Right, but I wasn’t talking so much about my own experience, rather my experience with other people during that time, because I was tech support for literally everyone I knew, so I knew what they all thought. Because they told me.

AOL was what most nontechnical people had during that time. There’s a reason for those AOL disc memes. It’s made fun of a lot, but that was how the internet became mainstream. They mailed them to everyone and their grandma, and their success was it was FREE** and the discs installed and configured everything for you: the browser, the ISP settings, and even their home page. You stuck the disc into your cup holder, and it gave you a friendly icon on your desktop to click to access The World Wide Web™ (or AOL’s private version of it – most people didn’t know better). Most people would never have discovered the internet otherwise.

eta: and yes, internet society was actually that divided in the early years. More so, if anything. AOL was so ubiquitous and marketed, they made a blockbuster movie out of it. You likely can hear the tone in your head, even if you never used AOL in your life. Few brands have attained that social status, or held it for long. Oscar Meyer, Disney, things like that. And it didn’t last a hundred years; merely a few. /e

It wasn’t just the discs – if you bought your computer from the furniture store it came set up that way. Non-tech people just clicked that icon and didn’t know any better. Keep in mind that accessing the real internet was difficult and required a lot of knowledge many people neither had nor wanted at the time. The computer was for spreadsheets and solitaire, and it was a very expensive luxury.

I doubt you’ll get the response you’re looking for, because the people you’re talking about are the same people you’re decrying today. I’m saying that idealised demographic didn’t really exist, and I’m not speculating about them. I was embedded deeply in a world of those people. I remember them very clearly. I made it my career to understand them.

I strongly believe you’re seeing them through a heavy fog of nostalgia.

eta: and back to the original point, I strongly believe that people who feel the internet has fallen short of our expectations don’t remember what our expectations really were.