I dunno if this is just nostalgia poisoning or what, but like... remember when internet friends were actually friends?

There wasn’t this weird filter of "parasocial relationships" or "content creators" vs "audience". It was just some person with a screen name talking about stuff they liked, maybe on IRC or in a forum or on a webring-linked page. And then you talked back. And maybe you added each other on AIM or ICQ. Simple as that.

Now it’s like everyone’s got a brand. Everything's so fake, so polished. Even the stuff that pretends to be raw is probably scripted. No one's really being themselves. It's exhausting.

Anyway, shoutout to the old net when people could just be weird and honest and not worry about farming likes.

i think at some point one's social reality became way more entangled in the internet rather than just remaining a void you post into
i chalk this up to a shift in perception, mid '10s maybe? though i'm sure the enforcement of providing identifiables in most places also factors into the mindset
...or maybe like most people, i just grew up. dunno.

newfags like me really missed the bus. couldn't dare to imagine how it felt for people within your camp

>I dunno if this is just nostalgia poisoning or what, but like... remember when internet friends were actually friends?

Not just you, as I also believe this same reason. Just that depends where you find your friends, they will actually be your friend, and not a lousy "look at me im ur fucking pal."

>There wasn't this weird filter of "parasocial relationships" or "content creators" vs "audience". It was just some person with a screen name talking about stuff they liked, maybe on IRC or in a forum or on a webring-linked page. And then you talked back. And maybe you added each other on AIM or ICQ. Simple as that.

Club Penguin type friends? or something? (not very fond of this kind of?)

I'm too tired to even figure out what Im trying to say, but i honestly agree with you. Friends just doesn't feel like the same at all. it's just so bland and boring, and when you do find an actual good friend, either 2 things will happen. You lose contact with them overtime, or you both become best buddies but have the more harshest conditions together.

> Club Penguin type friends? or something? (not very fond of this kind of?)

Talk like a human being!!!

>I dunno if this is just nostalgia poisoning or what

Nah, it's not. It's exactly what you said at your OP post.

Sounds like you're comparing social media to personal messaging services. A better comparison would be Discord, and sure enough, lots of people make friends on Discord. I hate the platform, I'm only making a point that this thread is pining over a non-existent problem. Unless somebody would like to make a more detailed and interesting statement on this? Maybe what you're getting at is going over my head.

>It was just some person with a screen name talking about stuff they liked

Another retarded post. There are plenty of people still like this. You basically said that everyone is a content creator with an audience and random normal people don't socialize online??
>nostalgia poisoning

Astute self-diagnosis, this site will end up being just like any other alt-chan.

There is some truth to this although OP doesn't fully elaborate. It's more than the brand thing. In the AIM/ICQ days, a random instant message from someone was a curious, "Oh, a person, I wonder who they are, this could be fun." In today's a landscape, a random DM (a personal message outside of a group) is seen as sketchy, it could be a scam or someone with an ulterior motive. Sadly, that isn't wrong. Things have just changed and it's led to people treating the Internet differently. The only people I talk one on one with are people I have been talking with that way for years. Everyone else is only interested in group chats, because they don't want to put up any commitment to the friendship. They would rather be sporadically available to a group, which is understandable I guess. The truth is that in those old days, we wasted a lot of time believing that those one on one Internet friends would always be there and probably should have been thinking more about our RL friends. Though I will say, it is cool to still be talking to someone you've known online for 20 years, it's rare. And I can't imagine it will be more common now but less.

>this site will end up being just like any other alt-chan.

I hope not. But yeah you're right a lot of the shit posted here is all about the same 2 or 3 topics. "nostalgia", "braindead zoomer", "privacy", etc. Would be nice to have some content on here that isn't recycled. I will write some articles and post them here once I'm done.

> Another retarded post. There are plenty of people still like this. You basically said that everyone is a content creator with an audience and random normal people don't socialize online??

Right again, look in the right places and you'll find the right people. I've made some friends online who I've seen IRL, and obviously some who I just talk to but will likely never see. He is right by saying that talking online is not as fun as it used to be though

52351

Though I don't think that's what OP meant at all, I think you hit the nail on the head. The group chat dynamic is opposite in so many ways. It's omnipresent instead of time-limited, and it's necessarily less personal, a bit colder and more performative. It introduces group dynamics and group-driven conflict.
But now I think of it, it's worth mentioning that group chats are almost always made of people who know each other apart from the Internet, i.e a family chat, a work chat, a friend group chat, and so on. Perhaps that taints the interaction as well?