... people complained because they had to have JavaScript enabled to post on my site. Fast forward to 2017, and they're not fazed by the fact that nearly every site requires JavaScript.

Whoa whoa whoa, dude...
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa there.
Whatchoo tawkin' aboot, Willis? Do you doubt that I thought of something years before ReCAPTCHA thought of it? Notice how all of the social media sites have round avatars nowadays? I did that first too.
WHY DON’T YOU EVER GET ANY CREDIT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??
I'm not looking for credit. I'm usually only interested in finding a quick solution to the problem at hand. Not too worried about other people borrowing it afterwards. It's not as though you can prevent people from borrowing JavaScript anyway.
I think it's funny that some Web developers like to write blog posts touting some amazing solution that I think should've been obvious or common sense. Not to mention making up cute little trademarks like "AJAX" or whatever. Some things are automatically suggested by the platform's features. For example, when the CSS3 border-radius property was introduced, it was obvious to me that it could be used to make round avatars. People only started jumping on the bandwagon when one of the big sites did it.
I don’t understand what the fuck you’re talking about.
"If we wanted you to understand it, we wouldn't call it 'code'." - some programmer