15-20 years or so ago. Whenever smartphones became the dominant communications tool, and pretty much everyone had access to the internet from their pocket square.
Been online since '93 myself at pretty much the dawn of the World Wide Web.
I remember cliques and a lack of online monoculture on Usenet and IRC before the World Wide Web even existed; the web exploded things even further, as did the privatization of DNS and takeover of funding by VCs and ad conglomerates. All that had happened by 1998.
Even then there were things that were more or less known in all corners of the Internet. You could mention things like SCP, ‘Charlie bit my finger’, or My Immortal on any forum and people there would recognize it.
Now it’s all fragmented. Someone can mention something that’s a massive phenomenon in one part of the platform and no one else on the same platform would recognise it. For example, I only recently heard about backrooms and apparently it has been a thing for half a decade. That’s a long time in internet years.
15-20 years or so ago. Whenever smartphones became the dominant communications tool, and pretty much everyone had access to the internet from their pocket square.
Been online since '93 myself at pretty much the dawn of the World Wide Web.
I remember cliques and a lack of online monoculture on Usenet and IRC before the World Wide Web even existed; the web exploded things even further, as did the privatization of DNS and takeover of funding by VCs and ad conglomerates. All that had happened by 1998.
Even then there were things that were more or less known in all corners of the Internet. You could mention things like SCP, ‘Charlie bit my finger’, or My Immortal on any forum and people there would recognize it.
Now it’s all fragmented. Someone can mention something that’s a massive phenomenon in one part of the platform and no one else on the same platform would recognise it. For example, I only recently heard about backrooms and apparently it has been a thing for half a decade. That’s a long time in internet years.