The thing I found the most interesting from “A Brief History of the Internet” was the concept of an internet celebrity (6:14). I have never really thought about how internet celebrities came to be because since I can remember, there have always been people famous for being online, mainly Youtubers. The fact that the first internet celebrity was famous simply because of a webpage is very surprising. Recently on Twitter I saw an infographic circulating detailing a survey conducted amongst elementary school students. The survey question was, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. Over 30% of the students answered that they wanted to be a Youtuber. Being an internet celebrity is now a common, and possibly even achievable goal. I doubt that Mahir Cagri benefitted financially from his webpage (a quick Google search shows that record holders don’t get paid for appearing in Guinness World Records), at least not enough to live off of. Today, creators can make a living and even become millionaires off of posting viral content online. Even smaller channels can generate a strong source of income from posting on YouTube. For a smaller channel with less than a million subscribers, views alone may not be enough to pay the bills, but add in merch sales, sponsorships, meet and greets, etc. and YouTube becomes a viable career option. Outside of YouTube, this idea of an internet celebrity also opened the door for ‘people who are famous for being famous’ such as the Kardashians and Paris Hilton. These people make their income from living their daily lives, people tune in out of interest, then over time the celebrity’s life becomes much more sensational due to their newfound fame. On a much smaller scale, this is what happened to Mahir- he posted about his average life online and that snowballed into it becoming a sensational life, where he even met Bill Gates. In a butterfly effect kind of way, Mahir creating his website has led to Kylie Jenner being a billionaire.
I think the work of Dragan and Olia from “The early internet is breaking” is probably picking up popularity. In today’s world, ‘vintage’ and ‘retro’ aesthetics are in style. People want to return to the days of the early Internet. This video was published in 2019- although only a few years ago, the vintage movement has progressed significantly since then, primarily gaining popularity during quarantine through trends on TikTok. Initially brought on by a recurrence in 90’s fashion, specifically mom jeans, this aesthetic has now spread to many more categories. Although Dragan and Olia wish to preserve these sites from a historical perspective, I believe young adults today would have more interest in preserving them as well from a purely aesthetic perspective. This is reinforced by the presence of young adults throughout the video, commenting on the specific webpages they are being shown. Many of them praise the layout of these websites for their design and creativity, with one man claiming that despite the flash animations and bright colors, there is an element of clear personality (an idea reinforced by Dragan in the video as well) that many website designs today lack (7:20).