A new channel every day

In the beginning, there was a blip and a twang, followed by a sound that can only be described as a song of a drunk bird with pneumonia.

The TV screen- or, if you were lucky and had rich parents, the monitor screen would come to life, and line by line, images and words started materialising out of thin air. 

Signs that you, the privileged one, are connected to the source of infinite inspiration and knowledge. The internet 1.0.

The internet 1.0 was a playground for creative people. A safe space free from marketers, influencers and other emotional rapists.

We surfed the net, every page a new game, an intellectual challenge devoid of familiar signposts. No menu, no about page, no shop, no home, no contact just things on the screen slowly revealing themselves at a blistering speed of 36kb/sec.

I used to spend the whole day surfing the web from one page created by an extraordinarily talented creative artist to another, guided by pure luck.

We didn’t know that others were there too, looking at the same page, reading the same words, getting the same ideas. No comment sections and no way to tell someone how much you liked their stuff. It was beautiful. 

My guilty pleasure were the sites themed around “Make something new every day”.

I would start every day by checking out what new crazy clever dumb or funny things these people were coming up with.

We did not follow curated lists created by an artificially intelligent algorithm; it was all our own choice.

People started making websites to share links to their favourite pages, design and art techniques, snippets of code and yes porn, movies, games, aps.

We were unaware of the incoming tsunami. In the years to come, we will all be collecting emails, growing a subscriber base, and paving the way for the invasion and takeover by the most uncreative and ruthless type of internet user: marketers.