The Internet - Back in the Old Days: Part II

Yesterday I reminisced about the first time I ever saw a blog online. Today I want to mention the other thing that sticks in my mind from those college library internet days.

I remember idly browsing (again, this was in the early 2000s) and I came across a webpage that literally stated that Tony Blair was the Antichrist. Firstly, it shocked me that someone would even call another person the Antichrist, especially in the context of British politics. I just couldn't envisage someone thinking in such a biblical way. So it just seemed bizarre to me, and I assumed the person who had made the page was some kind of psychopath. Though, like with the American blogger, I was somewhat impressed that they'd managed to self-publish their thoughts on the 'World Wide Web'.

The second thing I found odd was how someone from outside the system (a lone, renegade voice) could be so focused on Blair himself. I'd been raised a socialist in a Labour-voting household, so Labour were the good guys. By this point in the early 2000s I was beginning to have my own complaints and disappointments with what Labour were doing, but still, "They're not as bad as the Tories," I thought, as I read the strange ramblings. "Surely the Tories are the real bad guys. Why doesn't this guy see that?"

It was such a weird thing to see at the time. It was so removed from what I was used to.

Of course, as the the years rolled by, and I too became increasingly aware of Blair, I'd often think back to that webpage. "Wow, that guy was right," I'd think to myself with a laugh - half-amused, but half genuinely impressed by the guy's prescience.

Even now I wouldn't go as far as saying Blair is the literal Antichrist 👿 but I'd be much more sympathetic to the page if I was seeing it today. I certainly wouldn't be mocking the guy for saying it.

(A malevolent looking Blair

- courtesy of PixVerse)

It shows how much things have changed. How much I've changed. It's also worth noting how we are part of a generation of people that lived both with and without the internet. We've experienced both sides. So it's perhaps worth recording our experience of this. Especially as so much of the internet of old has disappeared into the cyber-graveyard.