The Golden Age of the Internet Is Over 

UPDATE: Im aware this was briefly on front page of reddit and r/videos (which is amazing)! And it was later removed, some people thought it was shadowbanning or something suspicious, but truth is I have been banned from that sub since 2017 (a few friends used to post my vids, without my asking), so its a legitimate post removal if anyone was curious. Either way I do appreciate the support and Im glad people resonated with this video, thats all I could ask for. You can check out my social media links in the video description if interested.

Nerds, Gamers, Bloggers, Content Creators. Long ago, the four corners of the internet lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Corporations attacked.

the internet was ruined when companies realized they could monetize people’s communication

Just remember RU-vid once had the slogan “broadcast yourself”

For me the internet died after 2015 everything just went downhill, especially when politicians, corporations, and news outlets started using it for commercialization.

The internet was great when it was a retreat from the world. Now it -is- the world.

I remember when you were an idiot for putting your personal information online but today 15 years later you're encouraged to do it. Why did we allow this to happen?

The internet used to be a cool place to escape from real life. Now I return to real life to escape the internet...

It’s funny how the the golden age of most types of media ended when corporations became part of the equation.

"Lets face it, the internet has become corp-" *AD*

The internet used to be so nice before everyone and their mom showed up.

we'll never see a pre-corporation internet again, I feel so sorry for everyone who missed it, it was like a nonstop party at your fingertips

What killed the golden age of the Internet was really the smart phone. Before to interact with the digital world you had to boot up your pc, wait for your dial up to come on and then log into whatever site you wanted to access, but now the Internet is quite literally in your pocket & can be accessed within seconds. You're connected to it at all times. It doesn't feel like a retreat but rather something that consumes your whole world every fucking second of the day. I miss the early-mid 2000's.

It really is a hugely demotivating feeling to have your livelihood swiped away in an instant. Insanity.

2008: Post something on RU-vid for fun 2020: Post something on RU-vid for money

I miss the days when people would make content and post just to make content and post. Nowadays people make content FOR the algorithm and FOR advertisers.

I miss when people didn’t take the internet so seriously and it was all just for fun.

Just as he said "the internet has become corporate" I had a mid-roll advert. How ironic.

I was born in the middle of the golden age. It feels unfair that I didnt get to experience it

Historians will find 2010s hillarious.

I think Club Penguin is legit a great example of what used to make the internet so special. It was a world you could go to and chat with others, play some silly games, decorate your igloo/penguin, and just escape from the real world for a bit. But Club Penguin wasn’t designed to keep you on for hours and hours at a time, more so for a quick few minutes every now and then. Even the art style of club penguin perfectly captures that of the vintage internet.

We're all just actors in the world's longest Black Mirror episode.

Glink: "RU-vid sucks now" RU-vid: *this video is recommended for you*

I wonder how many people wished they were born earlier to see what the internet was before all of this.

I'm an artist and DeviantArt provided me that customization I fell in love with spoken of here, but a few years back they made an upgrade and the entire website is so bland and boring now. I want the old years back :((

"The Internet has become corporate" - immediately get a Tik Tok ad

RU-vid died when people began earning money from views. The focus went from hobbies and passion projects to trying to make money.

"Let's face it, the Internet has become corporate" That sentence barely finished and I was hit with an ad, HAHAHAHAHAHAH, oh the irony

I'm so sad that the golden age of internet only lasted for this short period. It came and went away before I even noticed

As soon as he said “the internet has become corporate” I got an ad lol

There cannot be a renaissance without a dark age.

This video was made in 2019. In 2020, all of this that was wrong happened ten times more. The internet got even worse in 2020.

My grandparents watched the downfall of radio and television happen slowly over the course of many decades. I watched the internet's downfall over the course of my short life. This isn't how things are supposed to be.

I actually fear that 10 years from now I could look back to today and miss the current state of affairs if we follow the current trajectory.

The Wild West days of the Internet were sure something I'm glad I experienced.

I miss how personalised the old RU-vid layout was. Remember when RU-vid meant 'Broadcast Yourself'? Now it's just a corporate echo chamber of soulless content.

I miss the early 2000's where RU-vid had just hilarious, minute-long videos filmed by crappy home cameras. They were absolute gold.

I'm personally waiting for the internet 2

Time is flying when even the internet has a "good old days."

What killed the internet? Money, lawyers, and governments.

Back in the day on forums, everyone seemed to have a paranoia about being tracked and hacked, so you NEVER used your real name, NEVER used a real picture of yourself! And that anonymity brought an honesty that's missing today.

The problem is: People rely on the Internet, for a sense of belonging. Nowadays, it's just a reboot of High School drama.

The images of old RU-vid gave me such nostalgia

The money changed everything. It turned making memes/internet culture from a passion to a profession, and thats what killed it.

Normies and big tech ruined everything. It's so bad that I tried to comment a brief history of blockbuster and Netflix and RU-vid wouldn't allow it.

*Remember when the every website had its own unique look and personality?*

I'm 45. I joined online gaming and other internet stuff in 1997 when I was 22. It was the glory age. The internet now is laughable compared.

I miss when the internet was a place to escape the real world. Now I can’t go anywhere without seeing politics or things from the real world.

I got a taste of the golden age when I was so young, but I will never forget it. ytps and shitposts were the best things ever, not anymore though. recently I've been growing away from the internet and going back a lot more to the real world

"The internet has become corporate- *ad*" Great video, you've found yourself a new sub

My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about.

Sometimes i feel like it's the downfall of humanity as well, greed, corrupted, sucked into negativity, consumed by media, sad everything is going downhill

Dude the ceo of youtube is LITERALLY called susan and doesnt visit the site and has 0 clue about the internet. Its literally like someones mom took over youtube

The internet is becoming so degenerade and soulless everything is a competition everything is for social status there is no fun anymore the only good thing left is that you download things

"Let's face it, the internet has become corpo-- " *forced ad* "... corporate." I agree.

old websites felt really comfy. they felt secure, welcoming. it's a feeling i won't find nowadays, because everything here is trying to steal your personal info. it's a feeling i won't find nowadays because everyone is in a rush to control and silence those that dare oppose them.

It is disgusting what has happened over the years to the internet. I started my internet journey back in the early 90s. It was the 'wild, wild west'. We could say what we wanted, do what we wanted, and no one had public melt downs, no calls for fans or followers to attack, no storm of Karens doxxing people for not going along with some witch trial group think, no one was censored, canceled, shut down, etc. Everyone just handled it. And BECAUSE of that, the large majority of people were a hell of a lot friendlier and far, FAR more creative than today. We could even make videos without copyright strikes. RU-vid came along in 2005 - long after the start of the internet, but even back then, RU-vid was FUN! It was all about us, not corporations and celebrities, news, movie trailers, etc. It was the every day person - that was the whole damn point of RU-vid. Now, the internet feels like you're being treated like a child....and everyone around you is also a child - an EXTREMELY sensitive child, who runs to the teacher to cry about their feelings. It's very sad, because the more you monitor, the more you restrict, the more you shut conversation down, the worse people get, not better.

And it didn't just die. It was MURDERED

"They took down Hentai Heaven" I felt that

We are in a Cyberpunk dystopia without the cool aesthetic.

Internet is a place to get ourself get off reality, but when internet is reality, everything boring

Give it another 10 years and we'll have a renaissance period

There’s people in these comments right now who are too young to remember when you could customize your channel background on RU-vid

It’s unfortunate but dear god, how far this site has fallen...

one of the things that make me sad is the lack of personalization. i remember when we're able to change lot's of things on Twitter, now we can't barely change the colors of the links and when we click to change it, we can only pick the 5 colors they choose for us and this color is used in all pages, even other ppls pages. i loved to check my friends pages and see what colors and wallpapers they choose. now everything is the same. that's why i love neocities, they keep the best of internet alive

You kids have no idea how fun the internet was. As my computer science teacher put it " it's a gateway to the entire world, you can do anything, see anything". No politics, no fake news, no outrage, just randomness and weirdness. Going online was like going on an adventure. The sound of your phone getting connected online felt like you were gearing up. You don't know what websites you're gonna visit, who you're gonna talk to, what new flash games you're gonna discover. It was definitely magical. And even though internet speeds were very slow at the time, it felt like the wait for new page to load was worth it. Maybe I am being nostalgic here, but I can't deny.. i had a great time with the internet in the 00s.

I miss the times when the internet was more goofy (ytps and lol internet stuff) instead of the sterile corporate internet we have today

We can't save RU-vid. We just need to make a new one.

Remember back in 2008-2009 when youtube was not connected to google and you could customize your profile page with wallpapers, gifs anf pics? Yeah good times

This video is ahead of its time. In 10-20 years, the internet won't even be recognizable anymore

I once saw a thread on 4chan that said memes are never to be bought and sold, for they are free for all. The moment memes become a product is the day the internet dies

Anyone else tearing up over that clip of the old RU-vid? Just me? *emotional nostalgia*

IT lasted less than a decade. What killed it was the smart phone.

In the Myspace days people didn't know it but when they were creating their pages they were doing a small amount of coding.

The Internet was like the jungle, freedom... now is like the city

Remember when the word "cringe" wasn't as used and people were not afraid of being creative? Yeah, me too.

I loved how the Internet was in the 2000s. It was not glued to my life and it was not a place to keep 24/7 checking on other people's lives and posting pictures of your most recent trip that nobody cares. It was a magical place where ANYTHING could happen. You'd go after school/work to disconnect about life and just chill and have fun, like an alternate world where freedom of speech reigned. I used to be very anxious to get home and boot up my computer where I could browse the Internet and finally be able to talk and to check the stuff that I really liked and just be myself, whereas I couldn't with most of my real friends. I was a Sonic fan at that time and the community was strong. We had animations, fanfics, forums, millions of fan websites (geocities), board discussions, arts, cool videos, contests, reviews, tips, radios, etc. You had endless content of your favorite stuff, and made on the sole purpose of being fun and good content, not on making money (at least most of the times). Nowadays you are just restricted to Reddit and its horrible mods or some forum that is just a ghost town. Online gaming was at its peak also. Staying up until late playing CS 1.6, Quake 3, Unreal, WoW was the shit. No censoring, no SJWs, no simping, no cash grabs, just the boys having fun. It was also very common to make friends with someone within some game and later the friendship would go on to outside the game via MSN. No one does that anymore. Everyone just lost their authenticity.

After big government found out that social media can over throw governments...that was the end of the internet.

“i wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them”

It crushes me when i realize that those times are not coming back

I really hate modern internet and social media. Things were so much simpler back then.

"they took down HentaiHaven" I felt that

"For a decade the Nerds and geeks were the guardians of peace and justice in the internet. Before the dark times... Before the Companies...."

Back then, my parents were restrictive of me using the computer constantly. Now, i am having to restrict my parents of using their smartphones constantly..

Now there's reels making everthing 10 times worse 😭

Remember when filling in a social media profile was fun?

Unlike most nostalgia for things, the internet is a living organism that has objectively mutated into a big commercialized piece of shit.

I always hated social media Started using it after corona and became miserable But thank god i got cured again

This phenomenon really effected meme culture as well. There are multiple “memes” nowadays that started as publicity for movies, and are honestly very unfunny. Besides, they only last for 2 days. I feel like I’m holding onto something that doesn’t exist anymore, but there are still some enjoyable environments on the internet, specially on youtube.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The internet was definitely better between the 2000s-2012 time period. I LOVED how the internet back then was more like the wild west with anonymity. The internet isn't a "web" anymore. I remember starting at one site and clicking a link in the site that brought me to another site which then brought me to another site until I forgot how i got there. There's no more surfing on the internet. Everyone uses the same 10 sites which are all the corporate social media sites. This goes against the internet's founders philosophy. It isn't a web when you only go to the same 10 websites. Google forces you to read mainstream media sources and isolates peoples blogs where people wrote their perspective. Now we only get mainstream news which is biased on both sides. We're literally in the ARPANET now when there was only a dozen servers/sites. Corporations definitely ruined the internet. I hope these companies get broken up to give other website providers a chance.

The internet was way better when you had to go home and sit at your computer to use it.

_UNREGISTERED HYPERCAM2_ *muffled 007 soundsystem plays in the distance*

I was a freshman in high school in 2008. 2000-2010 WAS the golden era, no doubt in my mind.

There was a golden age. Now let’s hope there’s a renaissance.

Rant time. As someone on the autism spectrum RU-vid was one of the greatest discoveries of my childhood. When I was in school the teachers and students gave off this impression that they saw me has “different” or “didn’t belong” even if I didn’t know at the time I was on the autism spectrum. My cousin was the one who showed me RU-vid and ever since then I have loved this website. RU-vid is more engaging them TV ever could be. On TV you have a few channels you can watch various shows but on RU-vid you specifically subscribed to a certain channel making it much easier to watch what you wanna watch. Finding content on RU-vid is more interesting as well, on TV you just flip through random channels until you land on a show that you are willing to watch. On RU-vid you can search for specific things and find stuff that you may not have kept watching on TV that you enjoyed on RU-vid. There was just so many great things about RU-vid watching contact that appeals to you, branching out to new types of content, allowed creativity to thrive and RU-vid allows anyone who wants to make videos basically “Broadcast Themselves”. On RU-vid it felt like everybody was on the same level (equal) everyone’s videos were treated equally no matter how different the content was on each channel. RU-vid allowed a variety of content to thrive, so the RU-vidrs and viewers felt that they were in a community of just regular people. with no filter on almost everything that was posted. There were so many great animations on RU-vid that I can talk about for ages but we’d be here all day. Cyraik and David Firth made funny, weird, dream like and disturbing animations that would never air on TV and if they did they would be heavily modified, not what the artist intended. they’re were great parity animations (sometimes as a music video) for stuff like Minecraft and My Little Pony etc. The original animated series were amazing they were usually written and animated by one person and they had to choose the voice actors for the series. Feral Pride, Wolf Song, Twelve, The missing Light, Cow of the Wild, Painted flower etc. Were all able to come into fruition by RU-vids platform. although some of them may not hold up as well as they did in the past that’s kind of the charm most of them are not super well animated and the riding for some may not be all that great but this meant a lot to me when I was younger. There are so many other great animated stuff on RU-vid you just got a find it. RU-vid has also helped my critical thinking looking how commentary channels and review channels gave their opinions and explained why they believed on a movie or situation etc. it help me to agree to disagree with people and be humble. I love that edgy and weird/stupid Comedy channels or implementing that style into their videos. If you didn’t like that since of humor there were thousands of other channels you can go to. I don’t remember anyone really getting offended by this kind of stuff it seemed they went and found comedy that they liked Wow wHat a coNCepT. When I went to my private school the science and history teacher showed us RU-vid videos covering the topics we were or not even covering her topic sometimes would be a completely different part of history or science and that was great. I am subscribed to many science and history channel now. Science I already loved but history I didn’t find much interest in that until I found historical videos on RU-vid and it just clicked for some reason. Again as someone on the autism spectrum RU-vid was just so inviting to me no one was really ostracized and being “different” or “not belonging” was not something to be ashamed of. For example how to basic is such a fascinating channel. It’s a very specific concept of just taking “how to videos” then making them cursed and we all love it. Sr. Pelo just screams, acts like he’s on drugs and drawls he’s characters faces with grotesque facial expressions and is beautiful. Then google, Susan and the RU-vid executives have to come try to ruin everything. There is still great stuff made on RU-vid but it seems like it’s buried under mountains of BS like companies, pointless dumb drama, bland repetitive channels, Content farms, fake perfect people etc. there are so many design choices in modern RU-vid that makes it almost impossible to upload certain types of content or gain traction on RU-vid. It’s not that I hate nice friendly wholesome content I just like variety and I don’t like companies being on the front page of RU-vid. that’s not what RU-vid is about!!! Stop censoring everything do you really think all the advertisers and viewers are going to leave RU-vid because of a slightly offensive video? Do you guys really thank it’s necessary to demonetize or give a channel a strike for saying the word retarded? This is coming from someone on the autism spectrum and I think it’s so dumb. Old RU-vid taught me to be tough skinned and not let words bother me. I hate the idea that people with high functioning autism need to be coddled. NO I just wanna be equals in society and that’s how I felt on older RU-vid. Now RU-vid acts so authoritarian they want to control everything. Instead of people not liking edgy channels that say words like “retarded” they can go find other channels on their own but now RU-vid, forces people to watch what RU-vid, wants them to watch. It’s not about YOU! viewer or YOU! the content creator anymore. I am passionate in a lot of things art, animation, science, Biology, character design, video games, comedy and music. I’ve always wanted to make RU-vid videos but I just don’t feel that motivated to make any because of all this restrictions and the Internet community as a whole. Not to make money or get “famous” just to make them for fun. It’s just sad honestly...

As a AI from a video game once said: “What we propose to do is not control content, but to create context.”

Internet truly died for me when it stopped being about creativity, fun, and escapism. Now it’s about drama, Us v. Them,validation, greedy corporations and billionaires trying to get money while not caring if people are getting hurt or negatively on their platforms, and political warfare thanks to the government and politicians using the internet. If I remember correctly, I remember a time when RU-vid was just dumb animal and skit videos. Not infested with drama or “tea channels” made by validation seeking Milennials and Gen Zers making money off of any internet drama or negativity that they see.

“They took down hentai heaven nooooo.” What a chad

Dude, this was an eye-opener. I literally almost forgot how the internet used to be when I was in college. I'm gonna log off, take a bath, and read a goddamn book.

The golden age ended when Megaupload was taken down in my opinion. It triggered this wave of corporations censoring everything to death.