I've been thinking about this problem a lot and I don't think there is an easy answer or solution to this. I think that world is gone.
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To recreate the feeling of a small group of people chatting like it was commonplace two decades ago, I created a Discord server for strangers to just hang out and chat whenever one feels like. No pressure, no overbearing rules, just a small island in the modern lonely internet.
Its been going on for a little over a month now, there's about 15 people that are more or less regular. If you or anyone reading is interested, send me an email with your Discord name.
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Still, any attempt like this is still so unlike the Internet we had in the 2000s. Myspace died and with it the sense of community. The modern internet feels as lonely as standing in Piccadilly Circus on a Sunday afternoon. So many people, with so little time for anyone else.
That said I think we forget that barriers to using the internet were the gates that kept it a cozy medium-sized community. I knew older programmers than me who were content learning languages and frameworks by buying books or renting books from the library, but only socialized with colleagues, friends, and family in purely offline venues. Only a certain type of person put up with the jank of the internet and the early Web and that's the kind of person who was writ large on it.
Just how in real life we don't invite the world into our homes or grab lunch with anyone off the street, likewise our internet presences are now becoming circumscribed to specific groups. The trick is to make the barrier to entry just high enough as to select for compatible people but not so high that the group becomes a clique.
I completely agree, I think that scenario is indeed a relic of the past. I was talking about exactly this with a friend recently. Never again will worldwide instant chat (IRC) be an amazing new thing where only the lucky few get to try it out -- figuring out etiquette, lingo and customs along the way with "innocent" ignorance (not sure how else to word this). Same for all the "first" big protocols and platforms, and of course the early years of the internet altogether. The cat is long since out of the bag, and that universal wide-eyed surprise and awe cannot come again.
--
To recreate the feeling of a small group of people chatting like it was commonplace two decades ago, I created a Discord server for strangers to just hang out and chat whenever one feels like. No pressure, no overbearing rules, just a small island in the modern lonely internet.
Its been going on for a little over a month now, there's about 15 people that are more or less regular. If you or anyone reading is interested, send me an email with your Discord name.
--
Still, any attempt like this is still so unlike the Internet we had in the 2000s. Myspace died and with it the sense of community. The modern internet feels as lonely as standing in Piccadilly Circus on a Sunday afternoon. So many people, with so little time for anyone else.