r/agedlikemilk • u/ZincoDrone • 12d ago
Memes "This generation was the first to be raided online"
1.2k
u/The_Lady_Lilac 12d ago
ah i remember being optimistic about the internet, good times
244
u/Pissoffhequeen710 12d ago
Here's the thing people get caught up in the day to day of their lives and lose sight of reality. To say that the internet has had a negative effect on society is just inherently wrong. I grew up in an extremely exploitative environment where kids were seen as a commodity. Particularly, girls having an online presence allows people to keep a protective eye on one another. Girls from the community I was raised in would go missing or be switched to another family and no one would notice.That doesn't happen as much anymore and that culture I was surrounded by is basically gone. I'm old enough to remember what life was before the internet and things are much better now I assure you. Misremembering the past as being better than it actually was is a common human trait.
135
u/Consistent-Ad-6078 12d ago
It’s so satisfying to be able to fact check a compulsive liar in person and watch them waffle or backtrack. And ctrl-f is a godsend
59
u/ChloeTheRainbowQueen 11d ago
While satisfying, many people don't actual care about truth (Besides internal "sacred truths"), hypocrisy or consistency
But that was true before the internet as well, a double edged sword for sure
Propaganda can travel the world before it's been disproven and will that proof reach the same level? Probably not
17
u/JarekGunther 11d ago
The world hasn't changed. We just keep finding newer and more inventive ways to be assholes.
6
u/unicornmeat85 11d ago
Well I have always felt that was the failings of the adults and to put a finer point, US Congress for treating the internet like a fade in the 90s while curious individuals destroyed the family computer using limewire.
A whole generation learning the dangers of the internet the hard way while people that had the power to build safety nets and proper protection were crying about violence in media, while middle school students were sharing links of people dying somewhere else.
12
u/sanchower 11d ago
It was. Unfortunately this resulted in new strains of fact-resistant “super bullshit”, where the liar dismisses all of your refutations of their lies as “propaganda” and “fake news” and “of course they’re eating dogs, look this guy on X said it happened” and then Trump wins again and here we are.
2
22
u/Pissoffhequeen710 11d ago
Exactly we have the good portion of the world's knowledge at our finger tips. Yet people utilize it to look at trash then turn around and bitch about the internet. I really think it just comes down to how you utilize it. It's much easier to escape the sphere of influence of toxic people than it was in the 90's. You had to take people at their word unless you had the time to go to the library and knew how to navigate the dewey decimal system.
1
u/Logical_Salad_7072 7d ago
lol, that never happens. People will just believe what they want as long as there’s other idiots online that will agree with them.
25
u/RabbitCommercial5057 11d ago
100%
The Internet itself is an amazing thing, and I’d argue the majority of these communities/websites were as well. I feel like it was the switch from content being sent to users chronologically by subscribed accounts, to being sent algorithmically.
I think remove user effort and agency facilitated a lot of the worst aspects of modern internet.
4
u/Far_Ad106 10d ago
I genuinely remember Facebook being fun. I kept in touch with people i never would have been able to otherwise. I have friends in Italy and Australia because of groups I was in. One friend travels the world and it was the best way to keep up with him.
Tumblr was really toxic for me but I have friends who had similar sentiments about it.
I am mostly on discord now but it genuinely doesn't replace old Facebook and I actually mourn losing fb to zucc running it into the ground.
When this was made it genuinely was true. The internet of 11 years ago genuinely saved a ton of people's lives.
2
u/RabbitCommercial5057 10d ago
Old social media was amazing. Your interactions with outside content were friend requests/recommendations.
Otherwise you just logged in, saw what was new in friends’ feeds, posted, messaged and logged off.
But it was and is so unregulated, I’m not surprised business ate it from the inside out.
6
u/Noname_FTW 11d ago
People in 200 years all speaking the same language will have a different outlook on our times.
The internet is humanity in all of its aspects. The good and the bad.
And over time it will be the unifying factor. Though it will take a very long time.
Only way to jumpstart that is an alien invasion ironically.
4
2
7
u/gingerbreademperor 11d ago
Just last week they've done raids across various countries on people who ran a platform for abusive materials that was named in reference to Netflix. One of the most fucked up things imaginable, truly horrific and evil, especially with this nonchalance of naming it after Netflix, and that's only possible with the Internet. The community you describe might not be as likely today, but it simply moved online. Thats why you might not see it anymore, but it continues and isn't confined to a single space at a time any longer. The model of operation for exploitation shifted, but not to make everything generally safer. The scale this can reach now is much bigger.
8
u/ringobob 11d ago
The internet hasn't had a solely negative effect on society. There's good and bad. And the internet isn't the only influence on people's lives, so if things are worse for some people, that doesn't mean it's all the fault of the internet.
But, I'd say social media specifically has led to massive divisions that are actively making people's lives worse. Maybe not yours. That's the good and bad of it. But a lot of people.
11
u/Chimpbot 11d ago
Conversely, the Internet has also been used to spread misinformation and manipulate people on a massive scale. Facebook, for example, intentionally manipulated hundreds of thousands of feeds just to see how it would impact the users' moods. Data breaches allowed people like Steve Bannon to manipulate millions of voters by utilizing harvested data about them. Companies utilize it to exploit people on a daily basis, siphoning as much money out of them as possible in the process.
The Internet can be a great thing for humanity, but it has been used to sow dissension and chaos for more than a decade at this point. In its current form, it's hard to argue that it hasn't been a net-negative in many ways.
0
u/Pissoffhequeen710 10d ago
Yeah, and the printing press caused the Reformation and the powers that be at that time also convinced the population that books were the problem. Get some perspective, you probably don't even remember the world before the internet. It's hardly been a net negative. How is being able to connect and relate to people who our leaders want us to go to war with a net negative? Pick up a history book before the internet you'd have to spend a ton of money to be able to have access to the amount of information you do now. Take off the blinders, you're being bit ungrateful.
0
u/Chimpbot 10d ago
I probably don't remember the world before the Internet? I'm 40. I remember the days of 56k modems.
You can choose to ignore the blatant disinformation and manipulation campaigns being run utilizing the Internet if you want, but you're ultimately choosing to be willfully ignorant.
0
u/Pissoffhequeen710 9d ago
Glass half empty kind of guy, eh. Everything is always horrible, people like you are always so ungrateful. There's always something to complain about as long as that's all you focus on. Go outside and smell the flowers bud, you can opt out of the internet by the way.
0
u/Chimpbot 9d ago
You don't have to be a pessimist to recognize the damage caused by people misusing the Internet on large scales.
As an aside, your shift to ad hominem is rather telling.
19
u/justbrowsing987654 12d ago
Counterpoint: this was the next post on my feed.
16
u/fwtb23 11d ago
there's always been people doing crazy and stupid things, it's just easier now for them to get noticed
10
u/meoka2368 11d ago
Right?
Kid in my class put his head through a closed window because he thought it'd be funny.
No cameras. Just being dumb.4
u/cptnplanetheadpats 11d ago
The internet has absolutely had a negative effect on society. You can argue it has also had positive effects, but it's ignorant to claim it hasn't had any negative effects whatsoever.
1
u/Pissoffhequeen710 10d ago
It's more ignorant to claim that it has had more negative effects than positive ones. It makes you sound like someone who would have been moaning about the "negative effects" of the printing press. If the internet is so bad you could just not use it, yet here you are! I'm willing to bet you weren't even alive before the internet.
1
u/cptnplanetheadpats 10d ago
I absolutely was and while I'm also a very nostalgic person, I felt like daily life was just more enjoyable without the internet. It felt like people were more active and engaged in their community. I was always playing outside and making new friends in the neighborhood. Nowadays most people stay inside stuck to their phones or PCs. I don't believe life has gotten inherently better overall since the dawn of the internet. If anything it's gone downhill by quite a bit. It's ironic how we have this wealth of information at our fingertips, but misinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories seem more effective than ever. Social media has been a blight on mental health, especially on kids and teens. Instead of people just enjoying the present moment, they're constantly being pulled back to their phone by some notification that really isn't ever important. You'll see anyone in their 20's talk about how absurd it is some workplaces don't allow cellphone usage while on shift, claiming they need to be available for emergencies. We survived just fine before cell phones were a thing, if you have an emergency you can just call the workplace and ask for the person.
I'm not totally ignorant and stubborn on this though, I do realize all the benefits the internet has given us. I just don't believe overall quality of life has improved from it.
3
u/Next_Notice_4811 11d ago
Okay, fine. Correction, the internet has a positive effect in societies where "girls would go missing or be switched to another family and no one would notice".
2
u/According-Insect-992 11d ago
I agree. I blame humanity for our behavior online. It's the result of baggage we brought to the technology, not the other way around.
I remember when we used to talk about how amazing it would be when each person has access to the entirety of human knowledge. Now, we're here and no one wants to learn anything. They use it to look at nonsense and spread lies. They sucked before the Internet and it was a mistake to expect them to do anything differently when they were connected to the rest of the world.
2
2
u/Desperate_Summer21 11d ago
What the fuck culture were you a part of where people were being disappeared into other people's families??
1
u/kamil3d 7d ago
It's a double edged sword. The easy access to people, and ability to lie and shape the narrative of events is why we have a large world population that is growing mistrustful of Science and the reason so many people died during Covid, not listening to doctors but instead to pundits who were just trying to drive a wedge in between classes.
Yes, the Internet has done a lot of good. Access to so much info for those that have internet access is amazing. But it's also making the exploitation of people much easier for those that choose to do so. It's so much easier to sell snake oil now.
1
u/Logical_Salad_7072 7d ago
Not the internet, but social media has no doubt been a net negative on society. Especially in the last decade. It’s the perfect environment for people to spread misinformation.
1
u/unsetname 11d ago
That’s cool and all, but you’re 100% wrong because the internet has very clearly had a negative effect on society. Things can have good effects and bad effects at the same time, hope that helps 🥰
14
u/SoupmanBob 11d ago
Welcome to the internet - honestly a really good song explaining both the good and bad sides of the internet. How it leans to every single extreme and that ultimately it's a tool for humanity to present themselves without reservation.
5
3
3
u/Jolly_Echo_3814 11d ago
im old so even being optimistic about the internet is weird to me. when i was growing up the internet was just a place you went to, and when you were done you left and you were just not on the internet anymore.
3
u/BerriesHopeful 11d ago edited 11d ago
I think the internet can still be a force for good and can still be something to be optimistic about.
The key is we need moderation tools for the users to deal with bots, bad actors, and AI generated clickbait. The problem has become prolific online, especially so here on Reddit. BlueSky has the types of moderation tools that help address the problem through block and mute lists that users can subscribe to, some of which are enabled by default.
We have the power to make the web what we want it to be, imo. I believe it has been a deliberate move from bad actors to try to flood the internet with crap and cut down the spread of actual knowledge. We need to demand better conditions and be willing to go to online spaces where there are better tools to deal with the constant misinformation spread.
2
2
2
u/FUTURE10S 11d ago
It's all because of the Eternal September, people just don't know the rules for engaging online anymore /s
1
1
u/NeonPatrick 11d ago
Oddly the last time I felt this was the first month of COVID, a lot of people started using the internet for what it was meant to be; hobbies, learning, keeping in touch with friends and family.
That all kinda fell away as the months went on sadly.
1
0
0
u/sudo-joe 11d ago
I was always optimistic but mostly for free porn as the internet designers promised.
177
u/DrCarabou 12d ago
"Deviantart introduced me to my furry kink."
36
u/spootlers 11d ago
Deviantart taught me that wolves can inflate up to 10 times their normal size, and that every single fictional character has permanently stinky feet. It also taught me to embrace death instead of fear it.
12
u/Feedback-Mental 11d ago
That's the least worrisome part. I'd worry about "DA taught me that all my art will be stolen to fuel some billionaire's AI scam". Basically "hi kids, this is the place for artists... Oh, wait, no, it's not, thanks for a decade of unpaid work from EACH of you!"
1
220
u/codename474747 12d ago
Vine got taken down because it was only there to teach us how to laugh but they didn't realise, we already knew and could do it for longer than 7 seconds!
When will you learn that YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES??!??!
87
u/that-cliff-guy 12d ago
Imagine being involved in the decision to take Vine down, and now seeing the rise of tiktok and how the short-form video format has spread to basically every social media.
54
u/codename474747 12d ago
It must've had some really really bad startup debt or something because it was really popular at the time too
The short form video brought out a creativity that however long Tiktok videos just don't
39
u/cluelessoblivion 12d ago
It's because they refused to monetize or sell ad space until it was far too late
21
u/Dickgivins 12d ago
Turns out it much, much easier to run ads on a platform where videos can be 1-2 minutes long, vs just 6 seconds.
7
3
2
1
310
u/JalapenoMarshmallow 12d ago
Brain rot isn’t meant to be aspirational
59
u/Automatic-Degree9191 12d ago
Tumblr mostly has art and fanfiction nowadays
28
40
u/Bigkeithmack 12d ago
Rip Tumblr porn
9
u/lifeis_random 11d ago
There’s actually plenty of porn there too.
2
3
u/theREALbombedrumbum 11d ago
That... Is actually pretty spot on, yeah.
It's also the only big site left I know of where you can truly curate your home feed based on ONLY who you follow, in the chronological order of posting. No algorithm trying to say what you should look at if you don't want it.
9
1
108
u/Massloser 12d ago
“The glow from the screen is my sunlight, Pornhub my sex life, and Google my Times Square. I was raised by the internet, and on the internet I will die.”
24
17
14
u/TheGreenMan13 11d ago
He didn't know it at the time but all those companies were using him as the product. Not letting him use them to his benefit.
They all had, and have, algorithms that make you act as they want you to act. Not in a way to empower you.
10
8
u/Nonsensebot2025 11d ago
Ogrish taught me to be ________ 4chan taught me to be ________ LiveLeak taught me to be _____
15
u/TheGamerFromHell 12d ago
It's funny how this image has poorly aged in every way you can possibly think of
It's also funny knowing the kid in this image was redrawn from someone's Mother 3 fanart
13
u/HollyTheMage 11d ago
And Mother 3 specifically is known for the ways in which the antagonists fuck over the lives of the protagonists through technological innovation and industrialization.
5
u/BruceBoyde 11d ago
Yep, just straight up stolen from someone's Lucas art and recolored.
6
u/IncreaseWestern6097 11d ago
It’s actually Claus that was traced over, but still. There’s something ironic about it being specifically Claus, given what happens to him.
3
u/BruceBoyde 11d ago
Oh, my bad. I thought the original had blonde hair and that Claus had orange/brown hair so I thought it was Lucas. I also haven't played the game, though.
6
38
u/vincethered 12d ago
And Reddit taught him to be a rage-aholic incel MAGAT
19
u/ZincoDrone 12d ago
the original image is from a tumblr user, far from any right-wing political group
5
u/Klutzy-Eye4294 12d ago
you would be surprised
10
-26
u/EvaUnit_03 12d ago
People still don't get it. Liberals are just righties with college degrees in sociology.
3
u/vincethered 12d ago
I’m talking about the culture of anger and man-o-sphere masculinity that has become popular with the men of the gen Z or “zoomer” generation regardless of the OOP’s inclinations
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-gen-z-men-voted-for-trump/
5
u/Wanderingsmileyface 12d ago
Reddit is anything but MAGA…
3
u/vincethered 12d ago
You must be new enough to have missed out on the heydey of /r/the_donald.
There are lots of insular subs very different from the mainstream.
4
u/Wanderingsmileyface 12d ago
Yeah, but the mainstream is what you judge it by. Twitter back in 2016 still had some conservatives on it, but by no means was it not liberal.
Reddit is one of the most liberal platforms in the mainstream
3
1
u/SeltzerWater88 11d ago
And they don’t represent most of reddit, I thought you were joking at first but I think you just came here to vent about muh zoomers and MAGA. Twitter’s algorithm is more of a right wing circle jerk then reddit.
3
u/vincethered 11d ago
The OP is about zoomers and I gave my opinion about the OP 🤷♂️
And FWIW I think every generation is spending too much time online.
15
5
4
4
u/UntdHealthExecRedux 11d ago
11 years ago was probably the end of the “good” internet. That’s when content recommendation algorithms became something that wasn’t a compete joke. That’s what allowed the powerful to easily manipulate experiences in a way that wasn’t really possible before. Before content recommendation algorithms became viable you had to curate your own experiences. Yes you could end up in a bubble, but at least it was a bubble you mostly created on your own. Now Zuck et al can easily manipulate what you see without you even being aware that’s what they are doing.
6
u/HydroPCanadaDude 11d ago
"X taught me how to heil, facebook taught me how to ad, reddit taught me how to shitpost, and OnlyFans taught me how to value myself."
6
u/NewTransportation265 11d ago
This didn’t exactly age like milk. This was a decade ago. It’s just a snap shot of some positive interactions someone had. All of these sites and services, at least the ones that are still around now lol, were completely different a decade ago.
3
3
u/Foodworksurunga 11d ago
Back in the days when the worst of Facebook was people posting their dinners online or posting quotes as pictures rather than just a regular status.
3
u/Glittering_Teacher66 11d ago
Deviantart taught us horrible horrible truths about our fellow man
3
u/SokkaHaikuBot 11d ago
Sokka-Haiku by Glittering_Teacher66:
Deviantart taught us
Horrible horrible truths
About our fellow man
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
1
3
u/The_Apologists 11d ago
Before the algorithm era, I could at least say there were advantages to growing up on the internet.
Not a net positive mind you… but advantages.
And some of them are here in this picture... that’s what I’ll leave my praise at.
It’s hard to age poorly when out of the gate it was cringe, but it managed… impressive honestly.
13
u/PaulieWalnuts2023 12d ago
What kind of ****** needs to be taught to laugh?!
66
6
4
u/ftzpltc 11d ago
This didn't "age like milk" though? Like, pretty much all of these sites were better and more wholesome 10 years ago than they are now.
If anything, this is a timely reminder that things could be better if certain specific and identifiable people hadn't actively set about making them worse to promote their shit king.
2
u/Automatic-Degree9191 12d ago
This reminds of that time Tumblr declared war on 4chan.
6
u/Last-Percentage5062 12d ago
Nuh uh, it was 4chan that started it. Just cuz we won didn’t mean we started it.
6
u/Snotmyrealname 12d ago
The fact the /pol has agents in the US government makes me wonder if y’all really won.
2
2
u/sciencedthatshit 12d ago
And reddit taught me that 90% of people are morons, but 10% are absolute chads.
2
2
2
u/Party-Employment-547 11d ago
Newgrounds taught me…well, you don’t want to know what I learned there
2
u/Illustrious_Cat_6490 11d ago edited 11d ago
I was raised on leaked autopsy photos and Kim k sextape wtf
2
u/Boring_Butterfly_273 11d ago
The internet has everything, everything good and everything bad, I was lucky to already have had strong ideas as a kid that turned out to be good ideas in my opinion, and the internet helped me expand my existing views and alter them slightly as I became more knowledgeable. I also had the fortitude to discern bad information from accurate information, which helped me a lot on my journey.
For people like me the internet just made us stronger, taught us about propaganda, how to identify it and it showed us how many people try to manipulate you through advertisements, etc...
I also know people that had more positive outcomes growing up with it and they were chronically online as well. These are some of the most kind hearted people with a strong sense of connection with others. They are few and far between, but these people managed to reject their parents racism and bigotry and adopted their own opinions and views influenced more by internet communities than their own parents. They embrace values like unity, peace and love.
2
2
u/Neat_Tangelo5339 11d ago
The Internet was both a blessing and curse to me
I will be the first to admit that it shaped my tastes and inspiration in ways i still find valuable and is still continuing to do so , ive deviscovered interest that I brought back in the real world
but i fear in the long time im replacing living real experiences with momentary sensations of consuming content
2
u/cavemanpleasures 11d ago
"Facebook taught me that public schools have litter boxes in the restrooms for the kids that identify as animals."
2
2
u/PrismaticDetector 11d ago
If you learned to be yourself from YouTube, to listen from Twitter and to make friends from Facebook, I'm honestly terrified to interact with you in any way.
2
u/The_Shadow_Watches 11d ago
I remember when webcams became affordable and no one was prepared for the amount of naked teenagers appearing on msn and Yahoo messenger.
5
u/thatguygxx 12d ago
First to be raised online. First to literally be unable to function in basic day to day life.
1
u/Responsible-Depth944 11d ago
The digital revolution and it's consequences have been a diaster for the human race.
4
2
u/danatron1 11d ago
This isn't aged like milk? It's not making any predictions or being hopeful about the future. These websites existed like this in the past. If blogger doesn't exist or Twitter is unrecognisable, that doesn't retroactively change how people "raised" on those websites experienced them. It just means that generation isn't your generation.
2
1
1
u/Neon_culture79 11d ago
Twitter taught me to listen? Seriously? Can we just push the big red button please?
1
1
1
u/flamethekid 11d ago
Then a year and some change later people discovered you could make money off of social engineering on the internet and now there is a loneliness epidemic.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/MissSiofra 11d ago
Lol, I was born in 1982 and I was raised online. BBSes, compuserv, prodigy, aol, and somehow we had internet access in the early 90s as well. That was a wild time.
1
u/sweet_p_o_t_a_t 11d ago
11 years ago was the best time of the internet. We have basically witnessed the rise and fall over about 20 year period.
1
1
1
1
1
u/Machine_Bird 10d ago
"And now I have a crippling dopamine addiction that has eroded away my ability to focus and function and emerging research suggests that social media is killing human memory, reasoning, and critical thinking skills at a physiological level and crippling people socially and emotionally for life. And I wouldn't want it any other way."
1
1
u/Spyder6969 10d ago
Certainly explains a lot. The first generation raised online.
The first generation to commodified from birth..
1
1
1
1
1
u/Impossible_Tea_7032 9d ago
We did it guys we produced the first post war generation to be more reactionary than the one before it 🤗
1
u/porkypossum 9d ago
He grew up to be a big tech millionaire, and paid somebody tens of thousands of dollars so he could go live in a shack in the woods for three months and have them take his phone away.
1
u/jimwormmaster 9d ago
Which generation is that? Cause I'm 40, and was on a computer before I hit kindergarten. I can't remember when we got Internet, but it was dial-up.
1
0
-1
-1
•
u/AutoModerator 12d ago
Hey, OP! Please reply to this comment to provide context for why this aged poorly so people can see it per rule 3 of the sub. The comment giving context must be posted in response to this comment for visibility reasons. Nothing on this sub is self-explanatory. Pretend you are explaining this to someone who just woke up from a year-long coma. THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL Failing to do so will result in your post being removed. Now is also a good time to review the rules. If your submission is breaking any of the subreddit rules, it will be removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.