Ah, I'm sorry Dreamwidth's giving you trouble! I've got anonymous commenting turned on on that post, but I think Dreamwidth have been trying out new spam filters since switching hosts, so maybe something went awry there.

The early Internet really drilled 'never, never click on an advertisement' into its users, much to the chagrin of advertisers.

One thing that comes up amid this is the concept of the online quiz and surveys, which are another thing very much of that era. It points out that you ask for information and people are very resistant to giving it, but if you put it in a quiz, people are tripping over themselves to answer it and categorise themselves.

I'd forgotten how many online quizzes I used to do! Some of them were not intended for kids of my age and I'm not sure how I ended up on them. I remember at one point being asked 'what are your personal erogenous zones?' and having only the vaguest notion of what that meant. I felt like it was something to do with sex? But the options included 'neck', and I didn't think necks had anything to do with sex? I suppose I should choose the bum; that seems like it might be right?

When I was a little kid, I was convinced that combat in games was you being secretly matched with some other player and them mysteriously controlling the enemy AI

I love this! That's absolutely delightful.