The Internet’s “Wild West” Era: A Love Letter to the early 00’s Internet.
Now that we are at several months away from 2019 (as I am writing this piece), as well as me turning 30 years old — quite a monumental age for some (and yes I already had my quarter-life crisis, so I’m good) — I can’t help but reminisce of the past. I grew up watching cartoons and playing video games, but once I turned 8 years old, I found something that probably shaped my life forever: a desktop computer. I started messing around with it, using MS Paint to create “abstract paintings” (and by abstract paintings I mean using the pencil tool to draw a bunch of lines and filling the gaps with different colors), playing Minesweeper just to lose 3 seconds later (I never got the hang of it, still up to this day), but more importantly, I found something interesting: Internet Explorer. Along with the blazing fast speed of 56k Internet — and with the sheer luck that my parents were not using the phone — I would start exploring the “information superhighway”.
It was through this software that I started to learn the concept of “walkthroughs” for games that were difficult for me (Shoutout to GameFAQs). I started to learn more about my favorite games and all the secrets that they had. I started to see all the rumors of different games that were available only in Japan but that never came to the United States, hoping that one day these would arrive. It was an era where the internet was slowly becoming mainstream. However, I feel that it is during this era where the internet started to show itself as a unique place where one could find forms of entertainment that may have taken years for TV and other media to adopt. Even though the internet now is a place where everyone can receive their information in an instant, I can’t help but think of the early internet, particularly from 2000 to 2006 not just as the “Golden Age” of the internet, but as the “Wild West era.” Hear me out.
Of course, I would be supervised when I was using the internet when I was around 8. After all, it was a brand-new product, and my siblings wanted me to be safe lurking around the net. However, once I was around 10 to 12, I started to explore more sites that started to show a different side of the internet. No, I am not JUST talking about porn, but sites that offered a deviant yet unique form of entertainment that was unconventional for its time. Sites such as Newgrounds and AlbinoBlackSheep offered a variety of games and animations that were not seen in gaming consoles and TV respectively. These games and flash animations had a unique sense of humor that would somewhat shape the so-called “millennial humor” that can be seen in our current memes. Flash animations such as the Pico series, Mack Daddy Mario, Mario Twins, and the all-time classic “Badger, Badger, Badger” are some examples of classic flash animations that had a unique charm to them. Not only flash animations, but early videos such as Milk and Cereal, The End of Ze World, and Metal Gear Awesome proved to be viral hits even before the term “viral” became somewhat of a synonym to a popular video and not to a disease.
These videos would not be shared easily, as social media was as its infancy, and YouTube did not open its doors until 2006. The only way that you could find these gems would be through friends that had the same style of humor as you. Basically, “neo-nerds,” as instead of lunch conversations about D&D and Star Wars slowly turned into conversations of flash animations that we would find on these websites. The internet started to have its small niche community, one that was very passionate about sharing content. It felt like the “Wild West” in the sense that all these websites somewhat felt like small towns scattered around a wasteland that was slowly filled with the plethora of sites that one can find now. However, the usual outlaws were out there, and you would catch them without any warning — just like a gunslinger drawing his gun to his victim in mere seconds.
Being that this was an era where the concept of a “comments section” was not seen in many sites, there were flash animations that were “edgy” in nature. One second you would be playing a game where you would take a small dot in a maze, and once you reached your goal, you would be met with a terrible picture of Regan from the Exorcist, covering the entire screen, with a piercing scream that would wake up the neighbors from a 30 mile radius. This type of shock entertainment was found almost anywhere. You would be wandering around a website and see a random sentence that would read “visit lemonparty (dot) org” [NOTE: I am NOT making anyone go to that site. I am sure most of y’all know, but if not, and you want to visit, be my guest. You have been warned]. Once you would visit, you would see a terrible picture of three old men doing things that would be considered unholy to some. Just like Lemon Party, there are a plethora of sites, most of which are still up to this day, either as a testament to the idea that shock entertainment will keep on thriving, or just because there are still people who have not visited these. Either way, these types of websites were proof that the internet was a place that was ruthless in nature, where one could be in peace browsing the net, then suddenly encounter this type of content. Again, before comments sections began popping up in almost every website, one had to learn how to adapt to this kind of environment. One would easily see that a website or a video felt odd, and either lowered the volume, or scrolled down just in case it was a “shocker.”
Of course, most of these videos are nothing compared to some gore videos that one could easily access on Facebook or Twitter, but these were early signs of just how the internet was slowly growing to become a place where one could be free of showcasing anything. Not only that, but sites where one could easily meet up people started to appear too. Before Facebook and even Myspace, there were a plethora of internet forums where one could enter and meet people to discuss about anything. From video games to politics, these sites were open to any type of conversation. Of course, just as things started to get heated, there were moderators that would try to ease up the tensions that these conversations would bring. Nonetheless, unlike now where one cannot fully express their fits of anger in such a fashion without being called a racist or having it labeled as hate speech, these types of comments seemed like nothing out of the ordinary, and yet proved one thing: the internet was full of assholes. Just how the Wild West would be portrayed in media, one second everyone in the saloon (or the forum) would be having a good time, until someone all of a sudden would get heated up (in this case the comment) and start a brawl with everyone in the saloon (in this case, almost everyone in that thread).
I am not advocating for this to be normalized again, nor am I condoning this type of commentary, but what I am trying to prove is that old internet forums would be areas where almost any kind of hate speech would be seen, yet people seemed to slowly be adapted to this kind of behavior. In an era where “cyber-bullying” is something that is considered as a danger for today’s youth, this type of behavior would be shunned upon and even mocked by adults. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see just how internet speech slowly started to be shaped by people on the internet. Now with sites such as Facebook banning people for saying such trivial words as “Honk,” I can’t help but think that the main goal of these companies is to start controlling what is seen on the internet, and — in a certain way — tame it.
I could talk about how the internet was so different from before to now, but I feel that these few paragraphs could give someone a small glimpse of that era. There are many factors that contributed to the days of the frontier ending. Technological advances, societal changes, and creations such as the barbed wire ceased the vision of the west as this wild frontier where it was open range, free of anything. Unfortunately, now with the internet being heavily monitored by the government due to the Patriot Act and multiple trackers keeping track of your every Google search (yes, including that weird kink you thought of once and Googled it to make sure you weren’t the only one with it), it feels that the internet is not as open as it was before. Sure, you might find your “cursed” content on social media such as Twitter or Instagram, or your “dank” meme pages on Facebook — to which it all contributes to the so called “millennial humor” that it is heavily debated by many. I feel that those posts are an echo of the type of content that one would find before, and a small glimpse of how the internet was back then: A nonsensical place where you could be yourself. A place without many barriers and trackers. Truly, a “wild west.”
