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This is the old internet, and what got me addicted to urban exploration and other niche hobbies - it's still an active community, especially on UER.ca, if you e

This is the old internet, and what got me addicted to urban exploration and other niche hobbies - it's still an active community, especially on UER.ca, if you ever wish to join but facebook really has decimated small websites like such and expanded reach. I remember over a decade ago, there was a small chat on UER that you could hop on and chat with people and it was a really core, solid community, and 15 years ago it was much more, open and solid community. I personally can't believe it's been quite a while. You can still post photos/meetups on UER.CA but it is very reputation based, while the facebook side anyone shows up - and a few that I've attended have just turned out quite differently then older Urbex meetups. RIP ninjalicious :( The internet back 15-20 years ago was much much more decentralized then it is today, and while no one is actively preventing you from creating your own forum/site - the network effect is not the same as using your Facebook to join a group and going from there, unfortunately. And for fringe hobbies, the harder it is to get into or find the more active the community is, simply because the people involved are much "content creators" or passionate about it. And trespassing and possible tangible legal issues, and risk - Urbex was about exploration, one could describe learning about network vulnerabilities, or walking open directories or even guessing FTP passwords, or, SSH passwords. I remember reading similar posts in the same time frame about older Internet users about the heydays of IRC and BBS's and thought "heh, that's cute" but now seeing this come full circle. Just wow.

jchw 4y ago
Every time I see one of these old pages (sometimes again, but also sometimes even for the first time,) it just makes me painfully sad. It's been very challenging for me to deal with the loss of the "old Internet." I am relatively young, so for me most of my "old internet" experience was actually around 2000-2010, not the preceding era, which I mostly only experienced indirectly or in small bits. And yet, it's such a stark and absolute difference from what became of the Internet since, and I don't think I'll ever get over losing the way things were. I grew up with it. It could be harsh and inappropriate, but it was very free and fluid, rebellious and free-spirited, and a very effective respite from the challenges of real life, and I definitely wouldn't have had my hobbies, skills, interests, and even friendships flourish so much without it. There's just no way. There are countless different attempts at explaining what went wrong (and multiple proposed causes: social media, the fall of search engines, the advertising industry, the rise of monetization, the increase in populous on the internet, etc etc etc.) but as time goes on, I just wonder: why does it have to be this way? Some of the websites I have the fondest memories of had maybe 20 truly active members. Nowadays, there are at least 10-20 times the number of people for any given niche who would love to return to form, but no matter how hard you wish for it, it never seems to work that way. I've come to the following conclusion: The ultimate, first-order reason why the "old internet" is dead is because the influx of people entering a given niche community decreased below the level of replacement. And I believe it's due mainly to two things: 1. Search engines lost the war to SEO SPAM. There is too much monetary incentive to be #1 in the index. For example, if you Google about some niche thing, say a video game or hobby, the first few results have become mostly either near-SPAM content or highly corporate content. Niche, quality websites have taken a back seat. Pagerank died. 2. Meanwhile, the Internet landscape changed dramatically too. People started carrying around phones. Instead of going home and logging onto a desktop or laptop computer, you fundamentally started interacting with the internet in a different way: the internet came to you, in the form of notifications on your phone, and you could start browsing literally any time you wanted, whenever you had some down time, anywhere. In addition to this shift, big players like Facebook, YouTube, et al. began to optimize for "screen time" and "engagement"; people's attention has been monopolized. They had less attention left over to dedicate to smaller niches because social media websites offer effectively infinite amounts of engagement and are engineered specifically to keep you going. With less people paying less attention, everyone left, and we're now here. The worst part is, even if you want to leave social media, and quit platforms that don't respect your attention, the web as a whole have been molded by them. Most of the people you will deal with come from social media, so there's always this 'backchannel' of communication going on wherein drama festers, and the vast majority people you will deal with will already be squeezed of their attention from simply being there. If your community doesn't maintain a presence on social media, there are swaths of people to whom it effectively does not exist for, making it even more challenging to avoid. Modern community software has been infected with some of the modern "best practices", like Discourse, the forum software: it has implemented a few gamification elements like badges, and nags to try to get you to come back. I think that in moderation these elements aren't inherently horrible, but I want literally none of them. When I had the most fun online, forum software was built to perform its core functions, not built to try to boost engagement. If you have something truly great, you will NOT have to remind users to come back. They will not forget. Some people seem to try to escape to alternative protocols like Gemini, but I think they're missing the point. Yeah, sure, artificially, it sort of recreates some of the scrappy, "experimental" nature of the older internet, but that's not the problem; the problem is the world around it, that we're living in. If you could simply escape back to the way things were, you wouldn't need a gimmick like an alternative protocol to catch on. All you really need is a discussion forum and/or IRC server, a handful of random people who don't know each-other by anything other than some weird aliases, and a common interest to bond over. It's all you ever needed. But it's probably never happening again, because the internet is real life now. Even if you could just select for "random folks who use the internet the way we used to use it", it would be hard to escape the world we live in, where everything is unavoidably connected, even when we don't want it to be. It's an unwelcome guest that invites itself to many interactions even if all parties would prefer if it didn't, leading the the weird situation where seemingly everyone agrees that something is stupid and pointless, and yet nobody seems to know how to stop it from happening again next time. And thus, all we have now are these weird memories. Seeing these classic webpages fills one with emotions, because you know that it was crafted by someone who cared. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just staring at an old, obsolete web page and ascribing to it properties that don't exist, and that things were actually "just as bad" when you think about it, but I know deep down that's just an attempt to cope with what we lost. That's probably also why I find myself hanging out here. Even though it's certainly far from perfect, and it's definitely a far cry from the close-knit niche communities that I've been in which have created lifelong bonds, marriages, businesses and more, it's still quite a refreshing difference from a lot of other places online with its JavaScript-light experience, lack of gamification/nags/etc., and deft touch for moderation. (And I mean sure, it sounds a bit circle-jerk-y, but when you compare HN to Reddit, especially with the "new Reddit" interface, it is disturbing how much worse Reddit is than it used to be, and it's not even that bad compared to a lot of the Internet now. I don't think I'm exaggerating.)
- Bjartr 4y ago
  I'm disappointed you've been downvoted. Thanks for taking the time to add this to the discussion.
- rootsudo 4y ago
  What's hilarious is even new platforms adapt the old ways - Discord now adapted "forums" but only if your "server" (which isn't even the right word, it's more like an IRC channel) is "popular" enough. But you are 100% right, push notifications and the internet now being accessible by everyone has made fringe/niche websites and communities less common - it should have the effect that the people who are on these sites are the truly invested ones - but then it comes down to network effect, getting other people involved and marketing - which, sadly falls down to SEO, social media, IG tagging, Facebook posts and then the inevitable facebook group which always manages to replace the website itself eventually. Many old websites were also ad sponsored, but they weren't smart ads, not until Google, I think - a main sponser paid for server bills and had the best real estate in an annoying banner ad in a margin or in a frame (ew!) But, discoverability and getting people to participate - that is another silo/walled garden that is hard to break from now. Facebook and Google, does so much to really put you into the ecosystem, that is now "content creators" and if you don't have an "Internet Personality" then what are you doing? The Internet is real life now. The Internet is truly Metalife. "And thus, all we have now are these weird memories. Seeing these classic webpages fills one with emotions, because you know that it was crafted by someone who cared. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just staring at an old, obsolete web page and ascribing to it properties that don't exist, and that things were actually "just as bad" when you think about it, but I know deep down that's just an attempt to cope with what we lost." No, this is context. This context is lost on a centralized platform, with boilerplate template and styleguides designed to commit feedback loops and go for addiction - e.g. the way facebook arranges groups, posts and not always by "newest" or the ones that are/have been most engaged - which in many groups can be of conflicting opinion or discussion. The thing is, I wonder if in a decade or two would we miss that? I am from the same time period of you, and managed to hop on the old train of dial up, Windows 95' and ride it to Windows XP/Dialup-Cable modem which was another transformation that matches your time period and now that the mobile phone is the defacto computer - we have other things lost, such as the current generation inability to understand how a file system or file structure works. "(And I mean sure, it sounds a bit circle-jerk-y, but when you compare HN to Reddit, especially with the "new Reddit" interface, it is disturbing how much worse Reddit is than it used to be, and it's not even that bad compared to a lot of the Internet now. I don't think I'm exaggerating.)" Same, and also 100% agree, and what comes to mind, is that we are not the market audience. Reddit is a private company that wants to make a profit - It sounds silly, but when I need a sanity check on change and where we are - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit wikipedia always helps and the first paragraph and the left margin gives me all I need to know - 100 million dollars revenue, clear marketing plan and of course A/B testing designed to ensnare new internet users. That's it. The old websites were gold, we are victim to nostalgia, I miss the old ways for sure, and I'm glad I was there to experience them and the technical challenge that was required to go online, interact and contribute to different places (which are now archived forever, e.g. geocities, or IRC logs, or bash.org quotes.) - and now it's just repeating again.

jchw 4y ago

Every time I see one of these old pages (sometimes again, but also sometimes even for the first time,) it just makes me painfully sad. It's been very challenging for me to deal with the loss of the "old Internet." I am relatively young, so for me most of my "old internet" experience was actually around 2000-2010, not the preceding era, which I mostly only experienced indirectly or in small bits. And yet, it's such a stark and absolute difference from what became of the Internet since, and I don't think I'll ever get over losing the way things were. I grew up with it. It could be harsh and inappropriate, but it was very free and fluid, rebellious and free-spirited, and a very effective respite from the challenges of real life, and I definitely wouldn't have had my hobbies, skills, interests, and even friendships flourish so much without it. There's just no way. There are countless different attempts at explaining what went wrong (and multiple proposed causes: social media, the fall of search engines, the advertising industry, the rise of monetization, the increase in populous on the internet, etc etc etc.) but as time goes on, I just wonder: why does it have to be this way? Some of the websites I have the fondest memories of had maybe 20 truly active members. Nowadays, there are at least 10-20 times the number of people for any given niche who would love to return to form, but no matter how hard you wish for it, it never seems to work that way. I've come to the following conclusion: The ultimate, first-order reason why the "old internet" is dead is because the influx of people entering a given niche community decreased below the level of replacement. And I believe it's due mainly to two things: 1. Search engines lost the war to SEO SPAM. There is too much monetary incentive to be #1 in the index. For example, if you Google about some niche thing, say a video game or hobby, the first few results have become mostly either near-SPAM content or highly corporate content. Niche, quality websites have taken a back seat. Pagerank died. 2. Meanwhile, the Internet landscape changed dramatically too. People started carrying around phones. Instead of going home and logging onto a desktop or laptop computer, you fundamentally started interacting with the internet in a different way: the internet came to you, in the form of notifications on your phone, and you could start browsing literally any time you wanted, whenever you had some down time, anywhere. In addition to this shift, big players like Facebook, YouTube, et al. began to optimize for "screen time" and "engagement"; people's attention has been monopolized. They had less attention left over to dedicate to smaller niches because social media websites offer effectively infinite amounts of engagement and are engineered specifically to keep you going. With less people paying less attention, everyone left, and we're now here. The worst part is, even if you want to leave social media, and quit platforms that don't respect your attention, the web as a whole have been molded by them. Most of the people you will deal with come from social media, so there's always this 'backchannel' of communication going on wherein drama festers, and the vast majority people you will deal with will already be squeezed of their attention from simply being there. If your community doesn't maintain a presence on social media, there are swaths of people to whom it effectively does not exist for, making it even more challenging to avoid. Modern community software has been infected with some of the modern "best practices", like Discourse, the forum software: it has implemented a few gamification elements like badges, and nags to try to get you to come back. I think that in moderation these elements aren't inherently horrible, but I want literally none of them. When I had the most fun online, forum software was built to perform its core functions, not built to try to boost engagement. If you have something truly great, you will NOT have to remind users to come back. They will not forget. Some people seem to try to escape to alternative protocols like Gemini, but I think they're missing the point. Yeah, sure, artificially, it sort of recreates some of the scrappy, "experimental" nature of the older internet, but that's not the problem; the problem is the world around it, that we're living in. If you could simply escape back to the way things were, you wouldn't need a gimmick like an alternative protocol to catch on. All you really need is a discussion forum and/or IRC server, a handful of random people who don't know each-other by anything other than some weird aliases, and a common interest to bond over. It's all you ever needed. But it's probably never happening again, because the internet is real life now. Even if you could just select for "random folks who use the internet the way we used to use it", it would be hard to escape the world we live in, where everything is unavoidably connected, even when we don't want it to be. It's an unwelcome guest that invites itself to many interactions even if all parties would prefer if it didn't, leading the the weird situation where seemingly everyone agrees that something is stupid and pointless, and yet nobody seems to know how to stop it from happening again next time. And thus, all we have now are these weird memories. Seeing these classic webpages fills one with emotions, because you know that it was crafted by someone who cared. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just staring at an old, obsolete web page and ascribing to it properties that don't exist, and that things were actually "just as bad" when you think about it, but I know deep down that's just an attempt to cope with what we lost. That's probably also why I find myself hanging out here. Even though it's certainly far from perfect, and it's definitely a far cry from the close-knit niche communities that I've been in which have created lifelong bonds, marriages, businesses and more, it's still quite a refreshing difference from a lot of other places online with its JavaScript-light experience, lack of gamification/nags/etc., and deft touch for moderation. (And I mean sure, it sounds a bit circle-jerk-y, but when you compare HN to Reddit, especially with the "new Reddit" interface, it is disturbing how much worse Reddit is than it used to be, and it's not even that bad compared to a lot of the Internet now. I don't think I'm exaggerating.)

Bjartr 4y ago
I'm disappointed you've been downvoted. Thanks for taking the time to add this to the discussion.
rootsudo 4y ago
What's hilarious is even new platforms adapt the old ways - Discord now adapted "forums" but only if your "server" (which isn't even the right word, it's more like an IRC channel) is "popular" enough. But you are 100% right, push notifications and the internet now being accessible by everyone has made fringe/niche websites and communities less common - it should have the effect that the people who are on these sites are the truly invested ones - but then it comes down to network effect, getting other people involved and marketing - which, sadly falls down to SEO, social media, IG tagging, Facebook posts and then the inevitable facebook group which always manages to replace the website itself eventually. Many old websites were also ad sponsored, but they weren't smart ads, not until Google, I think - a main sponser paid for server bills and had the best real estate in an annoying banner ad in a margin or in a frame (ew!) But, discoverability and getting people to participate - that is another silo/walled garden that is hard to break from now. Facebook and Google, does so much to really put you into the ecosystem, that is now "content creators" and if you don't have an "Internet Personality" then what are you doing? The Internet is real life now. The Internet is truly Metalife. "And thus, all we have now are these weird memories. Seeing these classic webpages fills one with emotions, because you know that it was crafted by someone who cared. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just staring at an old, obsolete web page and ascribing to it properties that don't exist, and that things were actually "just as bad" when you think about it, but I know deep down that's just an attempt to cope with what we lost." No, this is context. This context is lost on a centralized platform, with boilerplate template and styleguides designed to commit feedback loops and go for addiction - e.g. the way facebook arranges groups, posts and not always by "newest" or the ones that are/have been most engaged - which in many groups can be of conflicting opinion or discussion. The thing is, I wonder if in a decade or two would we miss that? I am from the same time period of you, and managed to hop on the old train of dial up, Windows 95' and ride it to Windows XP/Dialup-Cable modem which was another transformation that matches your time period and now that the mobile phone is the defacto computer - we have other things lost, such as the current generation inability to understand how a file system or file structure works. "(And I mean sure, it sounds a bit circle-jerk-y, but when you compare HN to Reddit, especially with the "new Reddit" interface, it is disturbing how much worse Reddit is than it used to be, and it's not even that bad compared to a lot of the Internet now. I don't think I'm exaggerating.)" Same, and also 100% agree, and what comes to mind, is that we are not the market audience. Reddit is a private company that wants to make a profit - It sounds silly, but when I need a sanity check on change and where we are - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit wikipedia always helps and the first paragraph and the left margin gives me all I need to know - 100 million dollars revenue, clear marketing plan and of course A/B testing designed to ensnare new internet users. That's it. The old websites were gold, we are victim to nostalgia, I miss the old ways for sure, and I'm glad I was there to experience them and the technical challenge that was required to go online, interact and contribute to different places (which are now archived forever, e.g. geocities, or IRC logs, or bash.org quotes.) - and now it's just repeating again.