How the Internet was a Lifeline in the Early 2000s
Life Before the Internet
Some people wax poetic about life before the internet, fondly remembering a time when children played outside, families gathered around the dinner table, and news came from a paper. They’ll chastise younger generations for spending too much time in front of a screen, longing for the days when people were more present with one another in person.
Back then, your world was a lot smaller. People knew their neighbors, classmates, coworkers, the people at church. You met new people through friends or hanging out at places like malls, coffee shops, bars, parks, arcades, and community centers. The local community was all people had.
And maybe for some people, it was a better time. But for anyone who didn’t fit in, whether they were queer, neurodivergent, socially awkward, or just seen by others as being a little different, it was a much more isolated existence.
Being “weird” or “nerdy” was a social death knell. Those old movies where bullies beat up nerds weren’t exaggerating at all. If anything, they were toning it down. If you were different, you were bullied, beat up, and ostracized. And unlike the movies, there wasn’t always a ragtag group of outcast friends to band together with. Sometimes you were stuck enduring it alone.
If you were lucky enough to find a person, or even better, a community that understood you, that connection meant the world. But if you moved, as I did several times in my childhood, you’d basically be starting again from square one.
My Childhood
School was tough. I never really fit in. One core memory is when I fell off the balance beam on the playground in second grade and twisted my ankle. I was lying on the ground in pain while one of my classmates laughed like my suffering was the funniest thing she had ever seen.
“You really hate me, don’t you?” I looked up at her, with my tear-filled little kid eyes.
“Don’t we all,” she sneered.
And I internalized that hard. I genuinely felt like most people I met hated me, or at best tolerated me, until well into adulthood. And honestly, I still don’t think it was that far from the truth.
Maybe it was because I was poor. Maybe I just think about things differently from a lot of people. Maybe it’s because I was a “tomboy” and people were convinced it was something I should grow out of. I was told boys would like me more if I just started dressing and acting more like a normal girl. It wasn’t just about gender roles, either. There was a strong social pressure to “act normal” in general.
It felt like I was often blamed for not fitting in. When I was bullied in school, they stuck me in a social skills class, as if my lack of social skills was the reason I didn’t fit in. Let me tell you, the vast majority of the people I meet in life are not applying the social skills I learned in that class, and they’re doing just fine socially. The problem wasn’t that I lacked social skills. The problem was that the people around me demanded conformity and I was too young to understand why being kind and honest wasn’t good enough for them.
I couldn’t figure out why everyone hated me, but when the world around me was constantly treating me as if there was something wrong with me, I started to believe it. I got quiet. I tried to disappear. If I couldn’t fit in, at least I could try not to stand out too much.
That’s where I was in life in 2002, when we first got AOL.
The Moment Things Changed
Let me set the mood with one of my favorite songs from that era.
I remember that first summer where I had free reign of everything the internet had to offer. It wasn’t without its dangers. I definitely stumbled upon some things a 14-year-old probably shouldn’t be stumbling around in, and talked to some people who should not legally be allowed to talk to 14-year-olds at all. At least back then you had to click accept for people to send images, and I was smart enough to hit the block button when people started getting creepy.
But aside from that, it was an incredible experience. I found people who were just as obsessed with my weird niche interests as I was. People who read the same books and wanted to roleplay in those worlds. Places where I could talk about video games or music for hours. Forums where I could find other people who loved talking about aliens, ghosts, and cryptids as much as I did. Witchy personal websites that introduced me to spirituality outside of mainstream Christianity. Places where I could talk about computers with people that actually got excited about that kind of stuff. It opened up my world.
Plus, I didn’t have to be self-conscious about my weight or my looks and I could take my time to figure out what I wanted to say to people. People made a lot fewer assumptions about me. If I wanted to, I could use a gender neutral name. I could be completely anonymous. I could be whoever I wanted to be, but the best thing was that I could be myself and there were people that actually liked me for who I was.
I definitely went through several phases online. Some communities I lurked in, others I was only in for a while, but there were a few that gave me something that I never had before. A sense of belonging.
I Wasn’t The Only One
There’s a whole generation of us who found our people online when the outside world was actively hostile toward us.
For queer kids in conservative towns, neurodivergent kids who weren’t understood by the people around them, kids whose interests didn’t align with their peers, and anyone who was bullied and made to feel like they didn’t belong, the internet wasn’t just a source of entertainment, it was a lifeline.
It gave us the words to describe the things about ourselves that we didn’t understand. It helped us to learn that there was nothing wrong with us, and that we were not alone. We saw our own thoughts reflected in other people’s blog posts, and found connection in long, late-night instant messenger conversations. Sometimes those online strangers became lifelong friends.
And through those connections, we discovered that we’re not broken. We are worthwhile. And that the things that make us unique are not flaws.
The Cultural Shift
Through all of this, something magical started to happen. Everyone’s world got a little bit bigger.
Niche interests started to become more mainstream. Being queer, nerdy, a cosplayer, a furry, an emo kid, an anime fan, none of these things are weird now. That’s because we found each other online and built communities. We stopped shrinking ourselves to try to fit in with the people who didn’t get it.
And those interests we were once ostracized for took off in popularity. We entered a golden era of shrugging off conformity and embracing differences.
But, alas, as it has throughout history, the pendulum seems to have swung back in the other direction.
Each progressive social movement is inevitably met with a backlash, and this one certainly has been no exception. There is a stark divide in our society right now between those who embrace this spirit of diversity and acceptance that the early internet ushered in, and those who feel that the lack of conformity is an affront to social order. And while the early internet opened up our worlds, the current internet is ruled by algorithms that push people into echo chambers that close their worlds off again.
I think that perhaps that is a driving force for the current interest in reviving the spirit of the old web. When the hubs got bigger, we lost that sense of personal connection. When the algorithms took over, we lost both nuance and diversity. We’ve seen what a more human-driven internet did for society once. We’re not just looking back out of a sense of nostalgia, but to claw our way out of a system that rewards conformity and closes our worlds back off.
This is a topic I would like to explore further on this blog. I intend to write future posts that go into more depth about the things that made the old web so special, how things have changed, what we have lost, and how we can not just rebuild that, but work toward something even greater.