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To a small extent, yes. I kindof felt that when I discovered mastodon 5 years back, but it's still not quite the same. Back then, the internet was a new adventure. Every website was kindof shitty, but they all had their own unique personalities based on who made them. The internet's potential was unknown. The fediverse just feels like more of the same bland social media, but everything is messier and hard to find.

I say that, but Lemmy just makes me realize how much I took reddit for granted. Forums are nice, but it was great to have a place where at least 1/5th of the english speaking population congregated to discuss the issues of our time. I don't think we will get that on the fediverse.

I want to believe in the fediverse, but it REALLY needs to be ironed out and made easier to use.

In some way, yes. In other ways, also yes.

Honestly, yes. It does remind me of those days. Reminds me of the old Usenet.

who remembers mosaic? or pinemail?

Yes, really. I was fortunate enough to be able to access the internet during the 90s. Was exposed to Geocities, webrings, and IRC mainly (the heyday of BBSes were juuust before I had access). Before Google, it was a real magical time when you never knew what lay in store as you surfed the information superhighway's hyperlinks. The "Old Internet" ruled.

In my opinion, the Fediverse is both like that, and unlike that. The idea of federation is really close to the unsiloed feel of the before times, yet we know much more about connectivity now than ever before. There's definitely magic in having something for the first time which you cannot 100% replicate even with something innovative.

But I have to admit the Fediverse does have that Brave New World feel (the concept, not the novel).

This is how we would surf the web back in the 90s! I still remember flying over the earth shredding some world-wide gnar! We would all screech the AOL connecting sound as we swooped majestically through the forums.

100%

You didn't have massive social media sites acting like hubs for the whole internet, predicting what you might want to read or watch. You had to know what you wanted and seek it out yourself. Communities were mostly niche forums with limited crossover.

I have the same feeling! It's like a whole new space to explore with a small bunch of individuals. It reminds me of the MOOs : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO

MOOs where like the original "metaverse", text only. You could navigate through it. You would wander from room to room. Sometimes you would meet one individual and chat. Most of the time you would move things to understand the universe and for shit and giggles.

I get more of a early 2000s vibe from the fediverse, with it's smaller, more intimate communities akin to those old school phpBB and vBulletin forums I used to frequent extremely often, but of course more modernized.

This is the closest I've got to that feeling, yeah. Only difference is now I'm not a teenager and not that bothered about your asl.

It’s more akin to the early 2000s to me. Not in the sense of how the tech works but more in the feeling of nothing being “owned” by any one person or entity and things just being…free.

Yes, but a lot of people didn't know the proper way to use a keyboard back then.

I’m a techy person and I’ve tried to figure out kbin but I can’t lol. I got mastadon and Lemmy. I haven’t really tried more than like 5 minute to get kbin but I couldn’t figure it out in that time and I was able to do Lemmy and mastadon within that time range

not a 90s kid but it feels similar to the early 2000s internet to me

Before everything became aggregated you had to discover things on your own or know people who tell you about cool shit. The influencers of their times. Old Tech Tv shows would literally have segments of dope websites they found and shared them. It was a time when you wanted a place on the internet it would be your own webpage that you set up you paid for and maintained. It's how we got "webmasters" for a while before the wordpress and squarespaces of the world came to be.

I was there Grukler, I was there 3000 years ago. It was exactly like this. But with much more porn downloading very very slowly.

When I was a kid and the Internet was coming out, I was just really interested in finding the most grotesque porn possible and then printing them out on a printer and selling them for $.25 each in school so I could buy candy and FYI I always printed them out on the school printer because my computer teacher was literally like an 80 year old woman Who probably didn’t know how to use the computer

Actually pretty close.

I literally had this book

Wait until you discover that Lemmy also federates with PeerTube.

Also, any communities ending in a.gu.pe or chirp.social are actually 3rd party group services targeting Mastodon users.

can confirm. this is exactly how the internet felt.

i remember keyboard surfing as a child, good times. if u weren’t born in the 90’s u won’t understand