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What Went Wrong: Freedom and underculture.

The internet circa 1997 was an unsupervised, all-summer festival for free spirits & adventurers. Skinny dipping, legumes, transcendental dance and chance meetings that change the course of your life.

Now it's a residential school. 56% of the cultural machinery must be dedicated to dealing with behavioural problems in the cafeteria.

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not sure the nets ever were at some point in time, even in the internet's early days, 'unsupervised'

I don't remember an internet ever being "unsupervised" it was more that there were thousands of independent fiefdoms run by one autocrat and his minions. If you were in agreement with the ideas of that autocrat, it felt like freedom. If you weren't, you got banned and you found a different fiefdom with rules you liked, but there were plenty to choose from. Nowadays a few megacorps run those fiefdoms so it feels like there's less freedom because there's less options.

incidentally, the rainbow gathering web site still uses FRAMES

https://www.welcomehome.org/

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