Hobbies & Interests: The Internet was better before...

...Before I had to ALWAYS identify myself and jump through the tired frigging two-way verification HOOPS for EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE that offers even a speck of PARTICIPATION Opportunity on it!

I first got Online waaay back in 1994 and back then nothing like that had to exist because there wasn't any such thing as "comment spam", there was no "COPPA" crap, and the Net was new, and the economy not in a fish-gut bucket--which all translates to: Every website maintainer in existence did NOT have to deal with the economic realities of paying for server space and bandwidth quite severely enough to have to resort to complex and dark relationships with "third parties" who, "from time to time" would be sending word of "special offers of interest".

Back then, the most annoying thing online was email spam and banner ads--which seem like nothing to me now!

I AM SO TIRED OF HAVING TO REMEMBER 29 PASSWORDS and EVERY site makes you type it TWICE when you sign in, as if that's actually going to help! and if that weren't annoying enough you usually also have to type your damn @ddress over again as well.

THEN you have to wait for a VERIFICATION, and click THAT to get to the site you wanted to interact with, and half the time, by the time that verification-mail arrives you forgot what the hell you wanted to SAY in the FIRST PLACE!

When I verified HERE, though, I sure didn't forget what I wanted to rant about even though I had to wait 20 minutes to do it, because I'm bloody sick of this!

WHY IS ALL THIS TRULY NECESSARY? I know 90 percent of it's probably about spam and preventing it, even though spam STILL happens anyway, so IS it necessary at all? Must I leave a trail with my Name/@ddress everywhere I go - connecting automatically to my IP # as well?

I remember when the Net was joyously and DELICIOUSLY anonymous. Of course, those of us wanting anonymy nowadays just get throwaway @ddresses - but we still have to keep track of THOSE to participate. And we still have to jump through that stupid set of Verification Hoops.

This sucks. So do we just have the frigging spammers to thank for it...or is it the government(s) as well, both corporate and geopolitical?! I say, we tell them all to go to Hell on a locomotive, and get rid of all this excessive keeping-track-of people.

Show me an interactive website of any kind that doesn't require this sordid process and I'm there in an instant and will hang out for life.