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I’m not that much crazy older than you, but I do remember well being a teenager at the peak of the dotcom craze, being a heavy internet user, and even back then having a vague feeling that the ad riddled, desperately monetized (and shitty) websites built on the back of mostly investment capital run amok felt a little shitty as an end user. It’s hazy now and lost to time (the internet is not actually forever it’s like ~10 years old at most now) but i vividly remember pages that became harder and harder to navigate because of invasive ads, and sites that’d somehow embed malware on your computer that’d spam you with weird porn popups when your parents used the machine - it all feels vaguely similar to now, albeit much sleeker. Adware in my opinion is bordering on malware to the point I find the definitions indistinguishable. It collapsed then for good reason, and IMHO similar conditions as to now. I don’t want to live through that as a fully grown adult with a tech career now, and it worries me a lot.

What arose from the ashes of that bubble event became great so maybe a reset is needed, but for me personally, it’d be a disaster.



> the internet is not actually forever it’s like ~10 years old at most now

The internet has existed for longer than the web which is already 30 yrs at this point. Not sure I catch your point that it's 10 yrs old.


They're talking about a very similar idea as the article, that the early internet is disappearing as everyone moves to new stuff.


> it’s like ~10 years old at most

Wikipedia is from 2001, Archive from 1996. IRC still exists as do retro games or the demo scene. There's still some of that good stuff around, but you can't really imagine it being founded today, at least not with the same cultural enthusiasm. Such an optimistic time...




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