"Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you."

(EDIT: It's not a slight against the man; it's a quote from one of his most famous characters about mortality)

That's an excellent deep cut. SMB2 is insufficiently loved.

>netizen

Now there's a name I've not heard in a long, long time.

It probably makes sense. Early internet was not user friendly or cheap so I think there was a bit of a selection bias in who used it. When online access was made as easy as tapping a phone button, a very different sort of population arrived online. They brought their identity biases with them. For a lot of us in the 90's, the internet was our identity.

The collective sigh from the world as we appeared to move away from the threat of nuclear annihilation to the chance of a cooperative global system was pretty dope.

Autumn of 2001 to the headlines of today pretty much took away that delusion.

That's certainly true, but the arrival of real world divisions also hurt the online space.

At that time, the internet was the tribe. Certainly some exceptions, but there was a general sense of commonality online back then. We were all still sort of the weirdos who made the place go.

As the internet became a widely used corporate mass media space, it seemed to lead to the hostility, acrimony, and division we see in the "real world." I wonder sometimes if the need for market segmentation was pushed online for purposes of creating advertising demographics.