to preface, i grew up pretty addicted to this thing. i can honestly say that i've spent a lot of time on here, more than i should have, instead of focusing on having a real life, real friends, real experiences.
when i was young, the internet was basically this cool place where you felt up to date with all the latest artistic and intellectual happenings. i loved going on omegle and early youtube, where things weren't so censored and creators felt more small and less celebrity-like. there was lots of gross out content, sensationalized music videos, cool online games, things like that. i remember watching youtube videos made out of presentation slides, often for presenting riddles or horror stories.
as i get older, and i'm about in my early 20's, i feel like the internet has started to feel more like "real life" in a way. i honestly can't really identify when things started to feel different. things feel more politicized and less lighthearted. sometimes i go on here and i just feel stressed for some reason. it's hard to tell if it's by design or if it was irrevocably inevitable. at this weird point in my life, i honestly wish i could go out and do more real things (and i do, but, not a lot), to finally break my addiction from the web.
what have your guys' experiences been like with the internet? i also can't tell whether i'm just growing up, maybe the internet still feels like this magical place for young people on it, or if there are bigger things happening to the online space that's shifting our modern relationship with it. and hey, i guess it would be a good thing if i could finally break my 20-ish year long addiction with this thing.
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>>666
perhaps it was a good thing in the end but i pretty much had a bad time. a family member had gotten addicted to the internet and exposure to certian things led me to watch porn and i was the unlucky retard who got caught. i remember getting promised for days on end that when i got older i would be allowed to take my computer to my room and that was swept away forever. meanwhile the aforementioned family member got away with it and even got a phone amd involved in several internet communities. i was pretty much isolated from the internet so i guess i didn't know things and people would rib me for it or just pretend i didn't exist so i was kind of down emotionally. then again i guess i dodged a bullet by not becoming a degenerate and focusing on my studies. around like 2013 or so is when i got a phone for the first time and thus more internet exposure and i pretty much watched a fuck ton of cat videos, wikipedia articles, read shitty webcomics and whatever youtube videos. i guess i had a mediocre time but i did learn a few things.
mediocre is an interesting way of putting it. i mostly think of the internet as traumatizing, and i had the opposite experience growing up. my parents didn't really care about monitoring or controlling my internet usage.
>>666
Played some flash games as a kid. Got unrestricted access at 13 and got into programming. At 15 I stopped using the internet to learn and started mindlessly watching youtube. At 17 I discovered 4chan (and soon after 22chan), and I admired it for the anonymity, creativity and pursuit of the extreme in all things. A few years later I understood that the website was worthless and that any second spent there was wasted. I couldn't leave.
A sampler of my experience:
>Robotic emergence: my favorite flash game
https://www.kongregate.com/games/robscherer123/robotic-emergence
>How to become a hacker: an article about the values and skills of "hackers", not the ones stealing credit card information, but the people who enjoy solving difficult programming problems:
https://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
>E;R - Star Wars: The Farce Engorges
>An entertaining review of the first star wars sequel by an edgelord
https://youtu.be/sg29Sa6QFes [Play]
>Bill Wurtz - La de da de da de da de day oh
>Unique musician and video artist
https://youtu.be/V0HCZ4YGqbw [Play]
>A collection of fun /mu/ threads, including one dedicated to editing album covers to make them about ordering pizza
https://desuarchive.org/mu/thread/86651864
>world's end girlfriend - 100 Years of Choke
>the type of music that I could only find on 4chan
https://youtu.be/IEFsBYlXI3A [Play]
>>670
(Ruffle seems to struggle with the game, you should download the flash file and use the projector as opposed to playing on the site)
>>666
when I was a kid the internet to me was just whatever flash browser game I was playing at the time and nothing more.
When I was a teen the internet was something mysterious and magical. Something to be explored with many cool sekrit websites with sekrit cool clubs to discover.
Now as a young adult just like you OP the internet feels largely dead to me. The novelty and magic is gone knowing that most of the internet is just meaningless bot traffic, retards flinging shit at eachother in meaningless arguments always trying to have the last 'gotcha' reply or online influencers/ecelebs trying to sell you some trash or waste your time with meaningless often faked 'internet drama' or pointless shit like 10 minute videos where they just recite some twitter screencap or stupid 8hour long 'analysis' videos where they just repeat the plot of <insert media> without adding any meaningful commentary. It feels like there's barely anyone genuine left. People figured out that you can make easy money online and since than grifters have taken over
>>672
I can relate to this post. Grifters are probably the most obvious sign the internet isn't what it used to be. You know grifting is bad when e-begging is no longer shamed. I can understand giving creative people money, but there should be humility, not greed. Greed ruins so many things.
>>673
It seems that things always go bad once money gets involved. I guess it was inevitable that things would end up like this
>>672
>novelty and magic is gone
exactly. there's this essence of authenticity that is harder to find nowadays. you look at old forums and people had more character, more interesting and novel things to say, and were less jaded. online propaganda and bot spam is demoralizing and it's hard for authenticity to get the traction it needs to sustain itself.
it feels like people are more pressured to fit in and demonstrating creativity is punished or not rewarded as much as it should be. no one was as judgemental back then as they are now on the modern internet, at least based on what i observe.
>>675
I get that being a wage slave sucks but the internet needs to be selective of who they reward with internet fame. The way total hacks are reward for mediocrity really shows me how normalfags outnumber non normalfags.