I find people I have stuff in common with will also get a similar feed. I sent something to a co-worker last week, and he said he had just sent the same thing to another one of our co-workers and hour earlier.

There was a period of time where this happened so often it became a bit boring. Reddit about 15 years ago. Everyone has already seen everything we tried to bring up to talk about, so there wasn’t much to say. It was a lot of, “did you see…”, “yep”, “oh… what about…”, “yep”.

The Internet used to be like that.

Not really... Even back in the Web 1.0 days people didn't visit the same websites unless they had the same interests. And even today this exists – I'm seeing the same HN homepage for example, and this is true of most sites.

I think what you're describing was much more of a thing in the 80s and 90s with TV. People genuinely would tune into the same programs as each other every night and have these collective cultural experiences which don't quite exist in the same way they used to.

I don't miss it personally, but I suspect us losing that has led to some of our cultural divides in recent years.

I'm not the global shared experiences you're describing really ever existed.

PS: Was there ever a front page of Instagram? Sounds weird!

Once, there were approximately three TV stations.