Indeed. The same debates today, now between Android and iPhone
   for example, or gaming consoles vs PC smile emoticon I think the
   main difference is that communities are more self-forming and
   can span multiple groups, often without official names.
   Friendships begin in one place and follow everywhere. It's nice
   this way. On usenet, you subscribed to certain groups and you
   were more a member of the group. Groups had almost legendary
   qualities because it wasn't easy to start one yourself. You had
   to go through a process of democracy and voting that could get
   very complicated and people were very "debate"-y about the
   merits of your new group. the alt hierarchy made that much
   easier of course. and* Yeah - it's still flamewars but people
   call it "debating" and calling out fallacies. In its
   shorter-person (kid) form it's called youtube comments tongue
   emoticon == I still get that feeling online. I don't get that
   "exclusiveness" quite from Facebook (although closed groups I
   do), but I get it on Vine and among some people on Google plus I
   had it for a while. == But I'd say I feel more free in a sense
   because i can write _anywhere_ on Facebook and, thanks to
   Facebook's algorithms, my posts will show up to the people it
   thinks will like what I have to say, so I end up getting
   people-responses that I like to hear. They're actually rather
   clever now that I think about it. == That's likely a part of it
   too. I'd say I feel a little less free in FB *because* anybody
   can see anything, so there's some things I just don't say here
   that I might say in a more insulated community. I guess I just
   got used to it. In 2002, Google snagged a huge chunk of Usenet
   and decided to make it easy-to-search. Well, I had to go through
   REALLY QUICK and get some stuff from 1990/1991/1995 etc deleted
   'cause I was like, "no no no no no no no that's not for
   searching". After that I just threw my hands up in the air and
   went, "Ok, time to let go of privacy feeling online now - it's
   100% public tongue emoticon " - and so I did smile emoticon =
   But I still see people "exposing their every thought" online
   just like you did and I did back then. Stuff that will haunt
   them later on probably. I think what happened to us is probably
   gaining a set of "public eyes".that we didn't have when we were
   younger. ==