7 ms·

The internet turned into a crowded mall. Now you need a corner shop

114 points by maguay 3y ago

rglover 3y ago
> What isn't rare isn't valuable, and there's never been inflation as exponential as there is in today's digital property market. Why I recently put a post-it above my desk that says "think boutique, mofo." If you're indie/DIY, the only way to stand out moving forward will be rarity [1]. [1] "You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one." - Jerry Garcia
eloisius 3y ago
I try exploring the 'alt-internet' or indyweb or whatever we call it from time to time. I've messed around on Mastodon instances, but it never really clicked with me. I never really used Twitter though, either, so not surprised. I did enjoy old Instagram around the time stories came out because it was just my friends sharing less-polished pictures of what they were doing, so I thought maybe I would enjoy Pixelfed. I played with Scuttlebutt for a while and found it the most fun, just a pain in the ass to use. However, they all have a similar problem. There's almost no one except bored tech people on them. Don't get me wrong, I think retro computing is cool, and I like seeing people's DIY hardware creations occasionally, but it's only a small niche. The corner shop is boring if it's almost always empty, and the only people that ever show up are other corner shop proprietors or corner shop enthusiasts. At the same time I'm aware that attracting the rhetorical racist uncle from Facebook over to your Mastodon instance is not the goal, and it wouldn't make it better to have wider appeal. There are very few non-tech-specific old web holdouts that I know of. One of my favorites is Crazy Guy on a Bike [1]. It's a special purpose site, forum, blogging platform, etc. specifically for bike touring, all run on donations by one crazy guy writing Perl like it's 1998. It's been around for over 20 years, and as cool as it is, it's also fixed scene that isn't growing or attracting new members. As people move on and donations dry up I'm sure it'll disappear. I don't want it to be so, but I feel like whether you're at the mall or the corner store, the internet is just a boring place now, and yet I spend more time with it than almost anything else. Probably says more about my age and the fact that AIM chat and quirky HTML sites were a part of my childhood than anything else. [1] https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/ https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  I also liked instagram back in the day for photography. Someone is building https://grainery.app/ https://grainery.app/ focused on (film) photographers. I think we'll see more of a trend towards niche social media, which is cool.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    There already was a huge trend toward niche social media, around the time FB was made. Stuff like Path, Diaspora, Bandcamp, and Yo. They were either cloned and destroyed by bigger social sites or they couldn't find enough traction in their niche.
    - skgough 3y ago
      I think the big difference now is how these sites stay alive. Now that we know things like Nebula or Kagi can work using a paid model, more of these types of user-supported communities will pop up. What's interesting about this, I think, is that in order for places like these to collect enough users to support themselves, the creator class of the community will have to become famous on one of the free-to-publish communities, like Twitter or YouTube, and then encourage their fans to come with them to the paid community. I imagine at some point YouTube and Tiktok et al will start restricting these types of promotional material to retain users, which is not fun to think about.
      - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
        Path used a paid model and still didn't survive. It's true the techies who lament the decline of corner stores are now more excited about things like Kagi and I'm pretty sure a lot of their marketing is exploiting those feelings on niche sites like HN. But really, how long have they even been alive? Path tried their best for years and then failed. I hope that maybe enough has changed that folks like Kagi can now survive since wishing ill on something being built isn't my way.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
verisimi 3y ago
The wider internet is pretty dead to me - is it much more than a bunch of corporate shop fronts? It's largely become TV, or the mall. You have to work hard to get something that's interesting. And credit to hacker news, this is still one of the places where real people share interesting information.
sebtron 3y ago
Very good article. It's nice for once to read a piece about the state of the web with a glimpse of optimism in it.
DeathArrow 3y ago
>But the trick of Hacker News, the thing that keeps you going back, is that it covers such a wide range of interests. I'd argue that big part of the success is the way it's constructed. You always have fresh stuff on top, and you are encouraged to take part in discussing them, as opposed to regular forums where people can discuss on the same topic for years or decades. Reddit and 4chan work the same. People have short attention span, they always want something new and they are after instant gratification. I enjoy both types of forums, the ones where you see mostly new content and ones where you can discuss whatever topic interests you, as long as you like and as long as you have discussion partners.
- djaychela 3y ago
  I'd agree with this - it really works here because I don't actually know who anyone is, or see their comments regularly (other than when someone's username points to them being someone I know elsewhere, such as Jeff Geerling). On most forums, there's an 800lb Gorilla who dominates everything, and they will set the tone of the place. I can think of two (one I used to engage with, one I have to engage with for work reasons) where there's one person who does this, and I stayed away as much as possible because of that opinion-domination which happened there. I don't see that on HN, and it's one of the reasons I like coming here, maybe twice a day.
- jumploops 3y ago
  I’d argue that a big part of the success is dang. Moderation is the key to community building, and HN has the best.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jajko 3y ago
    Yes, it often takes 1 'rotten apple' to drag down discussion into nasty stupid personal fights. Kudos to him in how well he manages that, not sure if he sleeps or takes actual vacations without internet.
DeathArrow 3y ago
I guess it's hard to come back from mega malls to mom and pop stores. Switching from globalized giants like Amazon to small specialized shops might be hard. Also is switching from Facebook to some small website.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  > Switching from globalized giants like Amazon to small specialized shops might be hard 5 years ago I would have considered it near impossible, nowadays I look everywhere else first. Specialized shops put more thought into their product selection than "anything I can dropship" and compared to modern Amazon it's far easier to find something resembling quality. They may be more expensive but in my experience paying 70 bucks once to a trustworthy vendor ends far better than paying $20-30 three times on Amazon because in reality it's always the same $5 Aliexpress stuff. The downside is that small shops sometimes have a bit more friction in the ordering process or higher delivery costs. About a year ago I didn't even have a choice: dozens of USB-C adapters I looked at on Amazon were obviously lying about the specs in their product description, I couldn't find a single one that was even worth trying. They all just go for the lowest common denominator and hope 99% of the customers don't actually check (and are probably right, sadly). A local shop meanwhile had exactly one adapter of that kind with datasheets on the manufacturer's website and it worked.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    I realise last year I havent used amazon for years. Its just shit. Its like dumpster diving, need to look out for fakes, deep search to skip the 'recommended' products. Its incredible hustle now. I dont know if amazon turned shit or I have more money then time to be dealing with it.
samsquire 3y ago
I enjoy a website called halfbakery It's not wise to wonder why things aren't good anymore. The zeitgeist of what people value is different to what it was in the 90s. I want to make and do good things so that's what I focus on writing about or programming. Make good things and share them. If you don't value good then you get the fruit of it.
kazinator 3y ago
> Now you need a corner shop Problem with this analogy is: corner shops suck. They have poor selection, prices and service. If just one of these three fundamentals is poor, you have a reason to go elsewhere.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  It does seem inevitable the corner shop gets replaced by the supermarket, especially as travel time is not an issue - how many corner shops survive with a supermarket next door? Maybe what we need is a range of small hipster specialty shops and cafés etc.
cangeroo 3y ago
But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Were feeds of kittens more interesting and addictive than sequential debate? In particular, Reddit etc. are many-to-one (one post, many comments), where a forum thread are sequential pages of comments. And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Is the problem not solved? Again, is the UX broken, and what's the alternative? I'm very interested in this problem. Any recommended literature? In particular on the topic of social dynamics, herd behavior, and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Most people want to centralize around something popular, because there's an instinctive desire to be part of the "in" crowd and that is most often defined by what is popular. The convenience that comes with a centralized service is also strongly desired by most people who have bigger fish to fry than keeping track of so many forums and services. Also, it's not just forums that became centralized; so have other communication mediums. One particularly impressive example is Discord: Remember Internet Relay Chat? AOL Instant Messenger? MSN Messenger? Skype? Yahoo Instant Messenger? ICQ? Teamspeak? Ventrillo? They all became Discord, both in private and professional contexts. Outliers like LINE and Microsoft Teams only survive out of specific cultural or fiscal clout. >And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. HN is also laid out like that, you are also just "reacting to the OP" rather than going down an impractical chain of chronology. >If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Because it's still <centralized service> rather than <a service>. Some people hate <centralized service> but have no alternatives, unlike 20 years ago when twelve dozen individual services on any given subject matter were just internet'ing away with naught a care if you patronized them or not. You had options, today you don't.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  No, fucking spammers ruined much of them. Bastards. They are the top reason we can’t have nice things.
raytopia 3y ago
A random thought I had while reading this (specifically about the the physical location) is I wonder if there's a way to limit your website/server to a local region. Similar to how BBS were back in the day.
- maguay 3y ago
  Something similar occurred to me while writing the piece—and then I instantly thought that to a degree that's what China has built behind the Great Firewall, and one should always be careful what one asks for. And yet. There's something to the idea. Something very "art project"-esque where certain web pages were only available when you're physically in a specific area could be fun, at first. Could also be incredibly restrictive.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  There are, but they all obviously involve means that most people here would call heresy and sacrilege: The tracking of users' IP addresses, user agents, operating system regional and language settings, etc.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    You don't need to do all this though. Just look at NextDoor.com, it works fine for mostly only having locals. And the results are disastrous: it's the most toxic place on the internet.
  - willi59549879 3y ago
    Ip addresses don't need to be tracked for that. It could be done with a proxy that just refuses access to ips not in the right location. although i think it could be very annoying for users. some use tor or vpns, my just keep my websites open to everyone.
kulor 3y ago
My HN of the past was k10k[1], SurfStation[2] and a raft of niche web design communities. What made these communities special is that they had unashamedly indulgent and whimsical chrome around the content, more akin to a magazine. It felt alive. Around this time it was hard to pull off complex designs on the web as internet connections were slow and HTML, JS & CSS were primitive. I think precisely because of these constraints, a sense of awe & wonder proliferated when people pulled off a fancy interface which led to an explosion in peacocking. It's what dragged me into the world of crafting high-quality user experiences from the positive reinforcement loops that were embraced and encouraged. Some communities exist today like Dribbble that possess some of the aforementioned traits but they feel soulless or just self-promotion machines. Then again, there may be millions of relevant communities that exist that I haven't stumbled upon, yet. In a world of post-scarcity, it almost feels necessary to create artificial bounds to encourage these esoteric & competitive communities. Maybe finding, creating and contributing to magazines is a better metaphorical aspiration than a corner shop. 1. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/kaliber10000-2003 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/kaliber10000-2003 2. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/golden-age-of-web-design/surfstation-2002 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/golden-age-of-web-design/sur... Edit: formatting
- samsquire 3y ago
  I really like the design of that website kulor. It would be interesting if you could have a REPL in that style design, and you can reorder the panels of running processes, it reminds me of Yahoo, Lycos, Excite portals in the early web. I think they're also called portlets.
JohnFen 3y ago
I don't think the internet needs more corner shops, even. What the internet needs is more parks and backyards. Spaces where real people interact with real people without the the burden of commerce weighing everything down.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  My curiosity got to the better of me so I have to ask this question: how is it that you post in almost every single thread about "the old web" and at that so many times a day? I see your name on these threads constantly. I'm only here because I left a comment idly yesterday.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It's a subject that I am very interested in and is relatively safe to express opinions about.
    - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
      Fair enough!
countWSS 3y ago
> Ctrl-F Lemmy Lemmy is the current thing if you want to compete with big platforms like Reddit and host it on your own: Fediverse is the "network of corner shops".
mancerayder 3y ago
I'm an old BBS user and the generation that saw the world turn to the commercializing Internet in real time. From a message forum perspective, what kept intelligent discussion and thoughtfulness/patient writing going was simply that there was a higher barrier to entry (knowledge) and fewer people. It was also not easy to use the phone to write a message, much less do much of anything online. You had to use a PC with a modem, at a minimum. And FIDOnet etc required a BBS that had a batch job to go off and sync messages. Today it takes three seconds to post a short message that millions will read. You see celebrities do this all the time, saying something regretful because it was on a whim. But Reddit is full of low quality, quick replies that self-referentially try to re inforce or repeat meme joke. Or mic-drop dismiss someone else's perspective. Almost no Reddit forum isn't full of what feels like spam, but isn't - it's people expressing their dumb one-liner feelings thinking it's funny. And apparently it's hilarious because it gets upvoted leading most threads to be completely unusable for information or challenging ideas. Then there are the 'hot takes' with incredible speculation and confident views that aren't challenged intelligently but could do. I do miss older times HN is the closest thing to them, but suffers from a lot of anonymity. I recognize perhaps 3-4 users in all the time I've been here.

114 points by maguay 3y ago

> What isn't rare isn't valuable, and there's never been inflation as exponential as there is in today's digital property market. Why I recently put a post-it above my desk that says "think boutique, mofo." If you're indie/DIY, the only way to stand out moving forward will be rarity [1]. [1] "You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one." - Jerry Garcia

eloisius 3y ago

I try exploring the 'alt-internet' or indyweb or whatever we call it from time to time. I've messed around on Mastodon instances, but it never really clicked with me. I never really used Twitter though, either, so not surprised. I did enjoy old Instagram around the time stories came out because it was just my friends sharing less-polished pictures of what they were doing, so I thought maybe I would enjoy Pixelfed. I played with Scuttlebutt for a while and found it the most fun, just a pain in the ass to use. However, they all have a similar problem. There's almost no one except bored tech people on them. Don't get me wrong, I think retro computing is cool, and I like seeing people's DIY hardware creations occasionally, but it's only a small niche. The corner shop is boring if it's almost always empty, and the only people that ever show up are other corner shop proprietors or corner shop enthusiasts. At the same time I'm aware that attracting the rhetorical racist uncle from Facebook over to your Mastodon instance is not the goal, and it wouldn't make it better to have wider appeal. There are very few non-tech-specific old web holdouts that I know of. One of my favorites is Crazy Guy on a Bike [1]. It's a special purpose site, forum, blogging platform, etc. specifically for bike touring, all run on donations by one crazy guy writing Perl like it's 1998. It's been around for over 20 years, and as cool as it is, it's also fixed scene that isn't growing or attracting new members. As people move on and donations dry up I'm sure it'll disappear. I don't want it to be so, but I feel like whether you're at the mall or the corner store, the internet is just a boring place now, and yet I spend more time with it than almost anything else. Probably says more about my age and the fact that AIM chat and quirky HTML sites were a part of my childhood than anything else. [1] https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/ https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/

RamblingCTO 3y ago
I also liked instagram back in the day for photography. Someone is building https://grainery.app/ https://grainery.app/ focused on (film) photographers. I think we'll see more of a trend towards niche social media, which is cool.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  There already was a huge trend toward niche social media, around the time FB was made. Stuff like Path, Diaspora, Bandcamp, and Yo. They were either cloned and destroyed by bigger social sites or they couldn't find enough traction in their niche.
  - skgough 3y ago
    I think the big difference now is how these sites stay alive. Now that we know things like Nebula or Kagi can work using a paid model, more of these types of user-supported communities will pop up. What's interesting about this, I think, is that in order for places like these to collect enough users to support themselves, the creator class of the community will have to become famous on one of the free-to-publish communities, like Twitter or YouTube, and then encourage their fans to come with them to the paid community. I imagine at some point YouTube and Tiktok et al will start restricting these types of promotional material to retain users, which is not fun to think about.
    - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
      Path used a paid model and still didn't survive. It's true the techies who lament the decline of corner stores are now more excited about things like Kagi and I'm pretty sure a lot of their marketing is exploiting those feelings on niche sites like HN. But really, how long have they even been alive? Path tried their best for years and then failed. I hope that maybe enough has changed that folks like Kagi can now survive since wishing ill on something being built isn't my way.
- qingcharles 3y ago

verisimi 3y ago

The wider internet is pretty dead to me - is it much more than a bunch of corporate shop fronts? It's largely become TV, or the mall. You have to work hard to get something that's interesting. And credit to hacker news, this is still one of the places where real people share interesting information.

sebtron 3y ago

Very good article. It's nice for once to read a piece about the state of the web with a glimpse of optimism in it.

DeathArrow 3y ago

>But the trick of Hacker News, the thing that keeps you going back, is that it covers such a wide range of interests. I'd argue that big part of the success is the way it's constructed. You always have fresh stuff on top, and you are encouraged to take part in discussing them, as opposed to regular forums where people can discuss on the same topic for years or decades. Reddit and 4chan work the same. People have short attention span, they always want something new and they are after instant gratification. I enjoy both types of forums, the ones where you see mostly new content and ones where you can discuss whatever topic interests you, as long as you like and as long as you have discussion partners.

djaychela 3y ago
I'd agree with this - it really works here because I don't actually know who anyone is, or see their comments regularly (other than when someone's username points to them being someone I know elsewhere, such as Jeff Geerling). On most forums, there's an 800lb Gorilla who dominates everything, and they will set the tone of the place. I can think of two (one I used to engage with, one I have to engage with for work reasons) where there's one person who does this, and I stayed away as much as possible because of that opinion-domination which happened there. I don't see that on HN, and it's one of the reasons I like coming here, maybe twice a day.
jumploops 3y ago
I’d argue that a big part of the success is dang. Moderation is the key to community building, and HN has the best.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jajko 3y ago
  Yes, it often takes 1 'rotten apple' to drag down discussion into nasty stupid personal fights. Kudos to him in how well he manages that, not sure if he sleeps or takes actual vacations without internet.

DeathArrow 3y ago

I guess it's hard to come back from mega malls to mom and pop stores. Switching from globalized giants like Amazon to small specialized shops might be hard. Also is switching from Facebook to some small website.

alpaca128 3y ago
> Switching from globalized giants like Amazon to small specialized shops might be hard 5 years ago I would have considered it near impossible, nowadays I look everywhere else first. Specialized shops put more thought into their product selection than "anything I can dropship" and compared to modern Amazon it's far easier to find something resembling quality. They may be more expensive but in my experience paying 70 bucks once to a trustworthy vendor ends far better than paying $20-30 three times on Amazon because in reality it's always the same $5 Aliexpress stuff. The downside is that small shops sometimes have a bit more friction in the ordering process or higher delivery costs. About a year ago I didn't even have a choice: dozens of USB-C adapters I looked at on Amazon were obviously lying about the specs in their product description, I couldn't find a single one that was even worth trying. They all just go for the lowest common denominator and hope 99% of the customers don't actually check (and are probably right, sadly). A local shop meanwhile had exactly one adapter of that kind with datasheets on the manufacturer's website and it worked.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  I realise last year I havent used amazon for years. Its just shit. Its like dumpster diving, need to look out for fakes, deep search to skip the 'recommended' products. Its incredible hustle now. I dont know if amazon turned shit or I have more money then time to be dealing with it.

samsquire 3y ago

I enjoy a website called halfbakery It's not wise to wonder why things aren't good anymore. The zeitgeist of what people value is different to what it was in the 90s. I want to make and do good things so that's what I focus on writing about or programming. Make good things and share them. If you don't value good then you get the fruit of it.

kazinator 3y ago

> Now you need a corner shop Problem with this analogy is: corner shops suck. They have poor selection, prices and service. If just one of these three fundamentals is poor, you have a reason to go elsewhere.

HPsquared 3y ago
It does seem inevitable the corner shop gets replaced by the supermarket, especially as travel time is not an issue - how many corner shops survive with a supermarket next door? Maybe what we need is a range of small hipster specialty shops and cafés etc.

cangeroo 3y ago

But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Were feeds of kittens more interesting and addictive than sequential debate? In particular, Reddit etc. are many-to-one (one post, many comments), where a forum thread are sequential pages of comments. And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Is the problem not solved? Again, is the UX broken, and what's the alternative? I'm very interested in this problem. Any recommended literature? In particular on the topic of social dynamics, herd behavior, and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Most people want to centralize around something popular, because there's an instinctive desire to be part of the "in" crowd and that is most often defined by what is popular. The convenience that comes with a centralized service is also strongly desired by most people who have bigger fish to fry than keeping track of so many forums and services. Also, it's not just forums that became centralized; so have other communication mediums. One particularly impressive example is Discord: Remember Internet Relay Chat? AOL Instant Messenger? MSN Messenger? Skype? Yahoo Instant Messenger? ICQ? Teamspeak? Ventrillo? They all became Discord, both in private and professional contexts. Outliers like LINE and Microsoft Teams only survive out of specific cultural or fiscal clout. >And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP. HN is also laid out like that, you are also just "reacting to the OP" rather than going down an impractical chain of chronology. >If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Because it's still <centralized service> rather than <a service>. Some people hate <centralized service> but have no alternatives, unlike 20 years ago when twelve dozen individual services on any given subject matter were just internet'ing away with naught a care if you patronized them or not. You had options, today you don't.
WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
No, fucking spammers ruined much of them. Bastards. They are the top reason we can’t have nice things.

raytopia 3y ago

A random thought I had while reading this (specifically about the the physical location) is I wonder if there's a way to limit your website/server to a local region. Similar to how BBS were back in the day.

maguay 3y ago
Something similar occurred to me while writing the piece—and then I instantly thought that to a degree that's what China has built behind the Great Firewall, and one should always be careful what one asks for. And yet. There's something to the idea. Something very "art project"-esque where certain web pages were only available when you're physically in a specific area could be fun, at first. Could also be incredibly restrictive.
Dalewyn 3y ago
There are, but they all obviously involve means that most people here would call heresy and sacrilege: The tracking of users' IP addresses, user agents, operating system regional and language settings, etc.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  You don't need to do all this though. Just look at NextDoor.com, it works fine for mostly only having locals. And the results are disastrous: it's the most toxic place on the internet.
- willi59549879 3y ago
  Ip addresses don't need to be tracked for that. It could be done with a proxy that just refuses access to ips not in the right location. although i think it could be very annoying for users. some use tor or vpns, my just keep my websites open to everyone.

kulor 3y ago

My HN of the past was k10k[1], SurfStation[2] and a raft of niche web design communities. What made these communities special is that they had unashamedly indulgent and whimsical chrome around the content, more akin to a magazine. It felt alive. Around this time it was hard to pull off complex designs on the web as internet connections were slow and HTML, JS & CSS were primitive. I think precisely because of these constraints, a sense of awe & wonder proliferated when people pulled off a fancy interface which led to an explosion in peacocking. It's what dragged me into the world of crafting high-quality user experiences from the positive reinforcement loops that were embraced and encouraged. Some communities exist today like Dribbble that possess some of the aforementioned traits but they feel soulless or just self-promotion machines. Then again, there may be millions of relevant communities that exist that I haven't stumbled upon, yet. In a world of post-scarcity, it almost feels necessary to create artificial bounds to encourage these esoteric & competitive communities. Maybe finding, creating and contributing to magazines is a better metaphorical aspiration than a corner shop. 1. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/kaliber10000-2003 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/kaliber10000-2003 2. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/golden-age-of-web-design/surfstation-2002 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/golden-age-of-web-design/sur... Edit: formatting

samsquire 3y ago
I really like the design of that website kulor. It would be interesting if you could have a REPL in that style design, and you can reorder the panels of running processes, it reminds me of Yahoo, Lycos, Excite portals in the early web. I think they're also called portlets.

JohnFen 3y ago

I don't think the internet needs more corner shops, even. What the internet needs is more parks and backyards. Spaces where real people interact with real people without the the burden of commerce weighing everything down.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Karrot_Kream 3y ago
My curiosity got to the better of me so I have to ask this question: how is it that you post in almost every single thread about "the old web" and at that so many times a day? I see your name on these threads constantly. I'm only here because I left a comment idly yesterday.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It's a subject that I am very interested in and is relatively safe to express opinions about.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    Fair enough!

countWSS 3y ago

> Ctrl-F Lemmy Lemmy is the current thing if you want to compete with big platforms like Reddit and host it on your own: Fediverse is the "network of corner shops".

mancerayder 3y ago

I'm an old BBS user and the generation that saw the world turn to the commercializing Internet in real time. From a message forum perspective, what kept intelligent discussion and thoughtfulness/patient writing going was simply that there was a higher barrier to entry (knowledge) and fewer people. It was also not easy to use the phone to write a message, much less do much of anything online. You had to use a PC with a modem, at a minimum. And FIDOnet etc required a BBS that had a batch job to go off and sync messages. Today it takes three seconds to post a short message that millions will read. You see celebrities do this all the time, saying something regretful because it was on a whim. But Reddit is full of low quality, quick replies that self-referentially try to re inforce or repeat meme joke. Or mic-drop dismiss someone else's perspective. Almost no Reddit forum isn't full of what feels like spam, but isn't - it's people expressing their dumb one-liner feelings thinking it's funny. And apparently it's hilarious because it gets upvoted leading most threads to be completely unusable for information or challenging ideas. Then there are the 'hot takes' with incredible speculation and confident views that aren't challenged intelligently but could do. I do miss older times HN is the closest thing to them, but suffers from a lot of anonymity. I recognize perhaps 3-4 users in all the time I've been here.