Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

In the present day, there seems to be a feud between the early adopters, and people who got a modem later on. The early adopters are still around, of course, but they seem to have more centralized interests than newer users, who are colloquially known as 'normies,' or 'newfags'. The difference can be seen on sites such as reddit, 4chan, who coined the aforementioned terms, and countless forums that had changed very little since their inception. Observers may see this as a general conflict between new v. old, but there are elements to this that make it differ, aside from existing in the same medium.
When I say "early adopters," I don't mean users of older websites; I'm talking about those who relied on digital media before the first sites were even created.

The culture in the early years is no different from today.

There's just more of it. Lots more of it. So much that any niche can be seen as a trend. And porn too!

well yeah, but how did it develop?

I'll tell you one thing.
There was way less nymphomania back in the days.

It depends what you mean by "early years." The beginnings of (non-military) internet culture could be found as early as the 1970s with MUDs and dial-up forums. But the internet began receiving widespread usage in the late-90s and early-2000s. In those days, the newness of using the internet for recreation made even simple things seem fun. For example, one of the first videos to ever go viral was this weird little thing cooked up by 14 year-old Neil Cicirega using a pirated version of Macromedia Flash. At the same time, all the major corporations were just dipping their toes in the internet. CNN's website was initially a compliment to the cable channel and not a replacement. There were big, popular sites to be sure (Newgrounds, Ebay, etc.) but new media was not yet mature enough to challenge the old guard. Compare that to today where YouTube, Twitch, and Netflix have practically rendered television obsolete. Oh, and no significant social media.

Short version: There was less of a singular internet culture so much as many subcultures. We still have those subcultures today, but we are also aware of the mainstream culture because we all congregate on behemoths like Facebook and YouTube. Regardless of your personal interests, you will more than likely catch wind of the latest memes and controversies without even meaning to.

It was more of pixelated images do nothing for people. There was a lot of E-RP though.

Can't mention early internet culture without including Joel Veitch. I'm still surprised Rathergood has been around even to this day.

Five star rating systems were way more common, and it was perfect for filtering out great OC from the fast, low effort stuff you tend to see now.

Most big social media sites want to give you an endless feed to keep you looking for as long as possible. It probably makes more money but it sure as hell isn’t fun.

In my opinion, it was nice until the MLG came to the memeverse:

Dumb, but fun memes like lolcats were everywhere
everyone was anonymous, everyone treated eachother like shit, but shared a sense of companionship

I don't really know what to say about old internet culture, you could say that it's the same thing nowadays, but memes have short lives and way more people recognize it (even some business practices use them for their advertisements), you could say it's very different, because it was a time before memes were called… memes, and some jokes were just "dumb fun", the internet was more peaceful and everybody just cared about having a good time.

Forums were the good stuff where you could nerd out things that nobody really cared IRL, youtube poops and newgrounds flash animations were one of the best forms for comedy and memes in general, simpler times, dumber times, funnier times.

It was an edgier time, at least when it really took off during the 00's.