Here Went Everybody

In that era, people could even make their own little social networks, so the conversations and content you found on an online forum or discussion were as likely to have been hosted by the efforts of one lone creator than to have come from some giant corporate conglomerate. It was a more democratized internet, and while the world can’t return to tha... See more

The internet of today is a battleground. The idealism of the ’90s web is gone. The web 2.0 utopia — where we all lived in rounded filter bubbles of happiness — ended with the 2016 Presidential election when we learned that the tools we thought were only life-giving could be weaponized too. The public and semi-public spaces we created to develop our... See more

Up until 2008, there was a blockage, the present just wasn’t happening, until suddenly we had this trifecta: the Financial Crisis, Obama in power, and the rapid expansion of the internet. We were flooded with innovation while the economy was completely off the rails. This is the context that gave way to DIS Magazine and dump.fm, Marisa Olsen coinin... See more

The web came of age with the social platforms of the 2000s. While these social platforms created new forms of connection, in many ways they disappointed the early vision of the web as an open jurisdiction. While establishing norms for how we individually represent ourselves, social platforms also, in part, dampened the imagination of a pseudonymous... See more

What lies before us maybe isn’t one main mass migration but a dispersal, a disruption of the hegemony as everyone throws up their hands, shouts “OY!” and heads off to a variety of smaller, more bespoke environments: influencer Discords, celebrity or fandom communities, invite-only groupchats, boutique apps like Cohost and Somewhere Good. Of course,... See more

or an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems. Going back to the more free-for-all nature of the Nineties internet could mean we see a proliferation ... See more