During which Presidential term was the Internet at its best?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Not including Biden because there's not really a distinction between the current time and Trump yet.

Anyway I'm going to vote for First Obama, message boards like this still reigned, social media existed so you could stay in touch with people but it didn't dominate lives, streaming services hadn't dominated things yet damaging physical media and video stores but you still had Netflix's at the time very convenient DVD mail service, and smartphones were still pretty nascent and didn't dominate our lives like they do now. I also have a soft spot for the Ron Paul online cult, they seem so quaint and amusing in comparison to Extremely Online political movements now, which almost exclusively make you want to bash your head in the wall. They were crazy don't get me wrong, but at least in a harmless and sort of charming way, as opposed to woke SJWs/red rose Twitter die hards/neo-tankies/the alt-right/QAnon.

I also have a lot of nostalgia for Second Clinton/First Bush time but I'll admit this is definitely the nostalgia filter since the Internet was so annoying and inconvenient in many ways then, but there are some things I miss, like those primitive Geocities band sites...anyone remember guestbooks on websites btw? Or those little custom widgets you'd use to track hits?

[Хahar 🤔]

I'll vote for the last Bush term, mostly just because Wikipedia was a robust resource at that point. Other than that, there have been hardly any positive developments on the Internet since the early 2000s.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

Bill Clinton, hands down.  

Who didn't love dial tones and FREE AOL CD's?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'll vote for the last Bush term, mostly just because Wikipedia was a robust resource at that point. Other than that, there have been hardly any positive developments on the Internet since the early 2000s.

YouTube comes to mind too as it started in and blew up during the second Bush term. Other than that I would have to say I agree.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

I miss when I thought of Silicon Valley as being full of "Dilbert" style tech wonks engineering complicated ideas, instead of its current image of deranged psychopaths pretending to be humans while they squeeze the blood out of society.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

For nostalgic reasons (and the fact that the internet was so tame compared to now), second or first Bush. No Facebook, no Sh!tter, the biggest websites at the time were MySpace, Something Awful, Newgrounds, 4chan in its early days, and small message boards like Atlas which were/are collectively better than the two or three social networking giants that dominate the internet today. MapleStory, RuneScape, Gaia Online, and Habbo Hotel were fun if you were a kid at the time. Homestar Runner.

As with most things, the internet gradually became worse as it became more mainstream.

[The Dowager Mod]

Bill Clinton, hands down.  

Who didn't love dial tones and FREE AOL CD's?

I thought I was hot sh**t when I was first on my block to get a 33.6 modem.

[YE]

Anytime before there was an Internet.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Obama's first term was when the internet was at its best, but Clinton's second term was when computers were at its best.

The DIY/shareware-nature of the 90's is amazing & fun to see in hindsight, especially when it came to PC games. The 80s certainly seemed exciting, but there's just something about the 90s and the daily pace of technological change & adventure. The building blocks for things that are just so commonplace today like instant messaging, social media, streaming audio/video, email, search engines, podcasts, web interactivity and countless more.

I feel something was lost after the dot-com bubble, then re-appeared from 2005-2010 with early YouTube/social media only to devolve into its current homogenized state.


EDIT: Actually, I might lean towards Bush's second term.

- The beginnings of YouTube (and its lax copyright laws)
- Aforementioned flash games & AlbinoBlackSheep. As well as NewGrounds, EBaumsWorld and YTMND (The latter 2 may be a drawback for some).
- Social media in its infancy, particularly MySpace. I've never gotten more into social media or communication than in 2006-2009.
- Related to above, AIM.
- The last time the the World Wide Web was largely accessed via desktops & laptops. This changed soon after with introduction of the iPhone.

I guess the only downside is that this was when memes/viral videos really came into their own and verged on the obnoxious. It would only get worse from here.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

One thing that sounds kind of incredible and hard to believe in hindsight (like Charlie Brown's aluminum Christmas trees) is that during the Clinton Administration there was actual print magazines about the Internet. I even remember getting one once (it was some free issue deal from the publisher because I subscribed to another magazine they put out on video games), and it actually reviewed websites and gave each a 1 to 5 star rating.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Second Reagan, which was when I began using the Internet. Even if you're an idiot who thinks the web is the same as the Internet, H.W.'s term should have been included as a choice. Going before First Reagan would mean not assuming that the Internet runs on TCP/IP. Going before First Nixon would mean going back to when it was all theory and no hardware.

[Chips]

1st Obama.

[GeneralMacArthur]

First Bush was when I discovered the internet and I can't overstate the fondness I have for that old stuff.  I made so many Geocities sites, went around on WebRings for the TV shows and bands I stanned -- speaking of Stan, Eminem and American Idol dominated pop culture -- and we spent all day in the library playing flash games on Miniclip and Gamesloth and AddictingGames dot com, before first AdventureQuest and then Runescape completely took over.

I miss the internet where you could slap together a website in an hour and it would look like everything else on the internet.  Download a few JS scripts and change the cursor or make it snow or play music on the page.  You were automatically cool just for having your own website, and you could do anything you wanted with it!  So much better than social media.

And of course, the classic PhpBB forums that we spent all our time on arguing about religion and politics.  That was the good stuff.  I spent all my time on the Runescape Hacking message boards writing repetitive posts about how much the evangelical right sucked.

[bagelman]

Although the internet was much faster in terms of on demand images during Trump rather than Obama 1 or Bush 2, Bush 2 still wins my vote because no Facebook. Facebook was more of a concern for me during all of Obama, during Trump and the immediate aftermath of the present social media was more about Twitter and mobile apps.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Trump, duh. Believe it or not, there's a whole world out there beyond internet-politics-culture and its scope, helpfulness, and usability just keeps increasing.

[Ferguson97]

The two year period between the beginning of Obama's second term but before the 2016 primaries began was the absolute peak of the Internet.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Trump, duh. Believe it or not, there's a whole world out there beyond internet-politics-culture and its scope, helpfulness, and usability just keeps increasing.

I'd argue against this actually due to the proliferation of news site paywalls. That wasn't the case five years ago.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

There was a point when Twitter really took off and Facebook became something more than just a platform for posting where you happened to be dining that evening. Just prior to that was probably a Golden Age, maybe 2008-2010 or so.

[Crumpets]

2nd Bush was middle school for me and 1st Obama was high school, so I think I'm somewhat biased when I say 1st Obama. There was a period around 2010-2011 when Facebook was actually used for reconnecting with old friends, and I would spend hours a day online chatting with people, finding music, reading stuff, and generally using the internet for what it was intended for without much of a downside at all. Heck, I met my first girlfriend commenting on a friend's video on Facebook. How often would that happen anymore.

That being said, there's definitely a case for Bush's 2nd. The period when YouTube existed but didn't have a monopoly on the internet video market was a golden age for dumb-funny content. When people would put way too much effort into half-hour long flash videos that were amazing to watch, but were posted on sites like Albino Black Sheep, never went viral and just kind of disappeared to history. Basic arcade-style online games were also better back then. I used to have a standing competition with a friend of mine on a game called "Avalanche." We went back to play it a couple years ago and were terrible, not for lack of practice, but because bandwidth had improved so much since 2007 that it was like playing on super-hard rocket speed.

And since I brought it up, I'm curious. Does anyone else remember these videos? They were huge at my middle school, but I feel like I never see them referenced anywhere outside my friend group.

https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/demented
https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/mockingbird
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/88286

[Crumpets]

I miss when I thought of Silicon Valley as being full of "Dilbert" style tech wonks engineering complicated ideas, instead of its current image of deranged psychopaths pretending to be humans while they squeeze the blood out of society.

Also ironic seeing as how Dilbert ended up being written by a deranged psychopath pretending to be a human while squeezing the blood out of society.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

I miss when I thought of Silicon Valley as being full of "Dilbert" style tech wonks engineering complicated ideas, instead of its current image of deranged psychopaths pretending to be humans while they squeeze the blood out of society.

Also ironic seeing as how Dilbert ended up being written by a deranged psychopath pretending to be a human while squeezing the blood out of society.

True. It got worse, and he got worse.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

2nd Bush was middle school for me and 1st Obama was high school, so I think I'm somewhat biased when I say 1st Obama. There was a period around 2010-2011 when Facebook was actually used for reconnecting with old friends, and I would spend hours a day online chatting with people, finding music, reading stuff, and generally using the internet for what it was intended for without much of a downside at all. Heck, I found my first girlfriend commenting on a friend's video on Facebook. How often would that happen anymore.

That being said, there's definitely a case for Bush's 2nd. The period when YouTube existed but didn't have a monopoly on the internet video market was a golden age for dumb-funny content. When people would put way too much effort into half-hour long flash videos that were amazing to watch, but were posted on sites like Albino Black Sheep, never went viral and just kind of disappeared to history. Basic arcade-style online games were also better back then. I used to have a standing competition with a friend of mine on a game called "Avalanche." We went back to play it a couple years ago and were terrible, not for lack of practice, but because bandwidth had improved so much since 2007 that it was like playing on super-hard rocket speed.

And since I brought it up, I'm curious. Does anyone else remember these videos? They were huge at my middle school, but I feel like I never see them referenced anywhere outside my friend group.

https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/demented
https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/mockingbird
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/88286

This is about the same for me. I graduated HS in 2011, so it was split between W’s 2nd and Obama’s 1st. I voted Obama’s first, but yeah. Definitely a lot of good stuff in 05-09 though. Flash games were king then. Social Media wasn’t as toxic, even in the first Obama term. I don’t remember those specific Albino Black Sheep videos, but I remember the Badger ones, the Harry Potter variant, the “They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard!” video and so on.

[Mr. Morden]

Clinton's first term gave us great sites like this: http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm

[Former President tack50]

I didn't use the internet at all back then, but I'd argue 1st Bush term? That was when the Internet was at its peak, with a very libertarian attitude where anything could happen, sites operated on looser rules, everything was less regulated. And yet somehow, the internet was doing fine! Early 00s internet culture was probably the best though perhaps I am idealizing a part of history I wasn't a part of.

2nd Bush is also a good choice though other than using Wikipedia for some school projects I didn't use the internet back then either.

1st Obama term was still good but probably a slight decline.

The decline massively accelerated during the 2nd Obama term and turned into freefall during Trump.

On the other side, anything before the 1st Bush term is just too primitive.

[Cokeland Saxton]

First Obama.

Rise of Let’s Plays on YouTube

Before the Internet was overrun with snowflakes