Internet May Be Just a Passing Fad, The Newspaper Said 21 Years Ago

Regia Marinho
2 min readDec 20, 2021

The Internet was not a fad.

Image from Twitter. Daily Mail, December 5, 2000

Furbies were a fad.

The fact that some toy manufacturers sell ridiculously expensive indispensable toys is questionable…

Near Christmas time I went to buy Furbies at Toys “R” Us for my daughter. I remember that was too cold in New York City and I woke up very early to be able to buy one…it had a long line waiting to doors open.

Internet was never a fad, but always a real technological innovation. It’s not a single product, but a system and a platform.

Most things that seem like fads actually are fads. Exceptions like this are rare. People will use this example to justify that their personal favorite fad isn’t a fad.

In 2000 I already was selling my drawings on eBay.

I always believed that the Internet was here to stay.

These sentences are both true,

  • Most things that seem like fads are actually fads.
  • The select few disruptive things initially have the appearance of a fad.

What is a Fad?

“A fad is any form of collective behavior that develops within a culture, a generation or social group in which a group of people…

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Regia Marinho

I write about ideas, technology, the future and inspire the world through art. https://regiaart.com