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I've lurked on HN for years, but I had to create an account just to respond to your post. I operated these servers – perhaps my handle is still familiar. I reme

I've lurked on HN for years, but I had to create an account just to respond to your post. I operated these servers – perhaps my handle is still familiar. I remember you for sure! I'm touched that you and so many others still have fond memories of that time. It was such a gratifying experience to build out that server network and the accompanying integrations that attracted so many and built such a great community. I miss the days in college when I had time to work on stuff like that just for the love of it. I hope you are doing well!

dev0p 1y ago
This kind of interaction is what makes me miss the "old internet" the most...
- TimByte 1y ago
  People just made stuff for the fun of it
  - lukan 1y ago
    That still happens. You just have to look a bit more for it.
    - dc10tonite 1y ago
      Agreed. I think we probably even have better tools to search for things now, but there's just so much more that in some ways it's harder to find that kind of stuff.
- sneak 1y ago
  We’re all still here. Build communities. Find, join, and support existing ones.
- arkh 1y ago
  My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and habits so we won't be trawling what are the current young geek channels. It was forum, IRC, ICQ and their ancestors for us. It is some other things for them. The story about the group of teenagers embedding messages in the One Million Checkboxes database shows "the old internet" is still alive.
  - endymion-light 1y ago
    Honestly, this is partially why I actually love a lot of what's on Hackernews. This site still seems to have a big proportion of old school geeks within it's population, and it feels like one of the only places left for good discussion that i've found on tech.
    - Aeolun 1y ago
      It’s kinda funny right? You’d expect the number of comments to rise with the number of users, but aside from a few highly controversial topics we still have posts on the front page that barely get to triple digits comments, if even.
      - endymion-light 1y ago
        I mean partially, i've still not really noticed a post that has more than 1000-3000 votes on a daily. As a comparison to other social media, that's miniscule
    - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
      I don't meh. This site has had a huge change now that it's become a sort of GenXer geek culture icon. I had originally come to this site to escape the stupid Natalie Portman sliding my bowl of grits Weird Al worship that was on Slashdot but it came back here and everyone who was into that culture joined this place too. A particularly uncharitable part of me wonders why folks who are so displeased with the state of greater social media are willing to override norms of other sites just to chase their particular idea of social media but of course that is the basis behind Eternal September.
- suzzer99 1y ago
  You'll love this. I teared up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMDb1CWD6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMDb1CWD6Y
  - sbinnee 1y ago
    Yeah I loved it so much. Thanks for sharing.
  - bdelmas 1y ago
    Thanks for sharing :)
- charcircuit 1y ago
  This kind of interaction happens many times a day on various social media platforms. The internet is how a lot bigger and more private which means that it is harder to see such people reconnecting.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  Any particular reason why? This interaction just happened on the "current Internet".
  - timeinput 1y ago
    We used to all have our nice own gardens. If anyone was happening by we might say hello, and invite them in. It was easy to walk around your neighborhood, and find someone with a nice garden, who was having a garden party. You could present yourself by your handle (which was probably, or at least possibly globally unique), and join in, and maybe have fun at their garden party. It was difficult to find gardens that you didn't care about. When you found someone in the "gaming" garden, and then found them again in the "rally driving" garden (and you know they were the same person due to the nearly globally unique handle), it was fun and exciting. Now there are a handful of giant gardens that I don't really want to go into for the most part. They're owned by old royalty, they're uncomfortable (for me), the only reason the garden owners want me to be there is so that they can make me look at ads, not appreciate the garden. Maybe my friends are there too, but all I see are people yelling about their small section of the (private) garden. Sure I may still find my old friends in these weird giant gardens, but ben3212 is probably not my friend Ben who happens to have the favorite number 3212. Hacker News is a relatively "smaller" community that is closer to the old internet. Also the top streamer on tik tok / youtube shorts / ... are not likely posting here trying to get massive up votes on their content, as there aren't very many ways to monetize having the top post on hacker news, so while this interaction happened on the "current Internet" I know of one or two places like this on the current internet. I used to know of more, and I think I liked that better. I know this isn't so different than "Also the clouds used to be different. They used to be whiter, and puffier! It was better then!", but here I am.
TimByte 1y ago
The fact that people still remember those servers all these years later? That's legacy-level stuff
- rimunroe 1y ago
  They were so good. The owner really put a lot of work into them. There were a lot of WC3 mod servers, but these ones were much more fully featured than most. I've always wanted to ask rACEmic how much of the features I remember were custom. The forums were extremely active. I don't know how accurate my memory was, but I think there were around 3000 registered users. I was active in the community in my mid-late teen years, so it was a formative time I remember pretty clearly.
richardlblair 1y ago
I spent many a weekend on your servers as a teen. Thank you for running them! (I was MethodMan)
- gognog 1y ago
  Hah, I remember your gamertag! I (gognog) would've been the 180 ping player on your team you wanted to kick, playing from NZ cause there weren't any servers here. Small world, those WC3 servers were the real deal.
  - richardlblair 1y ago
    Oh, I remember you (for your ping, not your gamertag lol). For real, though. After years of playing CS the WC3 plugin revived the game for me. De aztec was amazing when you could teleport all around the map.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    Your name seems familiar, and I distinctly remember one regular who would frequently rubber band around due to their ping.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  I remember you! I was Stealth Penguin. I made annoying squawking noises over my mic
rimunroe 1y ago
Wow! Of course I remember you! I've actually tried to hunt you down in the past to say hi and thank you for all the good times. I thought I found you on Steam recently. If you see a friend request from a Stealth Penguin (https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n), that's me. I'm doing great these days and hope you are too! That was such a fun time. If you want to get in touch, my gmail address is rimunroe. I'd love to catch up!

dev0p 1y ago

This kind of interaction is what makes me miss the "old internet" the most...

TimByte 1y ago
People just made stuff for the fun of it
- lukan 1y ago
  That still happens. You just have to look a bit more for it.
  - dc10tonite 1y ago
    Agreed. I think we probably even have better tools to search for things now, but there's just so much more that in some ways it's harder to find that kind of stuff.
sneak 1y ago
We’re all still here. Build communities. Find, join, and support existing ones.
arkh 1y ago
My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and habits so we won't be trawling what are the current young geek channels. It was forum, IRC, ICQ and their ancestors for us. It is some other things for them. The story about the group of teenagers embedding messages in the One Million Checkboxes database shows "the old internet" is still alive.
- endymion-light 1y ago
  Honestly, this is partially why I actually love a lot of what's on Hackernews. This site still seems to have a big proportion of old school geeks within it's population, and it feels like one of the only places left for good discussion that i've found on tech.
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    It’s kinda funny right? You’d expect the number of comments to rise with the number of users, but aside from a few highly controversial topics we still have posts on the front page that barely get to triple digits comments, if even.
    - endymion-light 1y ago
      I mean partially, i've still not really noticed a post that has more than 1000-3000 votes on a daily. As a comparison to other social media, that's miniscule
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    I don't meh. This site has had a huge change now that it's become a sort of GenXer geek culture icon. I had originally come to this site to escape the stupid Natalie Portman sliding my bowl of grits Weird Al worship that was on Slashdot but it came back here and everyone who was into that culture joined this place too. A particularly uncharitable part of me wonders why folks who are so displeased with the state of greater social media are willing to override norms of other sites just to chase their particular idea of social media but of course that is the basis behind Eternal September.
suzzer99 1y ago
You'll love this. I teared up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMDb1CWD6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMDb1CWD6Y
- sbinnee 1y ago
  Yeah I loved it so much. Thanks for sharing.
- bdelmas 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing :)
charcircuit 1y ago
This kind of interaction happens many times a day on various social media platforms. The internet is how a lot bigger and more private which means that it is harder to see such people reconnecting.
dfxm12 1y ago
Any particular reason why? This interaction just happened on the "current Internet".
- timeinput 1y ago
  We used to all have our nice own gardens. If anyone was happening by we might say hello, and invite them in. It was easy to walk around your neighborhood, and find someone with a nice garden, who was having a garden party. You could present yourself by your handle (which was probably, or at least possibly globally unique), and join in, and maybe have fun at their garden party. It was difficult to find gardens that you didn't care about. When you found someone in the "gaming" garden, and then found them again in the "rally driving" garden (and you know they were the same person due to the nearly globally unique handle), it was fun and exciting. Now there are a handful of giant gardens that I don't really want to go into for the most part. They're owned by old royalty, they're uncomfortable (for me), the only reason the garden owners want me to be there is so that they can make me look at ads, not appreciate the garden. Maybe my friends are there too, but all I see are people yelling about their small section of the (private) garden. Sure I may still find my old friends in these weird giant gardens, but ben3212 is probably not my friend Ben who happens to have the favorite number 3212. Hacker News is a relatively "smaller" community that is closer to the old internet. Also the top streamer on tik tok / youtube shorts / ... are not likely posting here trying to get massive up votes on their content, as there aren't very many ways to monetize having the top post on hacker news, so while this interaction happened on the "current Internet" I know of one or two places like this on the current internet. I used to know of more, and I think I liked that better. I know this isn't so different than "Also the clouds used to be different. They used to be whiter, and puffier! It was better then!", but here I am.

TimByte 1y ago

The fact that people still remember those servers all these years later? That's legacy-level stuff

rimunroe 1y ago
They were so good. The owner really put a lot of work into them. There were a lot of WC3 mod servers, but these ones were much more fully featured than most. I've always wanted to ask rACEmic how much of the features I remember were custom. The forums were extremely active. I don't know how accurate my memory was, but I think there were around 3000 registered users. I was active in the community in my mid-late teen years, so it was a formative time I remember pretty clearly.

richardlblair 1y ago

I spent many a weekend on your servers as a teen. Thank you for running them! (I was MethodMan)

gognog 1y ago
Hah, I remember your gamertag! I (gognog) would've been the 180 ping player on your team you wanted to kick, playing from NZ cause there weren't any servers here. Small world, those WC3 servers were the real deal.
- richardlblair 1y ago
  Oh, I remember you (for your ping, not your gamertag lol). For real, though. After years of playing CS the WC3 plugin revived the game for me. De aztec was amazing when you could teleport all around the map.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  Your name seems familiar, and I distinctly remember one regular who would frequently rubber band around due to their ping.
rimunroe 1y ago
I remember you! I was Stealth Penguin. I made annoying squawking noises over my mic

rimunroe 1y ago

Wow! Of course I remember you! I've actually tried to hunt you down in the past to say hi and thank you for all the good times. I thought I found you on Steam recently. If you see a friend request from a Stealth Penguin (https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n), that's me. I'm doing great these days and hope you are too! That was such a fun time. If you want to get in touch, my gmail address is rimunroe. I'd love to catch up!