i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.
You must log in or # to comment.
The wonder of discovery. Before decent search engines you would go from link to link, use web rings or have someone send you an address. If you came across a community you liked, you stuck around. The small scale of it, yet the fact that it was global. Hard to describe…
I met so many interesting people that way. And I loved the creativity of their blogs. It’s gone like the corner candy store (which I actually remember).
Forums. I found forums the most engaging, interesting structure for “social media” that has ever been invented. I actually tended to get to know the people on them over time.
I have no idea why we ditched that structure in favor of “platforms”.
Here in Germany forums are still quite active. I have several forums I actively use.
The thing with forums though, is that they oftentimes end in drama. People really do get to know one another over time on forums and that often leads to meltdowns on a scale you don’t have on lemmy or similar pages.
Forums were great but the friction to find and join new ones was very high.
Also reposts killed forums.
New posters asked the same 6 questions over and over.
Pop Up Blockers.
It’s 2024 and popup ads are everywhere despite being legislated away in the early 00’s.
Fuck ads, and fuck pop up ads more.
Blank html Pages only containing pages of blue links to various SWF(flash) movies. Purple if I watched them.
Search engines with actual results, now every search is about trying to sell you something. Searching for a product used to pull up its manufacturer and specs, now its just where to buy it or something like it.
Have you ever tried Kagi? It’s pretty interesting and I’m giving it a shot.
I am using it, it is good for me. Don’t miss google at all.
I would be on various forums for different hobbies of mine. They were relatively small and you’d recognize other uses frequently, and there was drama between each other. It was fun lol.
I found a BBQ site that had a webring the other day.
I was so happy.
Please tell me they called it a “smokering”.
Lmao yes.
The internet is healing…
Could you elaborate a little please?
A webring was a group of sites that shared a common interest that agreed to link to each other, so that you’d browse around in a circle between them.
Nice, I’m sure I’ve encountered that before. Thanks for explaining
I just double checked it was this site: http://www.bbquepits.com/
But looks like the webring itself is no longer functional. Oops.
This is my favorite part of the old web.
The fact that we need a no ads version of that and it’s not XcQ is the most concrete example of enshittification I’ve seen
You know, it’s really sad how long it’s been since I’ve been there.
I miss the weird edginess of the internet. The reality is that the internet was a place that kids got warned about full of weirdos and dangerous types. And they weren’t wrong. The thing is, that also made it interesting and full of fascinating content. And it was largely unregulated and uncensored because the people in power were too old to understand or care about it. Now with things like KOSA and the centralization of the internet around a few megaplatforms, there’s less variety and creativity. The internet has become an endless soup of banal, milquetoast content. Vaguely appealing to everyone, but not greatly appealing to anyone.
OLGA - the OnLine Guitar Archive.
It was a huge collection of free guitar tablature. Mostly txt files cobbled together by enthusiasts. The first time I used it, it was only an FTP server. It was rough, sure, but it beat the snot out of the ad-riddled, subscription models we have today. There was a version of Time in a Bottle that I learned half of twenty five years ago and I have never managed to find the rest. It drives me crazy because it was a really good version. Someone had put the two guitar parts together to make a better sounding, hard-as-fuck to play single guitar version. Every version on the Internet now is some dumbed down PoS, or the OG that needs two guitars.
OLGA rocked. I’d forgotten all about it.
Have you checked the internet archive? No guarantees, but if anyone in the world has a backup of an old text- based site… it’s them.
It’s been a while since I tried to find it. I should give it another shot.
Flash. :(
Wait, what. Someone misses proprietary software that was rightfully killed in favor of open standards?
I think it’s moreso the things that came from flash lol
All the really weird non-commercial stuff that was made in Flash.
Lack of big corpos infecting everything.
The Fediverse is the closest thing to early internet rn, I fear for it because of the whole Threads thing
What’s up with Threads?
Threads is owned by Facebook (aka Meta), and recently integrated into Fediverse. Many instances defederated from it, some voted on this action. Basically the worry is the whole “embrace, extend, extinguish” threat. More on the phrase here, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
- less centralization
- obscure flash games
- random people’s crappy colorful html sites
- being able to find random people’s crappy html sites on search engines, despite not meeting the modern strict ranking criteria or being bloated with SEO
- being able to read fun, and sometimes unique and interesting ideas on said crappy html sites
- less DRM everywhere
- less commercialization and people trying to sell you crap (not saying less ads specifically because pop-up ads were everywhere)
- more people just sharing things for the sake of sharing even if it sucks
- anonymity
- just generally the more raw and people oriented feel and less of the corpo ridden EEE/data-sucking/cloud-for-everything/enshittification bullshit we have to deal with on a constant basis these years
The Flash games are what I actually miss the most, but all good points. My coworkers and I would pick a game from addictinggames.com every week and compete. No micro transactions, no intrusive ads, just mindless fun.
The internet felt alive back then. Now…it feels like the dead internet theory is real. Please don’t let this wonderful federated site become dead :'(
Working on it!
The creativity and willingness to share.
Anyone could make a crappy site.
Anyone could fire up some phpBB.
People created a lot of stuff that mainstream commercial developers weren’t willing to invest time in. Think windows power toys, mp3 players or converters, game mods, all the little things that filled the gaps in mainstream OS and other software. Add the free stuff that people made like Blender or other specialized software that did what commercial software did but for free.
Flash games.
Linux distros.
Hobbies and how-tos.
There was so much stuff. Now it’s all mostly locked down under DRM or whatever.
