
A 1980 Teenager's View of Social Media - brianstorms
https://medium.com/@brianstorms/a-1980-teenagers-view-of-social-media-eaf8a5fdbf6c
======
firebones
You know what's weird? I met my future wife online at college via a PARTI
(PARTICIPATE, a terminal based messaging system running on PR1MOS that allowed
a form of effectively real-time chatting and pseudonyms) in college...in the
mid 1980s.

So in most of the 1980s and into the 1990s, I couldn't really effectively
answer the "how did you meet" question because that wasn't yet a thing yet.
("On the computer" wasn't really satisfactory before people had a notion of
"online".) And when it was more technically explainable, it was sort of seedy
because there was so little that was local or social about it.

So the discovery, decades later, of people meeting online, of social media, of
dating sites, of changing screen names to reflect your mood...that all seemed
ancient in a way.

The only thing left is to watch it go by, to be rediscovered again by those
new to computers...

~~~
cbd1984
> "On the computer"

Oh, computer dating, where you input your statistics and the computer picks
the logically perfect match. Nah, it'll never catch on.

(Remember that idea?)

~~~
greggarious
It still exists. It's called "OKCupid".

~~~
sukilot
The "matching" part of OK cupid is a joke/gimmick, though. It's accuracy level
is not really well correlated to the site success. They even showed that once
when they intentionally flipped the match scores

------
cshimmin
Wow, this was a hugely entertaining read. I can hardly believe it was written
in 1980. Really lost it, laughing out loud at this part (and several other
parts):

> There is nothing like going home to the parents house and sitting there at
> the dinner table trying to explain what an amazing set of conversations you
> had today on the computer. They’re like, what? It can take an entire dinner
> conversation to try to explain what pnotes and TERM-talk are, and then you
> realize by the end of dinner, you have gotten nowhere, and they still simply
> Do. Not. Get. It. It’s frustrating. Some day, everyone will use these kinds
> of tools and we won’t be having these pointless hour-long conversations at
> the dinner table or anywhere else, trying to explain The Future, which for
> some weird reason you, lucky bastard, are already IN, while they’re still
> stuck in the past. I look forward to when this stuff is all mainstream and
> people can just talk about the online mail and chats they had today and
> nobody bats an eye. It will come. Question is, how long?

~~~
svantana
It wasn't written in 1980, it's a tongue-in-cheek response to an article
written by a 2015 teenager that went viral yesterday:
[https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-
me...](https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-
media-1df945c09ac6)

~~~
stackcollision
Ah, thank you. I was starting to get a bit of vertigo on how prescient this
was, I felt like I was reading The Machine. Now that I know it's satire it
makes a lot more sense.

------
bigbugbag
Very interesting read. I often try to educate people telling them that the
social network gimmick is just that : a gimmick in a marketing ploy. A network
of computers is social by nature of the users being social beings. Using
computers in a network was already social when I got in in the 1990's. The
social part is not from facebook or whatever the current popular thing is,
they try to get hold of it for their own profit and it's sad.

I'm looked at weird when I say that so called social networks feature
regressions from what was possible then. Reading this article, I learned that
even in the 1990's we had made a few steps backward from the previous decades,
I mean what happened to the simple feedback channel offered by TERM-comment ?
How come this is not a standard feature ?

------
technofiend
Oh man, so many good memories from that. My friend RPD III was so good at
flashhook dialing we could dial in to PLATO even with a lock on the rotary
phone, which was no small feat since it had a large number of high digits and
a zero or two.

We figured out the local admin's password (superkey+text man) and gave
ourselves extra accounts and privileges. Sure we had hacked access to our
RSTS/E PDP 11/34A by snagging the sysadmin's password off the LA30/LA36
(forget which) and replacing the login program, but even with Tek 4014
terminals it was nothing like PLATO.

------
sciurus
This article makes me miss Learnlink, Emory University's bulletin board and
student email system from the mid-nineties to 2012. It was still going strong
when I graduated in 2007. There's something magic that happens when _everyone_
in a community is using the same service. Even though students come and go, a
culture develops.

There have been at least a couple replacement attempts, but I don't know if
either have caught on.

[https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/emoryit/2014/06/20/learnlink-...](https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/emoryit/2014/06/20/learnlink-
retired/)

[http://osls.emory.edu/student_orgs/community/ll_to_community...](http://osls.emory.edu/student_orgs/community/ll_to_community_migration_FAQs.html)

[http://www.emorywheel.com/emory-bubble-launches-aims-to-
repl...](http://www.emorywheel.com/emory-bubble-launches-aims-to-replace-
learnlink/)

------
jccalhoun
Really interesting article. I wish it hadn't been written with the gimmick of
being written as if it were from the 80s.

~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
It was a response to this article:
[https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-
me...](https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-
media-1df945c09ac6)

~~~
jccalhoun
I know. I knew that based on the title. I still wish it was a response and not
an emulation or whatever.

------
davidgerard
Heh. I learnt to touch type on a PLATO system in 1990.

------
MichaelCrawford
"The all-too-few of us already thriving online now and who’ve seen the future,
find it hard to explain to the multitudes who haven’t yet what this all is and
why it’s really important."

Some people are well-aware of what computers are, but they choose not to use
them. It's not because they don't have the money or the expertise to use them;
I know a sheriff's deputy who uses computers in his work, but he doesn't have
a computer at home. He never uses a computer when he's off work.

From time to time I suggest to people where they can get free computer
training; there are ways to obtain actual hardware either inexpensively or
even free of charge.

But few who I offer such suggestions to, want to use computers. The reason
they don't use computers is not because they cannot, but choose not to.

~~~
cbd1984
I wonder how much of that choice is driven by fear, not so much fear that the
computer would Do Bad Things, like some enraged minor deity, but fear that
they really are Out Of It and can't learn new things.

If they don't try, they can't fail, and they don't have to face up to things
quite yet.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable.

~~~
Swizec
OR they consider computers as work machines and don't want to bring work home.

I mean, if all you're going to do with it is watch TV and fart around online,
you don't need a computer at home really. You're better off without TV and
you're definitely better off without wasting time on imgur, HN, Facebook, etc.

My point is, having a computer at home is kind of passe these days unless
you're a nerd.

~~~
sukilot
Considering how many people use Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp, your notion
of "passe" is... passe.

~~~
Swizec
Most people use those on their phone, not on their computers.

Looking at my non-nerd family members and non-nerd friends it seems that the
only reason anyone opens a computer is to watch a movie, watch youtube on a
bigger screen, or to do some sort of work or another. (school reports for
instance)

