Comment by Vampiero

I mean the pre-smartphone era when there was a barrier to entry on the internet. It was a nice place. Then everything turned to shit, as it always does, when the ignorant masses caused a context collapse by diluting the previous subcultures into a homogeneous blob that is eager to get spied upon and to be served advertisements non-stop.

The point of no return was precisely the introduction of the smartphone because it lowered the amount of energy necessary for someone who doesn't care about technology to interact meaningfully with it. To this day most people don't own a personal computer unless they need it for work. But almost everyone has a phone.