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[Starver]

(I see TANGOTI is now posted. Which was to have been my own original contribution to the OP.)

Having seen a significant lifetime of the internet (although it had achieved a maturity[1] by the time I was connected) and all of the web[2], I think one thing preventing a whole realm of linked mythologies is that the internet is heterogenised in so many ways (by ideology, by generation (albeit) of participant and, despite some promise to link the world, by locale-based fracturings). And there's only been 20, 30, 50 years (whatever your benchmark) of its culture. Not as much as nearly every other earthly one.


[1] Albeit an intermediate one, much more innocent in hindsight.

[2] Well, still a bit hazy about 'new' stuff, that generally ends in an "r" but not "er", just straight on from a consonant.

[methylatedspirit]

-- Windows is the default desktop OS.
-- MacOS is used by creative types, and the people against it are Windows and Linux users, who are basically Satan.
-- Linux is for 1337 hackers, and everyone who opposes it are either "Micro$oft" or Satan.

I think these are more about the mythology around computing (though the perspective comes from lurking around Linux circles, hence the Linux bias), but I think they're worth mentioning:

-- Microsoft is greedy, and does the ol' "embrace, extend, extinguish" routine on every open-source project it sees. The Big Bad of the Linux people.
-- Apple is also greedy, but prefers to lock down their own stuff. Hardliners like the FSF absolutely despise them, but they're otherwise invisible to the Linux people.
-- The (GNU/)Linux people are the software equivalent of tree-hugging hippies. They smell of counter-cultural radicalization against "proprietary software", and spout the words "free", "open" and "libre" like they're going out of style. They spell "Microsoft" "Micro$oft", always replacing the "s" with "$".

(*BSD (the ones that call themselves BSD, not MacOS)... exists? I don't think I've seen a *BSD user participate as heavily in the OS wars as those in the Big 3 do.)

[Starver]

Just thought of an original one, I think: Everybody speaks(/writes) English.

(That's the mistaken trope. The true one is that those who do, but not as their first language, overwhelmingly do it to a high standard even as they apologise. Not everyone, and some have learnt/adopted bad Internet English from the 'natives', but I have never noticed that many "Sorry for my English"-types then to get their/there/they're errors in.)

It is, of course, an update of the long-depricated one about "The internet is just America", which I possibly arrived (from .ac.uk) upon the rapidly withering tail of.

[EuchreJack]

Blue Screen of Death? 

Here is a fairly accurate story: When Microsoft was unveiling their new operating system (I think it was XP?) they got a BSoD.  What makes it hilarious is that XP was perhaps one of the better operating systems that Microsoft has put out.

Software cycle on the user's end: Broken, Buggy, Bygone*
*outdated, obsolete, no longer supported

Just thought of an original one, I think: Everybody speaks(/writes) English.

(That's the mistaken trope. The true one is that those who do, but not as their first language, overwhelmingly do it to a high standard even as they apologise. Not everyone, and some have learnt/adopted bad Internet English from the 'natives', but I have never noticed that many "Sorry for my English"-types then to get their/there/they're errors in.)

It is, of course, an update of the long-depricated one about "The internet is just America", which I possibly arrived (from .ac.uk) upon the rapidly withering tail of.

Also: Those who are not native English speakers invariably write better than those native English speakers.  This sentence being one example.
I did always find it hilarious that people are apologizing for their English when they're writing better than the English speakers...

[methylatedspirit]

Blue Screen of Death? 

Here is a fairly accurate story: When Microsoft was unveiling their new operating system (I think it was XP?) they got a BSoD.  What makes it hilarious is that XP was perhaps one of the better operating systems that Microsoft has put out.

That one was Windows 98. Here's the footage. I wasn't even born back then, but I heard that Windows 98 was one of the crappier ones, so much so that Microsoft had to release a Second Edition.

[Starver]

98 was pretty much almost "95 with the Plus Pack" (for better or worse) but 98 Second Edition (in '99?) did make for a convincing improvement, including (amongst other things) proper USB support, IIRC.

Though you can shove the still shrink-wrapped Minnellium in a desk-drawer, really. Better to switch to 2K from the NT track, if you needed to, and/or wait for XP to fuse the two lineages convincingly. ME was the Vista of the 9x-era.

(But this is a different line of mythology to the OP one. If you want to start a proper discussion, let me know where the thread is if/when you create it. I clearly have Opinions™.)

[EuchreJack]

Well, it was PCs running Windows 95 that caused the proliferation of the Internet to the masses.  Some Windows 3, but moreso 95.

Without the cheapo Windows PCs, the internet would have been the playground of the rich for a lot longer, and might have evolved a lot differently.
Because Apple/Mac is for the rich elitists, Windows is the operating system of the masses.

[Starver]

Probably more a concurrency.

Spoiler: Whoops, a bit of a Geek Out, read at your own peril... (click to show/hide)

WFWG3.11 was as capable of accessing the internet. AOL discs would have gone out regardless. There were some driver-layer improvements in the 9x releases, rather than messing with WinPCap/Trumpet Winsock, and maybe you could have less trouble with getting your NE2000 working (if not using a modem]), but 95 wasn't particularly better than its predecessors where it wasn't the old eternal struggle with EMM386 that virtually every (stand-alone, or IPX/SPX networked) top-end game forced their players to know how to reconfigure - and often differently for different games.


The release/inclusion of Internet Explorer for free (compared to paid-for Netscape Navigator[1] or trying to get NCSA Mosaic ported/run on some form of *nix desktop on the same machine) was probably a boon for the web, though. It might not have been as interesting if the everyman's fallback was Lynx in a DOS Window/not-even-in-Windows and they'd probably have been more likely to stick with some readnews interface (whether trn, or OE). And IE was available on 3.x at least until IE4, I'm fairly sure.

My experience of Macs at the time was limited to monochrome classic Macs, and I can't remember any web browser being put onto them at all. I think I only used telnet on them (maybe then I Lynxed off of the server, like I Mosaiced on the X terminals).

[1] ISPs would have probably bundled a group-licenced version as standard, if they weren't happier to just keep their own proprietry BBS/entertainment front-end, as a selling point.

But that's a different off-topic discussion.


Direct reply: Yes, MS got their OSs into everyday use more. Whether it was the original DOS (CP/M) product, Windows once it got to v3(ish), the move to 9x worked (where Bob did not!), and having caught business users up in NT then XP unified the experience (before splitting on Home/Professional lines).

Much as I hated them, the concept of a WinModem (from the hardware vendors, letting them scrimp a little) probably got more people over the line of resistance and newly excited to plug their PC into the phone socket. And I think I'm safe to say that the iMac was Jobs's response, but then so were WebTVs and they really did nothing, in the end, but help make September immortal. Any games-console browsing these days probably owes more to trying to kludge keeping up with computer-based browsing (and these days the browser innyour pocket) than set-top/bottom boxes dedicated to the task. Not that I have much experience with those since the days of Pong.

IMO.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Another one that overlaps more with gaming culture, but...

being advised to click ALT + F4 to fix your current application/problem.

[King Zultan]

Clicking on any ad immediately fills your computer with viruses and spyware.

[EuchreJack]

You need to spend 60+ dollars on Antivirus software.

[dragdeler]

Just thought of an original one, I think: Everybody speaks(/writes) English.

(That's the mistaken trope. The true one is that those who do, but not as their first language, overwhelmingly do it to a high standard even as they apologise. Not everyone, and some have learnt/adopted bad Internet English from the 'natives', but I have never noticed that many "Sorry for my English"-types then to get their/there/they're errors in.)

It is, of course, an update of the long-depricated one about "The internet is just America", which I possibly arrived (from .ac.uk) upon the rapidly withering tail of.

I think "their/they're/there" is a typical monolinguist issue, no additional thoughts were required to use either, beyond one sound. It does prove poor awareness to forget your verb, "there/their" is more forgivable IMO... "Could of" is like one of the most pathetic errors I ever saw in any language, can't fathom these people be much more evolved than animals. Whereas when you learn a new language you start by parsing each word, and thus seeing the sounds written out can often be an elucidating moment.  "Then/than" is harder, much more grammatical issue, also a good likelyhood these two are somewhat confounded in second (or rather first) language too. But to really "get" a second language, you're probably past that level of grammatical awareness, even if the details are very hazy to you.

                                            any noun can become a verb if you don’t care enough

                                        This point is invalid unless you use an example in your sentence

                                    I CAN SENTENCE HOW I WANT THANK

                                BEAUTIFUL

                            you see thats why i love english

                        I like to velociraptor around my house at 2 in the morning.

                    GOOD

                My headache makes me want to clothesline into a wall

            why do these make some semblance of sense 😨

        Because brains don’t brain logically

    Brains do brain logically! But when english doesn’t logic englishly, brain brains by itself to logic that english !

I hate that this makes sense