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This is something I wanted to get out of my head for a while.

I was reading old forums, checking old images, "mEmEs" and other forms of media through some websites that I use somewhat frequently and I noticed something…
We surely grew distant, different and diverse with time, haven't we? Maybe even toxic.

By late 2000's and early 2010's, media was more relatable and less specific: It was the internet, anyone could relate to its jokes, even though communities were aways there. Weirdos, weebs, gamers, fanbases (these are the ones I can generalize, sorry) and many others were aways there, but… We were more… "Normal"? We could relate more, our memes were more simple and straight foward, and if that didn't work, we could aways tell a good joke that "even normies would understand" and we would laugh. Simpler times, huh?

But something happened, then we start to change, differ, evolve into more specific communities: products by us and/ or for us became more and more common in form of
music, games, art and others; media obtained a lot of space in the internet.

So, we slowly grew different with time (just like evolution in nature, huh), and things… Changed, a lot. Think about that next time you check your perverted images, edgy memes or dumb firewars.

And now, I wanted to ask you something, "fellow kid": Why and how did we change?
Srry 4 bad englsih

The internet used to be a smaller community, than the big social media sites brought all the normalfags in(myspace, facebook, twitter) whoch led to a conflict, as regular internet goes were more “edgy” and knowlageable the ins and outs of tech while the normalfags are easilly offended, leading to trolling and lolcows, etc
the mainstay of internet culture itself I’d say split up due to size, and age

I would like to believe that the people who grew up as the internet was developing in the early 2000s and even by 2010, those people naturally became more cynical as they got older, losing the kind of "childlike wonder" they had when initially exploring and discovering the internet, for good and bad. And as a result, the same people started to understand the internet as a place to find yourself in a community you can comfortably be around and personally connect with (aka circlejerks), and they started to realize how opinions worked.

Conversely, as there was the people who grew up as the internet grew up, the new generation of multi-media users have gotten access to the internet during the high point of the internet's development, with access to everything at once and being able to slide into said communities earlier than the previous, and that's not exactly a good or bad thing. With them existing, the previous generation that grew up with the internet as it developed, older and more cynical, tend to view these noobs as "freshmen", being so unaware and lacking of understanding of how things really work.