Comment by armcat
1 month ago
What's changed significantly is the "intent" behind the content. The intent today is mostly the actual "content generation", i.e. "I write a blog post or a public github repo for the sake of having a digital footprint". This is vastly different when I used the internet in mid/late 90s. The intent back then was more like an "online journal" or something you hope someone else will find useful one day. Back then we had geocities, lycos, altavista, and we browsed with netscape and IE. For example, i began my programming foray with Delphi/Pascal, and I remember browsing these "crappy" [1] websites that were mostly just text, that explained how to convert C programs to Delphi (i was working on some plugins). The content was "genuine" content - someone laboriously documenting what worked for them, knowing very well that no one may ever actually read this. This is the issue today - it's all just for show.
[1] Those "crappy websites" with a maze of iframes are actually considered surprisingly refreshing today.
I remember when internet started to go from wild jungle to organized in structure and form.. At first I was delighted.. and then I saw how there was an industrial feel to it. Things were predictable (tooling influences you, google search algorithm too).. and whenever I found an old 90s website, you'd feel the time, craft, attention to detail, personal interest. pages and pages of long and interesting paragraphs. so crude yet so deep.
content generation isn't the intent, it's just the side effect. the real intent is to make money.
everybody is either trying to promote some product, or promote themselves as a "content creator" so they can start getting influencer marketing deals and payouts from youtube or instagram ad splits.
the internet was at it's best when most of the content on it was just because somebody had some information, and wanted to share it. that intent is still out there today, but unfortunately it's harder and harder to find buried amongst all the revenue generation.
Agree 100%! The "real intent", the true cause, is making money. Whether that's directly via social media, or via proxy (which is becoming a major player), where people generate content in order to build repertoire, which they try to monetize via other means (contracting/freelance, publishing, speaking, getting on the VC radar, etc). So yes - one can correctly say that the intent has changed from something altruistic (giving information to the masses with no monetary foresight), to explicit money-making intent.