now apparently files just go wherever it's all a cloud or whatever anyway isn't it

I think there are a lot of computer illiterate people I most generations but there seems to be an overlap of late gen x/early millennial thst kind of had to learn how computers and the internet worked if they wanted to use them as tech wasn't as easy to use. Plus anyone older than that who used computers where more often considered nerds.

These days more and more people don't even have a computer and just do everything through their phones.

but there seems to be an overlap of late gen x/early millennial thst kind of had to learn how computers and the internet worked if they wanted to use them...

That's exactly what happened. It's like how my grandfather knows absolutely everything about cars, he had to work on his if he wanted to use it.

Not only you. My age range between 20-30 also felt the same.... Haiyah

oh the turntables, back in the 90's the stereotype was the 10 year old showing the 60 year old how to use the "computator", nowadays maybe it's the 60 year old showing the 10 year old there are open source alternatives for image editing apps, office apps, and most things with a tappable tablet interface.

The 60 year old explaining the beauty of FOSS to a someone that only cares about tiktok and thinks Google is the internet

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This image brought to you by the time-period when anything with young people had to have skateboarding, surfing, or roller blading.

It was the law.

Well in this case it’s quite clever since he’s literally surfing the web

Hard to believe our hover-keyboards used to have wires!

I was told it was weird to use the phrase "surfing the web" the other day. I am not even that old.

??? I'm Gen Z and I use it sometimes, weird according to who?

After Gen Z, do we start over with Gen A?

Kind of. People are calling the next generation after Z Gen Alpha.

But that's subject to change. They used to call Millennials Gen Y or Mini Boomers.

I thought Gen Y was the generation before millennials? Like millennial parents?

Gen Y eventually got named millennials is how I always heard, but I'm a ditzy millennial so probably wrong

Don't forget your dual-wheel, 4D+ mouse!

Ngl this probably would make it easier to scroll websites without fixed widths, as well as diagrams.

I use shift and the scroll wheel. That’s on Ubuntu though. Not sure about other OSes.

Yeah me too but my mouse kinda sucks and jumps to hyperspeed on a small movement.

I wonder if this works under Microsoft ® Windows ®

Two eyes ... Two scroll wheels

Makes sense to me

This picture makes me nostalgic for an era I barely remember being alive for.

sorry if i made anyone feel old

We just completed another cycle, we are back in the 90s

Back in the 90s

I was on a kind of famous internet discussion site

I'm trouser_mouse (trouser)

trouser_mouse, don't act like you don't know

And I'm trying to hold onto my past

It's been so long, I don't think I'm gonna last

I guess, I'm just trying to make you understand

That I'm more trousers than mouse

Or I'm more mouse than trousers

is this a crossover between my two favorite shows?

Hold on to your butts - we’re gonna surf the web

If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 Kb/s, you're gonna see some serious shit!

If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 56Kb/s, you're gonna see some serious shit!

FTFY

Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbdudududududueeeeperrrrrrpeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuhhhhhheeeeeeeeeg shhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch brrrrrr

Did you guys know that lemmy is a series of tubes

I love you guys. Lemmy is seriously the most fun I've had online in a long while. Also loving the serious posts and comments.

If I could find my Encarta Encyclopedia disks, I would look up where this image comes from!

Yes I am old.

I used Encyclopedia Britannica books to do homework.

Oh! Remember when they had yellow pages for the internet

Does it really feel like the old web though? I'm a zoomie (22) and I kinda developed a rose tinted nostalgia for the old web (Windows 98 era) where I didn't even live in (tbf apparently a lot of zoomers have some nostalgia obsession with some sort of era).

Veteran lads, can Lemmy capture the old web feeling?

Right now, because it’s still growing and developing, Lemmy has this sudo-wild west felling to it. Like anything can happen.

This was how things were in the early days of the internet. With no way to know how things are going to turn out, people are just hanging out. Smaller groups interacting with each other, and just having fun.

It feels like a reboot, or a modern revision of the how things were.

As an old YTMND user, this is probably as close as it will ever get to what I experienced back then. I'd say have fun with this while you can, lol.

But they will never know what is like to be under the fear of a cold war and a nuclear attack...oh, wait, shit!

Mr. Putin, bring down this wall!!

I think people say it's got a bit of an old school feeling to it more because it feels a little bit lawless, and new, and experimental - a wild-west with a user base still finding its feet and expanding and figuring out what this place is and what communities will form.

I've been kicking around the internet since the 90s so it's quite a nice feeling, although not quite the same!

Yeah for one we didn't have up-points on all our posts and comments, and even in more active BBSes, forums, or chat rooms, you rarely had as many people in one "place" at a time. Really your only method of interaction or "reacting" or registering approval/disapproval was through writing something of your own.

And nothing ever went viral, because no one but a bunch of nerds cared about what happened on the internet.

The Internet felt like a brand spanking new wild West back in the 90s like there was so much to discover and explore. You don't understand the novelty of having all the information at your fingertips immediately. What was that actor's name in that movie that one time? What was the name of that song with those lyrics? Missed last week's episode, used to just hope you can catch it on summer reruns, but with internet you could look up whatever you missed.

Lenny right now feels like a wal mart brand replacement for something you had a long time that just broke and you're still trying to find a long term replacement. It's got some of the features, a fraction of the content, a bunch of new words to learn, and a lot more bugs, so who knows. It's just a message board at the end of the day so I'm not sure if it brings anything new to the table like 90's internet did.

BBS had threaded discussion and different topics and servers in the 80s, a lot like the fediverse

Yes and no. It should be a niche forum covering competitive speed fisting but it's a really bland version of internet 2.0

Not even close.

It does a bit. Modern internet has walled gardens and constant rage bait. Havent seen it yet here.

The original vibe was one of lack of consolidated info, extremely niche groups, and a lot of self discovery. This is so far beyond anything of that nature I find the comparison straight up weird. The lack of rage harkens back to maybe late 2000s but definitely not the early 90s to win98 vibe.

No, not even close. The web was pretty shit and — get this — nothing you ever did on it counted.

[cries in screeching modem sounds]

Plus there's not enough dancing baby gifs or under construction signs.

Or screeching primary colors, textured backgrounds, or badly rendered fonts. Or <blink> and <marquee>.

Or

You are visitor number 37 Since two years ago

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Partially. The main feeling of old is the greater sense of community, even if everyone is a named anonymous. People don't have to fight for attention around here. If you want to see a better visual representation of mid 90's internet, check neocities.org

Yeah I've already heard about that. I absolutely love those website designs. Each site beautifully represent the creator's personality, which makes it fun exploring these sites.

There are several eras of the web.

I think Lemmy feels very much of the "Web 2.0" era, which came about in the mid-to-late naughties. When MySpace and Facebook and blogging were all the rage.

So not the same "old web" era as Windows 98. If that makes sense!

yeah, we'd need more Geosities banner ads and <flash/> html tags to go back to the Macweb1.0/Mosaic era. ....Sometimes I still visit zombo.com to feel young again.

The UI is much nicer than way back in the day. It's a hell of a lot faster, and there are way more people. But the feeling of posting something without having your data collected is bringing me back though.

The fact that this is true is honestly my favorite part of Lemmy. I love the old school feeling of it being a novelty and a free for all and a work in progress all at once.

We’ve had the internet inside all of us this whole time ✨

Wait, the internet is on computers?

What is a computer?

Where's the cursor? Where's the eraser?

Does it bother anyone else that the mouse is coming out of the left side of the keyboard? Did they actually configure keyboards like that at any point?

The whole interface was so alien back then it didn't really matter. It was going to feel weird no matter what. It's only after several decades and a generation that it's started to feel like there's a "natural" configuration.

Yup, I might be misremembering, but there were at least a couple Sun Solaris keyboards with PS/2 style connectors on the left. Maybe some old Apple ones as well.

This art actually looks like it's based on an Apple Extended Keyboard II. It's been a really long time, but if I remember correctly, those had ADB ports for the mouse on both the right and left side of the keyboard (you could use either, or possible both for other ADB devices).

Wouldn't you plug it in on the left so you can have the wire loop round to use with your right hand?

I always do it this way when using a mouse with a laptop or keyboard with USB built in.

Edit: Think I misunderstood your post actually! I don't think they made keyboards with PS2 connectors on the side, but they certainly might have done!

Ride the information superhighway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv_utSYQIFA

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=sv_utSYQIFA

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

I love the idea of an open-sourced version of YouTube, however, there are no subtitles or any good enhancers on that site. Am I missing something there?

It's a frontend to youtube withohut ads and with sponsorblock baked in. I think subtitles are available if the original video has them.

This post has me excited for my new adventure with Lemmy. I've decided to make the transition from Reddit, tired of their new changes and other bullshit. Cheers to a new adventure.

New to here, as for now: better than calckey and mastodon

More different than better, for me anyway. I like masto a lot for long intimate conversations that are sort of half-public, but can dip seamlessly in and out of DMs, all in the same thread.

I just heard that international standards now stipulate that when referring to Internet and the WWW, that it is no longer a requirement to capitalize. its just internet and the web now, if anyone still even uses those words.

I’ll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I stop capitalizing the I in Internet.

Hang on, i'm still using the Information-Superhighway? What do we call that now?

the old town information road

The fuck? I thought it was all a series of pipes... Did I fall behind?

But what about the interweb/Interweb? And why is the symbol a blue e with some lines through it if it starts with an i/I?

/s

I hate a moral coward, one who lacks a manly spark I just detest a man afraid to go home in the dark I always spend my evenings where there's women wine and song But like a man, I always bring my little wife along!

I'm a member of the Midnight Crew I'm a night owl, and a wise bird too Home with the milk in the morning Singing the same old song! Rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun Early to bed, and you'll miss all the fun Bring your wife and trouble, it will never trouble you Make her a member of the Midnight Crew

The fun it doesn't stop 'til twelve on happy old Broadway So what's the use of going home, until the break of day? Now, something confidential, whisper not above a breath I once went home at two AM, and scared my wife to death

I'm a member of the Midnight Crew I'm a night owl, and a wise bird too Home with the milk in the morning Singing the same old song! Rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun Early to bed, and you'll miss all the fun Bring your wife and trouble, it will never trouble you Make her a member of the Midnight Crew

I never shall forget the night I made six robbers run Although I didn't have a knife, a blackjack, or a gun I proved myself a hero of a very high degree I ran for home, and six of them, were running after me

I'm a member of the Midnight Crew I'm a night owl, and a wise bird too Home with the milk in the morning Singing the same old song! Rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun Early to bed, and you'll miss all the fun Bring your wife and trouble, it will never trouble you Make her a member of the Midnight Crew

Lemmy is like a big circus tent full of scary, boring creatures and pornography

Where is all this pornography ? So I can shun it, obviously.

There is a whole lemmy server dedicated to that.

LemmyNSFW.com

I shun it several times a day. It's exhausting.

Hang on I'm just shunning it myself but once I'm done I'll let you know

Perfect! This is exactly what people say about everything good on the internet in the early days.

One of my friends tonight told me I was cool for having Windows 95.

Why yes. Yes it does. Does anyone have the tim and Eric innernette sketch? It’s been gone from YouTube for a while

Reddit just nuked all my accounts, nice to back to a more open community!

(first post)

Wait what, how

They only alternate theory I have is I use a VPN and that IP was flagged from another users abuse. But since there is no way to talk to the admins its all said and done. Also I bounce accounts (not to evade) as I have been doxxed on reddit more than once I keep my posting compartmentalized. They would all come back to that IP and would be seen as multiple ban evasions or an excuse to kick me. I'm pretty vocal on, well was vocal, about where the site was heading...

RIP Aaron