Gen Z TikToker Breaks Down In Tears After Learning What The Early Internet Was Like—And We Get It

Every decade had its problems, but there's no denying that there was a certain magic to the 1990s and early 2000s.

That includes the early internet days that Gen Xers and Millennials experienced before social media became the central focus of our screen usage.

Curious about the history of the internet and online communications, TikToker @mukbokyopo did a deep dive and came out in tears on the other side when she discovered how "pure" Web 1.0 had been.

The TikToker had been reading Life in Code: A Personal History in Technology by Ellen Ullman and exploring what she could of early renditions of the internet, and she found herself emotionally torn up about what could have been if it had been able to last.

TikToker @mukbokyopo lamented:

"It makes me so sad to read about Web 1.0. All this sh*t used to be so good, and all this sh*t used to, like, mean something positive in the world."

"It's actually the most heartbreaking sh*t ever. It's greedy f**ks dominating everything over and over and over again."

You can watch the video here:

There were some TikTokers who advised @mukbokyopo and other empathetic TikTokers to slow their roll before they overly idealized a decade that they did not grow up in and imagined how much better someone else's internet experience was than their own.

This is because each decade has its own problems, and while the early internet looked simple, wholesome, and prioritized information sharing and building communities over sales and over-stimulating content, there were other problems.

That all said, Gen Xers and Millennials agreed with TikToker @mukbokyopo that it was a magical time in many ways.

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Others took a moment to call out capitalism for ruining yet another nice thing.

@mukbokyopo/TikTok

@mukbokyopo/TikTok

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@mukbokyopo/TikTok

@mukbokyopo/TikTok

The early internet may have not been perfect, but it's understandable that some of us still miss that simpler time, and that younger generations are curious about what it was like to have a simplified internet experience.

It calls back to the conversation many of us have had about switching back to a simpler phone to avoid all of the added applications and social media that a phone doesn't necessarily "need." We're living in a over-stimulating life with more sales and fewer opportunities to actually connect with other people, and it's becoming more obvious what we're actually missing.

But technology moves at such a rapid pace that it was bound to happen sooner or later. Perhaps at some point in the future we'll look back on today as "the good old days."