I was going down memory lane, I graduated in 96. But Internet culture of the mid 2000s to mid 2015. Seemed like there was always some stand out video or event ranging from chocolate rain video, nyan cat, amazing horse, I like turtles, why does the Internet seem so stale lately? I just realized a lot of this fun stuff stopped around 2014 or became less prevalent the closer we get to events that started dividing us, like gamergate, Trump canidancy in 2015. God this last decade has just sucked and it just keeps getting worse. How did we go to so much hope and promise to where we are now? Even reddit sucks now
With the evergrowing flow of users, normality became the expectation. The internet bar club disappeard to become real life 2.0, and in real life, you are supposed to use money, and inner jokes don’t work. We went from “you shouldn’t post personal information to the internet” to “If you don’t put your real life profile on the internet, you are a weirdo who tries to escape real life”. The new world has been claimed by the old.
Though, in an easier way than in real life, you can become a cyberhermit. Leave social media, and even though there are a lot less people out of here, if you find active forums or chatrooms, you’ll find some everlasting internet culture.
It was never really gone, just got hidden by money and large scale hypersocializers.
Pleroma is a fediverse service where there are way less people than here, but it is more “childish” (make me think of very early 2ch-4chan). You have also misskey, though they mostly speak japanese there. For anon culture, you have still IRC, and some little open chatrooms through the fediweb. Though it’s hard to find similar places to early 4ch that aren’t nazi paradises.
Good luck out there!
Yep. Finding the small scattered imageboards which ban or reject politics and combat spam is difficult, but rewarding. And they tend to be special-interest focused sites, like erischan or lainchan, so they’re not all going to be interesting to everyone. trashch /comfy/ is a possible counter-example.