I've been on the internet as long as you and from my POV it changed a ton. The biggest changes to me are
(1) social media via smartphones - letting everyone trivially post to everyone else on the planet.
This use to be nerd activity (blogs) and the audience was other nerds. First social media sites, then the smart phone completely changed this.
(2) follows from 1, influencer culture, by which I mean, Instagram, TikTok, X, Youtube all incentivize people performing to try to get as many viewers/followers as possible. Thinking back to the 70s/80s, even the top movie stars just got some fan mail. They didn't have 400-600 MILLION FOLLOWERS to whom they could say anything they wanted. A celebrity had a most a TV show with a crew and editors and a strong chance of getting fired/banned if they got to crazy. Now, any high school kid can have 100+ million followers
It's not just people with followers, 20% of my youtube feed is people trying desperately to have something to talk about. Some news happens, thousands of people "report it" on their "channel". The scale of it is insane to me.
(1) social media via smartphones - letting everyone trivially post to everyone else on the planet.
This use to be nerd activity (blogs) and the audience was other nerds. First social media sites, then the smart phone completely changed this.
(2) follows from 1, influencer culture, by which I mean, Instagram, TikTok, X, Youtube all incentivize people performing to try to get as many viewers/followers as possible. Thinking back to the 70s/80s, even the top movie stars just got some fan mail. They didn't have 400-600 MILLION FOLLOWERS to whom they could say anything they wanted. A celebrity had a most a TV show with a crew and editors and a strong chance of getting fired/banned if they got to crazy. Now, any high school kid can have 100+ million followers
It's not just people with followers, 20% of my youtube feed is people trying desperately to have something to talk about. Some news happens, thousands of people "report it" on their "channel". The scale of it is insane to me.