80's were fun but I was born in 73. I miss a lot about those days, mostly being young and having few responsibilities and a lot of privileges. The very late 80's and early 90's were the heyday of computing and internet for me. It was the Wild West and everyone in it was mostly young and nerdy. My people.
Now the internet is full of assholes who aren't just autistic, but are self-aware assholes who profit from it in terms of money or attention. If I could turn back time I'd go back to it in a heartbeat.
But it wasn't perfect. CP was everywhere. It hit different when I was 15 myself, but these days I'm glad it's cleaned up. Everything took forever. You could spend hours downloading a thing and it wouldn't work. There were known hacks to bring down chat rooms any time you wanted and assholes would use them. I miss it, though, warts and all. Those were all the things that kept the normies off of it, which I think kept it a better place. Smaller communities with curious people are much better. Which is why I'm here instead of Reddit. When Reddit finally dies, if everyone comes here I bet Lemmy will be pretty miserable, too. It's the people. Not everyone belongs in the online society.
