My recollection, growing up and living mostly in Scandinavia

90s - mid 2000s:

- Pre social media days, you visited home pages. - Chat was done via IRC, ICQ, what have you. - Forums, news groups, etc. were the places to discuss things with others.

mid 2000s - early 2010s:

- Chat moved from IRC to MSN Messenger and the likes. - Social media (SoMe) took off. Started with lots of smaller SoMe sites, which were eventually made obsolete or acquired by big players. In the end Facebook dominated all. - Media sites (Youtube, photo hosting, etc.) start taking up more space and focus. - Smartphones are introduced, apps become a thing.

Early 2010s - late 2010s:

- Forums, news groups, etc. start to go extinct as owners and creators migrate to SoMe platforms. - Personal websites die off. - Everything becomes more and more walled garden. Everything starts requiring user, log-in, etc. - Mass M&A spree consolidates products and services. - The "linear" internet starts to die, as the big tech wants to monetize your attention completely. Everything starts to feel like some random feed. - Buying digital products starts to take a tumble.

Late 2010s - now:

- Everything feels smaller, yet there is more content. All products are owned by the same players. - It feels like there's a life-or-death battle for your attention. Most content feels like it should take tops 30 seconds to consume. Feeds feel like some stochastic hell where everything is in the extreme present. - Content seems to have underlying motive, the more controversial the more you see it. - You own nothing. Everything is a subscription, everything has a pricing plan. - Dark patterns is the way of life now. It feels like you're interacting more with mechanisms made to make you buy something, than people. It feels relentless.

Could probably add another era for the past 2 years, but this covers most of what I'm feeling.

Inside the walled gardens there are other walled gardens for humans, but the closeness you had before feels gone.