You'll most often see "Republican Jesus" brought up by the people who were born and raised in the evangelical church. People quite familiar with the subject. I am one of those people.
I guess if you want to ignore the movement of evangelicals to the right wing over the past 40+ years, then perhaps you could pretend it's just an invention of the "Left". But as someone who was alive for this transition and was once deeply embedded in American fundamentalist culture, I can tell you it's no invention.
There are countless books on the subject if you want to understand the history. "Jesus and John Wayne" is a recent release on the evangelical move to the right, and the evolution of "Republican Jesus". It's a good introduction if you're not familiar with the background. Written by someone who was once a member of such churches, and is still a practicing Christian.
It's true that not all Americans have this particular view of Jesus. Non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist denominations will give you a different viewpoint. If the Christians you know belong to those faiths, then "Republican Jesus" would seem quite alien. But the evangelical faiths have had much more success in broadcasting their version. Which makes their version of Jesus the one most prominently seen in the public square and the one currently in use by one of the political parties.
He was in an occupied country ruled by two sets of rulers: the imperial occupiers and those who were willing to collaborate with the oppressors. Jesus often spoke up for the downtrodden and condemned those with wealth and power. Those rulers tried to silence him and eventually executed him. There's a reason why the oppressed sometimes look to Jesus for inspiration.
And the skin color may not have been important in Jesus' time, but it is now. At least in terms of the American religious experience. Here, they almost universally portray Jesus as white. In a country where churches are the most racially segregated institutions, that means something.
The anticolonialist narrative is not sustainable based on all available literary evidence, including the noncanonical texts. Jesus, repeatedly, and in his most well-attested sayings, refutes that narrative, often to the disappointment of his disciples.
This is what the "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" aphorism is about - the Pharisees try to bait Jesus into supporting the "anti-oppression" narrative, and he declines, instead telling them that yes, the material things of this world (such as taxes) are in fact due to the Romans. This is a consistent theme throughout all the gospels. In one case, large numbers of disciples leave Jesus, because he tells them that he's not here for that.
When the Pharisees bring him to the Romans for violating Jewish law, all accounts are that Pilate is dismissive of the charges and Jesus tells him that "his kingdom is not of this world." And of course, Jesus famously prophecies the total destruction of Jerusalem and tells them they deserve it and have it coming. This is generally held to have been fulfilled during the Siege of Jerusalem by the Romans a few years later. This is not exactly "anti-oppression."
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
We could go on and on about this - Jesus associating with the hated (Roman) tax collectors, Jesus saying the centurion has greater faith than anyone in Israel, etc. Jesus is not pro-Roman in a greater sense, because he is not "on" anyone's side. But he explicitly withdraws himself from the "Jewish oppression by Romans" narrative.
The apostles do double down on it, by insisting that earthly authority is to be obeyed and that God put them there. One might suspect that's to help alleviate potential persecution.
> Here, they almost universally portray Jesus as white.
I hate even addressing this, because theologically it's totally irrelevant - all that matters is Jesus was Jewish. But to lump everyone in the Middle East into a "brown" category using some kind of 2021 racial ideology is quite silly. Many Middle Eastern ethnic groups are "white", or "white passing", or whenever the preferred nomenclature is today. "White" is not really a meaningful term. But if you saw the average resident of Galilee or Judea in 30AD on the streets of 2021 NYC, you would probably lump them into the "white" bucket.
If you doubt this, you can look up the Samaritans, for example, a highly insular ethnic group closely related to Jews that never left the region.
Of course, there are many, many other examples as well - Assad is a reasonably notorious concrete example. That said, people of Jesus's time also probably spent much more time in the sun and developed a healthy tan. The people insisting "Jesus was brown!" are weirdly racializing something that doesn't need it. And at any rate, it's not uncommon for Asian people or Black people (in sub-Saharan Africa) to depict Jesus more in those terms, which I don't think anyone has a problem with.
My point wasn't about Jesus' actual racial appearance in history but how the image is used in the current church. Apparently most Christians, at least in the US, like the white Jesus. I suppose, technically, it's white Italian Jesus since the modern depictions are usually based on the old paintings.
I have no idea of the tone of Jesus' skin. Of course, there are paler people in the Middle East. When I traveled there, I met many people who fit that description. But practically none of them looked like the modern portrayal of Jesus. And how could they when the modern portrayal is based on European paintings with European models?
This does bring a racial perspective into play. Especially in a country where the churches are almost entirely segregated. I grew up with the evangelicals. They thought of Jesus as one of them. Not as a Middle Eastern man.
And I'm quite familiar with Jesus' lack of resistance in the Gospels. But, for better or worse, many oppressed people have taken comfort in his story. Seeing him executed by the occupiers and collaborators gave a point of common ground by those facing horrendous regimes. And since Jesus stood up to the religious leaders, and went out of his way to attack the wealthy, there's some comfort and support found there as well.
Which makes it unsurprising modern people with their modern struggles would use Jesus as an example or as someone who would supposedly support them. They're part of a long line of people who have done so.
Jesus goes further than "lack of resistance", one of the reasons the people you call "collaborators" (they weren't) were so enraged by Jesus was by his appearance of active support for the "occupation" and him telling them to their face they deserved to have it all taken away from them and given to another people, as for example, in the Parable of the Vineyard.
Another reason they hated him is because Jesus associated with actual collaborators, like the tax collectors.
I am really baffled about how this can be twisted into comfort for people oppressed by occupying forces. Especially the part where he tells them Jerusalem is going to be destroyed and that they’ve earned it! Prophesying the destruction of the Temple and mass death and telling them they’ve earned it is comfort for other oppressed people?
> They thought of Jesus as one of them. Not as a Middle Eastern man.
The whole point is none of them think of Jesus as a man at all. Certainly not evangelicals. What do you mean by this?
Of course they think of him as a man. According to the doctrine, he was supposedly God in human form. He was here as a man. Artistically, he's always presented in a male physical body. What else would they think of him?
In a nation frequently obsessed with race, the racial identity of Jesus as it's presented matters. I'm not sure why that's controversial to you.
As is the identification of the oppressed and downtrodden with Jesus. That's common enough to be cliche. Maybe it's correct or incorrect, depending on how you look at the old stories, but it's done so often that it's strange to me that someone else would find it strange.
Of course, the oppressors have also frequently used Jesus. So I guess the one thing we can agree on is that the gospels are quite flexible.
They think of Jesus as the Son of God, the Word made flesh and able to experience all the usual privations and sufferings of the mortal frame.
They do not see him as having some sort of racial consciousness or national provincialism…because God would naturally as the maker of all nations transcend that.
Evangelicals are typically the ones that go perhaps too far with that themselves. See for example the controversy over their proclivity for trans-racial adoptions.
Just dive in. You could find a list of the more far-out episodes. But the fun of Art was not knowing what to expect. Even when the guest was boring, there might be a caller who wants to talk in detail about the starship that abducted them last night.
Art Bell had the absolute best voice for late night radio. Used to listen to him on my overnight road trips between Salt Lake and Vegas. Just the endless desert under a full moon, and Art's guest is rambling on about interdimensional beings. Could almost believe it for that moment.
One of my favorite things about Art was the tension. Did he believe what his guests and callers are saying? Or is he just humoring them for the show? I never knew the answer. Not sure if I would want to know.
Used to listen to him on my overnight road trips between Salt Lake and Vegas. Just the endless desert under a full moon, and Art's guest is rambling on about interdimensional beings. Could almost believe it for that moment.
Yeah, there's something about that time of night, being out on the open road. Reality seems a little bit, erm, looser, or something. I think it's just that all you have is you, the radio, blackness, stars, maybe the moon, and possibly a cow or a coyote or something. In those moments, there's less "stuff" to slap you in the face and remind you "Hey asshole, there's no such things as aliens, UFOs, ghosts, zombies, time-traveling Titors, etc." You just stare off into the black, see the millions (or so) of stars you can see, listen to the static-crackling AM radio, and, wait is that light really a star? NO... it's blinking wrong...
Sometimes shame is useful. Cigarettes are gross and unhealthy, not just for the user, but for the people around them. It is a costly habit, and most importantly, often leads to premature death. If anybody I care about smokes, you can bet your ass I'm shaming them. They shouldn't be doing it.
Only something like 10-15% of lifelong heavy smokers in the United States develop lung cancer. Something like 20-30% of all lung cancer comes from life-long non-smokers.
Shame doesn't work in the way you think it does. Especially when the target of the shaming knows the reasons why they're being shamed. More likely you're just going to be traumatizing and pushing away your loved ones.
> In the United States, cigarette smoking is linked to about 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths.
> People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke.
> Cigarette smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in the body. Cigarette smoking causes cancer of the mouth and throat, esophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, liver, pancreas, voicebox (larynx), trachea, bronchus, kidney and renal pelvis, urinary bladder, and cervix, and causes acute myeloid leukemia.
That's not a direct response to "Only something like 10-15% of lifelong heavy smokers in the United States develop lung cancer." Instead it's a copy-pasted list of large numbers.
Jet ski riding causes 100% of jet ski accident deaths, but that tells me very little about the safety of riding a jet ski.
Not here to defend smoking, but to defend argument.
Shaming single mothers or having a baby out of wedlock or shaming someone for being gay are great examples why you shouldn't shame people and why the practice should shamed out of existance.
I'm not going to speak to those particular examples, but shaming someone for a voluntary act, such as committing a crime, is very different from shaming someone for something they are and cannot control, like their race or their gender. Those why the latter are considered "protected classes" for the purpose of anti-discrimination laws.
That's a very common rubric, but also a very offensive one. The reason we should consider those protected classes (under particular circumstances) is because we have judged discrimination against them in areas of employment and housing to be both irrational and damaging (because limits on employment and housing are damaging.)
It's not because it's morally wrong to punish someone for being bad if they can't help being bad. That's why we allow people to plead not guilty for reason of insanity. People in protected classes aren't bad.
edit: this is the kind of thinking that leads people to desperately look for gay genes - because otherwise, they wouldn't be able to justify laws barring discrimination against gay people.
I relate it to modern child-worship: the belief that babies are born purely. without stain, and are thereby most deserving of life and happiness; but from the first moment of life the decisions that they make cover their souls with filth, gradually making them less deserving of life and happiness. Therefore, by applying this extreme Protestant reasoning to modern science, the things in your genes can't be judged because they were placed there by God. If you die because your sin literally turns your lungs black and diseased, the most important thing to do is condemn your corpse so no babies will follow your example.
As a society we've largely dealt with the latter problem by deeming children less capable of making rational decisions, and therefore holding them to a different, lower level of responsibility for them. This can be observed particularly in how we punish them differently than we do adults for their misdeeds.
Being a single mother or having relations outside of marriage can be a choice.
Shaming someone for choosing a religion different than their parents or shaming someone because they have picked a job you think lowly because they are not a protected class is not a good enough reason.
I'm not sure where the option to make a choice can be found. People go where their will takes them.
If the impulse to commit a crime is strong enough, they'll commit a crime. If some internal voice of reason holds them back, then they'll hold back. But in both instances, their actions were guided be preexisting circumstances, not by any choice they made.
It's funny how fast that attitude changes when someone you know dies of something you could have helped prevent. Suddenly you feel like you've got blood on your hands, and that maybe sometimes other people need a nudge or a kick in the right direction.
Guilt is common after a loved one dies. If you only stopped them from eating butter they may have not had a heart attack. If you were there you your grandma might not have slipped.
I don't think we have the control we brainwash ourselves into believing.
For every nag or nudge you create a riff where you are trying to impose your will. Whether it is about smoking, the person they are dating or their career choice your nudges are probably less helpful and more harmful then they appear.
I took an astronomy course a few years ago which had a fairly forward-thinking (if a bit lazy) instructor. The initial tests were fairly conventional. But for the intense test right before the final, he gave us a comprehensive take-home. With the full assumption we'd be hitting Google hard for the more difficult questions. He knew this was a complex topic. Thought we'd learn more and retain more with a test where we had to show some initiative in finding the right answers without the stress of having to remember it on the spot.
Plus, it doubled as a study guide for the actual final which was only a couple of weeks later. I thought it was a remarkably kind thing to do. Took out a little stress. Gave even the struggling students an easy "A". And it worked as a comprehensive guide to almost everything we covered.
This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day. Usually more often. Even in the hellscapes of Twitter or Facebook, you'll find interesting writing, weird animations, or new illustrations. There's immense creativity released daily. Too much for one person to ever keep up with.
Just because strip malls are plentiful, doesn't mean good architecture no longer exists.
And I remember the old days. For every hand-crafted gem of a site, there were a 100 with little more than a grainy photo of Slipknot and an "under construction" animation.
>This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day.
it's pretty undeniable that the web was more unique before the tooling and resources existed for laymen to easily spin up a site using an off-the-shelf solution, style-sheet, template, etc.
The grainy photo of slipknot may have been the same one from site to site -- digital media was uncommon and was generally scavenged from band sites and similar -- but many of those sites had hand-written code to facilitate the photo. Handwritten code that was unique and different from site to site.
Yeah, there is more artwork and toys on the internet now -- that's a function of the massive surge in popularity and accessibility and the world's populations finally getting to 'come online' -- but 'uniqueness'? That's way down ever since GeoCities and getting worse every day since.
It's now trivial to go find 1000s of Hugo/Gatsby/Hexo/Jekyll that all use the same exact style sheets and templates, but with different data on each site.
That's nice from an accessibility stand-point, but we lost a degree of uniqueness and creativity without a doubt.
I'm old enough that I had to hand-write all my web code when I started in the business, and I still do. Primarily because I never liked templates or wanted to learn how to tweak them - that's learning someone else's framework and being at their mercy. As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. So I can charge $200/hr while someone building a template site might be making $15/hr. And my code isn't necessarily as flexible or future-proof. But it's built to do [insert specialized UI/data feature] that nothing on the open market does.
I really miss the efforts of early self-built websites, experiments, online games - even the really bad ones. I also think that having to jump through hoops to publish content made people think harder about what they were putting out in the world. Making the process of publication brainless lowers the bar of entry to, well, brainless people.
> As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it.
Where do you find companies and individuals willing to pay $200/hr for basic, non-templated web code?
(Or is it one of those things where they find you...)
I rely on word of mouth and repeat business. There are a number of sites I've rewritten 3 times since the early 2000s - first in HTML/PHP, then in Flash/PHP, then in JS/PHP or Node. The code isn't (usually) that basic. I got known in the '00s for doing large, complex Flash sites - some fun ones on the art side, for bands and games, but mainly on the business side, doing online stores, CMSs and reservations systems totally in Flex/Flash. These were not what you'd associate with crazy animated Flash pages; my training was in graphic design, and these were pretty glossy, full-page responsive sites. They were also full-stack jobs, so when mobile became a thing and Flash died, a lot of clients came back needing a new front-end for an existing SQL/PHP stack that still worked. Now a lot of those have been refactored again as PWAs.
For really "basic" stuff, like doing a static website with a couple forms for an auto shop or something, I usually advise people to just go with a template solution. But one of the advantages of being solo is I've built up a really extensive set of tooling over the years, including my own lightweight CMS that's applicable for certain things where non-technical users just want to occasionally edit and preview content in-page. So that's deployed in some places.
Really, the $200/hr rate is to keep away cheap clients. It kind of obscures the fact that I work fast, so, if a client knows exactly what they want from a static website with a couple forms, I might knock it out in 8-12 hours, plus another 16 from the graphic designer I work with (who's billed separately at $100/hr). This isn't unreasonable for, say, a lawyer or a mechanic who wants something high-quality that doesn't look like every other site. We're a one-stop shop, so we'll also do logos, print pieces, etc. at the design rate. I also handle all the hosting, server management and domain registration for smaller clients (everything except email servers) and just send them a retainer bill for $400/year that includes all that plus 2 hours of support. On the higher end, there are a few companies whose stores and business apps I wrote way back who just need to keep making upgrades and changes, so I'm usually booked out for six months and rarely take new clients anymore.
I think the pricing works for a couple reasons. Initially I did it because I was tired of clients changing their minds or requesting endless unnecessary features that I felt cluttered up what should have been clean, easily navigated UIs. This was very prevalent in the Flash age when everyone wanted unnecessary animations and crazy splash pages. I would give an estimate for the number of hours involved at the beginning of a job based on the original features they requested, and anything beyond that I would start charging the hourly rate; it dissuaded them from waffling on "let's try this" and ruining their own websites. Over time I came to realize that a certain group of people like to show off a little and say they paid extra for something unique or higher-quality, or from "this guy who's the best" - and the people they bragged to would want to show that they weren't cheap either. Whereas I'm a guy who's like, "guess how cheap I got these boots", CEOs tend to be more of the "look what I can afford" type. And I'm not above tapping into that psychology. An additional benefit turned out to be that as a result of paying more, they actually trusted me more to make good calls about UI/UX, because you trust someone more who comes personally recommended, but also because professionals trust someone more who charges in or above their own income range. I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water. I started raising my rate annually.
One lesson I learned from the art and design world, before I even got into coding, was that under-pricing your own work is the kiss of death. Keeping my rates high enough to drive some clients away has given me more free time and let me shape my career in a direction I actually want.
What I've learned from your (very excellent) post — and this is what I suspected, really — is something you may not like: $200 an hour isn't enough... you're not charging enough. Sorry. And yes, my post was bait in hopes that I would metaphorically lure you out of your lair. Sorry for that too.
You've spent 2 decades building a reputation as "the best guy in the area", you're booked so solid that you don't bother taking new clients, and your rate doesn't reflect your reputation or productivity and your current retainer, including your own labor inputs, is hardly more (probably less) than a basic small-business managed hosting plan.
At $200/hr and your self-described productivity, you're not the "look what I can afford" provider, you're the value provider. Basically, you're doing your "basic", "non-templated" web code (which, oh by the way, includes your own hand-rolled infrastructure) for less than the cost of the template-nonsense that plucky entrepreneurial types are selling to small biz all over the place. (Again, you'd be amazed at what small businesses end up spending just in hosting. It's often as much or more.)
That's what it sounds like to me, anyway. And all this comes with a big fat disclaimer: you know infinitely more about your business than I.
P.S.
> I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water.
It's possible I don't charge enough, now. I'm cautious about raising rates, and the last time I did was pre-Covid. 2020 was pretty rough, with almost no one interested in building new infrastructure; luckily I had long jobs to carry me through most of it.
The $200/hr rate now isn't that different from a $50/hr rate in 2006. It was about half of what a smaller web bureau or design agency would charge at that time. My selling point was that I had the knowledge and will to do the work, if not the manpower and response time that a full agency could bring to bear. So - yes - it has always been a value proposition for my clients who have to trust that a one-man code show with a couple designers in tow can write software that will last ten years and is worth the technical debt incurred with a custom platform. I always remind them that unlike a company, I can get hit by a bus.
But I also omitted the fact that I really only enjoy writing fun, interesting code now... and there isn't much of that. So I find myself spending half the day on my own projects. I don't maximize my income by working long hours. Typically, I work on client projects 2-4 hours a day unless there's a short deadline. Maybe I should charge more for those hours, but I also feel a bit of moral obligation not to raise my prices too steeply on the clients who've made the decision to put themselves into my technical debt. And a lot of times I just do tech support without putting down a charge at all, if it's not really a big bother to me.
If inflation really goes crazy or if this situation ever began to feel like I wasn't being compensated fairly, I would raise my rates more sharply year to year. But... I grew up in ad agencies since I was 15 and got good at eyeballing the price points that brought in just the right customers. I used to be like a "Price is Right" contestant at that age, with the boss asking what I thought an account was worth, what a job should cost, and what they could afford. I've been accused of being too conservative in my pricing before. And of being too expensive. I don't think, personally, that maximizing the amount of money you can get out of a job is a good strategy for building long-term trust.
I have one client who, I know, thinks they have gotten an unfair and obscene amount of value from my hourly work. At one point when the stress of what they were putting on me was breaching what I could handle, even if I doubled my rate, they perceived this and just gave me a percentage of the company. So I'm of the attitude that if you do good work, and really put your complete attention into it, the world will provide for you. I hate hustlers and businessmen, hungry entrepreneurs, etc. I'm not a competitive type. Good craftsmen will never starve. To some extent, coders overrate their importance as part of a priesthood of industry in something new and poorly understood. We're architects and "engineers" with no real qualification. If the toilet in your small business backs up, the guy who comes to fix it is worth more than re-designing your online store. Or - differently, and I'm rambling here - I drive a 1980 Datsun. The only guy within 500 miles who knows that car is a mechanic who has Datsun tattoos on both of his arms... and lives in his shop, surrounded by Datsuns and charges an eminently fair rate. He built a new engine for me after I hauled him an old block. A craftsman.
Too often I hear, "you could be rich", or this or that. From ambitious people, of course. The truth is, the great thing about this life is that I have no ambition to be rich by working for someone else. If/when/how I get rich will only be if/when one of my own projects makes money. Without investors, who I hate, and certainly not on these clients' projects. I don't want or need to take advantage of them just because I could do so.
/rant - Hey, this just touched off a lot of thoughts and I don't normally explain my full thinking about this.
In 1997 a classmate would write HTML on paper with a pencil during class. It slipped my memory until recently & now I like to imagine it worked out well for him.
I learned perl on paper and pen with a copy of Larry Wall’s Perl in a hotel room in Long Beach. (An ex’s business trip, nothing to do during the day and too young to rent a car.) Having to check my own work with no interpreter (until I got home) really made me think both when I wrote it and when I reviewed it. Helped grok the concepts that were new and the syntax.
I'm a little confused to be reading comments where people are nostalgic for that. I feel like I always have to remind people that the web was horrible back then. All I remember from that era is that everyone used Myspace, which allowed you to load arbitrary Javascript and CSS into your profile page. When you visited a new person's page, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not it would slow your browser to a crawl because of all the auto playing videos and javascript animations. And also it seems to have allowed any number of XSS attacks. So maybe the code was "unique" but it was all unified in its singular purpose to annoy you and crash your browser and get your account hacked.
If you consider Myspace to be the apogee of that internet generation then you could say Facebook was the product that killed it off completely, which now seems to bring its own hell of annoyances, security issues, and autoplaying videos. Maybe not much has really changed after all?
Where are you getting myspace out of that comment? The author seemed to be talking about regular static or semi-static sites with hand-crafted HTML and CSS, perhaps driven by a bit of Perl or PHP.
Yeah, myspace was terrible, but it was the facebook of the time. Very popular with teens and some adults. Not so much with those of us who had been denizens of the net (not just the web) for a decade prior.
I didn't mention that because I think the "website with just some simple HTML and CSS" has moved mostly to Facebook and Medium and things like that. "Small bit of Perl and PHP" has been replaced with Wordpress and Squarespace. Those things are still around in a modern form. Nobody needs to do things the old way so they don't. My observation was just that if you're looking for the vibe of the old Geocities web, to me that disappeared along with the death of Myspace, for very good reason.
The other thing I remember about the web back then is that it seems to have had (relatively speaking) about as many cranks, kooks, conspiracy theorists, and other "outsider" types as it does now. There's still plenty of weird stuff to find. The only difference is they do it with memes on facebook now instead of on a Geocities site filled with stolen animated gifs. Some things just never change.
Smaller subreddits are a great counterexample as well. Many are teeming with user creations, be it art, short stories, personal projects, etc. Just about anything and everything can be found there, and much of it is people just doing their thing for no profit besides an integer counter on their post.
Here are a couple of user created content subreddits I like. They fall into the general overlapping categories of making and fixing things, and taking cool pictures of clouds, plants, and *nix desktops. :)
If you prefer the new layout you can "s/old/www/g".
It sort of both. There is probably more cool stuff out there today in absolute numbers, but less in relative terms as the businesses pushing clickbait and blogspam come in. The percentage of cool stuff decreases even as the amount increases, so it becomes harder to find even as it becomes more abundant.
Did you notice the reduction of information density on web pages? I think that would be the biggest immediate difference. Old Reddit vs. new Reddit as one prominent example. The dominance of responsive designs now, as compared to the old separation between main site and mobile site, as another example. I guess hamburger menus weren't a big thing in 2013? I honestly can't remember. Maybe time to hit the Internet Archive and look at pages from 2013.
It's interesting thinking of the changes. I guess many of the current trends were well underway by 2013 so the current state would be different but not too different to you. At any rate, I'm glad you're out and hope you can sort the ID mess.
I actually like New Reddit, except for the advertising.
Design is much more responsive now, I'll give it that. Lots and lots of huge photographic headers. Hamburger menus? I'm guessing that is the name for the 3-line icon? They were pretty new in 2013 on mobile sites on my iPhone 5. And the 3-dot thing for "extra" options ... I don't remember that existing back then.
There is a reduction in information density.. some of it is warranted by an increase in white space which is good. A lot of sites now have super-intrusive advertising posted all the way through the copy, which wasn't common in 2013.
The sheer amount of data I burn through just browsing the Web.. that's a huge change. Even my mobile plan with 100GB of data gets burned in no time just browsing around. Sites are so, so heavy now. I saw that post yesterday about Discord having an enormous favicon file and so I can see that people just gave up trying to trim their code. I look at some HTML source now and I lose my shit because it is literally megabytes of bullshit. People were more careful with their code in my time.
One weird thing is that my brain doesn't know it is 2021 yet. I saw a show the other day where a woman said her son was born in 2011 and I did the maths and my brain said her son was two years old. This happens to me constantly. It's like my brain stopped counting time as soon as I entered the jail.
Thanks. I have ethical issues with ad blockers. As someone who has built businesses based on ads it pains me to hurt these sites, even though the ad situation is really fucked up in 2021.
I just found out about Brave this week. It looks promising. I didn't know DuckDuckGo had a browser. I've been using the search occasionally. People say they can't switch from Google, but honestly their search quality is over-rated. They are really sanitizing their results more than the others recently. Even Bing is bringing back more results from really useful obscure sites than Google is.
Adblock Plus might be an acceptable solution for you, IIRC it has an "acceptable ads" program designed to only filter out the heavier or more intrusive ads.
Determining the sweet spot is a fun thought. I'd argue for the Windows 7 era. General purpose computing is still the norm. The web & apps have almost as many services as now, but with less bloat and less tracking. There's social media but it's not completely dominant. Linux for desktop is beginning to be in good shape. Smartphones are available for those who want them but they're not dominant yet either.
That's my personal one. I'm sure it'll be different for everyone else.
I guess if you want to ignore the movement of evangelicals to the right wing over the past 40+ years, then perhaps you could pretend it's just an invention of the "Left". But as someone who was alive for this transition and was once deeply embedded in American fundamentalist culture, I can tell you it's no invention.
There are countless books on the subject if you want to understand the history. "Jesus and John Wayne" is a recent release on the evangelical move to the right, and the evolution of "Republican Jesus". It's a good introduction if you're not familiar with the background. Written by someone who was once a member of such churches, and is still a practicing Christian.
It's true that not all Americans have this particular view of Jesus. Non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist denominations will give you a different viewpoint. If the Christians you know belong to those faiths, then "Republican Jesus" would seem quite alien. But the evangelical faiths have had much more success in broadcasting their version. Which makes their version of Jesus the one most prominently seen in the public square and the one currently in use by one of the political parties.