Hell I had friends using modems in 1991 to talk to each other.
I was actively talking D&D on BBS's in 1982 using my Commodore 64 (and thanks to FidoNet, it was national discussion by the mid 80s, with national email too thanks to EchoMail). By 1991 a lot of us were already on university internet access playing Nethack, MUDs, and emailing using PINE while discussing D&D on Usenet.
I am starting to wonder if this is a generational thing. I don't want to be impolite and ask your age, but is it possible you were a teen or younger in 2000 and maybe that's why you thought internet usage was lower than it was for that year? A lot has changed since 2000, but hardcopy Amazon book sales, internet usage in the U.S., and D&D discussion are not things that have changed all that much since then.
I'm saying the culture these days in regard to things like social media is very different now than in 2000 and you would be very disingenuous to claim other wise.
I am claiming otherwise in the context of "D&D discussion", it's not disingenuous for me to do so, and I'd prefer you stop being rude and reply to what I am saying rather than calling me names like liar (which is what disingenuous means in this context). MySpace was really not much different than Facebook, nor was Friendster or much of AOL. There are some aspects that are different, but not the ones that are most relevant to the topic of D&D discussions. In fact we've had some of the same discussions in 2014 that I had in 1991 on Usenet with people.
The social media for example is linked to your TV and cell phones and in 2000
Sure but most people are not posting on their TV. And whole many post on their cell phones, those same people were posting on their computers before. It's not like that changed the quantity of people talking about D&D, it just changed the device they were using to talk about D&D. But ask Morrus about his usage here - usage actually went DOWN for many years, and only recently rebounded with the introduction of 5e.
if you wanted to play online on a TV you were more or less limited to the Sega Dreamcast. The joke was also the only online business making money back then was porn as well.
I was General Council for a large internet co-location (server farm) company from 1997 to 2003. It was a joke only. We were massively profitable, and almost all our clients were profitable as well. Internet advertising was taking off in a huge way, and people were paying big bucks for it - in some ways, bigger bucks then than now.
And I was playing Xbox on Xbox Live in 2002 by the way. And before that I was at LAN parties, and playing 15 different people on Spaceward Ho!
Amazon and Ebay were in their infancy by comparison,
OK stop, just stop. This has already been refuted. You can't just keep pretending nobody replied to you, that nobody cited hard evidence to refute it, and then just repeat your claim. Amazon BOOKS were not in their infancy (they were almost as big as they are now). eBay in the U.S. was not in it's infancy (it was half a decade in already, and huge, and was about to buy PayPal).
It really seems like you think 2000 was 1990. Most of the stuff you're saying is off by about a decade. Which is why I referenced your age - I don't know of anyone who was a geek and an adult in 2000 who thinks these things.
Are you friggen kidding me? LiveJournal was huge. Blogging was huge. 2002 is the year Journalism classes were teaching blogging vs. journalism classes, and in 2001 "how to blog" books were being published. Once again it really seems like you're off by a decade on this stuff.
iPod was 2001, and it was a copy of several devices that came before it. Palm PDAs were huge, and the Palm VII had internet access in the U.S. by 1999. I had a Palm Treo phone in 2003, which had apps, and internet access.
no twitter, facebook, steam, youtube.
No idea what Steam has to do with this discussion. But yes, no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, which is a point that you've made three times now and which has been responded to three times now. The longer you pretend it had no reply, the worse your argument looks.
These forums did not exist either although the pre ENworld forums were up IIRC.
WOW. Dude...what do you think E.N. World stands for? This forum was founded by Eric Noah BECAUSE of the launch of 3e. It was absolutely around then...before the launch in fact! They were not "pre-ENWorld" forums, we just had a board reset at one point. There are lots of people who have been posting here since before 3.0e launched.
It would be out right moronic to claim 5E is doing better than 3.0 due to online reviews.
Excuse me? Did you just call me a moron for disagreeing with you?
. 100% of my group in the early 2000s played 3e.
