"Relics of the "old internet" are respawning in new social media startups. Myspace's profiles, Tumblr's vibes, StumbleUpon's spontaneity, Twitter's status updates - they're being reinvented by a new guard of startup founders. What's fueling it? Nostalgia for the internet they grew up with. Zehra Naqvi said she misses "how seemingly small" the earlier days of the internet felt. She's the founder of Lore, a platform that aims to help fandoms discover content and connect over their obsessions."
"Other platforms, like the newsletter and social network Perfectly Imperfect, explicitly address a similar longing for an internet of the past. "Do you miss the old internet?" its website says. "Before AI, soulless algo curation, psychopathic CEOs, and slop content took over?" Ysabel Gerrard, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, said trends typically cycle through roughly 20 years, and so a "a mid-2000s nostalgia is bang on time.""
""One of the most powerful ways nostalgia manifests is by getting us to perceive the past as a simpler time," Gerrard said. "This same logic applies to tech nostalgia: we miss the days when our phones were dumb, everything was wired, and we weren't all quite so connected." A 2024 Harris Poll survey of about 1,000 Gen Z adults in the US found that almost half of respondents said they wished social media platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and X (formerly Twitter) were "never invented." And 21% said they wished the smartphone had never been invented."
Startups are reviving mid-2000s internet features—Myspace profiles, Tumblr aesthetics, StumbleUpon serendipity, and Twitter-style status updates—to create less algorithm-driven, community-focused social platforms. Founders cite nostalgia and a longing for smaller, simpler online experiences; Zehra Naqvi, founder of Lore, misses "how seemingly small" the earlier internet felt and built Lore to help fandoms discover content and connect. Platforms such as Perfectly Imperfect promise alternatives to AI-driven feeds and soulless curation. Cultural scholars note roughly 20-year nostalgia cycles and describe tech nostalgia as a perception of the past as simpler. A 2024 Harris Poll found nearly half of Gen Z wished major modern social apps were never invented, and 21% regretted the smartphone.
Read at Business Insider
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]