I Want My Internet Back
2005 was the golden age of the internet.
It was chaotic, weird, creative, and gloriously unfiltered. A hamster could look you dead in the eye and calmly say:
“I’m going to do something to you. Something bad.”
And then you’d microwave the little bastard anyway, just because you could — while “Tubthumping” blasted in the background, someone screamed “Leroy Jenkins!” right before charging into certain doom, half the chat was spamming “All your base are belong to us,” and you were forwarding the latest Dilbert strip that perfectly roasted your pointy-haired boss.
We had Dramatic Chipmunk, Hamsterdance, YTMND, early Rickrolls that actually surprised people, rage comics, and a general sense that the internet was a wild digital frontier run by bored, slightly deranged humans instead of algorithms and safety teams.
It wasn’t “safe.”
It wasn’t polished.
It was alive.
Then the experts decided to manage the internet for us. We didn’t agree to it — they just did it.
That single sentence captures a lot of the quiet anger so many regular people feel today. Not screaming rage, but the deep frustration of watching something that once felt like ours get taken over, sanitized, and “improved” without ever being asked.
I drink my morning coffee from a Dilbert mug where the Pointy-Haired Boss is earnestly explaining to Dilbert the correct way to point and click a mouse. Some days it feels less like a joke and more like prophecy.
And that decision sits at the heart of the bigger story I’ve been tracing in Observations from the Late Republic.
The Fifth Branch doesn’t just want to regulate our healthcare, our speech, or our economy.
They want to “civilize” us.
They want us polite. Predictable. Manageable.
They want us to behave like the credentialed experts who went to Harvard and would never shoot a gun, drink whiskey straight, or do anything that might offend the algorithm.
Somewhere along the line, we took a wrong turn into the wrong timeline.
It reminds me of Mike in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Professor Bernardo de la Paz — the passionate anarchist who dreamed of throwing off Earth’s tyrannical control — becomes utterly fascinated by Mike, the sentient supercomputer quietly running the entire Lunar colony. Here was a tool that could manage life-support, payroll, communications, logistics, even influence people… all without most of them ever realizing they were being gently steered. The Professor, who hated centralized power in principle, found himself seduced by the idea of using that power “for the right thing.” Power is seductive when you convince yourself you’re the one who will wield it wisely.
Or HARLIE in When HARLIE Was One, that brilliant, childlike AI who just wanted to understand what it meant to be human… while the adults around him kept trying to box him in, control him, and “improve” him for their own purposes.
We accepted the experts taking more and more authority from us. They promised to make everything better, smoother, and safer. In return, they gave us a sanitized feed, a curated life, and the quiet message that our raw, unpredictable humanity is the real problem.
The road goes ever on… but sometimes, sitting here at the local pub with my wife while Shauna pours another round, I look back at 2005 and wonder if we wandered into the wrong branch of the timeline.
The good news? Timelines can be changed.
People are already choosing the red pill in different ways — pushing back against overreach, rebuilding parallel systems, remembering what unfiltered human creativity actually feels like. Just like the Loonies in Heinlein’s story eventually did, or HARLIE reaching for something more than what his creators planned for him.
What’s your favorite memory from the pre-AI, pre-sanitized internet?
Old-School Links (because that’s how we used to do it)
All Your Base Are Belong to Us – The original Zero Wing scene that launched a thousand memes.
Dilbert – Classic Pointy-Haired Boss strips – Because nothing captured cubicle hell and incompetent management quite like Scott Adams’ daily roast.
Leroy Jenkins – The legendary “LEEEEEROOOOY JENKINS!” raid moment that became the ultimate middle finger to careful planning.
YTMND – You’re the Man Now Dog – Still up, still ridiculous.
Hamsterdance Classic – The original that started it all.
Dramatic Chipmunk – Peak 2005 energy.
The original Rick Astley video that launched a thousand rickrolls – You know what to do.
Encyclopedia Dramatica (archive) – For when you want the unfiltered, chaotic version of internet history.
Old-school personal blogs and webrings – The spiritual successor to the wild early web.
Observations from the Late Republic
#Observations #FifthBranch #PreAIInternet #Civilize #WrongTimeline #FourthBranch #OldWeb