This Has Nothing to Do with the Pandemic
Back in the early days of the web, things were a mess.
This was not a bad thing. Things were a mess because the web was a new platform for exploring new ideas. A lot of people jumped on the web and pieced together some fun sites that were the talk of the town.
Yes, there were no solid standard or convention on how sites should look or “feel”, but regular users didn’t mind. As long as they could click something and something happened, they were happy. Uploading a photo may have taken a day or two, but at least you could see it once it was uploaded.
Regular users didn’t much care for the underpinning conventions of a site. They simply wanted to congregate and have fun engaging in whatever nonsense the web or site had to offer.
As expansive as the web was, so too were the number of sites where regular users could socialize. Sharing was free and fun. People shared photos and, later, videos of themselves without a second thought. Why? Because it was fun.
The web was a platform where no authority figure was present to tell you what you can and what you can’t do. Yes, this may have made for some shady and terrible interpersonal experiences, but those were edge cases compared to the number of people using the web.
Sites were being built and taken live almost daily. There were no shortage of users available for these sites. Why? Because the millions of members one site may have can also become members of the latest and greatest up and comer. Indeed, if it was built, they came.
Sites were designed to be different and expressive of the designers intent. There were no imperative to follow another’s lead in designing a site. Just imagine what you want and build it the way you like. The outcome was a plethora of sites catering to the wants and desires of millions of regular users.
The sites may not have been the best built or faux standard compliant, but regular users didn’t look under the hood to care. They remained on the surface and did what they enjoyed doing, which was mindlessly having fun. It was the virtual world. There was no real need to take anything seriously.
That is, until entities appeared to tell you to take it seriously.
I don’t care if you have a million members who visit your site daily and are having fun. Until your sites meets OUR standards and best practices, we will use our vast network of concerned web zealots and evangelists to condemn you at every opportunity.
Then the big dawgs showed up.
If you don’t use our middle-man tech to analyze your site’s traffic, or present the information on your sites in a way that pleases us, then we will, without any real authority, tell everybody that your site has been deemed unworthy to visit.
Regular users didn’t understand any of this nor did they care. They were happy with the way things were. Standards? Standards were for automobiles, not websites. Privacy? Millions of users were uploading penis and vagina pics for millions of others to see. Do you THINK they cared about privacy? Not until someone told them they should.
Sites were being designed and enjoying huge successes way before standards, analytics, best practices, and SEO (whatever the hell that is) came into the picture. No one needed a search engine to find a site. Good sites were made known by word of mouth. Regular users were adept at typing characters in the address bar and bookmarking pages.
Then the agenda behind the madness became known to the majority of web Ds (designers, developers, and douchebags). Only a handful of startups with the deepest pockets could meet the criteria set by the self-appointed authorities of the web.
This lead to fewer websites going live and surviving online. This lead to earlier burnout of web Ds trying feverishly to keep up with the latest and greatest expectations of the web authorities, only to fail at every outing. Unless a site was patterned off an established site did any new site even hope to stand a chance at survival.
This lead to another problem: why use a site that is based off another successful site when I can simply use the successful site? Answer: there is no reason. Thus, the successful sites became bigger and acquired the money and attention needed to become even bigger. Smaller sites either faded from memory or were swallowed up by the larger more successful sites.
This was a slow process (in web terms) leaving regular users to wake up one day going, “What the hell happened to all the GOOD sites I used to use?”