How does one explain to young people that the internet used to be a free, open place with no ads.

@alexwild must the pay could of weeks I’ve been wading through small internet stuff through #gemlog and #gopher and it’s been nice, but the whoa feeling was reading #usenet in a terminal. It was local newsgroups for the #tildeverse and there wasn’t much there, but a couple shitposts and a long read on community mesh, all in text breaking at 72 chars, was the throwback I needed.

Just like with the public spaces we’d hang out IRL, the critical mass that made those places amazing will never come back, but it’s nice that you can still dip your toes in it and see something current that grabs you