A lot of the people I recall interacting with on Usenet in the mid 1990s were very much grown up, graduated, far away from “mom”, and employed as developers or uni staff somewhere. However, they still enjoyed hacking, either out of pure fun or FOSS idealism, and without monetary reward very much in mind. I think that the OP is on to something when he says that the economic environment changed, and this led to nerd things being seen through a much more mercenary lens.

Even the major “news for nerds” site in the early years of the new millennium, Slashdot, where there was awareness that FOSS was now fueling major economic growth, did not yet have the same overwhelming culture of startups, venture capital, megacorps, and hustling as the venue we’re conversing on now.

> awareness that FOSS was now fueling major economic growth, did not yet have the same overwhelming culture of startups, venture capital, megacorps, and hustling as the venue we’re conversing on now.

I don't think it was a change. Both things existed in parallel, with a little bit of crossover. The startup/VC/megacorp thing just won out, that's all. And nobody ever really doubted that it would, once it was visible.

My take while reading OP was that the author simply grew up. When young and idealistic it's easy to believe the utopian marketing. In reality, business is the same as it's always been.

I do think politics has gotten worse in the "post-truth era". And tech certainly enabled that. It's hard to blame anyone in particular, though. One thing we see in the show "Connections" is that it's always hard to predict the consequences of new technology. Even seeing it coming, it's not fair to believe tech workers should have saved us from the rightward swing.

I feel like "business is the same as it's always been [so things aren't getting worse]" is kind of like saying "I'm smoking exactly as much as I have for the past 20 years, how can I only just have cancer now?" It's not that the problem is new, it's that the disease is degenerative.