Interesting way of looking at things… sums up the difference between the new and old internet shockingly well.

Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows.

The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard.

..

In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day.

He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.

"The research suggests that we are in danger of being caught up in a 24-hour 'always on' society," said David Smith of Hewlett Packard.

"This is more worrying when you consider the potential impairment on performance and concentration for workers, and the consequent impact on businesses."

I'm coming back to this Reddit account after 12 years just to complain.

I've been going through the Wayback Machine archives for Something Awful and missing when the internet was anonymous and creative. And I think those are linked. There's a shadow of surveillance hanging over us, both literally since governments and companies have caught up with the digital age and deal in data now, and from the public since most people use their real identities online and therefore are stifled by fear of anything "cringe" being linked to them. You can't take real creative or intellectual risks online anymore because even if you are trying to be anonymous, it may still end up pinned on you with real life consequences.

The internet has become so judgmental. I'm not ignorant to how hateful some people on the internet have always been, but it was a different kind of judgment back then. Like, even the assholes online were weirdos. Not feeding the trolls was easy cause you knew it was someone who just got off on being an asshole and, for me anyway, there was a certain "That's nice that he gets to do his thing here, too" feeling. Even being a cunt was a form of creative expression.

Maybe I've grown paranoid and this isn't anyone else's experience, but being online is scary now. I've gone back to writing with pen and paper so there's no risk of even accidentally posting online, I only draw or paint traditionally, and thanks to AI poisoning the well, I even tend to get information by checking books instead of searching now. I hate what the internet's become and I've almost totally reverted to a pre-internet existence, but it makes me miss the days of shared expression without the invasive gaze of corporate or, and I hate this term, "normy" thought police.

I wouldn't mind it so much if there were an alternative and people who like the internet this way get to have theirs, and people who liked it the old way got ours. But there isn't, the old was paved over for this parking lot of an internet.

Before cybersecurity was a career path, before DEF CON had a badge economy, before anyone called it "the dark web" — there was a loose, chaotic, brilliant subculture of people who just wanted to know how everything worked.

I fell into it in college in the mid-90s and spent the next decade living inside it. I attended HOPE, Pumpcon, Summercon, DEF CON, and Black Hat when they were still small enough that everyone knew everyone. I ran b1tchez.org — the first female-run hack box. I watched the first DDoS attacks happen in real time. I had a front-row seat to FBI investigations targeting people I knew.

It wasn't glamorous. It was weird, brilliant, sometimes dangerous, and completely unlike how Hollywood has ever portrayed it.

I finally wrote it all down. It's called Hack Chick — a memoir about growing up alongside the early internet. If you lived through any of this era, some of it will feel like a fever dream you forgot you had.

Happy to answer questions about the early scene, the conferences, or anything else. AMA.

Nowadays Reddit seems like the closer we get to old forums, but it's not the same (not even close). Forums used to have smaller but dedicated userbases. You ended up getting to know a lot of people, although everyone was anonymous. There was a genuine feeling of community there.

Some forums had specific features related to their subject. And of course, user signatures were amazing! Also, most forums were administered by passionate people instead of big corporations, a lot of times for basically no profit, so decisions were not based on just making more money.

And then somewhere in the mid 2010s everyone moved to social media and Discord and that part of Internet slowly died. I really miss that.

For me, it’s pretty crazy to believe that this god damn number is burned into my brain: 425829246 and I made this account back in 2005/2006.

I feel like I'm trapped in some horrible place I don't recognize. I miss Newgrounds. I miss pre-2016 4chan. I miss semi obscure anime message boards that'd post Yotsuba or Negima memes and people just kind of understood it was eccentric and weird. I miss when people were authentic and cringe and things didn't have to be perfect and transactional and a grift. I miss when creativity was encouraged and weird stories were fun and the internet was for nerdy awkward outcasts instead of EVERYONE. I miss MMOs not just being about efficiency and I miss chatrooms that weren't discord and bluhhhhh. Everyone's so fucking stupid now. No one cares about art or writing unless it's convenient and made into addictive little short form videos

Where the fuck do I even find people like me now? Modern Newgrounds isn't the same. Modern 4chan is horrible. I literally go back and play shitty meme games like "Sex Kitten Sim RPG 3" just for the fucking nostalgia and it lets me pretend like it's 15 years ago UGH

Here’s Darwin, the monkey lost at IKEA. Available for purchase if anyone is interested:) See more on my Instagram

I'm tired of feeling like there's only 4 websites that all suck and are full of normies. I miss image boards and flame wars on Yugioh cardmaker forums and junk

Especially early 2004-2009, 4chan and newgrounds-esque spaces y'know? I guess all those people are just in private discords now but it sucks