I miss when the internet was fun

Hello there. Today I’ve come back here to write some thoughts I had the need to put in order for a long long time.

This has a lot to do with the last article I wrote, about how I became a developer. Internet has been in my life practically since I was born, and I’ve been fascinated by it since I was very young. But that doesn’t happen anymore.

Before I throw up all my thoughts, I particularly want to highlight one tweet that made me feel something:

According to the latest news, I think I’m actually a Zilennial. But that’s not the point. The actual point here is that “surfing the web“, for me, was like a hobby. For introverts, it was probably a defining point in our lives.

When I was in my school years, once I got home, all that I wanted to do was being on the Internet. I usually started by checking some random site and ended discovering a hundred more. And I remember those times as the ones I cherished the most. I learnt something everyday. And I’ve made great friends, too.

So, when did that fascination end? For me there are 3 clear stages in all of my internet life.

First, there’s the early teen years, where I spent hours on the computer pictured above. I was mostly playing Neopets and searching for ~creepy unsolved internet mysteries~. Probably my favourite part was discovering different Geocities sites and going from one to another. Also MySpace which, for me, it’s still the best social media site ever.

I think that Geocities deserves a special spot in this post. There’s something romantic about them. Here’s a great article talking about the sites.

These were not done by designers. Common people were creating the web. They were literally telling you about the things they loved, about their feelings, about their thoughts. It comes to my mind one quote from a TV show I’ve been binge-watching these days:

Everyone is always pretending, that’s why the web is so great, cause no one pretends! You just put there who you really are

It’s a statement that, right now, with social media, I find so hard to believe. I totally sound like a boomer here, but I think we all can agree that we don’t now anyone that doesn’t try to keep a perfect façade in all social media websites. Myself included, of course 😌. Now everything looks so prefabricated.

I loved this post talking about Cameron’s world, something that right know could easily be in a museum. I love the final quote at the bottom of the page that says basically the same I wanted to express, but with more grace:

In an age where we interact primarily with branded and marketed web content, Cameron’s World is a tribute to the lost days of unrefined self-expression on the Internet.

Then the real teens came. That for me, they were my two real years of high school, because I studied in the same school since I was 3 until I was 16. In this time I was too busy with the usual high school drama, but I still loved checking everyday RookieMag, of which I talked in my last post, and of course: Tumblr! which was a proper revolution. I think that for everyone who was a teen in the 10’s it caused a before and after. You don’t say that’s so Twitter or so Facebook. But if you say “that’s so Tumblr”, everyone that has experienced it, probably gets it.

And then all the years after. That was when the routine began. In 2016 I created an Instagram account and started to look at Twitter religiously. Since then, I barely use my laptop anymore. My internet routine has become something that can be done from any mobile phone. I’m not sad at all, but in hindsight it made me wonder why I no longer find web pages as appealing as before.

So what changed? If you put it all together I think you can get to the same conclusion as me: Internet doesn’t seem as human as it was anymore.

Geocities, Myspace, Tumblr, even RookieMag (where you didn’t have to code at all to express yourself) were all pages where you could taste the humanity that was behind it. Maybe it was because at the beginning, people were naive users of the Internet, and it was not that cool to seem cool.

The show I quoted earlier is Halt and Catch Fire. And it had a few moments that really touched me, and that related a lot with my thoughts about this topic. Although they are not about the web, they refer to the same human factor that I found missing these days (spoiler-ish?):

The first one occurs while one of the central characters is playing an adventure-like game which a colleage made for her, and she realizes that the OS she’s coding should be something unique. So she explains a story about a plushie she had when she was young. It was nothing to write home about, but she gave it a name and then became so special to her. So she creates an OS that asks for your name and can refer to you a person, as well as asking you different questions to guide you through all the computer commands. As if you were having a conversation with another person.

The other big (and short, but powerful) moment for me, is when another central character decides to ditch the aforementioned OS, only to a realize a few moments later the new Macintosh has something that leaves him astonished: it has a voice.

Even though the designs may seem prehistoric right now, things like the the icons desgined by Susan Kare always gave that little touch of humanity. I find very difficult to think about something nowadays that has aged so well.

I also think that people are not aware of how little details can create a very unforgettable experience for their users. For example, having a dark mode in a website for anyone that entered after 7pm. Or having a nice error page like the one in Slack. I’ve put a lot of easter eggs in my website as well as a changing goodbye message depending on the time you visit it. It may sound stupid but these are the things that people truly remember and cherish. As everything in life, I think it’s the little things that count.

And another Halt and Catch Fire quote comes to my mind, someone said: “Whats so great about this is it’s personal touch, the feeling that there’s a person on the other side”. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind? For me, even if it’s not specially a very small or “personal” company, the Google doodles are an example of this (probably not the best, though, but you get the idea).

Are we so accustomed to the “plain” Internet (I found this video very interesting) that we don’t find this little details charming anymore? Is it the content, or is it us? I find so difficult to encounter genuine websites, and not just webs with more ads than other type of content, that really inspires me and gets me to come back and read it the next day.

I don’t know. I am probably just talking sh*t but I wanted to have all of this expressed somehow. I don’t want to end my romance with the Internet but it’s been so difficult for me to find websites to be passionately about. What are your thoughts? I’m eager to listen. I hope this article made you feel some type of way, too. Either if it’s thinking that I’m crazy or that good times have flown by and will never came back. Anyway I‘m still bawling my eyes out because of the end of Halt and Catch Fire. So see you when I get myself together ❤️