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There 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

There 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).

OnlineGladiator 5y ago
> There 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 There are probably 3 orders of magnitude more crap though, so the good stuff is harder to find. And the random fun stuff doesn't bother with SEO so it's easy to feel like the internet is full of more crap, because it is. In the early days people were building websites for fun, nowadays people are doing it for money (or marketing, or they feel obligated to have a LinkedIn even if they hate it, or whatever - nobody used to feel obligated to use the internet). Sure, there are still some gems, but they're drowned out by turds. The early days are more fun because true believers are building something they really care about, by the time something becomes mainstream it's already generic. Your point about music doesn't apply because music has existed for millenia. The internet has existed for decades.
xipho 5y ago
Given your follow-up that points out "that's just the way it is", old toys don't work for the old, I'm curious as to how you think about the resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons? Something that was played, for people of my generation, 30+ years ago. Many of us have re-found that joy, and if anything it's better than it was before. Playing with our kids, playing with other adults, of all ages. Want to re-imagine with your action figures? Use them on your campaigns, on your boards, and put them in your story (imagination). You'll have twice the fun because something you remember is now fused with something you're having fun doing. The thoughts, ideas, emotions you experienced long ago will work their way into a new generation of imaginative, curious (how will the story go), ideas, young or old.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  2nd edition D&D or even 2.5 is pretty different from 4e and 5e (is there already 6e?) though... I really like 4e, our big serious campaign is 4e with increasing amounts of customisation because of course Wizards never really polish the high level game, there's no money in it. But it's a very different game from 2nd edition. My Wizard was written out (the other PCs basically killed him, hint taken) but you couldn't write a character like that in 2nd, limitless power just comes naturally to Magic Users in the old game, in 4e Magical Trevor had to make some really difficult compromises to be able to have his flexibility and he still wasn't the star of the show. (The other characters think giving Orcus a god-killing weapon was a bad idea, and they blamed Trevor even though it might work, apparently Orcus is "bad" and it's better that the universe is destroyed than he gets a god-killing weapon. Trevor did not agree)

OnlineGladiator 5y ago

> There 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 There are probably 3 orders of magnitude more crap though, so the good stuff is harder to find. And the random fun stuff doesn't bother with SEO so it's easy to feel like the internet is full of more crap, because it is. In the early days people were building websites for fun, nowadays people are doing it for money (or marketing, or they feel obligated to have a LinkedIn even if they hate it, or whatever - nobody used to feel obligated to use the internet). Sure, there are still some gems, but they're drowned out by turds. The early days are more fun because true believers are building something they really care about, by the time something becomes mainstream it's already generic. Your point about music doesn't apply because music has existed for millenia. The internet has existed for decades.

xipho 5y ago

Given your follow-up that points out "that's just the way it is", old toys don't work for the old, I'm curious as to how you think about the resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons? Something that was played, for people of my generation, 30+ years ago. Many of us have re-found that joy, and if anything it's better than it was before. Playing with our kids, playing with other adults, of all ages. Want to re-imagine with your action figures? Use them on your campaigns, on your boards, and put them in your story (imagination). You'll have twice the fun because something you remember is now fused with something you're having fun doing. The thoughts, ideas, emotions you experienced long ago will work their way into a new generation of imaginative, curious (how will the story go), ideas, young or old.

tialaramex 5y ago
2nd edition D&D or even 2.5 is pretty different from 4e and 5e (is there already 6e?) though... I really like 4e, our big serious campaign is 4e with increasing amounts of customisation because of course Wizards never really polish the high level game, there's no money in it. But it's a very different game from 2nd edition. My Wizard was written out (the other PCs basically killed him, hint taken) but you couldn't write a character like that in 2nd, limitless power just comes naturally to Magic Users in the old game, in 4e Magical Trevor had to make some really difficult compromises to be able to have his flexibility and he still wasn't the star of the show. (The other characters think giving Orcus a god-killing weapon was a bad idea, and they blamed Trevor even though it might work, apparently Orcus is "bad" and it's better that the universe is destroyed than he gets a god-killing weapon. Trevor did not agree)