You misunderstand. That was when the Internet was good. No amount of scat or gore or violent cartoons will ever hold a candle to the crushing algorithmic power of modern, corporate social media.
Millennials like us didn’t just grow up with the Internet, the Internet grew up with us too. We got to exploit bleeding edge technology to build the Internet we were using. Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are growing up on a mature but enshittified corporate social media landscape designed to exploit them for profit.
lostmypasswordanew@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Yes, but that was still before social media. As weird as it sounds, social media is probably more damaging than the early oughts shock sites
MY_ANUS_IS_BLEEDING@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Yeah social media just adds so much undue pressure, especially the non-anonymous ones.
People are constantly seeing perfectly filtered and perfectly arranged photos of influencers apparently enjoying the perfect life and then comparing their own reality and feeling inadequate.
The FOMO pressure to be always available and seek validation via DMs, comments and likes.
The bombardment of political slop and seeing the opinions of every single fucker in the world and a few million bots about some mundane shit is bad for your mood.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They killed the pro-ana site but replaced it with the mass normalization of lesser body images. Replaced stormfront with wide sharing of fascist talking points from people who wouldn’t call themselves national socialists. They sanitized the worst aspects of the old internet, but in trying to get people hooked they took a lot of the same things they sanitized and promoted versions that were palatable to the masses. They made an Internet that feels safe in the same way painkillers do.
shneancy@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
trueee, the closest i got to social media back then was a forum for a game i liked with less than 50 regular members