> I think everything changed when Eternal September happened.
The original Eternal September is about a specific year, but it has become an evergreen concept for each younger generation:
The Internet was really cool when I started using it and everything felt new or novel, but it started going downhill later.
That’s why this topic produces so much agreement when spoken of generically, but when the date of decline becomes the topic everyone just starts pointing to their early years on the internet as the golden age.
> The original Eternal September is about a specific year, but it has become an evergreen concept for each younger generation:
> The Internet was really cool when I started using it and everything felt new or novel, but it started going downhill later.
And you can also replace "Internet" with any other concept and you will find a lot of people in their early 40s and over (sometimes even earlier) bitching about how everything changed and it's now messed up.
I'm trying to avoid this feeling but how do I tell the difference between nostalgia and things actually getting worse?
It's complicated indeed, and sometimes it seems that society/societies make 2 steps forward and 1 back, and other times 2 back and 1 forward. Staying on topic, Internet "at scale" brought many many positive things but also enabled bad things at the same scale. But in many minor changes, IMO nostalgia dominates over being factual.
> And you can also replace "Internet" with any other concept and you will find a lot of people in their early 40s and over (sometimes even earlier) bitching about how everything changed and it's now messed up.
Maybe we (humanity in general) should take a hint from that and stop messin' shit up?
It's more specific - the Eternal September concept is also about gatekeeping, and how a moderate barrier to entry is often good for a social space.
like the old slashdot min(uid) flex