Pre-internet era: You walk into a room and sit down at a table. Someone brings you a turkey sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a soda. Perhaps you are a vegetarian, or gluten-free. Doesn’t matter; you get a turkey sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a soda.
Usenet era: You walk into a room and sit down to your turkey sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a soda. Someone tells you that over at the University they are also serving BLTs, pizza, coffee, and beer.
Web 1.0 (aka The Great Schism): You walk into a room. The room is lined with 50 unmarked doors. Someone tells you, “We have enough food to feed you and a hundred more…but we’ve scattered it behind these fifty doors. Good luck!”
Web 2.0 (present): You walk into a room. Someone points at the buffet and says, “Enjoy!” You turn to see a 100-foot-long buffet table, piled high with every kind of food imaginable. To be fair, some of the food is durian, head cheese, and chilled monkey brains, but that’s cool, some people are into those…and trust me, they are even more psyched to be here than you are.
Tumblr (a hell pit): You try to serve yourself a baked potato. An angry child runs up and slaps the plate out of your hand. “NIGHTSHADE PLANTS ARE POISONOUS,” the child yells. You are hungry. The child gives you a turkey sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a kick on the shin.
AO3: You walk into a room, rubbing your shin and holding your turkey sandwich and potato chips. It is almost the same as the Web 2.0 room but everything is neatly labeled. There is new food coming in all the time. A few people are helping to expand the room to make space for it and all the guests. As long as they are supported, you will never go hungry again.
but also AO3: you want a turkey sandwich with tomato. There is a table filled with turkey sandwiches labelled ‘with tomato’. You take one. No tomato. You throw it away and take another. Still no tomato. The next one still has no tomato, but it has pickles in it, even though it wasn’t labelled (and you hate pickles). There’s a couple with tomatoes in the bottom. You’ll have to taste every sandwich to find them, though. You give up. (Still can’t complain, though, the sandwiches were available for free.)