So much has changed from those first years when the Internet beginning to bloom. It’s a jungle, now, filled with weeds, bugs and creepy crawly things. But there are plenty of manicured lawns and terraces filled with nutritional tidbits and…

Ok, I’ll stop with the metaphors… maybe…

I’ve worked in this field for decades now. I often think of those early conversations that planted the seeds for what has become towering stalks of commercialized social media platforms where the giants of tech rule the day. Or the quiet meditative, utopian patches where people gathered to find ways to change the world.

Did we? Maybe. Is it better? I dunno.

I miss the early days of deep, threaded topics of discussion that wound their way like a vine around bulletin board systems across the world. I ran one called “The Cathouse” (because I had cats…) and was written up in early computer magazines as one of the few females (in the world?) that ran an electronic bulletin board system (BBS). It felt like we were just sitting around a campfire telling stories about … whatever struck our fancy. There were conspiracy kooks there, at that time, too, but they would be quickly cut down by those with sharp shears. But the biggest thing was – there were no ads, no one bugging you to buy their later whatever or ads targeted to things you might talk about. It was clean and pure, conversation for conversation’s sake. You did not feel like you were watched, listened to or spied on just to sell you the latest deoderizer or facial cream because of something you said in a post.

Those early days are not anymore.

Now it’s a free-for-all sometimes within a walled garden, sometimes out in the open for anyone who passes by to see. The watercooler days are gone and megaphone has replaced it.

John Perry Barlow (may he R.I.P.) wrote about the early days of hanging out in the ‘dark caves’ of the Internet where he would meet dubious characters. At first a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and later a champion of online free speech (he spear-headed the (Electronic Frontier Foundation). He wrote a sweeping manifesto for those who “inhabit” the Internet called “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” which began…

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

Not sure how he would react in today’s jungle complete with Elon Musk running Twitter and corporate giants looming over legal decisions that affect all of us (banning TikTok, anyone?). He fought against corporate and governmental will over places of ideology more than anything. He fought against the dismantling of conversation replaced with marketing speak and those who wanted to take a shovel to the independent creative spirit that ran wild on the Internet.

Read about Barlow, read the manifesto, this is the world most of us early Internet spelunkers sprouted from.

I worked for an offshoot of The WELL, a place where thinkers such as Barlow, Howard Rheingold, Stewart Brand, Steve Case (yes, THAT Steve Case), Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and so many others communed on various topics. Many from well-known earth-crunchy companies such as Rockport Shoes, Whole Earth Catalog and The Farm. The off-shoot became WELL-Engaged, which had a more corporate element – lots of advertising. And while the original WELL still exists, you have to apply to enter it and they may or may not accept you.

On the WELL Conversation ran deep. Philosophy, science, religion, politics, the colonization of outer space… Nothing was taboo, nothing was left out. People were civil but they demanded that WELL denizens play nice with the tribes – be civil, hold discourse and arguments but don’t throw rocks.

As WELL-Engaged (which eventually became Prospero until bought by Mzinga) we began to take on the idea of what online community might look like for corporate America. We started with NBC Olympics because, well, the Olympics, then E*Trade, Financial Times, Audible… most of these companies sprouted in San Francisco so they were an easy catch for us to maneuver since we were right across the bridge in Suasalito. Whoever we could get that would allow us to moderate and plow their forums to plant discussions. I took care of the 2000 Olympics forum hiring and working with former and current Olympians across the globe to help fertilize the conversations around their sports. But NBC had strict guidelines regarding communication that we had to adhere to… and we got in trouble frequently for allowing people to speak their minds. Barlow would’bve been outraged. But there was an exception made for one character…

Robin Williams. You cannot lay a foundation of corporate rules on Robin Williams. Audible hired him for a series of interviews with Williams’ friends. I was the lucky sod who got to manage those forums. Williams was kind and personable, easy to work with and constantly had us in stitches with his stories and mannerisms. He loved to walk around San Francisco in a rain slicker and many of us saw him wander aimlessly through town. Perhaps, if we had known what thoughts were in his head… ah, but who knew then? He lived in Mill Valley and would frequently take public transportation – the ferry or otherwise, to head into San Franciso and hide in a smokey music club or other venue his identity hidden by hoodie.

It was a limited series and when it ended we felt the air deflated from us. The intervvierws were funny, insigthful and drew in fans from all over who wanted to chat about what was said. It’s hard to find any of them, now but there is this… Robin Williams and Harlan Ellison (a two-parter).

It’s hard to move on from something like that, but once our contract with Audible ended I was tasked with creating a community for E*Trade. I truly loved this job – hard to beat going into an office situated on Richardson Bay near the ferry terminal. There was a walkway at the pier that would take you to places to eat or sit where we would watch the otters and sea lions, sometimes whales, hear Santana in his recording studio nearby or simply marvel at the city over the Golden Gate Bridge. However, once the company sold and jobs on the Internet crashed I moved back to Orlando and eventually back to Atlanta where new jobs were waiting. This was after my stint with CIMedia (pardon the timeline craziness). Leaving San Francisco and going home was sort of symbolic to me in the decline of building online communities toward a more profitable Web model. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Before I went to California, I began building communities for companies such as Cox Interactive Media (CIMedia), the Cartoon Network and How Stuff Works, among others. My favorite involved building a community of “bugs” for CIMedia’s yall.com (earliest cached capture by the Wayback Machine is December 1996). The site covered southern culture on all levels and bugs seemed a fitting way to name a community. We assigned those with particular interests for specific bugs that matched, metaphorically, at least. Lightning bugs, ladybugs, ants, bumblebees… 16 different bugs became part of what we called “the hive.” These were what the industry began to call user-generated content editors. so we latched on to this new idea of user-generated content as something that could help drive traffic to the site.

And it was popular enough that at one point, the yall.com site and the bugs community was offered to the TNT network, but it didn’t fly (pardon the pun). However,  the site was swallowed up by AccessAtlanta.com, the “Atlanta Journal and Consitution’s” entertainment site. But without that trailer park which the bugs could hitch themselves to, the Bugs hard a rough time getting attention or being seen by the website’s traffic. The domain yall.com was eventually sold and a print magazine out of Oxford, M.S. (now in Tennessee) titled “Y’all” took it over (and has it to this day).

So, after that stint with CIMedia, a myriad of other content development jobs began running into each other. Mostly all the same with variances of tools used and methods. The Cartoon Network had a bizarre, union-like approach to every aspect of creating their online presence, How Stuff Works obsessed over the do-it-and-learn-it-yourself approach and don’t talk to the celebrities involved, the Yellow Pages burned through copywriters like a corn field on fire (you had to punch a code into the telephone just to go to the bathroom), Network Communications, Inc. created WordPress blogging sweatshops with a drill sergeant at the helm. Due to the overwhelming abuse the writers received daily, one of the employees quit, started her own business and through time brought WordPress’s WordCamp to Atlanta so that others could learn how to navigate this new type of self-experience and use it to expand their own entrepreneurial endeaavors.

But I felt drained after contracting out with all these corporate entities until I took a job in higher education. Granted, people are people no matter where you go, but the product that’s sowed can make a difference. And while tech changes daily,  higher ed moves at a slower pace and takes its time meeting current tech challenges. There’s not a lot of community building other than through the social media sites, in which I was in charge of for the college I worked for.

Content has always been king, but for a while so was SEO and every other bell and whistle that came out. But content always rises above as the reason people come to your site. Only now, in 2025 the move towards a methodical approach with data has aligned itself with marketing on a more feverish path to delivery. Attention spans have dwindled and most conversations are littered with emojis as if we’ve gone back to cave drawings to tell our stories.

What was once a wild new frontier has morphed into a boulevard of subjective and personlized content sifting information from us to utilize toward the great sell. Those of us who ventured onto the Internet as freaks, oddballs, punks and hooligans have become corporate (or non-profit) shills pushing the ideology of those we work for. But as always, trends go in cycles, and I’m starting to see a slight edge toward finding a way of bring community back to these elements – placemaking, connection, networking, pathways – whatever you want to call it – it’s communication at its simplest.

I still contend that community, that sense of involvement in something bigger than yourself that you feel part of and participate in, is still at the core of every website and social media platform built on the Internet even if it’s not apparently obvious. I won’t get into the role AI may play in the future of developing web spaces, but that remains to be seen. We may be in Community 2.0 with 3.0 involving AI.

But overall…for me… what a long, strange trip it’s been… (Robert Hunter, from “Truckin'”)