To All The Neos and Trinities

The internet of the late 90s and early 2000s was a whole different beast. I got exposed to the internet in the early 2000s and computers a bit early than that. In the early 2000s I spent a lot of my time playing computer games like Half-life, Motocross Madness and countless other games, experimenting with the control panel, changing themes, changing Windows Media Player and Winamp skins. I now a see that missing that era of computers and the internet is a legitimate thing as I see numerous instagram handles based on the nostalgia of computers and the internet in the 90s and early 2000s. A lot of was spent on playing Age of Empires on a dial-up LAN and on Yahoo Messenger which had Yahoo Chatrooms back then. The chatrooms were classified according to interests, so you could go into a Harry Potter chatroom and roleplay a Harry Potter character. You could meet people of other countries on Yahoo Messenger and chat with them. Like I once met a girl from Ohio in the chatroom. The internet back then was fun, and people could actually connect on it. The social networking sites back then, chiefly focused on common interests. And as far as I'm concerned I realise that the death of internet as it was started with the death of Orkut. And some may say, with the rise of Facebook. The change was imminent as greed and control are human nature. The internet in the 90s, you could be anyone you wanted, most importantly you didn't have to pretend, it was much like the movie The Matrix, and you could be Neo or Trinity, you could reinvent yourself. Late 2000s, the commercialisation and weaponisation of internet happened, and the fate of the internet was sealed by mid 2010s. Internet just became another place where you pretend and a place where your data is exploited so that it could be sold to companies. When Facebook was new it used to connect people on the basis of common interest, and it prominently displayed interests, hobbies, favourite films and music of people. Come late 2010s and it was all gone, from every social media site including Facebook, though Facebook still has that functionality just that you have to go deep and search for it. By mid 2010s internet was not only weaponised but also converted to a financial machine and it also became a source of dirt for you with all the embarassing things and porn that you have searched, which could be used to blackmail you anytime. Internet by mid 2010s became from a tool for connecting people to a tool for exploitation. There are several benefits too, like you don't have to carry cash, you can order goods and services online, you can do banking online, you do not have to have physical copies of movies and TV shows and you can stream them. But anyone who knows humanity and history of humanity, knows that these benefits are secondary. You can't reinvent yourself on the internet now, and knowledge has become redundant and also the quality of knowledge has decreased from what it was in the 90s till the late 2000s. Blogging was a rage till late 2000s. People actually shared their hobbies and interests and their personal lives on their blogs, until emotions became a tool for affiliate links and selling things. We are in the age of AI now, and we are the commodity now and the internet is the market where we are sold. No Neos and Trinities can be born on the internet now. But very interestingly scammers can not only be born but flourish. I recently saw some Instagram handles about nostalgia of late 90s and early 2000s internet and nostalgia hit me like a breeze, the internet back then was free, and if you compare the today's emojis with Yahoo smileys of back in the day, you would realise it. I haven't explored Discord actually but I guess it is where the teens and youth of today are. I hope that it is actually a good place for them. Though it is true that you can't reinvent yourself anymore, your identity is the jail you are in and and after sometime it's not you but your identity and what people think of you starts calling the shots. Redemption is a thing of the past. And I wonder why haven't we started dreaming advertisements yet.