I'm prepared for my downvotes.

I have often joked that in the not-too-distant-future people will look back upon the early days of the internet like we look upon the 1950s view of smoking.

What do you mean kids shouldn't do it? It's fine. You know how it is, watch a kids cartoon, look at some memes, two girls 1 cup, email the fam, those two Mexican dudes who had their heads cut off with a chainsaw, research Ghana for a school project, sneak in some porn after the parents go to bed, and cap it off with some chat room conversations about Picard's superiority to Kirk while some kid across the country goes on about shooting his brains out because mom and dad either don't love him enough or love him too much. Maybe download some credit card spoofers and Diablo hacks for online play if you aren't quite ready for bed.

The early internet, and even the internet now, is a fucking wild concept. Take everything that people think, not just what we know, but what we fucking think about while we are taking a shit, and make it available for anyone look at without guidance or context. We can even watch police shootings in real time and pretend to be detectives during terrorist events, consequences to real people be damned.

Should parents know better? Sure. Is the internet an effective babysitter while they grind out a living? You bet.

If we restrict this dumpster fire behind age-verification and eliminate anonymity through tagged identification, the effect on privacy and anonymous online activism will be severe. However, CinnamonRingCumGlaze86 will be significantly less able to use their 6th grade reading level to convince people that modern medicine is bad because Pre-Historical Witches didn't have AIDS bro. #flatearth #zoroastrianismwasasteptoofar #onceagaintherealproblemiscapitalismandwearelookingatthewrongthingbecauseofmanufactured-outrageandobfuscationcreatedbytheoligarchy #worldofwarcraftclassic