Ask Lemmy

The early mass-adopted Internet, where every company aimed at kids had a website with free games, where everyone who wanted to share about themselves or their interests did so in their own little corner so you could rabbit-hole your way through the link trees, most stuff was non-monetized or had easy-to-block ads, and no tracking of your behavior was really happening.

Software/Apps costing a fixed, one-time amount rather than subscription models for everything

Public health and the general belief that vaccines work.

The internet.

Netflix being the only streaming offering.

StumbleUpon was what I personally cite as the peak of the internet.

It was a website where you made an account and selected what categories of things you were interested in. Then click the button and it would take you to a random piece of content on the internet related to that. I remember thinking at the time it was like Pandora, but for the whole internet rather than just music. Eventually it got bought and shut down.

Mint would be another one. A free, ad-deiven website with optional premoun features that allowed you to easily link all of your financial accounts. It would automatically categorize transactions, but you could manually change them and change the categories themselves. It worked great back in the early 2010's. Then Intuit bought it and it slowly got shittier. They reduced the visualization options. Eventually a few years ago they shut it down to try to get people to move to a different, paid product. Personally I moved to HomeBank, an open-source self-hosted solution. But it means I need to manually import everything.

The internet without megacorps. Ok, the world without megacorps.

Having hope for the future. Believing it would be better than the present.

There was a brief moment when broadcast television networks just put their shit on the internet for free. Like you just had to go to their website, and then like the whole catalog of Scrubs or something was just there to watch.

Pre-algorithm driven social media.

end of soviet union to 9/11

Democracy
Human rights
Rule of law

Season cliffhangers.

Young people will never understand me in 1990, banished up to my parent's bedroom to use their TV because they had a movie on downstairs, watching William Riker calmly say "Fire" on a borg cube containing HIS CAPTAIN, and then the music du-du-du-du-duuuuu and the words "to be continued"

And then having to wait an entire goddamn 3 months to find out the outcome.

Ending seasons on cliffhangers was magical. It's still attempted sometimes today, but in the age of binge-watching and in some cases years between seasons, most shows just wrap up one season arc and start a new one. Kind of sucks.

Democracy

Blockbuster and similar video rental stores. Shit was magical before streaming or even getting movies in the mail.

I'm back in the 70s and 80s we had but we called the dime store. Where a lot of the products were only a dime and then they raise the price to quarter and then raise the price again to 50 cents. And then eventually we ended up with dollar stores. But I mean overall they're all the same junk some good some really really not. But I know when I was younger and poor the dollar store was always fantastic for whatever I needed. Hell even now for things that I can use I still go there and pick it up even though some stuff is $1.25 or more. It's still less expensive than a lot of other places.

Pokémon Go. Those first few weeks and months were nothing like anyone could have imagined from a mobile game. People were outside and enjoying a game with other people. I remember seeing videos of people all running because a rare Pokemon had spawned somewhere and everyone was helping each other to get to it.

The game itself was a simple affair anyone and everyone could play with no paywalls or subscriptions. Now it’s just paywalled events, Pokemon locked behind those events and it’s just a slog to play now.

I’m glad I got to be a part of those early days.

Windows XP and 7. Before all the “AI”, bloatware and unnecessary features. Oh and that pinball game that was on xp.

Hanging out and house parties after high school let out, with no cell phones

the transparent electronics vibe, the whole y2k was a fast and awsome era

My knees.

Movie theaters. Post-pandemic, tickets are more expensive, cinemas are more run-down, and movie theater etiquette has gone out the window.

Amateur porn.

Now it’s all OnlyFans and Christians doing hate campaigns to shut it all down.

24/7 stores is an easy one, same with the early internet.

Personally, I'd say commuting. People are getting way crazier with how they drive these days, more distracted overall, and just plain stupid.

Democracy.

Geocities

The internet’s creative centers pre YouTube algorithm.

Now, not just to make it big, but to get popular, you need someone talking for 10 minutes every week to draw attention - maybe even every day.

That forces hundreds of creators to consider what content can be made lazily with no effort, rather than with skill over the course of a few months. Rewind back to the better days of Flash animations and even my own hobby of Garry’s Mod / Source Filmmaker animations to see a lot of what I mean.

Yugoslavia. Party scene. Some relationships.

Digg, reddit

Inbox by Gmail

Cheap take out and delivery. Where I live at least shrinkflation and inflation have hit very hard and it's just not worth it at all.

Physical media, physical buttons, watching sports without a subscription.

The McDonald's Arch Deluxe. I got mine with bacon.