5d ago

Well, today I had a fit of nostalgia for the old Internet without algorithms and moderation and I want to ask you, do you remember this?

I mean those weird and gory YouTube videos and stuff with the blackest humor and seas of blood and a real living soul.

I even re-watched some videos, some from archives, some from open access, and it was magical, a little strange of course, but damn alive. Doctor, I want to go back to the past. And the most important thing is that there was no AI.

Does anyone still remember the times of the 2000s and 2010s?

Edit: Oh yeah, can you also send links to some videos or art or even music that you liked before.

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The thing I remember most about the early internet was staking out your own weird little corners. There wasn't much of any "everything" site yet, so you'd find the things that appealed to you and settle there.
A lot of my early tastes in indie and experimental music were formed by the Music message board on GameFAQs. I was already going there for the walkthroughs and found my way to some of the under-populated, miscellaneous boards.
You experienced meeting people with names (even if just pseudonyms) and ideas that weren't just blended into an algorithmic slurry.
It's why I like Lemmy, I can feel a bit of that here. Still, I have a hard time surrendering things like Twitter and moved instantly to Bluesky where I continue the trend ...
- I still love that on Lemmy I can post in one thread and recognize someone I interacted with later on another thread. It feels smaller in a good way, like there’s persistence and character instead of commoditized identities.
  
  Now you got me nostalgic for pre-internet days of BBSs and local chat boards. I used to belong to one where we would meet once a month in a Cafe. It was almost like a secret society where you knew everyone.

I remember a time when you could 't even watch videos online! The best we had where GIFs if they wheren't too big to fit over our 33k somewhat modem connection with dial-in!
- Flash videos made painstaking efforts to be very very tiny while also as long as possible. Newgrounds, albinoblacksheep, and animutations all got really big (no pun intended) as a result.
  
  OMG flash!! I forgot about that! What a horrible sites we made with shockwave flashplayer 😂

I feel like video rolling onto the scene was the beginning of the end. I don't like video as a medium, so that's an easy place for me to draw the line. Before Youtube&co link zines and blogs would link to other readable stuff. Sometimes it had pictures, but it was complex and thought out (usually). Over time, as monetization become more of a thing, Youtube became more of a thing, along with influencers and unskipable ads. And here we are.
- If youtube stayed as it was in its first ~4 years it wouldn’t be so bad. Everything being video has ruined the internet for me, though, since I agree with you that it’s generally a bad format for information + discussion.
  There used to be readable how-tos and tutorials for things, and now all that’s left is 45 minute YT videos littered with influencer garbage.
  
  I like the idea of short videos. But guess that's not the best way to make money, so instead we have long videos. 🤷‍♂️
  
  There used to be readable how-tos and tutorials for things, and now all that’s left is 45 minute YT videos littered with influencer garbage.
  This is so much of what I hate about the internet today. Many, many things which should be a single page wall of text is now some 20 minute video which just shows the person doing something, with terrible music in the background and fuck-all for deep explanations. I do understand how hard it is to write those deep explanations, my own blog has gone over a year without an update. But fuck, if you're the type of person who can be constantly working and posting, this seems like something that should be reasonable to do. Of course, monetizing the written word is harder. I know some writers are getting there on substack,. but that seems like a platform where you need to have an audience first and then you can monetize it. There isn't really any discoverability in substack. If people don't know you're there, they won't find you.

My first exposure to the internet was at a time that I like to call the "early modern internet" (early 2000's). I do have some nostalgia for that time, but I think times were also simply different.
For instance, there's just less content on the internet at the time, and whatever content there was was harder to find. The positive is that the internet felt more genuine. Nowadays, I think people have gotten into the habit of self-censoring, presumably at the gentle pressuring of big tech companies, and that has led to even indie content creators producing what feels like safe, corporate content.
My personal belief is that culture is shaped by logistical challenges. The challenges of the early modern internet are not the same as the challenges now. We don't need to return to a 2000's-era internet, and I don't think that's even possible. But at least we can reintroduce genuineness by resisting corporate influence where we can. Presumably that's why we're on Lemmy
- Yes, I didn’t even suspect before that such a place existed, because I was constantly busy with work, combining it with creativity, it was quite painful, but now I feel like I’m at home and that same spark of hope has lit up in my eyes again.

Possibly one of the few survivors of that period: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
- ...he says, while the website is unavailable.
  
  Your browser might be refusing to load the page because it doesn't use HTTPS. Works for me, but I have to allow it first
  
  it's available for me

No mods I'm the 2000-2010s? What are you on about?
Other than that, the old net was populated with personal sites maintained by hobbyists and fellow nerds. GeoCities was the place to hang and share. It was open and it was free. I miss it terribly. I miss the feeling of progression instead of recession. I miss looking at mediocre art and knowing somebody poured a piece of their soul there, or reading an article and knowing its mildly informative contents were stitched together by someone who at least gave half a shit.
Oh, the things we have become.
- You can get that vibe again at https://neocities.org/
  
  Neocities is it's own vibe all together.
  There wasn't much JS used on Geocities pages typically
  That said, Neocities is the shit
- Well, yes, my experience is different from yours. I was a fan of ultra-violence and black humor. And it wasn't that there were no moderators, I just knew how to get around them and continue having fun. Of course, it wasn't always easy, but it was worth it. And yes, I could very well be wrong since I don’t know everything, sorry.
  
  I watched a dude kill another dude with a shovel in 2004 on thatsphuckedup dot com. So I mean you do know things.

No, I'm not old enough for that, and anyone else younger than me certainly never will be. I only ever hear of the good old days from posts like these, but from what I gather, at least some of that magic can be found here, which is why I'll never leave this place. "Conventional" social media never appealed to me at all, with all of the "trends" and "influencers" and whatnot. Reddit was what had caught my affection, until the APIpocalypse, which sent me right here. Whatever it was in the past that I didn't get to experience then, I feel like I'm experiencing it now, in one way or another.
- You know, I remember one quote that said that oxygen intoxicates and makes you free, and freedom is a threat to the ruling boars. Well, let's hope Lemmy sticks around for at least a few more years, because, you know, I'm tired of wearing the mask of a law-abiding citizen and I can't take it anymore.
- Lemmy definitely feels like ye olde internet in a way. So does using linux. I hate what the internet became for the most part.

What does dark humour have in common with food & clean drinking water?
- Oh man you just made a joke that was too black lol...

I've been an Internet user since 1995. Gather round the fire, kids, and let me tell you stories about a place called Stile Project, old tales about Fatty Big-Eye and his friend Bruce, and how everyone used the f slur like it was their first name!
- Stile Project...
  I had been on that site for years when my sister tried to traumatize me with "Two girls, one cup"...
  I laughed, then showed her "Return of the Japscat" and the pain Olympics.
  Do not recite the old magicks to me...

Yeah I remember especially in the early 2010s of YouTube there were videos of mexican cartel beheadings being shown daily like it was a normal thing in YouTube, was really odd.
- It was strange, but at least it was true and without sweet lies.

When the internet was fun! I relive it using the archive and keeping old pics around. It was undeniably better before walled gardens and social media shit.

Grainy vids and bad audio, I’d rather have that authentic effort than the highly polished regurgitated bulsheet narrated with a YouTube voice we see now.

NomadNet on Reticulum has an old internet vibe. Anonymity and markdown "web pages".

!oldweb@lemmy.ml might be of interest - not hugely busy, but has some links to old internet stuff.

Ahh the times when internet cost one kidney per minute.

I'm sort of on the edge of this. I grew up going to older forums, but those were still moderated and I can't really remember a time without google. Honestly I don't even remember how I found the sites that I used. I guess some were just forums for games I played, but less sure about other places.

I remember pre Eternal September, yes.
My father loved technology so the moment we could get internet we did. Which was right after our doctor friend got internet lmfao. Loved you, mosaic, at his house.
I use to go to some site called A Girls World which was for girls. No idea how safe it was. I edited recipes for the site! Fun times.

I think youtube changed internet a lot. It required whole new mindset to be able to spend time there. "things" were ready quite early but we needed to wait next generation to actually create some content to watch.

Yes and no. I had a friend who was an extremely talented info sec person who left several forums and irc because they were sick of hearing slurs related to their identity. Maybe people would have not made these slurs, had they known. It's more telling who we were, when it wasn't known.

Can't go wrong with some 2010's YouTube Poop. My favorite is Seu Madruga Will Go On.

Ooh! I love "Four Yorkshiremen Sketch" threads!

I remember when you could do anything at Zombo.com. Good news, everyone - you still can!

Here, I'll give you some balm for the wounds of time:
http://www.eviloverlord.com/
Use it wisely.

45 comments