“When was the last year that the internet felt good to you? I think everybody has different answers to this. Mine, I think, go fairly far back, maybe to the heyday of blogging. ‘Words and getting up to 40,000 hits on his blog a day’. At least before the moment when Twitter and Facebook went algorithmic.” — Ezra Klein‘s intro for “We Didn’t Ask for This Internet“, which was posted on 2.6.26.
I feel so grateful that I was around and column-ing back in the internet heyday of the late ’90s and early aughts. Every day I felt such a profound sense of peace and well-being…a sense of being plugged in and belonging to a soothing, crackling worldwide fraternity, and never did I feel so good about internet life as I did in the early to mid aughts, and particularly when I visited Paris internet cafes. There used to be dozens of them all over town. Some are still in business even today, although mainly for gaming.
One of my all-time favorites was located on rue Raivgnan, maybe a block north of rue d’Abesses. From 2000 to 2007 or ’08 it felt like one of the happiest places on the globe. Heavenly. I would plop down in front of a large screen with a good speedy modem and a just-purchased cappucino on a nearby table, and I wouldn’t leave for three or four hours. All was well. Ten years before the woke terror plague, which was triggered by #MeToo. No fear, only freedom. Connectivity itself felt like a wonderful Neverland paradise…a place for constant intrigue and adventure, and without algorithms or predatory extraction schemes.