6 ms·

I think this is half the explanation. The other half is that people stopped making cool internet things just out of the passion and craft of it. Now everything

I think this is half the explanation. The other half is that people stopped making cool internet things just out of the passion and craft of it. Now everything on the internet is "content," a hyper optimized form of human intellectual output that is devoid of art, minimal on information, excreted instead of created, measured to the lowest common denominator, monetized yet worthless, just enough bait on the hook for the next lizard brain click. And we ourselves have changed, trapped in this giant skinner box, too hooked on the next dopamine hit to dig deeper for our novelty. Even professional journalism is quite dead and with it went our collective consensus reality; instead we are left in a house of mirrors looking at endless reflections of special interest talking points. The world is an incredibly interesting place, but none of that makes it to the internet anymore. In the meantime, go read an old gem, seat61.com and reflect on what we have all lost.

schwartzworld 5y ago
> The other half is that people stopped making cool internet things Nah, it was always a small group of people making cool internet things. Now they are just drowned out by the commercial internet.
- krapp 5y ago
  Actually, more people are making cool internet things than ever. The internet is in a golden age of creative expression across every conceivable medium. Anything you can think of - art, music, video, games, ARGs, fiction and unfiction. But they're not putting those things on quirky hand-coded websites, so Hacker News doesn't care. The idea that most of the modern web is boring, uninteresting and not worth anyone's time is just peak tech-hipster contrarian nonsense. Sheer volume alone would suggest that, even if that were true, the interesting remainder would still be bigger than one could see within a lifetime.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    Neat! So uh, where is that stuff? Link us!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - krapp 5y ago
      Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, Instagram and TikTok. And elsewhere.
      - dougmwne 5y ago
        I guess this proves the original poster right that there are only 5-6 interesting websites left on the internet. I also only check these 5 sites+HN.
        krapp 5y ago
        No, you're missing my point - the best way to find new sites is to check the link aggregators where people post those sites from. The best way to find new content is on the sites where that content gets posted. I mean, the fact that you only check a few sites and HN doesn't say anything about the rest of the internet. How would you even know if the rest of the internet is interesting or not if you never bother clicking a link out?
        jfengel 5y ago
        Those sites are vast. There are billions of videos, subreddit posts, etc. It's all under one name but so was all of Geocities. You couldn't even begin to consume all of what is produced on those sites. Most of it sucks, but it always sucked.
        grumbel 5y ago
        They are also algorithmically curated and have a heavy bias towards new content. Those sites vs the old Internet is basically the difference between a modern supermarket and a flea market, both provide you with lots of stuff, but it's a completely different experience.
      - Sosh101 5y ago
        Oh
dunnevens 5y ago
This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day. Usually more often. Even in the hellscapes of Twitter or Facebook, you'll find interesting writing, weird animations, or new illustrations. There's immense creativity released daily. Too much for one person to ever keep up with. Just because strip malls are plentiful, doesn't mean good architecture no longer exists. And I remember the old days. For every hand-crafted gem of a site, there were a 100 with little more than a grainy photo of Slipknot and an "under construction" animation.
- accrual 5y ago
  Smaller subreddits are a great counterexample as well. Many are teeming with user creations, be it art, short stories, personal projects, etc. Just about anything and everything can be found there, and much of it is people just doing their thing for no profit besides an integer counter on their post.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    Link us!
    - accrual 5y ago
      Here are a couple of user created content subreddits I like. They fall into the general overlapping categories of making and fixing things, and taking cool pictures of clouds, plants, and *nix desktops. :) If you prefer the new layout you can "s/old/www/g". https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/ https://old.reddit.com/r/electronics/ https://old.reddit.com/r/electronics/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/ https://old.reddit.com/r/painting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/painting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Pizza/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Pizza/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ramen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ramen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ https://old.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ https://old.reddit.com/r/succulents/ https://old.reddit.com/r/succulents/ https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://old.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/
neom 5y ago
Internet is too damn hard to make these days!!!! When I go back through wayback and look at the sites I was making as an early teenager in the late 90/early 2000s, it was me every month publishing the same thing but you could tell I'd just discovered a new menu in dreamweaver. Tables to tables and frames, tables and frames to some css, css to some dhtml. At some point I learned all the dreamweaver menus I wanted to learn and there isn't any stackoverflow or anything to really learn much more online, so that was that, I moved on to learning linux, and then on to learning irc. I wan't trying to learn to code, I was trying to figure out how to make weird things I could put on the internet. That was fun! I worked on digitalocean, all my friends are in dev tools etc. I think all that stuff is cool, but the idea of me making a fun mess around project to learn web today literally gives me anxiety, hell even using sqarespace is an unrewarding utilized journey.
- musicale 5y ago
  > the idea of me making a fun mess around project to learn web today literally gives me anxiety, hell even using sqarespace is an unrewarding utilized journey. I think vanilla javascript isn't too hard, but it is kind of hard to find easy and fun onramps to it. This reference is what recently inspired me to do some things in vanilla javascript: https://htmldom.dev https://htmldom.dev github search came up with this which reminds me of retro DHTML sites: https://github.com/Vishal-raj-1/Awesome-JavaScript-Projects https://github.com/Vishal-raj-1/Awesome-JavaScript-Projects There seem to be a number of interesting things on github, e.g.: https://github.com/bradtraversy/vanillawebprojects https://github.com/bradtraversy/vanillawebprojects https://github.com/snipcart/learn-vanilla-js https://github.com/snipcart/learn-vanilla-js
rramadass 5y ago
You Sir, are a Gentleman and a Scholar :-) >Now everything on the internet is "content," a hyper optimized form of human intellectual output that is devoid of art, minimal on information, excreted instead of created, measured to the lowest common denominator, monetized yet worthless, just enough bait on the hook for the next lizard brain click. I could not have said it better myself ! The Internet has become a place to publish/share every trivial thought that has ever popped into every mediocre mind. There is no self-regulation/self-censoring anymore. The Noise is just overwhelming and it is extremely mentally fatiguing just trying to get at any kind of Signal. You just give up and start numbing your mind with all the junk available. PS: Here is Veritasium explaining the insidious effects of "Youtube Platform" Algorithms - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 Now extrapolate the same idea to other dominant platforms like Facebook, Google etc. and you realize that "The Internet" has become a platform for Expression and not necessarily Information. PPS: The book Networked Life: 20 Questions and Answers by Mung Chiang gives an inside algorithmic view of how the above platforms work.
strwbarie 5y ago
Thank you! Took your advice, went to seat61.com, and loved it. Could I ask what other old gems I could explore?

schwartzworld 5y ago

> The other half is that people stopped making cool internet things Nah, it was always a small group of people making cool internet things. Now they are just drowned out by the commercial internet.

krapp 5y ago
Actually, more people are making cool internet things than ever. The internet is in a golden age of creative expression across every conceivable medium. Anything you can think of - art, music, video, games, ARGs, fiction and unfiction. But they're not putting those things on quirky hand-coded websites, so Hacker News doesn't care. The idea that most of the modern web is boring, uninteresting and not worth anyone's time is just peak tech-hipster contrarian nonsense. Sheer volume alone would suggest that, even if that were true, the interesting remainder would still be bigger than one could see within a lifetime.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  Neat! So uh, where is that stuff? Link us!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - krapp 5y ago
    Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, Instagram and TikTok. And elsewhere.
    - dougmwne 5y ago
      I guess this proves the original poster right that there are only 5-6 interesting websites left on the internet. I also only check these 5 sites+HN.
      - krapp 5y ago
        No, you're missing my point - the best way to find new sites is to check the link aggregators where people post those sites from. The best way to find new content is on the sites where that content gets posted. I mean, the fact that you only check a few sites and HN doesn't say anything about the rest of the internet. How would you even know if the rest of the internet is interesting or not if you never bother clicking a link out?
      - jfengel 5y ago
        Those sites are vast. There are billions of videos, subreddit posts, etc. It's all under one name but so was all of Geocities. You couldn't even begin to consume all of what is produced on those sites. Most of it sucks, but it always sucked.
        grumbel 5y ago
        They are also algorithmically curated and have a heavy bias towards new content. Those sites vs the old Internet is basically the difference between a modern supermarket and a flea market, both provide you with lots of stuff, but it's a completely different experience.
    - Sosh101 5y ago
      Oh

dunnevens 5y ago

This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day. Usually more often. Even in the hellscapes of Twitter or Facebook, you'll find interesting writing, weird animations, or new illustrations. There's immense creativity released daily. Too much for one person to ever keep up with. Just because strip malls are plentiful, doesn't mean good architecture no longer exists. And I remember the old days. For every hand-crafted gem of a site, there were a 100 with little more than a grainy photo of Slipknot and an "under construction" animation.

accrual 5y ago
Smaller subreddits are a great counterexample as well. Many are teeming with user creations, be it art, short stories, personal projects, etc. Just about anything and everything can be found there, and much of it is people just doing their thing for no profit besides an integer counter on their post.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  Link us!
  - accrual 5y ago
    Here are a couple of user created content subreddits I like. They fall into the general overlapping categories of making and fixing things, and taking cool pictures of clouds, plants, and *nix desktops. :) If you prefer the new layout you can "s/old/www/g". https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/ https://old.reddit.com/r/electronics/ https://old.reddit.com/r/electronics/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/ https://old.reddit.com/r/painting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/painting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Pizza/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Pizza/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ramen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ramen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ https://old.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ https://old.reddit.com/r/succulents/ https://old.reddit.com/r/succulents/ https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://old.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/

neom 5y ago

Internet is too damn hard to make these days!!!! When I go back through wayback and look at the sites I was making as an early teenager in the late 90/early 2000s, it was me every month publishing the same thing but you could tell I'd just discovered a new menu in dreamweaver. Tables to tables and frames, tables and frames to some css, css to some dhtml. At some point I learned all the dreamweaver menus I wanted to learn and there isn't any stackoverflow or anything to really learn much more online, so that was that, I moved on to learning linux, and then on to learning irc. I wan't trying to learn to code, I was trying to figure out how to make weird things I could put on the internet. That was fun! I worked on digitalocean, all my friends are in dev tools etc. I think all that stuff is cool, but the idea of me making a fun mess around project to learn web today literally gives me anxiety, hell even using sqarespace is an unrewarding utilized journey.

musicale 5y ago
> the idea of me making a fun mess around project to learn web today literally gives me anxiety, hell even using sqarespace is an unrewarding utilized journey. I think vanilla javascript isn't too hard, but it is kind of hard to find easy and fun onramps to it. This reference is what recently inspired me to do some things in vanilla javascript: https://htmldom.dev https://htmldom.dev github search came up with this which reminds me of retro DHTML sites: https://github.com/Vishal-raj-1/Awesome-JavaScript-Projects https://github.com/Vishal-raj-1/Awesome-JavaScript-Projects There seem to be a number of interesting things on github, e.g.: https://github.com/bradtraversy/vanillawebprojects https://github.com/bradtraversy/vanillawebprojects https://github.com/snipcart/learn-vanilla-js https://github.com/snipcart/learn-vanilla-js

rramadass 5y ago

You Sir, are a Gentleman and a Scholar :-) >Now everything on the internet is "content," a hyper optimized form of human intellectual output that is devoid of art, minimal on information, excreted instead of created, measured to the lowest common denominator, monetized yet worthless, just enough bait on the hook for the next lizard brain click. I could not have said it better myself ! The Internet has become a place to publish/share every trivial thought that has ever popped into every mediocre mind. There is no self-regulation/self-censoring anymore. The Noise is just overwhelming and it is extremely mentally fatiguing just trying to get at any kind of Signal. You just give up and start numbing your mind with all the junk available. PS: Here is Veritasium explaining the insidious effects of "Youtube Platform" Algorithms - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 Now extrapolate the same idea to other dominant platforms like Facebook, Google etc. and you realize that "The Internet" has become a platform for Expression and not necessarily Information. PPS: The book Networked Life: 20 Questions and Answers by Mung Chiang gives an inside algorithmic view of how the above platforms work.

strwbarie 5y ago

Thank you! Took your advice, went to seat61.com, and loved it. Could I ask what other old gems I could explore?