6 ms·

Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?

by dimal 1y ago

lanfeust6 1y ago
All the big social media platforms were around when this started. The dominance wasn't in full swing yet but it only took a few years for vbulletin and everything else to dwindle.
eestrada 1y ago
I miss the old internet. I'm pretty sure anyone old enough to have experienced it misses it.
- Loughla 1y ago
  And the people who were there before the old Internet missed that too. Something something eternal September.
  - mhink 1y ago
    Absolutely. I remember being about 14 or 15 years old, reading old .txt files about, like- how to build blue boxes and experiment with the phone system, C programming tutorials for MUDs that had peaked in the late 90s, IRC archives (even though IRC was still around, I had no way of finding my way to good channels), and getting this distinct sense that I had just missed something really cool, and was stuck with an Internet that had already passed its prime.
- nunez 1y ago
  I was there. Nope. Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope. Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope. Getting malware just for existing? Early software firewalls that burned CPU cycles/crashed your PC? That were the only option because hardware firewalls were stupid expensive and not at all practical for residential use? Nope. Norton Antivirus? ABSOLUTELY NOPE. Blue screens when you looked at IE or Navigator the wrong way? Nope. Flash? Lol, nope. WAP? The 2004 kind? Lol, hell nope. "This page is best viewed on Internet Explorer", i.e. IE4/5/6 or it's basically unusable? Nope. Having to actually go seven or eight o's into the Gooooooooooooooooooooooogle footer to find what you were looking for? Def nope. Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform. You have to work hard to get hit with a virus these days, especially on iOS/macOS or Linux, though it's much harder on Android these days too. Also, I loved wasting my life on /., but Reddit is so much better, even after the API-pocalyse. I definitely miss open messaging platforms though. AIM for life.
  - jltsiren 1y ago
    The old internet had something today's internet lacks: a justified belief that the future would be better. Things were new and exciting, and you saw opportunities and rapid improvements everywhere. Today it's just governments and megacorporations, and bureaucracy upon endless bureaucracy.
  - rvba 1y ago
    Flash brought a lot of good stuff...
  - agiacalone 1y ago
    I was there too. Napster was good because it was new. And the music was yours when you got it. Never used NAV. Never cared to. Linux didn't need it. Hated Flash too, and never used it. Internet was still great without it. WAP was new, too. But Ethernet existed, and we wired our house. Used Firefox/Netscape Navigator. Avoided IE pages like the plague. I do malware research. You're grossly underestimating how common malware is today. Ever hear of ransomware? Not everything on the Internet is better today. Some things are, but many are not. And don't even get me started on the cesspool that Reddit is.
  - itsboring 1y ago
    Hmm, when I think “old Internet” I don’t think Napster, IE, WAP… I think usenet, gopher, telnet MUDs, IRC netsplits and FTP warez.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    Old internet was something different socially for subcultures, especially DIY subcultures and communities. You just don't connect with people the same way on giant message boards or platforms like Reddit where you're one user out of a billion. It was just... Smaller and personal, I guess? It feels like everything today is optimized for monetization, ads, tracking, etc. I guess I could summarize it as saying the internet went mainstream and changed its audience and charm.
  - thowawatp302 1y ago
    > Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope. > Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope. I was there too, and realized that these sort of reductions in speed made one far more mindful of what one was doing > Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform This too is particularly debatable. Applications are thin wrappers around web browsers, there are constant annoyances (want to receive notifications for this webpage? Not now? We’ll ask you later.) I bet if I pulled someone from 2005 they’d look at a lot of things on a current website and see malware. And is it really more cross platform when we’ve achieved that by having less platforms?
standyro 1y ago
there was still angst then, it just was more targeted in single directions, not like now where the angst is aimlessly directed at society, sponsored by squarespace
- weard_beard 1y ago
  Sounds like a cologne. Angst, by Squarespace
npteljes 1y ago
The internet was never all goofy shit like this. The launch date of G-G is "February 13, 2008", and we already had the creepy Facebook, deplorable shit like jailbait was in full swing, gore was not just popular, it was old news. Internet advertising was already very toxic for many years, and its surveillance capabilities were also ever-increasing. Not to mention, the Eternal September lasted for 15 years now. My point is, it changed, yes, but "The Internet" was always shit, and you can also always find good fun, as always. You can turn off the doom, and enjoy a good never-ending scroll of a myriad of fantastic hobbies and people sharing their human experience. It takes effort, just like it did back then.
- wholinator2 1y ago
  > It takes effort, just like it did back then. I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    And also, very different things exist. So yes, it's hard to find the "same" things or "similar" things, but if one adapts a bit to more up to date trends, the horizon broadens a lot. For example, there is much less life on traditional forums now, but much more life on YouTube.
- asddubs 1y ago
  we had facebook, but things weren't centralized to only 5 websites yet. You are right though, there's a lot about the old internet that was better, but there was also stuff that was worse. It was more untamed perhaps. I certainly don't miss rotten.com or goatse or the absolute cesspit reddit was at the time (as you mention). We tend to forget about this and just think about the good, like individual weird blogs hosted on their own quirky websites actually being able to find an audience (which still exist to some extent but not to the same degree at all). Still, I think "the internet was always shit" is too cynical of a take. Some parts of the internet were always shit. Some of it changed for the better, some for the worse.
nunez 1y ago
It still is; it's just different
prawn 1y ago
The gore sites are a prevailing memory from early days. (I was first online in the mid-90s.)
- gorlilla 1y ago
  Rotten rings a bell there.
_sys49152 1y ago
www.mnftiu.cc legendary
heavyset_go 1y ago
God I miss ye olde FYAD
dclowd9901 1y ago
If you had to encapsulate the vibe, it would be "people just post shit to see if other people are as weird as they are." It was a whole era, folks. And I don't mean "does anyone else" Reddit crap that is absurdly naive. This was way more before and way more naive than that. You didn't have any expectation that you were normal (even if you were weird). You just did it to gauge how fucking weird you were.
DeathArrow 1y ago
>Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst? I first accessed the internet in 1998 through school. I still like it more how it was in those days. Most people didn't care about the Internet so the people lurking the Internet had a particular interest in it or were technically inclined. Once some guys discovered they can make tons of money through the Internet, those good times are over. It's like you travel to a beautiful place which is not popular. Once it starts becoming a major tourist attraction, it will be ruined for good in 20 years.

Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?

by dimal 1y ago

Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?

All the big social media platforms were around when this started. The dominance wasn't in full swing yet but it only took a few years for vbulletin and everything else to dwindle.

eestrada 1y ago

I miss the old internet. I'm pretty sure anyone old enough to have experienced it misses it.

Loughla 1y ago
And the people who were there before the old Internet missed that too. Something something eternal September.
- mhink 1y ago
  Absolutely. I remember being about 14 or 15 years old, reading old .txt files about, like- how to build blue boxes and experiment with the phone system, C programming tutorials for MUDs that had peaked in the late 90s, IRC archives (even though IRC was still around, I had no way of finding my way to good channels), and getting this distinct sense that I had just missed something really cool, and was stuck with an Internet that had already passed its prime.
nunez 1y ago
I was there. Nope. Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope. Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope. Getting malware just for existing? Early software firewalls that burned CPU cycles/crashed your PC? That were the only option because hardware firewalls were stupid expensive and not at all practical for residential use? Nope. Norton Antivirus? ABSOLUTELY NOPE. Blue screens when you looked at IE or Navigator the wrong way? Nope. Flash? Lol, nope. WAP? The 2004 kind? Lol, hell nope. "This page is best viewed on Internet Explorer", i.e. IE4/5/6 or it's basically unusable? Nope. Having to actually go seven or eight o's into the Gooooooooooooooooooooooogle footer to find what you were looking for? Def nope. Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform. You have to work hard to get hit with a virus these days, especially on iOS/macOS or Linux, though it's much harder on Android these days too. Also, I loved wasting my life on /., but Reddit is so much better, even after the API-pocalyse. I definitely miss open messaging platforms though. AIM for life.
- jltsiren 1y ago
  The old internet had something today's internet lacks: a justified belief that the future would be better. Things were new and exciting, and you saw opportunities and rapid improvements everywhere. Today it's just governments and megacorporations, and bureaucracy upon endless bureaucracy.
- rvba 1y ago
  Flash brought a lot of good stuff...
- agiacalone 1y ago
  I was there too. Napster was good because it was new. And the music was yours when you got it. Never used NAV. Never cared to. Linux didn't need it. Hated Flash too, and never used it. Internet was still great without it. WAP was new, too. But Ethernet existed, and we wired our house. Used Firefox/Netscape Navigator. Avoided IE pages like the plague. I do malware research. You're grossly underestimating how common malware is today. Ever hear of ransomware? Not everything on the Internet is better today. Some things are, but many are not. And don't even get me started on the cesspool that Reddit is.
- itsboring 1y ago
  Hmm, when I think “old Internet” I don’t think Napster, IE, WAP… I think usenet, gopher, telnet MUDs, IRC netsplits and FTP warez.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Old internet was something different socially for subcultures, especially DIY subcultures and communities. You just don't connect with people the same way on giant message boards or platforms like Reddit where you're one user out of a billion. It was just... Smaller and personal, I guess? It feels like everything today is optimized for monetization, ads, tracking, etc. I guess I could summarize it as saying the internet went mainstream and changed its audience and charm.
- thowawatp302 1y ago
  > Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope. > Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope. I was there too, and realized that these sort of reductions in speed made one far more mindful of what one was doing > Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform This too is particularly debatable. Applications are thin wrappers around web browsers, there are constant annoyances (want to receive notifications for this webpage? Not now? We’ll ask you later.) I bet if I pulled someone from 2005 they’d look at a lot of things on a current website and see malware. And is it really more cross platform when we’ve achieved that by having less platforms?

standyro 1y ago

there was still angst then, it just was more targeted in single directions, not like now where the angst is aimlessly directed at society, sponsored by squarespace

weard_beard 1y ago
Sounds like a cologne. Angst, by Squarespace

npteljes 1y ago

The internet was never all goofy shit like this. The launch date of G-G is "February 13, 2008", and we already had the creepy Facebook, deplorable shit like jailbait was in full swing, gore was not just popular, it was old news. Internet advertising was already very toxic for many years, and its surveillance capabilities were also ever-increasing. Not to mention, the Eternal September lasted for 15 years now. My point is, it changed, yes, but "The Internet" was always shit, and you can also always find good fun, as always. You can turn off the doom, and enjoy a good never-ending scroll of a myriad of fantastic hobbies and people sharing their human experience. It takes effort, just like it did back then.

wholinator2 1y ago
> It takes effort, just like it did back then. I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.
- npteljes 1y ago
  And also, very different things exist. So yes, it's hard to find the "same" things or "similar" things, but if one adapts a bit to more up to date trends, the horizon broadens a lot. For example, there is much less life on traditional forums now, but much more life on YouTube.
asddubs 1y ago
we had facebook, but things weren't centralized to only 5 websites yet. You are right though, there's a lot about the old internet that was better, but there was also stuff that was worse. It was more untamed perhaps. I certainly don't miss rotten.com or goatse or the absolute cesspit reddit was at the time (as you mention). We tend to forget about this and just think about the good, like individual weird blogs hosted on their own quirky websites actually being able to find an audience (which still exist to some extent but not to the same degree at all). Still, I think "the internet was always shit" is too cynical of a take. Some parts of the internet were always shit. Some of it changed for the better, some for the worse.

nunez 1y ago

It still is; it's just different

prawn 1y ago

The gore sites are a prevailing memory from early days. (I was first online in the mid-90s.)

gorlilla 1y ago
Rotten rings a bell there.

_sys49152 1y ago

www.mnftiu.cc legendary

heavyset_go 1y ago

God I miss ye olde FYAD

dclowd9901 1y ago

If you had to encapsulate the vibe, it would be "people just post shit to see if other people are as weird as they are." It was a whole era, folks. And I don't mean "does anyone else" Reddit crap that is absurdly naive. This was way more before and way more naive than that. You didn't have any expectation that you were normal (even if you were weird). You just did it to gauge how fucking weird you were.

DeathArrow 1y ago

>Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst? I first accessed the internet in 1998 through school. I still like it more how it was in those days. Most people didn't care about the Internet so the people lurking the Internet had a particular interest in it or were technically inclined. Once some guys discovered they can make tons of money through the Internet, those good times are over. It's like you travel to a beautiful place which is not popular. Once it starts becoming a major tourist attraction, it will be ruined for good in 20 years.