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This is amazing. I miss the days when the web truly felt like a vast tapestry of people energetically letting their freak flags fly. Pave paradise, put up... a

This is amazing. I miss the days when the web truly felt like a vast tapestry of people energetically letting their freak flags fly. Pave paradise, put up... an algorithm to maximize engagement.

duxup 4y ago
Algorithms and the dev community today might freak out themselves if someone used one too many divs, or a bit to much JavaScript… God help them if they saw the blink tag…
- _the_inflator 4y ago
  It even has/had a name: DIVitis. ;)
  - noorah 4y ago
    "DIVitis". Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
  - NetOpWibby 4y ago
    Ah, this is what React suffers from.
    - tomduncalf 4y ago
      It doesn’t have to as you can use fragments (<><Stuff /></>) to avoid adding a wrapper div since a few years back
- dusted 4y ago
  There's never been used as much javascript in the history of time as right now, and it's never been doing as little as it does right now :P Because.. why use a perfectly good browser to render your html when you can implement another, lesser browser within the browser in javascript and have THAT render your html, but badly. Also, divs and css for layouts suck, TABLES is the way to go :)
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    Mobile killed tables for layout. Unless you replicate the table in different configurations and use CSS to show one for each screen size.
  - _zetta 4y ago
    I miss tables
    - duxup 4y ago
      I still work on some old sites / code that uses tables. I LOATH tables. Flexbox is so much easier.
  - jetbalsa 4y ago
    Framesets -- I /love/ framesets and I still use them to make things!
NovaVeles 4y ago
There are a few places lurking in the shadows of social media that the algorithms never touch, where the freak flags still fly. When you stumble across those hidden gems, it is something magical.
dfxm12 4y ago
You think the Web still isn't full of people letting their freak flags fly? You can still see this on twitch, YT, tiktok, etc. Just like Geocities represents amateur or even naive web development/web design, there are the same types of people trying to create video content. Even Twitter (including the "weird Twitter" genre of tweets) and other social media sites are full of amateur commentators, writers, comedians, musicians, etc. Web development/web design, including the tools and techniques available to the hobbyist has just gotten much more mature. People no longer feel like a kid in the candy store in terms of adding blinking text and rotating gifs, and tutorial websites are no longer showing these examples.
- BrainVirus 4y ago
  TikTok to Geocities is what AstroTurf is to real grass.
- chasing 4y ago
  Of course there's still a lot of freaky flag-flying happening. I just meant that now it feels like everyone's shouting in the same room — a room 1/3rd full of people trying to maximize the cash value of shouting and 1/3rd full of straight-up grifters. Whereas in the late-90s millennium fever it felt more like you were laying out the crazy foundation of some optimistic future.
- rchaud 4y ago
  Sorry, but TikTok is not modern-day Geocities, not even a bit. The operative word is "City": Geocities let you browse individual "neighborhoods" of websites at your leisure. It stayed out of the way, giving you the satisfaction of discovering little weird nooks and crannies on your own time, just as you would by traveling to a real city. Website makers also weren't trying to go viral and be invited on to the Jimmy Kimmel show. There is nothing organic about TikTok. You have to wade through a deluge of formulaic dance videos set to repetitive music clips for about an hour before the all-powerful algorithm determines that maybe you're not interested in that. For a platform that probably has billions of videos (Geocities never did), discoverability outside of the algorithm is impossible, because the search functionality sucks.

This is amazing. I miss the days when the web truly felt like a vast tapestry of people energetically letting their freak flags fly. Pave paradise, put up... an algorithm to maximize engagement.

duxup 4y ago

Algorithms and the dev community today might freak out themselves if someone used one too many divs, or a bit to much JavaScript… God help them if they saw the blink tag…

_the_inflator 4y ago
It even has/had a name: DIVitis. ;)
- noorah 4y ago
  "DIVitis". Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
- NetOpWibby 4y ago
  Ah, this is what React suffers from.
  - tomduncalf 4y ago
    It doesn’t have to as you can use fragments (<><Stuff /></>) to avoid adding a wrapper div since a few years back
dusted 4y ago
There's never been used as much javascript in the history of time as right now, and it's never been doing as little as it does right now :P Because.. why use a perfectly good browser to render your html when you can implement another, lesser browser within the browser in javascript and have THAT render your html, but badly. Also, divs and css for layouts suck, TABLES is the way to go :)
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  Mobile killed tables for layout. Unless you replicate the table in different configurations and use CSS to show one for each screen size.
- _zetta 4y ago
  I miss tables
  - duxup 4y ago
    I still work on some old sites / code that uses tables. I LOATH tables. Flexbox is so much easier.
- jetbalsa 4y ago
  Framesets -- I /love/ framesets and I still use them to make things!

NovaVeles 4y ago

There are a few places lurking in the shadows of social media that the algorithms never touch, where the freak flags still fly. When you stumble across those hidden gems, it is something magical.

dfxm12 4y ago

You think the Web still isn't full of people letting their freak flags fly? You can still see this on twitch, YT, tiktok, etc. Just like Geocities represents amateur or even naive web development/web design, there are the same types of people trying to create video content. Even Twitter (including the "weird Twitter" genre of tweets) and other social media sites are full of amateur commentators, writers, comedians, musicians, etc. Web development/web design, including the tools and techniques available to the hobbyist has just gotten much more mature. People no longer feel like a kid in the candy store in terms of adding blinking text and rotating gifs, and tutorial websites are no longer showing these examples.

BrainVirus 4y ago
TikTok to Geocities is what AstroTurf is to real grass.
chasing 4y ago
Of course there's still a lot of freaky flag-flying happening. I just meant that now it feels like everyone's shouting in the same room — a room 1/3rd full of people trying to maximize the cash value of shouting and 1/3rd full of straight-up grifters. Whereas in the late-90s millennium fever it felt more like you were laying out the crazy foundation of some optimistic future.
rchaud 4y ago
Sorry, but TikTok is not modern-day Geocities, not even a bit. The operative word is "City": Geocities let you browse individual "neighborhoods" of websites at your leisure. It stayed out of the way, giving you the satisfaction of discovering little weird nooks and crannies on your own time, just as you would by traveling to a real city. Website makers also weren't trying to go viral and be invited on to the Jimmy Kimmel show. There is nothing organic about TikTok. You have to wade through a deluge of formulaic dance videos set to repetitive music clips for about an hour before the all-powerful algorithm determines that maybe you're not interested in that. For a platform that probably has billions of videos (Geocities never did), discoverability outside of the algorithm is impossible, because the search functionality sucks.