See What Everyone Wrote Ten Years Ago
If you’re tired of the hellish dimension of modern Twitter, the internet renaissance man Andy Bayo has a link for you: Here’s what your Twitter feed would look like ten years ago today (if you followed all the people you follow now) . Of course, you can only see tweets from people who were already on Twitter in those early days. Your old channel is probably quiet. Probably boring. And this is probably calming.
Back in 2008, people tended to just tweet about what they were doing at the time.
The tapes were full of gentle observations that hardly deserve a mention in real conversation. The jokes were not polished, not even real jokes. Twitter was boring. It was cool.
(I was not in the best place in 2008!)
The drama was relatively low-key. Toxic shit happened! But that was not the main topic. Ten years ago, the main story in my feed was a Gawker retrospective by blogger Emily Gould .
I notice all the time that not a single quote has been tweeted. Then you had to do it manually, and you couldn’t fit their tweet and your own comment in 140 characters. I believe this is the crux of why Twitter was not a hell of a landscape. Quotes, links, and responses received less attention. Twitter hasn’t yet started feeding on excessive emotion and negative attention. The user could not go far, spewing insults; Twitter really took care of shutting down multiple attempts.
Not that the outside world is much better than it is now. The financial crisis was already growing, we already had mass shootings and unjust wars, and we did not know if we would get Obama or McCain. Maybe Twitter was just too small, and all online communities are doomed to either disappear or grow until the Nazis join them. Either way, enjoy your boring old 2008 Twitter feed .