"I do feel something important went missing when the old, clunky, more human-scaled internet evolved out of itself."
Specifying exactly what this is would be extremely difficult. The early Internet was uniquely special because of a confluence of factors that came together in a perfect storm that burned brightly and burned out quickly. I'm not sure there's even a single word or term for what you're thinking of.
But if I had to take a stab at it: The Unexpected. The joy of spontaneous discovery. The sense of adventure that comes from exploring a new world, not really knowing where you would go, and what you would find. That is exactly how it felt surfing the old Internet. I hearken back to the very last Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, as the two main characters step out into a world covered by fresh snow, in awe that everything is all brand new. "It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on!"
The modern Internet is certainly more efficient in every measurable way. But there is very little spontaneous or unexpected taking place.
I can still remember some of the old gems I found. the Unofficial Squaresoft Homepage comes to mind. I still have a text file of the Completely Bogus FF3 FAQ, which was a fake guide to the game made by a bunch of different authors, describing all these bizarre extra worlds you could explore, and all these secret characters and bosses and dungeons you could find.
Somehow, stumbling on these things through exploration only made them more precious.
I miss the old internet, but I don't pine for it. Better to just remember it fondly. Its death was inevitable, so there's no point wishing it would come back. It died for the same reason we lost the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age of Greek mythology: It was too perfect, too pure, too delicate an equilibrium to survive extended contact with mankind. As you put it: "The fundamental difference between the cultures of the early and of the modern internet is the absence of profit motives, careerism, and social validation feedback loops in the former, and how they condition nearly everything that happens in the latter."
This is my first time hearing about/skimming the Bogus FF3 FAQ (it's on the Internet Archive), but there were DEFINITELY motherfuckers on the old Nintendo AOL message boards who'd seen it and were posting disinfo about how to recruit zombie Geshtahl circa 1995–6.
Huh. Its lies about how to recruit Rydia are different from the lies I read (and *might* have believed) about how to recruit Rydia. This is raising all sorts of questions.
As long as we're talking about txt files from the 1990s, last night I was tickled to discover that "How to Recognize a Cthulhu Godling" is still online:
Platforms like Neocities exist and are very active. I've been hosting my writing on there for a year and a half and in that time have talked to lots of people (via email) and made lots of friends. Discoverability is bad and it takes quite a bit of effort to find interesting websites, but that's of course exactly what you're praising.
I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I suspect the main issue is that you simply don't have the time to find interesting internet stuff anymore -- which is of course is understandable, as there are probably more worthwhile things you could be doing. SEO and concentration towards large platforms certainly are part of the problem, but there are search engines like marginalia.nu specifically designed for finding smaller websites. The actual effort it takes to start a website is no different from before, and there are plenty of communities (often found in discord servers rather than forums or irc channels) for finding like minded people. The small internet continues to exist, it just takes time to explore -- and since you're no longer a teenager or 20-something, you probably don't have as much time to explore it as when you were younger.
Completely fair point, and one that I perhaps didn't lay enough emphasis on: I'm NOT sitting down on a Sunday morning, cracking my knuckles, and going exploring, or looking for fascinating niches in the infrastructure of the corporate internet. I know that stuff IS there, and I'm no longer sure where it is.
But my point stands: the small internet is like an urban park or a suburban nature preserve—or, rather, maybe the modern jazz or literary scenes. Pretty much all of cyberspace used to be small internet; digital culture used to revolve around things happening on the small internet. That's obviously no longer the case. The small internet is a thing that most people don't encounter and aren't guided towards, and is more or less culturally irrelevant—which doesn't really matter if you're not in it for money & clout, but again, there are significant differences between the way of life & vibe on a block of little houses in small town on the prairie and on a block of little houses in the middle of Queens. The small internet ain't on the prairie no more is what I'm jabbin' at.
I'd heard of Neocities around the time it launched and was like "I give it a year." I'm pleased it's still alive, and after reading your note I skipped through it a bit and had to close out of the browser and go for a walk to stop myself from committing to making a page. Don't suppose you'd care to link me to yours?
they (or, he, let's face it) JUST played a show in Philly. I didn't even know until the day of, when I biked past the venue and saw SISTERS OF MERCY on the marquee. Then I shed a black tear and biked on.
How *is* he live these days? I can't imagine he's still got the Lucretia, My Reflection video energy some forty years later.
Also, in the spirit of websites of the early Aughts that were all about having fun, I thought you might appreciate stinkymeat.net. (It's a hilarious site about a science project conducted in a neighbor's backyard, WITHOUT their knowledge, over the course of several weeks.) From 2000, last updated 2004.
I really miss when the internet was a fun place to hang out. I can count on one hand the number of well-hidden, off-the-beaten-path places I can still safely count on for great "content" (ugh, hate that word) and conversation. This site is one of them.
I initially discovered Patrick R through his aforementioned writeups of a certain long-running JRPG whose name begins with the letter F, but ended up sticking around thanks to stuff like the poetry analysis and The Zeroes.
In a crazy coincidence, I just finished the seventh entry in that long-running franchise two nights ago for the first time (I'm 32). I still have a working PS2 and a CRT, so I got the real experience, no emulation needed. I went back and re-read Patrick's "Rise and Fall" articles (although I'll admit I only skimmed parts of them) on the "Socks" place afterward. It gave me a weird feeling. You were in your early twenties when you wrote all that, right?
Since your a bing/edge guy you might try copilot if an answer to your wife's question is what yiu seek:
Daleks for their relentless pursuit of "Exterminate!" and sheer iconic status. But the Cybermen have their chilling “delete” factor and ever-evolving adaptability. Daleks are more about pure malevolence; Cybermen are a reminder of what happens when technology goes too far. If you had to face one, who'd you choose to outwit?
I understand all too well. I was already in my thirties during the Angelfire/Geocities/Livejournal days, but I saw a lot of parallels to the zine community in the late Eighties/early Nineties, particularly that need just to WRITE. (Most of that doesn’t even show up on the Internet Archive, and it’s a little sad and a little surreal to realize that a lot of magazines for which I worked in the 1990s, heralded as so influential and innovative back then, don’t even show up in eBay listings. Don’t even get me started on the number in limbo because the editor/publisher is dead or hiding from creditors, and any thought of reprints gets into a whole tangle of getting reproduction permissions from authors who themselves are either dead or violently opposed to giving those permissions.)
Oh god that story about his cousin and the same half of the family really made me ache decades ago wow thanks for finding an archived version. I am glad there's an active socks discord. Nostalgia is a good hobby as long as you don't devote your life to it. But it's nice to know people are alive and thriving that I have felt connected to, even one way.
"I do feel something important went missing when the old, clunky, more human-scaled internet evolved out of itself."
Specifying exactly what this is would be extremely difficult. The early Internet was uniquely special because of a confluence of factors that came together in a perfect storm that burned brightly and burned out quickly. I'm not sure there's even a single word or term for what you're thinking of.
But if I had to take a stab at it: The Unexpected. The joy of spontaneous discovery. The sense of adventure that comes from exploring a new world, not really knowing where you would go, and what you would find. That is exactly how it felt surfing the old Internet. I hearken back to the very last Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, as the two main characters step out into a world covered by fresh snow, in awe that everything is all brand new. "It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on!"
The modern Internet is certainly more efficient in every measurable way. But there is very little spontaneous or unexpected taking place.
I can still remember some of the old gems I found. the Unofficial Squaresoft Homepage comes to mind. I still have a text file of the Completely Bogus FF3 FAQ, which was a fake guide to the game made by a bunch of different authors, describing all these bizarre extra worlds you could explore, and all these secret characters and bosses and dungeons you could find.
Somehow, stumbling on these things through exploration only made them more precious.
I miss the old internet, but I don't pine for it. Better to just remember it fondly. Its death was inevitable, so there's no point wishing it would come back. It died for the same reason we lost the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age of Greek mythology: It was too perfect, too pure, too delicate an equilibrium to survive extended contact with mankind. As you put it: "The fundamental difference between the cultures of the early and of the modern internet is the absence of profit motives, careerism, and social validation feedback loops in the former, and how they condition nearly everything that happens in the latter."
This is my first time hearing about/skimming the Bogus FF3 FAQ (it's on the Internet Archive), but there were DEFINITELY motherfuckers on the old Nintendo AOL message boards who'd seen it and were posting disinfo about how to recruit zombie Geshtahl circa 1995–6.
Huh. Its lies about how to recruit Rydia are different from the lies I read (and *might* have believed) about how to recruit Rydia. This is raising all sorts of questions.
As long as we're talking about txt files from the 1990s, last night I was tickled to discover that "How to Recognize a Cthulhu Godling" is still online:
https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~ivl/writing/quotes/recognize.cthulhoid
That was great, thanks for the link! It confirmed my suspicion that many of my students have decidedly... unearthly origins.
Platforms like Neocities exist and are very active. I've been hosting my writing on there for a year and a half and in that time have talked to lots of people (via email) and made lots of friends. Discoverability is bad and it takes quite a bit of effort to find interesting websites, but that's of course exactly what you're praising.
I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I suspect the main issue is that you simply don't have the time to find interesting internet stuff anymore -- which is of course is understandable, as there are probably more worthwhile things you could be doing. SEO and concentration towards large platforms certainly are part of the problem, but there are search engines like marginalia.nu specifically designed for finding smaller websites. The actual effort it takes to start a website is no different from before, and there are plenty of communities (often found in discord servers rather than forums or irc channels) for finding like minded people. The small internet continues to exist, it just takes time to explore -- and since you're no longer a teenager or 20-something, you probably don't have as much time to explore it as when you were younger.
Completely fair point, and one that I perhaps didn't lay enough emphasis on: I'm NOT sitting down on a Sunday morning, cracking my knuckles, and going exploring, or looking for fascinating niches in the infrastructure of the corporate internet. I know that stuff IS there, and I'm no longer sure where it is.
But my point stands: the small internet is like an urban park or a suburban nature preserve—or, rather, maybe the modern jazz or literary scenes. Pretty much all of cyberspace used to be small internet; digital culture used to revolve around things happening on the small internet. That's obviously no longer the case. The small internet is a thing that most people don't encounter and aren't guided towards, and is more or less culturally irrelevant—which doesn't really matter if you're not in it for money & clout, but again, there are significant differences between the way of life & vibe on a block of little houses in small town on the prairie and on a block of little houses in the middle of Queens. The small internet ain't on the prairie no more is what I'm jabbin' at.
I'd heard of Neocities around the time it launched and was like "I give it a year." I'm pleased it's still alive, and after reading your note I skipped through it a bit and had to close out of the browser and go for a walk to stop myself from committing to making a page. Don't suppose you'd care to link me to yours?
Just saw Sisters of Mercy recently for the third time.
they (or, he, let's face it) JUST played a show in Philly. I didn't even know until the day of, when I biked past the venue and saw SISTERS OF MERCY on the marquee. Then I shed a black tear and biked on.
How *is* he live these days? I can't imagine he's still got the Lucretia, My Reflection video energy some forty years later.
Yep. Saw that at The Met.
Also, in the spirit of websites of the early Aughts that were all about having fun, I thought you might appreciate stinkymeat.net. (It's a hilarious site about a science project conducted in a neighbor's backyard, WITHOUT their knowledge, over the course of several weeks.) From 2000, last updated 2004.
I really miss when the internet was a fun place to hang out. I can count on one hand the number of well-hidden, off-the-beaten-path places I can still safely count on for great "content" (ugh, hate that word) and conversation. This site is one of them.
I initially discovered Patrick R through his aforementioned writeups of a certain long-running JRPG whose name begins with the letter F, but ended up sticking around thanks to stuff like the poetry analysis and The Zeroes.
In a crazy coincidence, I just finished the seventh entry in that long-running franchise two nights ago for the first time (I'm 32). I still have a working PS2 and a CRT, so I got the real experience, no emulation needed. I went back and re-read Patrick's "Rise and Fall" articles (although I'll admit I only skimmed parts of them) on the "Socks" place afterward. It gave me a weird feeling. You were in your early twenties when you wrote all that, right?
There are still a bunch of surfing sites around, if you start somewhere. https://www.nativetech.org/cornhusk/corndoll.html
Since your a bing/edge guy you might try copilot if an answer to your wife's question is what yiu seek:
Daleks for their relentless pursuit of "Exterminate!" and sheer iconic status. But the Cybermen have their chilling “delete” factor and ever-evolving adaptability. Daleks are more about pure malevolence; Cybermen are a reminder of what happens when technology goes too far. If you had to face one, who'd you choose to outwit?
I understand all too well. I was already in my thirties during the Angelfire/Geocities/Livejournal days, but I saw a lot of parallels to the zine community in the late Eighties/early Nineties, particularly that need just to WRITE. (Most of that doesn’t even show up on the Internet Archive, and it’s a little sad and a little surreal to realize that a lot of magazines for which I worked in the 1990s, heralded as so influential and innovative back then, don’t even show up in eBay listings. Don’t even get me started on the number in limbo because the editor/publisher is dead or hiding from creditors, and any thought of reprints gets into a whole tangle of getting reproduction permissions from authors who themselves are either dead or violently opposed to giving those permissions.)
'round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away—hm?
Oh god that story about his cousin and the same half of the family really made me ache decades ago wow thanks for finding an archived version. I am glad there's an active socks discord. Nostalgia is a good hobby as long as you don't devote your life to it. But it's nice to know people are alive and thriving that I have felt connected to, even one way.
and thanks for sticking around <3
Bookmarks man. They're helpful
Loved surfing the net to find this post; no 'under construction' gif too! It was all there!