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Comment by Khaine | Hacker News Reader

Thats just what the internet of the mid to late 90s was like. People rarely used their real name, there were hundreds of forums, some private. You could have different nicks on them.

Nobody knew you were a dog on the internet[1] until the rise of Facebook and linking your real identity with an online identity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

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The idea that everyone has only one identity, one whole, is harmful.

People change over time. People change even a little based on who's around them. Even memories change as people see things in new lights.

The Internet of the late 90s and early 2000s was spectacular in that everyone could be as authentic and deep as they wanted to be, and as shallow and invisible as they wanted to be depending on context.

Firefox? Want to know how to really sell yourself. Be 'For the User', like TRON (but avoid that for copyright reasons and because normal people don't understand). The user should be able to TRUST that Firefox isn't selling them out, spying on them, or doing anything strange. That when Firefox creates identity sandboxes they're firewalled from each other to the maximum extent; including resisting device fingerprinting (just look generic and boring).

You could argue (it certainly has been argued) that the ability for technology to dissolve the usually more coherent identities that we take on daily by granting unlimited role play, trolling, and exploration is simply too much for a lot of people, and makes it hard to maintain a coherent sense of self. This is especially true of people who are “internet addicts” - not that the designation means a whole lot as I’m here at the gym talking to you on the phone.

Don’t get me wrong, I mostly agree with your comment. I think even more dastardly is the tendency for the internet to market new personalities to you, based on what’s profitable

There's also the inconvenient truth that a very specific part of the world was online in the 1990s.

Primarily more educated, more liberal, more wealthy.

Turns out, when you hook the rest of the planet online, you get mass persuasion campaigns, fake genocide "reporting", and enough of an increase in ambient noise that coherent anonymous discourse becomes impossible.

I mean, look at the comments on Fox News or political YouTube videos. That's the real average level of discussion.

The 1990s internet was definitely not more liberal! 4chan style forums were probably the rule. I can’t believe someone would say that, clearly you didn’t use the same internet that I did.

He didn't say the internet was more liberal, he said the people on it were.

Before you start forming your reply, think about the actual culture back then. If you take slashdot as somewhat representative of the 90s internet culture, it was basically anti-corporate, meritocratic, non-judgmental, irreligious, educated, non-discriminatory, and once 2000 came around tended to be highly critical of the Bush agenda.

4chan at that time and places like it represented more of an edgelord culture, where showing vulnerability or sensitivity was shunned, everything revered by the larger populace was ruthlessly mocked, and distrust of society and government in general was taken as natural. Calling them conservative would have been non-sensical.

Exactly. If I had to characterize the general internet (read: what would and wouldn't raise an eyebrow in an average forum) in terms of political alignment, it'd probably be:

   - anarchist 60s/70s
   - libertarian-meritocracy 80s/90s
   - capitalist-meritocracy-liberal 00s
   - polarized liberal-globalist vs conservative-reactionary 10s
   - polarized liberal-individualist vs conservative-statist 20s

That SA / 4chan (both of which were really post-90s) existed were in no way proof of an anti-liberal bent. Their very edgelordness was an implicit reveling in absolute freedom of expression (even if their later liberal-pro-censoring and alt-right splinter movements subsequently forgot that).

4chan was very much left-wing to liberal until Stormfront invaded them back. After Caturday came Soviet Sunday.

It's still possible in smaller, constructive communities, not in large general-purpose social networks.

As a hn poster, I agree with this

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