What are some of the rules about the Internet that were taught to you but are now completely ignored?
For me, it was that the Internet never forgets and that you should never enter your real name. In my opinion, both of these rules are now completely ignored.
Basic forum etiquette. It's horrifying at work seeing teams "teams" (forums) used like chats, all the cross-posting and thread necromancy, people completely unable to keep topics confined to the appropriate sub-forum, etc
Necroposting is a slur by the terminally online against normal people trying to get shot done. They're the reason why every Google search that leads to a forum ends with some guy asking your question and being told to start a new thread instead.
It went from "don't post pictures of yourself or your real name online because you might get strangers' attention" to everyone trying to be their own version of a Max Headroom talking head to try to get the attention of all the strangers. Selfies, video selfies, talking head videos, reaction videos... all garbage.
As in real life, it's pretty sound advice to ignore, block or otherwise disengage from trolls and other forms of belligerents. Even in the '90s when I first started using the internet, the phrase of the day was "don't feed the trolls". But people just can't help themselves. They will even reply saying "I know you're a troll, but...".
The Steam forums are a great example, where every other thread is a fake "is this game woke??" screed. The fact that you can be rewarded for being a cunt there with jesters (which translate into points that can be spent to buy profile items) just makes it a thousand times worse. You get 'paid' to be a troll on Steam. It's insanity.
The only anti-troll weapon that works or is needed is oblivion. Let their steaming turd of a post curdle in solitude. Don't even downvote it. Being downvoted is a victory for them, an acknowledgement that they exist and that they've gotten your attention and that they've annoyed you. Shadowban them from your mind. Block them so that no future posts of theirs will infect your screen. Report them so mods can remove/ban them. Just don't engage directly with the post or the user. Don't say "blocked and reported" in the troll's thread/post. Just do it silently.
Ive blocked so many award baiters on steam, when an update for one of the bigger games comes out the first few comment pages are filled with "you've blocked this user. If you've blocked enough of them the comments get usable again.
This is how I felt about online gameplay too. Someone being a turd? Block em. I still had some GREAT interactions with random players.
But nowadays every online game is dead silent. People are scared of toxicity so they're all sequestered in separate discord servers. Might as well be playing with bots. =\
This might be more of a blogosphere-era thing I guess. Even when most people blogging did it for pleasure rather than work, it was always considered polite to "hat tip" (h/t) the source of a given link, if you happened to find it on someone else's site.
What people are really mad about us the fact that artists are (and always have been) starving. We throw so much food away, let the artists cook for fucks sake.
I would posit a big part of this is because early-net days were primarily for just socializing and sharing cool stuff (heck yeah, I miss it.) Artists probably didn't make a majority of their living through the 'net. If something was shared it was likely just "I think this is cool, folks!"
Nowadays, to say the Internet is heavily commercialized would be a massive understatement. Every little interaction is monetized. Many people make their entire living through e-commerce. It's just how things went.
Meanwhile you have a billion faceless sandfleas with repost-botfarms trying to hustle cash with the stupidest methods possible.
You'll see entire channels where animations or paintings or whatever are circulated on socials like youtube, twitter, or tiktok with the artist tag conveniently cropped out (if there was one).
Some are outright stealing the work for profit (selling tshirts or something), while others are just using it to farm clicks, which is also a route to profit.
The artist who made the work is cheated, perhaps unaware, as some click-grifter gets all the attention. And that sucks. :(
As an artist myself, I try to make sure I share the sources for stuff now, because recognition is a form of thanks, at the very least.
I miss the sharing internet...the attention economy has basically turned the internet into a sociological illustration of "The paperclip apocalypse". :(
I’ve never used Twitter and every time I see a post with like… the original comment in the middle, a reply on top, and a reply again? On bottom? I’m like what the fuck is even how
Came here to say that. It actually predates common internet usage - Fidonet was a much bigger thing through the 80s and early 90s than emails, and BBS forums used it to distribute messages.
Properly quote only what you are replying to. Quote a line, reply to it. Repeat on multiple points.
Then wait a few days for a reply, of course, unless they were dialling into the same BBS.
Now we have boards like this that do a pretty good job about displaying context and quoting is less needed.
I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent but whatever the heck Gmail does with its reply "conversation" order absolutely bamboozles me. It decides to just hide messages in the middle seemingly at random too, and gives them all reply buttons.
I remember when it was just funny edgy humor that was clearly satirical for the most part because a lot of us were just dumb kids. It was abrasive and stupid but you had this feeling everyone was in on the joke.
But bizarre satire has turned to deeply held conviction.
I'm not just sad that the mean spirited trolling persists, but that it's gotten more sincere and often must be taken seriously. :(
On the Internet I grew up on, pretty much anything was ok except to discuss (or even speculate about) the real-world identities of users who didn't very openly disclose them.
I'm a faithful follower of never using your real name in social parts of the internet. We don't need to know and we don't want to know. The only ones who would want to know are scammers or people wanting to give you a shitty time. I only use my real name online for people and places in where it's required like talking to agents from my bank, insurance .etc And very few friends know my real name through FB and the circle anyways.
Don't send nudes online to anybody. I know of some communities where people happily are flaunting it one moment then they make a post later whining about them being exploited or that they thought they were crafty hiding the nudes from someone they're married with. They delete it but they're too naive to think that what's already out there, has most likely been saved by hundreds by now, so you're fucked either way.
Another is, is that if you want to be understood, then you need to use proper spelling and grammar. I miss the days when you got kicked at because you used 'u' in replacement of 'you'. It's just two fucking extra letters you lazy asshole. These days saying stupid shit like; 'yah fr u tha fam' is somehow a complete sentence. No, I'm going to give you shit for it and if you want me to bother caring with what you have to say, fucking make some sense. I don't even get offended by insults when they're poorly spelled, it just tells me what kind of an inept moron you are.
The only abbreviations in that are fr and u. Fam is slang for family, not a text only abbreviation. "Tha" is just a transcription of how someone may say "the". Like "da bomb". "Yah" is either a typo of "yeah" or the same as "tha". This feels more like an insult against people transcribing vernacular literally. Are you racist?
It made sense with t9 texting. Smartphones have easy to use keyboards and autocorrect. No reason to still type like you have to make 7 or 8 key presses to type "you."
I'm a faithful follower of never using your real name in social parts of the internet. We don't need to know and we don't want to know.
Corollary: there are no girls on the Internet. The simplest way to promote gender equality is to not disclose gender in arbitrary conversation or in the profile. If you still do in an anonymous forum, you are likely trying to take advantage of privileges that the patriarchal societal structure offers you in that situation, and in doing so you are upholding it.
Nah, u wrong fo dat last part homie. Maybe if u tryna have an intellectual discussion then u can write in full n shi. But if it's just a casual convo, then write casual
I used to get hella annoyed that my mom would be online all afternoon so I would pick up the phone and blow into it for a few seconds until I heard AOL man say "Goodbye."
Social media killed online aliases and I have a hard time deciding if we're all worse for it.
Instinctively I still stick by that, though, as you can tell by my anonymous profile with no bio, but when I volunteer any amount of personal info these days people are often confused that I'm not sharing openly who I am or where I'm from. Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
And now it's come 180 in that some see it as a red flag if you don't give up that information. I had someone on a different social media site accuse me of being a bot because I wouldn't give up the specific town I'm from. I've seen it happen to others too. It is both fascinating and insane how viewpoints have changed regarding identifying yourself online.
Not only telling your real name, you weren't supposed to tell your real birthday, give away your phone number or where you lived, even just saying the city was a bit much.
So filling in those things like on Facebook or LinkedIn feels very wrong but it would be even more wrong to have fake info there.
So my new rule is, only add ppl I know irl to places I use my real info and everything else can I add anyone to.
Ugh, the world of "branded people."
Everything is like "Add a picture of yourself, or you won't seem trustworthy!"
Yeesh. Some artists and such can make it using a pseudonym, but it's rare in more professional circles...but now if you hope to be taken seriously as a professional, you're expected to put your real super genuine self out there.
...and we get news stories of people being harassed and doxxed literally to death. It's crazy...