The Golden Age of the Internet Is Over

every great art form and platform goes through its good eras and it's bad eras a time when that thing was at its peak an era where everything seemed to be in perfect harmony there is a golden age of hip-hop a golden age of gaming even a golden age of civilizations but with every golden age there also comes a downfall a time where the former glory days seem to be forever out of reach no King rules forever and all good things must come to an end even on the Internet [Music] [Music] what concerns do you have about these private companies controlling the vast majority of communication between people and social media and I have this feeling too that spending so much time on social media actually impairs my thoughts I feel like I don't think as clearly or as freely for the first week I'd grabbed my phone without even thinking unlock it and start to swipe through screens looking for something to preoccupy my wandering mind these companies offer you shiny treats in exchange for minutes of your attention and bytes of your personal data which can then be packaged up and sold is you and your own social media you're not thinking about said look we've been trying to do this game for 15 [ __ ] years we're still getting our videos frozen for fraudulent views Roger like [ __ ] views we've been doing this [ __ ] for almost two [ __ ] decades all inside your file you think I'm gonna put out a hit video copyright takedown notice your video has been taken down from YouTube we got to monetize this is that thing you do on Twitter that thing you do on Instagram there's nothing behind it there's no benefit there's no upside and welcome to 2019 where your voice can be copper reclaimed on YouTube Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance program just scrolling YouTube just terminated both of my new accounts I've lost everything so it's almost like you know engraved in the world they give you these caps so you can't think but wait it wasn't always like this let's start from the beginning you need a computer and a phone and suddenly you're part of a new mesh of people programs archives ideas just what is this main artery of the information superhighway super-attractive many of them is the World Wide Web the world wide web surfing the World Wide Web Pokemon is an undeniable obsession with children across the country in the early to mid 90s the Internet was a very different place online gaming was in its infancy but that didn't stop quake players from joining matches and praying that their mom didn't get a phone call during its IRC chat rooms with random strangers were the social media of the day in fact I remember being a little kid and joining a chatroom for the first time on my cousin's computer on the drive back home after that my mind was racing with the possibilities of what I could say in a chatroom how people would respond and how amazing this instant communication was you even had basic internet forums in the 90s but overall this era was still a primitive time for online communication and entertainment the people who use the internet were mainly just computer nerds but as the 2000s hit the world changed forever and most importantly so did the Internet the early to mid 2000s were a time where the internet grew and flourished into something more than just the program your desktop it evolved into a fully realized global communication network the Golden Age of the internet had begun [Music] during those days the internet was a magical place where gamers could discuss theories and strategies on internet forums online gaming had now reached this new frontier where you could hop into Ventrilo voice chat with 39 other players while raiding Onyxia and probably getting yelled at by your raid leader for being out of position MSN Messenger aims Skype all of these programs created the opportunity to make close friends and form intimate relationships through instant messaging social media meant something completely different during that time it wasn't code for four or five big sites that everybody used no instead the internet was more like a new frontier a wild west where sites like MySpace and even YouTube during that time offered almost complete control over personalization customization and self-expression through your profiles and channels for me specifically YouTube was this exciting new platform where videos and information flowed so freely and so openly so many small-time creators and filmmakers also blossomed on this platform that offered so much creative freedom and so much opportunity with its growing audience and user base you also have the start of other social media sites except similarly to YouTube they didn't feel restrictive divisive or corporate in any way Digg was a great resource for sharing interesting media throughout the internet Facebook in its early days was a useful way to keep up with real life friends live journal and sites like it let users express themselves and share thoughts in an online diary and myspace of course which was the king of social media from around 2005 to 2008 I never actually got into myspace as a kid but I do know that it allowed for a level of personalization that you will never see a social media site of today four people had their own theme music on their pages their own background pictures avatars layouts and much much more speaking of personalization my favorite spots to hangout on the internet were gaming forums like neo seeker game facts and sub-communities for games like World of Warcraft halo and more which all had their own custom fan forums these bulletin boards allowed for custom avatars signatures they displayed join dates custom Flair and you often have your own personal homepage on those sites as well features like these are completely gone in the popular sites of today which instead make things much more uniform and sterile in other words over time all of these features of personal expression have been watered down go on reddit go on YouTube go to Facebook even Twitter yeah sure the profile pictures and maybe a couple other small things are different but we pretty much all look the same now this Golden Age also saw the growth of fun and interesting mean sites like YT MMD which was sadly shut down on May 14 2009 teen you had a bombs world.the something awful forums and even the hacker known as 4chan I loved this era of the Internet so much that I made an entire video detailing why 2007 specifically was a seminal year in part due to the Internet at the time this golden age as I view it came to a close during one important event in 2009 Facebook overtook MySpace and quickly became the blueprint for the rise of the social media sites that followed that is the style of using a streamlined sterile design a heavy emphasis on social connections and finally something more subtle but yet probably even more important and that is the discouragement of anonymity since I was a nerdy kid who had been using the internet since I was 10 even in 2009 as Facebook grew to immense popularity I remember thinking how jarring it was that people just used their full real-life names and actual photos of themselves on their profiles on internet forums and other sites you never did that who is always a username it was always an avatar that had nothing to do with you or was only representative of you but Facebook which was originally designed for college students was the platform that normalized transparency and complete openness amongst its users that's when the lines between real life and Internet life began to blur that's when the Golden Age came to an end what is the Facebook exactly it's an online directory that connects people through universities and colleges through their social networks there you sign on you make a profile about yourself by answering some questions and during some information such as your concentration or major at school contact information about phone numbers instant messaging screen names anything you want to tell interests what books you like movies and most importantly who your friends are then you can browse around and see people's friends are and just check out people's online identities and see how people portray themselves and just find some interesting information about people you said everyone controls their data but you're collecting data on people that are not even Facebook users that have never signed a consent a privacy agreement and you're collecting their data we need to take a more proactive role in a broader view of our responsibilities it's not enough to just build tools we need to make sure that they're used for good and that means that we need to now take a more active view in policing the ecosystem and in watching and kind of looking out and making sure that all of the members in our community are using these tools in a way that's gonna be good and healthy it seems like in many ways they set us up to be controlled and they're doing it through monopolies Google controls search through YouTube and Google and by what you search you can think it's a truth but what did Kanye say can you say Google Ads we are drugged out we are following other people's opinions we are controlled by the media and today it all changes we need to be free fingers then we need to know how to feel free people say feel free but we don't even know how to feel free or think free say what you feel [Music] [Applause] [Music] enter the modern-day Internet a platform that has become interchangeable with the term social media 30% of the time spent online across internet users was spent on social media sites in 2017 and this trend has been steadily growing every year since 2012 maybe there's a reason why so many influencers and creators have made public efforts to detox themselves from social media use it's no secret that companies like Facebook Google and Twitter have become titans of the digital age consolidating and controlling a massive percentage of Internet traffic and online communication those gaming forums instant messengers and chat rooms that you grew up using yeah now they're ghost towns taking their place or a select few platforms run by a small group of companies whose policies dictate what you can and can't say let's face it the Internet has become corporate I'm going to break down each major platform that comprises this social media plague first on the list Facebook Mark Zuckerberg somehow convinced 2.4 billion people to use Facebook worldwide with 74% of them visiting daily so basically Facebook started out as a platform for you and your friends to chat over and now it's more of a newsfeed with aggravating sensational and possibly fake news articles being shared promoted by the algorithm and beamed directly into your neurons while you stare blankly at your phone Zuckerberg collects all of your personal information and probably sells it to advertisers and the Chinese government or something it does seem like Facebook might be losing relevancy though I personally haven't used it in years and I hardly know anyone my age who does but Facebook as a company has incomprehensible amounts of data influence and power over online communication across not only Facebook but also Instagram things have gotten so bad that even Facebook's co-founder Chris Hughes thinks it needs to be broken up and regulated he told the New York Times mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook's algorithms to determine what people see in their news feeds what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered he sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring blocking or copying it and finally Facebook like every other social media site selectively enforces their vague rules by banning profiles or deleting posts that don't fall in line with their political agenda in fact it has gotten so bad that even organizations that aren't political at all yet have been censored for some reason like CrossFit have decided to boycott Facebook the next cookie cutter online communication site that you can choose from is Instagram which is home to over 1 billion active users worldwide 500 million of which are daily users fun fact Instagram is also owned by Facebook giant corporation controlling half the internet there's nothing unsettling about that at all but I will say Instagram itself is pretty simple and effective without too much headache it's probably the least egregious of the social media sites although there does seem to be some correlation between the plethora of Instagram models the millions of photos uploaded each and every day and the unrealistic expectations of young girls who spend hours on the site with the rising rates of preteen depression speaking of depressing things by far the least complex and yet most divisive online platform is Twitter while Twitter is the smallest of the bunch comprising only of 320 million active users with 126 million of them being daily users it definitely has the loudest voice when it comes to unproductive and recreational outrage consider the time between a thought arising in your head and typing that thought out it's only separated by a few seconds so when you have a platform where celebrities online influencers and internet personalities share their political statements controversial opinions and publicize their mental breakdowns coupled with a character limit and the ability to not only respond but see every other response and be notified by them you have a recipe for some of the most reactionary unintelligent and unproductive forms of argument flooding the site on a daily basis rapper Talib Kweli x' tweets are the perfect example of this look at this long-running series of tweets it's all directed at this one guy literally dozens of back-and-forth responses and it's like who the [ __ ] is John McLaughlin why are you spending this much time arguing with a random guy who has 200 followers on Twitter arguments on Twitter usually just devolved into a black hole that you just keep getting sucked into perhaps the most unholy byproduct of Twitter is canceled culture which usually stems from someone viewing or saying something slightly out of line with the status quo be it an old tweet or an out-of-context clip followed by a series of tweets calling them outs which almost always lack in nuance or context some of these tweets then get retweeted and mass forming a virtual hate mob hell-bent on enacting a very warped view of justice also Tim Poole questioned CEO Jack Dorsey on the Joe Rogan experience about Twitter's selective enforcement of rules and bans based on ideology with a plethora of examples in cases of double standards and this was his response we're going to work to promote healthy public conversation that's what we want that's what we're going to do yeah I'll believe it when I see it and finally YouTube which gets 2 billion active users worldwide YouTube provides something the other sites do not in place of social interaction YouTube can entertain its users for hours and hours each and every day with its near endless catalogue of user created videos vlogs skits documentaries and even entirely new genres of content are all uploaded each day on the site perhaps more than any other platform YouTube has given immense creative freedom to its user base the ability to create captivating videos that attract grassroots audiences and fans to channels makes for a groundbreaking media platform however nowadays in tandem with all other social media sites YouTube has become progressively more strict with their rules and the enforcement of them from wave after wave of ad pocalypse --is D monetization suppress search results and overall censorship when it comes to changing its guidelines YouTube has had a near-constant knee-jerk reaction to sensationalist hit pieces written by dying outdated media outlets over the years at its core these policies greatly limit the type of content that's promoted and encouraged by the site a few prominent channels have even been banned by YouTube for very questionable reasons and given the climate of YouTube's policies and what's promoted we will likely never see another channel like filthy Frank allowed to succeed ever again on YouTube these days YouTube seems to be only interested in promoting celebrities network television programs corporations and only the most squeaky-clean advertiser friendly channels YouTube is now about them but once upon a time it used to be about you [Music] YouTube was the site that started it all for me the endless videos the countless channels sharing their own creations the humor the parodies the gaming all of it captured my imagination and inspired me to create something of my own sure I was 12 years old and only had Windows Movie Maker I had no idea how to edit or any idea of how to make something that people would actually want to watch but this exciting new platform that allowed for anyone and everyone to share their ideas encouraged me and millions of others to share our own creations I messed around made comedic edits of obscure Mario and Zelda videos ripped from the internet there was no guidebook or format or formula back then there was no monetization no way to make money and yet people still uploaded they made videos purely out of passion or interest instead of being motivated by money or greed or even views I loved YouTube for what it was and what it provided in some ways I still do love YouTube or else I wouldn't be making this video I care deeply about this platform and that's why it's so disappointing to see the direction it's taken a direction where everything that has made it great is slowly being broken down and it's not just YouTube this is the direction the Internet in general has been going in a consolidated censored and restrictive space the golden age of the Internet is over it shouldn't sit well with you that these massive corporations hold so much power when it comes to online communication and that there are no true alternatives or competition to keep them in check so what is the solution well support your local businesses if you will other sites smaller creators ideas and spaces that aren't a part of the establishment so yeah support youtubers you like create a channel of your own create a website of your own above all else create something Niq because that's what made the internet so amazing in the first place and realized that these videos channels pages and profiles pushed by network television and big corporations only make the internet more about them and less about you I'll take gaming forums over read it any day I'll take MSN Messenger / DMS I'll take myspace over Facebook and yes I'll take the old YouTube over the modern-day advertiser friendly mess it has become now you might think that I'm stuck in the past that I'm viewing the mid-2000s of the Internet as this golden age because I don't like adapting to change very much but I'll pose a question to you what good is the past if we don't learn from it by appreciating what made that era of the internet so great in the first place perhaps there could be another golden age in the future and what better way to encapsulate that than with a youtube parody song you and I post on the Internet Munich a with all of the people we met check our phones till the break of dawn and suddenly something's wrong as I scroll through and stare at my screen on the same three apps I've already seen I just sit and wonder why I'm so okay with wasting our time [Music] [Music] no I hate smaller websites [Applause] [Music] give it up control they got money they took our soul shotgun for just take the software we all know that you were born their use of evil they don't belong it's just the same with Amazon Elon Musk show us the way with Bonnie means [Music] [Music] my speak warranties come on we're just trying to avoid my team and I sandy modern size every beautify journalist played a dirty game Betty [ __ ] [ __ ] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wasting time with these memes I've made in everyone a little truth Rogen's podcast shimmy up DMT and chimpanzee stuff information beyond belief the Internet is neat to see I just wish that we could be back to being a little bit more free [Music]

Channel: Glink

Views: 2,350,646

Keywords: Golden Age of the internet, The Golden Age, Mid 2000s internet, internet history, old youtube, myspace, social media, classic wow, oldschool, 90s gaming, Joe Rogan Experience, Nostalgia

Id: OU6CuSMzNus

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019