This Internet experience has convinced me that intelligent people need a safe place separate from everyone else. I grew up on BBSes as a kid, a sort of hateful misfit, and learned to write, code and made friends I still know today. Local message forums and meetups, and FIDOnet and other distributed message forums for the wider reach. It took effort to even learn what these were, much less use them. As a kid computer nerds weren't running billion-dollar companies yet (Gates being the first obvious one in the late 90s), were made fun of at school, and were even the butt of jokes (if you remember from those 80s American movies).

The early commercialisation of the Internet killed BBSes but there were web forums. But more people could access it, so more problems. More stupidity, noise.

The dumbing down has fully transpired. Violence, anger and salaciousness are not only the noise in the noise to signal ratio, they're the investor's friend - the engagement hook that we pattern everything after.

Instead of nerds we have plastic faces with big fake lips posing for pictures or recording selfie videos in public.

I have painful nostalgia when I see an old VGA screen with an old operating system or Sierra game on it, and I wish I could find through the slop where the nerds went.