Everything you're saying is true, and half of it is the point I really wanted to make but was too lazy to do.
The fun "wild west" internet we remember from 20+ years ago, is still there, in a way. Back then you could put up a website with whatever information you wanted, and you could participate in the forums without the fear of rampant mobs of SJWs and mainstream media "journalists" wanting to burn your house down for failing to kowtow to whatever new craziness was the hot topic of the day. Everyone involved were reasonably technical people, and the normies were nowhere to be seen.
Today, in addition to that, we also have enormous, well-lit, highly polished, user friendly sheep pens for the masses, where the global normie population is guided into to consuming the narrative and posting pictures of their breakfasts as well as their genitals, and argue wildly as long as they stay inside the Overton window like good little boys and girls. Anyone who fail to say "baah" in either of the permitted ways, is ejected from the pens.
If you ignore all the mainstream systems, what's left is the internet of old. You can still run an irc server and write and host whatever sites you and your peers want - and that is far easier today than it was back then. As long as you don't get an audience larger than what you could have had those 20 years ago, you will be fine - but if you try to reach and threaten the gated communities of big tech, the powers that be will strike you down. Back then you couldn't reach the normies because they weren't on the internet, and today you can't reach them because the global cabal still has global control of them.
I don't think we can have it both ways. Reaching the mainstream isn't about making a good or fun or necessary product, it's about being part of the right club. That's how it was then, and it's how it is now, even though all the details have changed.
Everything you're saying is true, and half of it is the point I really wanted to make but was too lazy to do.
The fun "wild west" internet we remember from 20+ years ago, is still there, in a way. Back then you could put up a website with whatever information you wanted, and you could participate in the forums without the fear of rampant mobs of SJWs and mainstream media "journalists" wanting to burn your house down for failing to kowtow to whatever new craziness was the hot topic of the day. Everyone involved were reasonably technical people, and the normies were nowhere to be seen.
Today, in addition to that, we also have enormous, well-lit, highly polished, user friendly sheep pens for the masses, where the global normie population is guided into to consuming the narrative and posting pictures of their breakfasts as well as their genitals, and argue wildly as long as they stay inside the Overton window like good little boys and girls. Anyone who fail to say "baah" in either of the permitted ways, is ejected from the pens.
If you ignore all the mainstream systems, what's left is the internet of old. You can still run an irc server and write and host whatever sites you and your peers want - and that is far easier today than it was back then. As long as you don't get an audience larger than what you could have had those 20 years ago, you will be fine - but if you try to reach and threaten the gated communities of big tech, the powers that be will strike you down. Back then you couldn't reach the normies because they weren't on the internet, and today you can't reach them because the global cabal still has global control of them.
I don't think we can have it both ways. Reaching the mainstream isn't about making a good or fun or necessary product, it's about being part of the right club. That's how it was then, and it's how it is now, even though all the details have changed.