I was going down memory lane, I graduated in 96. But Internet culture of the mid 2000s to mid 2015. Seemed like there was always some stand out video or event ranging from chocolate rain video, nyan cat, amazing horse, I like turtles, why does the Internet seem so stale lately? I just realized a lot of this fun stuff stopped around 2014 or became less prevalent the closer we get to events that started dividing us, like gamergate, Trump canidancy in 2015. God this last decade has just sucked and it just keeps getting worse. How did we go to so much hope and promise to where we are now? Even reddit sucks now
I’m unsure the exact pinpoint moment, but I know that when Google acquired YouTube, it was like a warning sign of what is to come.
And when tech companies began to become more aware enough to take advantage of a not-so tech savvy government, much less a barely tech savvy populace of people, that started a march for corporatization to take hold on the internet. Things gradually began to just stop being fun.
Simply put - we were the frogs in the boiling water as techbros took advantage of all of us, acquired anything it could, then regulated everything to match their standards.