Early internet use felt like entering a separate fantasy world under a made-up name

Evidence

As that name suggests, over most of the 1990s, going online still had an element of science fiction or fantasy to it. Unlike our day of always-on Internet, back then one “jacked in” or perhaps passed through the back of the family wardrobe, and under a made-up name entered an entirely different kind of world populated by strangers, one where none of the usual rules applied. “Imagine,” said the cyber-pioneer John Perry Barlow, “discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions…where only children feel completely at home, where the physics is that of thought rather than things, and where everyone is as virtual as the shadows in Plato’s cave.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 984

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the shift from the early 1990s anonymous ‘cyberspace’ ethos to the real-name, identity-anchored era later built by Facebook. — connects to: Early online communities aimed to augment local place, not escape it — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 131; Pre-Web internet fostered play and identity experimentation, not marketable self-presentation — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 493; The early internet’s value lay precisely in sheltering niche subcultures from mainstream attention (+2 more)
• SHARE: The Barlow quote about internet as a new continent where only children feel at home would delight someone steeped in early internet culture.

Broader Connections

• The early internet’s value lay precisely in sheltering niche subcultures from mainstream attention #expands (0.82)
• The internet’s promise of niche escape collapsed into a mass culture of short-form content #complicates (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 522