Garfield Minus Garfield

Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?

The internet was never all goofy shit like this. The launch date of G-G is "February 13, 2008", and we already had the creepy Facebook, deplorable shit like jailbait was in full swing, gore was not just popular, it was old news. Internet advertising was already very toxic for many years, and its surveillance capabilities were also ever-increasing. Not to mention, the Eternal September lasted for 15 years now.

My point is, it changed, yes, but "The Internet" was always shit, and you can also always find good fun, as always. You can turn off the doom, and enjoy a good never-ending scroll of a myriad of fantastic hobbies and people sharing their human experience. It takes effort, just like it did back then.

> It takes effort, just like it did back then.

I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.