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This website is inane, juvenile and has no real use. And for all those reasons I love it. Kudos to HN for being a place where I can find things that just bri
by SkipperCat 5y ago
This website is inane, juvenile and has no real use. And for all those reasons I love it. Kudos to HN for being a place where I can find things that just bring some silly fun to my life.
I remember in the early days of the Interwebs, there was so many sites just like this one. You didn't have to go to FB, IG or some other content mill to find them. Plus, when you did find one, it had the same feeling of excitement as finding a $5 bill on the sidewalk.
Here's some other great sites.
* http://eelslap.com/ http://eelslap.com/
* https://theuselessweb.com/ https://theuselessweb.com/
- lextuto 5y ago
- dvtrn 5y agoSpeaking of eelslap, another slap-happy nugget from those days: https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/spank-the-monkey https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/spank-the-monkey
- dokka 5y agoHere's my useless website https://dx.tc/ https://dx.tc/
- eyelidlessness 5y agoOn iOS Safari with theme-color enabled, the status bar briefly but rapidly flickers between black and white clock/icons. I’m not sure if this is deliberate, but it’s a nice touch. (Also: warning to folks who might be bothered/harmed by flashing animations.)
- feross 5y agoAdding my useless website to the list: http://magickeyboard.io http://magickeyboard.io - it’s fun to build one-off random sites and put them out there :)
- dokka 5y agoIt's excellent!
- sound1 5y agowhat the hell is this??
- zrobotics 5y agoThe best website you will visit today ;)
- netizen-936824 5y ago100%
- _g5hh 5y agoSurprisingly ... uh, motivational to type. Add a small editor screen on the bottom and it could be some version of written? kitten!
- viraptor 5y agoIf you're using vscode, you may be interested in the power mode then: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hoovercj.vscode-power-mode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hoovercj...
- sterlind 5y agoI loved this when I could still type. unfortunately ran a little laggy because lack of webgl access or something, but it was a blast for late night silly hacking.
- rjuyal 5y agoLOL it is so good on mobile browser. Love it.
- 5y ago
- adventured 5y agoThere are more sites like this one today, by at least an order of magnitude, than existed in the early lift-off days of the Web (~1993-1997). You'd struggle to build a mediocre version of this site in the early days of the Web. And it'd try to eat your browser alive as you used it if someone managed to use early Flash or an applet to shoehorn it onto the Web back then. HN itself is, in part, a link content mill. No different than links posted to FB. People merely like to remember the past far better than it really was, it happens automatically as time passes and we become emotionally connected to the past in a different way. Our ability to experience new things is not the same at 40 or 50 years old as it is when we're eg 15-20 years old. We experience everything increasingly at a reduced excitement as the experiences pile up, our ability to experience new things the way we used to is dulled (it's why people don't fall in love at 40 or 50 anywhere close to the way they did in their youth in terms of sheer emotional joy and excitement (and yes, of course there are rare exceptions to the rule)). The feeling people experience when they talk about the early days of the Web, is identical to the feeling people on TikTok that are ~16-20 years old today will proclaim when they look back and talk about how amazing that era was - when they're 30+ years old; they'll talk about how nothing like that exists any longer, and social media is no longer fun like it was when they first discovered TikTok in 2020. That's nothing more than vast subjective, emotional projection; it's real for the person in terms of their subjective experience, and the extended context is false (where they project their emotional feeling outward to encompass more than their personal experience really covers; the difference between N experience for me vs N experience for everywhere else). There will be some young group of people having an amazing experience 20 years from now, that those 40 year olds (longing for the old 2020 TikTok days) can't share in it, they can't experience the new thing the same way (instead they'll sit around talking about how things have sucked since TikTok faded in 2024 or whatever); the typical 40 year old today - dulled by a lifetime of experiences - can't get the same thrill from TikTok that a 16 or 18 year old can when experiencing it for the first time. People that highly enjoyed ICQ or IRC or AIM in the 1990s, do the exact same thing today that those TikTok users will do in the future and for the exact same reason. It's true for their personal experience (it's true that they can't enjoy things like they used to, which is what is really being admitted), and that's all it's true for (it's false that there isn't anything like that experience out there today; it's that the person can no longer experience things like they used to when they were young; outside that subjective bubble a whole generation of people is out there having a huge amount of fun on TikTok and to them it's vastly superior than some low quality gifs on an ugly Geocities page circa 1997). And on the cycle goes, forever repeating. This is the same as older people proclaiming music used to be better in their day (whatever day, 1960s rock, 1990s grunge or rap, etc) and music today mostly sucks. It's a very common emotional feeling, and it's true for their subjective experience; and it's false when projected beyond themselves, when they attempt to apply it widely (because they're attempting to override other people's emotional experiences out there, which you can't actually do via such a projection). If you sit down to play with new action figure toys at 40 years of age, will you experience it in the same amazing way that you did when you were playing with similar action figure toys at 6 or 7 years old? When everything was still so new in the world. Will the excitement and thrill and repeat play value be there? Will your imagination work the same way? Is it the modern action figure toys that are the problem? Maybe a 40 year old person would proclaim they just don't make action figure toys like they used to, otherwise they'd be having a lot more fun playing with them; thus, action figure toys today suck, and so on. Now hand them over to a 6 or 7 year old today and witness the real difference: time had its way with you, as it does all things, a lifetime of experiences, physical change and emotional sediment has dulled your ability to interact with things the way you did in your youth. Here's a hint to the widespread nature of the feeling (about the old Web): there are a lot more older people using the Web today, with a long duration of experience at using it, than there are new people coming on for the first time to experience it fresh. The balance between the two has never been more skewed than it is right now. So the most common sentiment is going to be the older, experienced users projecting their subjective emotional context (longing for the old Web) as supposedly representing the objective context (when in reality it's only true for them and their context of experiences).
- 101008 5y agoFound this one, good one! https://mondrianandme.com/ https://mondrianandme.com/
- salgernon 5y agoIn the 90s, Berkeley Systems sold a screen saver package that included a module called “Mondrian” - but were sued by his estate and had to change the name.
- pier25 5y agoOr this one: http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/ http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/
- hatware 5y agoMade me think of: http://www.hiyoooo.com/ http://www.hiyoooo.com/
- pkdpic 5y agoLove these, not as cool but makes me think of: http://unknowablesymbols.com/rain http://unknowablesymbols.com/rain
- reidrac 5y agoOn the same line, perhaps: https://TomArayaScream.com/ https://TomArayaScream.com/ (I forgot they have a domain that redirects)
- twinge 5y agoUseful for dramatic effect: https://inception.davepedu.com/ https://inception.davepedu.com/
- wholinator2 5y agoVery interesting, there's a big defend net neutrality banner on the website. Has anything changed with it recently or is it just a relic of the last time
- r_singh 5y agoI’m mostly scared of clicking shady links these days… Idk if I’m being too paranoid but my google mailbox is full of phishing attempts…
- Riverheart 5y agoYour paranoia is justified. If NoScript didn't exist I don't know how anyone could browse the web with any confidence.
- pmarreck 5y agoI've been all over the Internet with an ad blocker and JS enabled running Firefox Nightly for years now with no issues.
- GreenWatermelon 5y agoThe brain becomes the filter. "nah this url sus" becomes an unconscious reaction, like this fire hot.
- kdazzle 5y agoOh, then you’ll love the shady url generator - http://shadyurl.com/ http://shadyurl.com/ -> http://www.5z8.info/inject_worm_r3l9em_gain-inches http://www.5z8.info/inject_worm_r3l9em_gain-inches
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- worker_thread 5y agorelevant: https://theuselessweb.com/ https://theuselessweb.com/
- riidom 5y agoDon't think it's useless. There are some activities you like, but you really shouldn't like them, because you have zero talent in them. The "shouldn't"-part especially true when acoustics come into play. Or to quote Mike from Gamefromscratch: "I'm here to make your ears bleed." :)
- omginternets 5y agoI have a true soft spot for https://helenkellersimulator.org/ https://helenkellersimulator.org/
- stonecrusher 5y agoSo what does the braille in the source code comment mean?
- dtjb 5y agohttps://makefrontendshitagain.party/ https://makefrontendshitagain.party/
- cxf12 5y agoThis reminded me of the kind of creativity I used to find on site called stumbleupon. Wonder what happened to it?
- arsome 5y agoBought by ebay, floundered, then sold back to the original owner, then died and turned into something called "Mix" which looks like some kind of photo sharing knockoff.
- abakker 5y agoAnother sad story of the internet.
- Stupulous 5y agoIt's a real shame. It's so hard to find web 'toys' nowadays- games without objectives, but with pretty, interactive visuals. I used to have a set of hundreds of them, but that list was deleted when StumbleUpon went under. I found them very relaxing. Anybody have another source for such things?
- billiam 5y agoOld enough to remember every single thing on the early Internet was some version of this, other than the astronomy and physics papers that my girlfriend and her fellow scientists exchanged. Websites that take my time > Websites that take my money (and my time).
- ugh123 5y agoReminds me of all the great stuff zefrank made back in the day http://www.zefrank.com/ http://www.zefrank.com/ although much of it lost(?) in old Adobe Flash tech. .. and new stuff today https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOHbM4GGWADc5bZgvbivvttAuWGow6h05 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOHbM4GGWADc5bZgvbivv...
- bsder 5y agoTry it in Ruffle: https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ Bug reports always welcome.
- 91dylwyn 5y agoLove it! theuselessweb found me http://eelslap.com/ http://eelslap.com/ My fav from back of the day http://www.davesweboflies.com/ http://www.davesweboflies.com/
- suzzer99 5y agohttps://zombo.com/ https://zombo.com/ Hypnotizing.
- hughrr 5y agoThis is an all time favourite. Also ported from Flash at some point!
- iamtedd 5y agoLost the secret link at the end, though.
- ungamedplayer 5y agoWhat....,
- iamtedd 5y agoIn the original flash version, just before it looped a link appeared to go to another page. You had to be quick to click on it. From memory there wasn't anything on it but a few words. Still, a shame they didn't keep it for the HTML version.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 5y agoI have a soft spot for https://findtheinvisiblecow.com/ https://findtheinvisiblecow.com/
- ajyotirmay 5y agongl this is super fun!
- willcipriano 5y agohttp://locutusofb.org http://locutusofb.org is a Easter egg I put together for trek fans.
- SMAAART 5y agohttps://pointerpointer.com/ https://pointerpointer.com/
- ajyotirmay 5y agohahah love this!
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y agoI feel like google adsense or monetization in general was the downfall of all of that early web richness. When the web was first created, everybody got on and just started learning html and making things... because humans are creative. I did the same. I made fun websites with/for my friends. I loved geocities. Then after a few years, I was only concerned with pumping out crap content and how many pageviews I was getting.
- sitkack 5y agoLike and Subscribe!
- jjeaff 5y agoNot having monetization certainly leads to quirky, genuine, and campy stuff, and having easy monetization certainly leads to crap. But having monetization has also lead to some amazing content and free services today that we never had before and probably never would have had. Things like photopea.com which is created by one person would probably have never progressed beyond the very basics were there no ad revenue to be made. Additionally, there are countless bloggers and content creators that create rich, amazing content and there is no way they would be able to do anything close to what they are doing if they couldn't make a living at it.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y agoAdvertising partnerships were always possible with good content creators. I posit that the ability for even the lowest level of content creators to make a few pennies hawking their crap is what has lead to the downfall of the greatness that was the early web.
- lagrange77 5y agoIn those days, everybody who was anybody had its own star trek fansite, where you could download midi files and gifs of rotating 3d klingon logos.
- rchaud 5y ago
- SenHeng 5y ago> You didn't have to go to FB, IG or some other content mill to find them. You had to go somewhere to find them. They didn’t just pop up in your browser all of a sudden. Back in those days it would be mailing lists or irc or some the general/random channel of a niche forum. Basically the social media of Web 1.0.
- barisx 5y agohttp://www.staggeringbeauty.com/ http://www.staggeringbeauty.com/