How The Wild Wild Web Was Lost (And Won)

A few months back, I was told that someone had reinvented - though changed just enough and added a note for anyone seemingly litigious enough to consider doing so to persuade them otherwise - Myspace, but the good version. To say there was a "good" version of Myspace is arguable, at best, especially coming from an incredible introvert such as myself, but in the eyes of modern day social media I think we can all agree that, yes, in fact Myspace was the good guy in the end. More invested in giving its users power over its platform than using them to further a brand, and more interested in giving its users a sense of place instead of a sense of being sold on yet another carefully marketed product pinched from an ever omnipresent and eternally spying algorithm, Myspace was, in essence, the end of the Internet, or at least the internet that was even remotely interested in actually bringing people together.

After all, that was forever the promise of the concept, wasn't it? To bring together everyone from around the world, to create an illusion that we're all not that different and to make information and socializing all that much simpler. But with the death of the webring where people who respected one another proved so by sharing links to one anothers work, the implement of cookie cutter profiles where you fill out forms instead of actively building a page yourself, and all the other grandiose examples of what the internet has long since become, it's clear to say that the exact opposite has happened. Now people are confined to their perfect little bubbles, safe and sound to hate one another even more than they already did because now there is - at least even semi so - the belief of anonymity, and if anything, we're more isolated than we ever were to begin with.

And while this would be a normal statement for someone over 50 to make, someone who perhaps grew up in "the golden age" of Americana, where the holiday special was the pinnacle of "must see TV" and they more often than not genuinely believed in their president, I think it has to be said that I'm a 31 year old woman. I grew up with the internet, and was the first real generation to do so. Sure, the argument could be made that my experience is different than someone of the Gen Z variety, whose life has been plugged in with high speed bandwidth from day one, whereas I had to witness the death of the analogue medium and the rise of the iPod, but overall we're basically the same when it comes right down to it, in terms of our willingness to cooperate with the tech at our disposal and recognize that privacy was never a thing anyone truly had, and that in order to participate in todays society you just have to accept that.

So how did I go from being someone who watched the birth and meteoric rise of social media and streaming video from a young age myself to being a worn out and cynical lady?

Easy.

The internet changed while I stayed the same.

And I'm not saying that that progress is inherently bad, but when you boil it down, nobody creates things anymore for the sake of it, instead now they create as a brand, and people are more an identity in concept than an identity in reality. I myself have fallen into this trap. Everything I do is carefully curated just so, and all because if I make one false slip, my entire digital existence is brought into question, morally, ethically and otherwise. But even then, while I recognized what I had to do in order to maintain the status quo for modern day internet life, I also never really grew out of the old ways, and boy howdy do I miss them. I now feel even more separated from the very peers I once sought out to connect more to online than in person, and instead of learning more about one another, I think it's safe to say this situation has forced me to learn more about myself, and that's both a good thing and a bad thing. I don't want to sound like the old person yelling about change, because I believe most change is a good thing despite being someone of the neurodiverse community who often hates the concept of change in and of itself.

But I also can no longer sit idly by and pretend that this change has been good, and the rebirth of Myspace, even if renamed, has really cemented the idea that we're all just clinging to the hope things will go back to the way they were. The mere fact that it boasts the number of users that it does in such a short span of its existence I think is proof enough that most people, even people younger than me, are incredibly sick of how isolating the current internet feels, and long for a real sense of community again. So let's take the new tech and apply it to the old way of thinking. Let's return to a simpler time, when the internet was not just an intimidating wasteland waiting to hurt you, but a welcoming wasteland waiting to greet you with open arms.

🐷 

On December 31st, 2020, Adobe killed Flash.

While Flash had become increasingly irrelevant (something even I, lover of old internet, cannot deny) and most browsers had long since abandoned support for it, it's hard to exactly put into words just how much of the internet once ran on Flash. From overall web design to the first internet cartoons to online games, Flash was the end all be all to the internet for a very very long time, and its reign, even if over, has to be admired and remembered because without flash, we wouldn't be where we are today I think. But something else happened when Flash died. A subgroup of people online came together well before the killswitch was thrown to archive and preserve everything they could that once had Flash has a base for it, and a lot of things that once heavily utilized the program, like Homestar Runner, now run through a emulator called Ruffle, so it can stay online in its mostly current state and form.

This says to me, atop everything else, that people are tired of the changes coming to the internet. For a long time people would complain when a website changed its visuals, its layouts, and most of the time I found those complaints to be wildly ridiculous. While Web 2.0 or whatever the fuck we're at now certainly has its disadvantages, I think it's safe to say that most websites that have undergone heavy digital plastic surgery in the last decade, be it Twitter or Youtube, have only come away being more usable and visually friendly than they ever were before. Hell, recently Crunchyroll, one of the oldest streaming services around, finally updated their site and it's gloriously superior to what they had before. But that's just me. Once again, the question arises how can someone who's bemoaning the death of the old internet approve of modern internet designs? Well, the answer is once again simple. I'm not so much crying about the death of design as I am the death of ideas. I am happy the internet looks better, works better (for the most part), but I'm unhappy that the internet has become cold and lifeless and sterile. I miss the sense of community it once had in forums and message boards, in e-mail chains and so on, as opposed to simply commenting on your friends endlessly vapid Snapchat story about her celery diet.

All that being said, I can't deny that Flash needed to die as much as Myspace needed to come back.

Flash had its use, but its use had long since run its course, whereas Myspace (or the current incarnation thereof that calls itself old Myspace and is in fact more Myspace than actual Myspace is) needed to be revived and save us from the cold calculating hands of giants like Facebook. Despite my statement above, I don't actually hate the concept of "stories" that seemingly every site has now implemented, because I view them as just yet another way to interact with your friends and followers, such as we all did once commenting regularly. Another method of conversation. But it does in fact create yet another layer to the isolation I'm discussing, where conversation is one sided and often outright ignored. Conversation is not so much conversation as it is instead generic misspelled commentary with random emojis of one sort or another. I'm not, and I feel the need to likely reiterate this time and time again in this piece, one of those people who thinks everyone being on a device at all times is a bad thing. Information and community are on those devices, they serve an enormous purpose. The problem is we're misusing them, and instead of actively broadening our horizons through them, instead of truly learning new things and opening ourselves up to ideas that challenge our point of view, we're instead finding things to vindicate our poorly thought out beliefs and keep us forever shielded in this bubble we've created for ourselves.

I think the creation of Far Right social media more than anything else is a perfect example of this, but I'd rather not get into that.

Instead, I'll talk about how good for my mental health the rebirth of Myspace and the old internet is, because honestly, it helps my damaged brain a lot to know that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

🐷

I once told somebody that I can gauge how much time in my life has passed simply by how much Trey Parkers hairline has receded.

While this is, obviously, a joke, there's also an inherent bit of truth to it, isn't there? I view everything in the world through the lens of media, and the internet is no different. Just a new form of media, or relatively new comparatively. Change has never been my strong suit, to put it lightly. I hate that people I love die, I hate that TV shows I watch are abruptly canceled, and I hate that my favorite type of beef jerky hasn't been available since I was in elementary school (okay, perhaps that one's a tad too personal, but you get the point), but surprisingly change on the internet? Never really bothered me. Likely because most of the change, up to a certain point, was purely aesthetic and cosmetic. New profile layouts, new features, new this or new that. The way we interact with the things never actually change, the things themselves never actually change, they just look nicer, so I was 100% alright with that. But it hit a point where everything I visited regularly online fell out of favor for even worse places to be.

Myspace became Facebook, Ebaums World became Youtube, Livejournal became Wordpress and Homestar Runner just flat out vanished for a handful of years altogether because there wasn't really anything to replace it to begin with while the Chaps brothers got good jobs doing work for Disney.

This is the sort of change I can't stand. This is the sort of change that hurts me on a fundamental level.

Visual change never bothered me likely because, growing up, I regularly rearranged my bedroom a few times a month, just to make it a brand new living space. I'm used to, and adept at, visual change. So yeah, whether it's packaging changes on products or UI upgrades on websites, that sort of change doesn't effect me negatively and frankly I rarely even notice after the initial impact has worn off, what little impact there is to be had to begin with. But change where things are no longer the things I'm used to at all? That's not a change I'm good with. That's not a change I can cope with. And, as with Adobe ending Flash, that's nothing new either, as companies have long since ended support for outdated programs of OS's, but again, that's something I can at least sort of grapple with.

I'm happy for the rebirth of "Myspace", but I can't help but feel like there's no real going back in time, no matter how hard we try. Sure, we can bring back all the old sites with somewhat slicker designs, or even the same designs but better functionality, but it won't be the same, because we're not the same age we were back then. It isn't even that the sites falling out of favor are really the issue, as much as it is the time period they were in favor moving on and becoming even worse time periods.  Life isn't the same as it was. There will never be another time where I will sit in my best friends kitchen on his home computer with him at 2 AM laughing at videos on Ebaums world where people hurt themselves, because that time is in the past, and the only thing left is the future...

...no matter how uncertain it is for me, or the internet.

🐷

These days, change isn't really something I need to worry too much about, for better or worse, generally some of both.

Stagnation is a constant in my life now, whether I want it to be or not, but the thing is, I don't mind stagnation if it's stagnation that benefits me or makes me feel comfortable. Websites remaining the same, my daily routine remaining the same, these are fine, these are examples of stagnation that only help me, not hurt me, and hell, even the website one can be finicky because UI updates can also be totally fine as I've made abundantly clear at this point. But that's the thing about change, whether it's online or in real life, it's not something you often get to choose when it happens or if it happens at all. Change just sort of...occurs, and you're expected to roll with the punches and I just don't jive with that too well, obviously.

But, if I need to face it head on, then it helps to have people remaking old versions of old sites in order for me to still have a place to escape to, a place that's familiar in a world that's become all but wholly unfamiliar. I was never a big fan of Myspace, but I'm definitely a fan of Spacehey, if for nothing else than it reminds me of a time when I enjoyed the internet and hated real life instead of now, where I hate both the internet and real life. Many of the sites I touched on in this column still exist, for the record: Livejournal, Ebaums World, and Homestar Runner. Hell, even Myspace actually still exists, even if it's nothing more than a former shell of what it once was. But the problem is most everyone else has moved on while I haven't.

I joined Facebook because everyone else joined Facebook, but the truth of the matter is I've never been a fan of social media likely because I'm not a very social person. I mostly use my outlets as linkdumps for my work. Let's face it, I'll never be able to afford a home, I'll never be able to afford having kids, plus I'm infertile anyway, so it's not like my social media will ever house all the change in my life because there's never going to be any change in my life.

I just hope the internet stays mostly the same as well.

Otherwise I could be in some serious trouble come the point Trey Parker goes fully bald.