6 ms·

Nice site. I was there, it wasn't that great, most of it was about Monty Python or how much people hated Barney the Dinosaur. The modern internet is much more

Nice site. I was there, it wasn't that great, most of it was about Monty Python or how much people hated Barney the Dinosaur. The modern internet is much more expressive for a great many more people that geocities ever was.

ska 6y ago
I'm curious what you mean by "expressive". The modern internet is a far more consumer oriented experience than it was in the "old days", so I'm not quite sure what you mean.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
QuantumYeti 6y ago
I was also there. I don't really know what to say other than it wasn't mostly about Monty Python and Barney. Edit: That last "What are you talking about?" part was pretty rude. Sorry about that.
goatinaboat 6y ago
The modern internet is much more expressive for a great many more people that geocities ever was. Geocities even constrained by the technology of the day offered far more expressiveness than Facebook’s “fill in these fields and we’ll populate a standard template” approach does.
- krapp 6y ago
  The "modern internet" is more expressive in terms of content. It's no longer entirely populated by a monoculture of university students or technologically savvy American nerds, and no longer limited only to what text and images can provide. Geocities, compared to modern platforms, offered more technical freedom in that it gave you direct control over HTML, CSS and Javascript, and yet still many Geocities sites wound up looking very similar to one another, and the quality of content in many cases was more shallow than now.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    It's no longer entirely populated by a monoculture On the contrary the Facebook of 2020 is far more a monoculture than the internet of 2000 or 1990.
    - krapp 6y ago
      I wasn't referring to the culture of the platform, so much as the culture of the userbase. Besides, Facebook is anything but a monoculture - nothing with a billion users could be considered a monoculture, especially not a platform where people maintain their real identity and culture rather than adopting a "platform" culture like on Reddit or 4chan. Also, obviously, Facebook isn't the internet.
trustfailure 6y ago
Monty Python brings back so much memories.
anyfoo 6y ago
I was there, and I am still there regularly because my projects on old hardware often require me to use web.archive.org and follow the resulting web of links. Every time I was amazed how different it was back then. Dense, but cleanly presented information, including links to other high quality websites. Contributions presented as elaborate documents themselves instead of a few lines in a comment box. Nostalgia is strong, but seeing the difference in front of me regularly, it’s obvious the modern web is missing what this had.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Personally I’d rather have one hand crafted Geocities page about something someone is passionate about than 100 Instagram accounts
- krapp 6y ago
  There are plenty of passionate, creative people on the modern internet. Just because someone doesn't hand-write all of their HTML and stylesheets from scratch doesn't mean they don't have anything interesting or authentic to say. I'm sure there are people on Instagram who are passionate about what they do - their passion just doesn't interest you personally, and that's fine. The internet doesn't have to serve the interests and tastes of just one kind of person.

ska 6y ago

I'm curious what you mean by "expressive". The modern internet is a far more consumer oriented experience than it was in the "old days", so I'm not quite sure what you mean.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

QuantumYeti 6y ago

I was also there. I don't really know what to say other than it wasn't mostly about Monty Python and Barney. Edit: That last "What are you talking about?" part was pretty rude. Sorry about that.

goatinaboat 6y ago

The modern internet is much more expressive for a great many more people that geocities ever was. Geocities even constrained by the technology of the day offered far more expressiveness than Facebook’s “fill in these fields and we’ll populate a standard template” approach does.

krapp 6y ago
The "modern internet" is more expressive in terms of content. It's no longer entirely populated by a monoculture of university students or technologically savvy American nerds, and no longer limited only to what text and images can provide. Geocities, compared to modern platforms, offered more technical freedom in that it gave you direct control over HTML, CSS and Javascript, and yet still many Geocities sites wound up looking very similar to one another, and the quality of content in many cases was more shallow than now.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  It's no longer entirely populated by a monoculture On the contrary the Facebook of 2020 is far more a monoculture than the internet of 2000 or 1990.
  - krapp 6y ago
    I wasn't referring to the culture of the platform, so much as the culture of the userbase. Besides, Facebook is anything but a monoculture - nothing with a billion users could be considered a monoculture, especially not a platform where people maintain their real identity and culture rather than adopting a "platform" culture like on Reddit or 4chan. Also, obviously, Facebook isn't the internet.

trustfailure 6y ago

Monty Python brings back so much memories.

anyfoo 6y ago

I was there, and I am still there regularly because my projects on old hardware often require me to use web.archive.org and follow the resulting web of links. Every time I was amazed how different it was back then. Dense, but cleanly presented information, including links to other high quality websites. Contributions presented as elaborate documents themselves instead of a few lines in a comment box. Nostalgia is strong, but seeing the difference in front of me regularly, it’s obvious the modern web is missing what this had.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Personally I’d rather have one hand crafted Geocities page about something someone is passionate about than 100 Instagram accounts

krapp 6y ago
There are plenty of passionate, creative people on the modern internet. Just because someone doesn't hand-write all of their HTML and stylesheets from scratch doesn't mean they don't have anything interesting or authentic to say. I'm sure there are people on Instagram who are passionate about what they do - their passion just doesn't interest you personally, and that's fine. The internet doesn't have to serve the interests and tastes of just one kind of person.