Current Events > What do you consider the "golden age" of the internet?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Right before YouTube had ads

1999 - 2012. As a bunch of people said, it was great before Social Media really took off, and brought so many morons online.

people keep saying social media but in reality social media as a concept was always fine.

it's the widespread access in the palm of your hand that became the absolute bane of its existence.

when the only access to it was through a computer, that alone acted as a good barrier of entry from the majority of the population.

so yeah, thanks apple.

The exact moment adblockers appeared.

I'd say 95 to 2003 were the golden age

Id say there was a 2-3 year window in the late 2000s, maybe 2008-2011, when things were just right in hindsight.

Thanks Steve Jobs and Google

heh remember when Google's slogan used to be "Don't be evil"?

zzeennoolloo posted...

1995 till 2005 = The Golden Age.

Why 1995 as the starting point? A few reasons:

1) Explaining what the hell the internet was became mainstream during 1995 when channels like MTV and ABC and others started explaining there is this thing called the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NIPGmziNG0

2) AOL (America Online) started advertising on major channels during 1995. This is one of their commercials on TNT during 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1npzZu83AfU

3) Xband (while introduced during November 1994, it starts to truly ripple by 1995. It remained permanently niche, but it became the first significant ONLINE multiplayer network for gamers with a Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo during 1995. It even had X-mail, which was their version of e-mail).

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/1/AAMsTmAACxHL.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/2/AAMsTmAACxHM.jpg

4) During 1995, EGM (Electronics Gaming Monthly - one of the top video game magazines) started telling people about their new website called NUKE (which becomes a success by 1995 internet standards):

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/3/AAMsTmAACxHN.jpg

5) The success of Nuke would lead to other video game websites showing up.
One of them would be a website known as the Video Game FAQ Archive during November 1995:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/4/AAcOiaAABlKw.jpg

and then...
During September 1996...
The website would be renamed as...
GameFAQS (and it's still around during 2022...you are on that website right now!!)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/5/AAMsTmAACxHP.jpg

The Golden Age of the internet began during 1995 and would end by the end of 2005.
2006 is the beginning of the Silver age of the internet. While Youtube was created during 2005, it would truly start to ripple beginning 2006 and that's the start of the Silver age, which ends around the year 2016.
2017 is the start of the DARK age of the internet when Twitter (which was created years earlier) begins to grow dark and INSANE in a very bad way and that insanity starts to slowly spread in a dangerous way to other websites...

In review:

1995 - 2005 = Golden Age

2006 - 2016 = Silver Age

2017 - and continuing for the time being = Dark Age

That's what we have so far, three ages.

On a side note,
The internet was technically created during 1983 but it wasn't till 1995 when it started growing mainstream and started blossoming, so 1983 till 1994 is the prehistoric age.
So really FOUR ages for the internet.

^ These are facts, not opinion.
As a result, this is the correct answer.
Also, the evolution of Twitter matches with the Silver age and Dark Age.
Twitter launched during the year 2006 and was a very nice and friendly place to visit.
It starts getting popular around 2011 or so and it's a place where everyone is happy and they are making raunchy jokes.
Around the end of 2016 is when things start getting weird and darker.
By 2017 it becomes TOXIC for several reasons. The toxicity starts to slightly and slowly spread a tiny bit to other sites.
By 2018, when Tumblr decides to ban porn on it's site, it causes tons of people on Tumblr to go to Twitter and then Twitter becomes ULTRA toxic as fuck!! Now the toxicity is spreading like wild fire to other sites. And it's 2022 and it's still ultra toxic as fuck!!!

I think the internet impacted me mostly negatively. By 15 I was already doing all nighters just to stay online. I'm still very grateful I got to experience it when I did though.

I also vaguely agree with the Golden/Silver Age post.

A while ago someone made a website that was basically classic Facebook (or MySpace?). I wonder if stuff like that will start to see a resurgence.

Id say like 1998/1999 to 2010. Maybe a few years after.

I dont think that society was really ready for social media and having it through smart phones is a kind of not a great thing. So so many people have access to it 24/7 that really shouldnt have access to it that much.

I already Voted mid 90's to Mid '00's

But I've said it, and will say it again.

The internet was best when it was home to Nerds and Pervs.

late 00s was when it had the highest inverse ratio of Things to Restriction. That is, there was a lot of stuff, and very little keeping you from that stuff. Corporate control had yet to get to youtube, social media security was still piss-easy to break, Flash content was only getting better and more frequent, there were no bypasses for adblock, porn wasn't getting taken down by bots for looking vaguely familiar to other stuff that got taken down, the promotional gains you could get were absurd because companies were still figuring out how to scale things, so there were consistent free pizza and xbl exploits.

It was a good time to be a teenager.

Oh, and, while Discord has solved the old issue of how to organize communications across platforms (remember trying to agree on a program for mics for PC games? It was fucking awful), it, and streamlined social media in general, have killed off the traditionally strong, consistent communities that sprouted seemingly because of old restrictions on power and formats. You can see that quite clearly here on gamefaqs.

YellowSUV posted...

Hard to say, but sometime pre 2012 when the proliferation of smartphones made the Internet much worse.

its true phones wrecked the internet by dumbing everything down into a handful of basic websites

remember when the internet was an endless sea of possibilities lol now its just notifications

remember every now and then coming across a super weird website, not even porn related

I miss that stuff. Im sure theres some out there but not nearly as many people browse the net anymore so its less circulated

When it was nothing but FTP and Gopher sites

PoopPotato posted...

For me it was around 98-2000.

Chat rooms were kind of like the beta version of virtual reality in a way.
You could download game demos left and right which for me was similar to renting SNES games on the weekend, only this was free.
Everything was new and it hadn't hit the mainstream yet, so you could still have a bit of a niche hobby.
Multiplayer games were a hoot because the graphics didn't really matter at the time due to everything looking kinda shitty, game play was more important. Unreal Tournament was a blast.

You can literally do all of this today faster and easier.

I think a good range is 1999 to 2012
The sweet spot would be when YouTube first started, 2005, to perhaps before social media platforms became standardized which seems like some time around the 2012 election

SavageGlum100 posted...

^ These are facts, not opinion.
As a result, this is the correct answer.
Also, the evolution of Twitter matches with the Silver age and Dark Age.
Twitter launched during the year 2006 and was a very nice and friendly place to visit.
It starts getting popular around 2011 or so and it's a place where everyone is happy and they are making raunchy jokes.
Around the end of 2016 is when things start getting weird and darker.
By 2017 it becomes TOXIC for several reasons. The toxicity starts to slightly and slowly spread a tiny bit to other sites.
By 2018, when Tumblr decides to ban porn on it's site, it causes tons of people on Tumblr to go to Twitter and then Twitter becomes ULTRA toxic as fuck!! Now the toxicity is spreading like wild fire to other sites. And it's 2022 and it's still ultra toxic as fuck!!!

The big missing piece here is the rise of tumblr. Toxicity was definitely on tumblr more than Twitter.

Wait a minute. The Internet really started going downhill in 2016-2017.

Could this be another effect of the Harambe incident..? It cant just be a coincidence.

zzeennoolloo posted...

1995 till 2005 = The Golden Age.

Id go with this.

Puglia77 posted...

Mid/late 2000s. Or anything before everything became political or social media.

This. Before twitter and Instagram and everything else (TikTok)that followed became a thing.

2005 - 2009 was GOAT for me, but it was pretty good up till 2016. Once all the good shit started getting banned on YouTube and all the corporations really started getting their pull all of the fun was kicked out.

Honestly Filthy Frank leaving was the final nail for me.

It's the same timeline for gaming. Huge technological advances where everything just got better and better. Then at some point we hit a peak where it's diminishing returns, followed by outright stagnation. The internet began to suck around the time Microsoft began referring to programs as apps. After 2019 especially, it's been a complete nosedive.

It's like at some point they just decided that options were bad, so not only are sites centralized and algorithm'd, they actively break things and take away features. Can't even downvote on youtube anymore. Every browser update broke something I had customized, first they'd hide it in some obscure spot you'd have to jump through hoops to get through, then they'd remove it entirely. Everybody wants to pigeonhole you into doing things their way or the highway.

I'd say late 90s to late 00s. It was basically the wild west >_> Lots of flash games, funny articles, CE was actually fun at that time, youtube was chill, AIM and chat rooms were fun, etc.

Basically I feel like once social media became a thing, the internet and internet culture slowly started to go downhill

2005-2010

bump

2010s to 2016

We haven't made it there yet.
Early days of the internet were like the wild west expansion. Now we're in the industrial revolution. Once there are laws in place to clean things up, and curtail social media sites, then we'll be in the Golden Age.

MySpace Era I guess. MySpace MySpace could suck though if your computer was slow and you decide to view the page of someone with a million animated things including the wallpaper and auto start videos.

But I was the second to last holdout from my group of friends to break and switch to facebook.