The Last Good Year?

[Fyren]

When it comes to the last 'good' year on the internet, it's probably somewhere around 2010-2014. Feels like its genuine appeal died somewhere around that time. Social media was already becoming a big thing, but its malicious effects weren't really as bad. Message boards were fading out of favour, but were still around. I'd personally say those were the defining years that the internet lost its anarchistic roots.

Personally, my last good year was 2012. I'm not complaining too much about life at the moment, it's not that life is bad - its rather that i experienced a rather painful period that year that changed me quite dramatically.

 

[mast]

2007.

I've been trying for years to articulate why 2007 felt like the last "good" or "real" year without any luck. It's just something I feel in my heart.

 

[1980Miami]

2007.

I've been trying for years to articulate why 2007 felt like the last "good" or "real" year without any luck. It's just something I feel in my heart.

Last year before smart phones, I Phone was released in 2007 I think

 

[Rikstah]

Last year before smart phones, I Phone was released in 2007 I think

It didn't really hit the mainstream here in Aus until around 2011ish for us.

 

[Codex]

I keep thinking how's the XXI century's '80s gonna be.
But back in 2010, I didn't think a bit about it. It was, I guess, the last good year for me.
Still 19 going on to 20, rocking as a teenager and with high expectations as a young adult.
i'm broken now
am afraid it's beyond repair lol
oh well, i have nothing to complain about, really. but some switch shifted in my mind, and it's one of those buried ones, deep down inside, really hard to reach again
let's hope for the best and cope with nostalgia
God bless this place.

 

[Rikstah]

I keep thinking how's the XXI century's '80s gonna be.
But back in 2010, I didn't think a bit about it. It was, I guess, the last good year for me.
Still 19 going on to 20, rocking as a teenager and with high expectations as a young adult.
i'm broken now
am afraid it's beyond repair lol
oh well, i have nothing to complain about, really. but some switch shifted in my mind, and it's one of those buried ones, deep down inside, really hard to reach again
let's hope for the best and cope with nostalgia
God bless this place.

It'll be alright bro just keep on trucking.

To some extent this is just the ageing process. People watch their potential bar drain away while we do our best to live the life that we'll be proud of at the end.

Nostalgia is a painful longing to go back to a place we can't go to, whether it was something real from our past or an idealised vision of a past era.

 

[Thereal]

I'm 18 so everything isn't as zoomed out for me, but I'd say that 2012 was the last year where things felt normal,. After that my life and the world around me both seemed to jump around everywhere from good to terrible. Truly nothing is stable, and while its not always bad, its not a comforting thought either. I wish I could've been around in the 90s, that probably would've at least been better than this. Or at least the early 2000s so I could get the OG Bionicle for retail price lol

 

[selfKaiHarness]

I'd gotta say, the best years i had were 2012 to 2014. It was by far the best years I had before the internet died a few years later. I was being homeschooled, I had way more free time to watch all sorts of Gmod videos before creators quit (I miss Gmod Idiot Box and Cyntago) or tragically died (RIP Colin Wyckoff), DBZ Abridged (TeamFourStar years ago were in their prime), and had to visit several (I'm sorry) piracy sites for DBZ content to watch. It was so much more lively and fun back then.

Sadly, the internet can never be revived ever again. It's all because of a shell of a company Google has gone backwards instead of moving forwards. But man, I miss the prime of YouTube. Those were the good days where censorship wasn't as widespread as today, it was nearly decentralized, and you can create any website you want. Except for the Viacom jerks that like to smite anything that falls under fair use.

Sadly, I was one of the last of the 90s kids to ever be born in 1999, didn't have a chance to experience Web 1.0.

 

[ignika98]

Everyone's "last good year" is really just the point where they lost hope of life getting any better for them. For most people this seems to happen around early to mid adulthood, when you're past the point of college life and society expects you to settle down.

It's natural to fall out of touch with current trends as we get older. Especially when it comes to things online. Culture and trends are set by teenagers and some young adults, so when you stop interacting with people of that age group you stop being able to keep up with the trends they set.

The only thing I think I've noticed objectively getting worse over the years is media. And I think it all has to do with how popular it's become to watch movies and shows and play video games. It's normal to spend most of your day doing nothing but binging Netflix and playing video games nowadays. When I was growing up that was still seen as weird and nerdy behavior. Because of the normalization of media it's audience has grown exponentially. And it's basically a rule at this point that a wider audience equals lower overall standards.

 

[punishedgnome]

Somewhere between 2008-2013. Personally, I feel like my life has gotten better overall. I'm just talking when I think the Internet, economy and most pop culture in general went to shit. At some point the internet started to get centralized, censored and dumbed down for retards, the economy stopped working for the average person and we entered the current paradigm of all media, movies and TV shows having to be part of this grand over-arching storyline instead of being self contained. It feels like it all happened around the same time.

 

[Pangolin]

Popularization of bring on the internet all day is what led to it's decreasing quality. Most people don't really have anything important or relatively interesting to say.

A lot of normies just exist and live to consume pop culture. As long as they are in tune with everyone else they are happy. But a nagging feeling bites them, a thought they try to desperately medicate, gaym, eat, away but never will. Their mental conditioning doesn't let them question it because obviously it means it's time to consoom.

 

[Aral]

To be on this forum, a literal monument to both the past of the internet and an idealized idea of life 30-40 years ago, you have to have some sort of dissatisfaction with current year. Whether that's not liking current cultural aesthetics, technology, entertainment, sports etc you all have your reasons. I just want to know, what was the last good year? The last year you felt in touch with things, the last year before things became bad?

I don't know if I ever felt in touch with things tbh. I can't tell which is my best year, because to me either they're neutral or bad, but I can't ever say I ever had a good year in my life.
As a child I wasn't old enough to conceive that, as a teenager I was basically in survival, rather, "don't kill yourself today" mode all the time, and as an adult everything feels too overwhelming. I can't understand and be in touch with the world, not for long anyway. It's like I'm from another planet, and the only world I understand is my own, because I make the rules.

 

[kriko313]

Personally I would put it in the early-middle part of the 2010s. Maybe 2012-2014. You could practically do most things, even on the mainstream platforms. People were more open and chill. It wasn't a minefield of outrage mobs, literal feds and glow in the dark hackers doxxing you. Fandoms still were going strong and not turned into bastions of Twitter politics etc. The monetization of online content was still new-ish and it didn't dictate what everybody does and say.

Much better times.

Damn never thought about it but 2019 is going to be a year we'll be nostalgic about in the future for sure. Things are never gonna go back to the way it was then...

That is a good point. If I told people what 2020 and 2021+ will be like, it would have felt like an Alex Jones rant on steroids.

 

[OrientalGrill]

Mid 2012 is when both my life and the world I've known got even worse. I had issues with finding friends and fitting in since about 2010, but before 2012, I still had passion and excitement for things. Its like everything has suddenly become more dumbed down, censored, everyone is now offended by the silliest jokes. Its irritating having to either restrain myself or pretend to be something im not to fit in with a ridiculous and absurd world.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

Like many here already said: somewhere between 2009-12 ish

Basically when the internet stopped being a place where you deliberately log on to. Before the only people online 24/7 were nerds on their computersy 5 years later EVERYONE was online all the time with their smartphones and the net shifted to accommodate phone useage.
It also ended the golden era of imageboards. I lurked several at that time. 4chan, Krautchan, 4chon and some other smaller ones I don't even remember anymore. Then for some reaosn everything kinda got mashed together. Many of the smaller ones died and the rest suddenly just behaved like 4chan despite being culturally distinct before so today no matter where you are, everyone has the same memes and rethoric. Krautchan/int/ during that time especially was probably the best time I ever had online.

 

[Deleted member 3578]

I was like in 6th grade for 9/11 and already listening to Dead Kennedys, so shit has always seemed frustratingly and aggressively hopeless on a large scale.

But for personal shit, I was rolling into big changes and life improvements for 2020. I had to reset and rearrange...

But I'll say 2017/8 was probably my least stressful and most positive year of adult life. Mostly cuz I was shedding shitty people from my life and living alone.

 

[LincolnJames]

Somewhere between 2008-2013. ... At some point the internet started to get centralized, censored and dumbed down for retards...

Popularization of bring on the internet all day is what led to it's decreasing quality. ... A lot of normies just exist and live to consume pop culture. ... Their mental conditioning doesn't let them question it because obviously it means it's time to consoom.

The points from these posts I think lays it out well for what I believe has contributed to "the last good year" having come and gone, somewhere around 2010. This was about the time when I feel that the internet went from something that its users created, to something that was, well, for consumption by the masses. The cable-tv'ing of the internet. The focus of the internet changed from users who maintained, explored, created, poked, and prodded, to users who, if not simply consumed, were happy to have their creativity constrained within the given ecosystem. I'll be off in some of the details here but we can look at any number of services whether it was early FB, early YT, EnterNexus/Nexopia, Geocities, etc. All of these services offered a highly customizable experience and way to express oneself. Take early FB for example, there were user created apps inbeded in profiles, groups were an absolute mess, profiles were highly customizable (at least compared to today). YT had the ability to reply directly to a video, a direct messaging feature existed, where interaction amongst users was not constrained in the fashion it is in its current iteration. Many Apple products perfectly represent this approach: if we look at iOS, the user adapts to the system rather than the system being created by users themselves. What do we call this model? "Safe but boring"? It's reliable, sure. But it's certainly not fun. Not fun in the way that the internet used to be. And I think we see this trickle into other areas of life now too. I don't believe it's simply cost that sees fewer and fewer kids driving or taking pride in owning, maintaining, and even upgrading their vehicles. This used to be a huge scene. It certainly still exists, much like Agora, message boards, IRC, and like, but not in the same capacity. And newer cars, with their computers and proprietary systems, make it that much harder, if not impossible to modify. Cars are becoming iPhones. All this to say that society seems to have happily abandoned identifying one's uniqueness by making making something their own. We didn't change the essence of HTML but we created something out of it. We didn't change the essence of a Honda CRX, we just slapped a turbo on it, lowered it, and added some ground effects. We made it our own. Where has uniqueness gone? Has it moved inside? Is it now about personality tests, mental disorders, and sexualities, all proudly tweeted about from an iPhone? Take me back to communities that gathered in parking lots on a Friday night to show off the latest modifications to the beautiful Datsun 510, the somewhat boring 240SX, and that weird guy who insists on showing up with a Volvo 850. The Saturday morning electronic swap meet followed by the LAN party. Take me back to a time when people could explore. And more importantly wanted to explore.

 

[Rikstah]

Personally I would put it in the early-middle part of the 2010s. Maybe 2012-2014. You could practically do most things, even on the mainstream platforms. People were more open and chill. It wasn't a minefield of outrage mobs, literal feds and glow in the dark hackers doxxing you. Fandoms still were going strong and not turned into bastions of Twitter politics etc. The monetization of online content was still new-ish and it didn't dictate what everybody does and say.

Much better times.



That is a good point. If I told people what 2020 and 2021+ will be like, it would have felt like an Alex Jones rant on steroids.

Legit get these thoughts like maybe the Mayan end of the world really did happen in 2012 but instead of dying we warped into a clown dimension

 

[cynthiune]

I feel after 2012, end of the Mayan calendar funnily enough, everything became particularly more shit. The internet became more centralized, censorship started to be more rampant, an increasing amount of attempts to take away our freedoms became way more apparent and in full force, and now we have a pandemic that will affect how society will run into the future more than we probably know.

To answer my own question I'd say 2011-13. Not personally my last good year, but the last year I felt somewhat in touch with the cultural zeitgeist and had hope and excitement for future media. Since then I don't like the current trends in design, feel detached from modern popular opinion, and worst of all I rarely am excited for new albums, movies, games, etc. Blame SJW, capitalism, or whatever but that's the way it is for me

my last truly, without condition good year was 2011 or 10

I think this is roughly the correct answer. Completely setting aside my personal feelings about where I was in life, 2012ish is the latest point the world in general felt "normal." It started getting really weird after that, and the descent has been exponential. My other answer would be 2001, and we just coped for an entire decade until the cracks started showing.

Edit: My really fucking small brain didn't see there was a page 2, which most echoed this sentiment already. Seems like this is pretty on the nose then for most people here. Can't be coincidence.

 

[trick]

I would say '99. Then the hysteria around the Y2K bug happened, followed by 9/11, then the internet eventually being weaponized once enough regular folks got their hands on it.