The modern world was built on military funding, nerds repurposing utilitarian calculation devices to start fan clubs and play D&D, and advocates for the free, decentralized internet that enabled Silicon Valley to succeed, only to turn around, lobby for net neutrality, and monopolize it all.

7/ The internet had transformed. No longer a space just for professionals, it became a playground, battleground, and proving ground for a new digital counterculture—one that still shapes the internet today.

6/ This was the true start of the “Wild West” era—a time of limitless creativity, trolling, and unfiltered digital anarchy. It also marked the birth of “brainrot”—where absurdity, irony, and lack of restraint became the dominant aesthetic of internet culture.

5/7 By the late 90s, the old, academic, office-minded internet culture clashed with a youth-driven counterculture defined by:

Ironic stupidity & absurdity (as seen in Something Awful’s motto: “The Internet Makes You Stupid”)

Anti-censorship & self-publishing (“Only on the Internet”)

4/ As kids gained internet access via library and school computers, the U.S. government became savvy of, let’s just say, “college-aged content”, & attempted to censor online speech. This fueled an anti-censorship movement, defining the internet as a space of unfiltered, unregulated expression.

3/ Then came The Eternal September

Before 1993, Usenet had a yearly influx of new users when college freshmen, unversed in netiquette, got internet access. But AOL’s mass adoption meant new users never stopped coming. That old netiquette broke down, and a new, chaotic, irreverent culture took hold.

2/ Early computing was for work, until users repurposed their computers for personal interests and play. Games and fan clubs (online fandoms), shifted how users viewed and engaged with computers and the internet—not as tools for labor, but for entertainment, exploration, and experimentation.

Satire: The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

TikTok better back it up and ask if “is fast enough?” and Vine’s table better break and say “oh no…our table”

It’s literally a bunch of out-of-touch people not comprehending the scope of such a ban.

Random question: How would Internet Archive feel about making a crowdsourced TikTok archive? I’ve personally wanted to contribute to a chronological TikTok scroll that contains TikTok’s of cultural and historical significance. I’d make it myself if I had the developing skillset.

If you had a social media platform with 3.9 billion global users, would you sell it to, let’s say, Russia to keep 150 million Russian users on the app? Hell the fuck you wouldn’t and moreover, you shouldn’t. #tiktokban