If you've ever found yourself missing the "good old days" of the #web, what is it that you miss? (Interpret "it" broadly: specific websites? types of activities? feelings? etc.) And approximately when were those good old days?
No wrong answers — I'm working on an article and wanted to get some outside thoughts.
@molly0xfff for me, the thing I miss most is the up-front feeling that the web was built by people and for people.
Rationally, I know that people are still building the web, but everything feels so smoothed over and dehumanized now.
And when I ask myself "why does this exist" about most websites now, the answer is "to make money [on ads/investors]" rather than "because someone thought this should be on the web"
Kind of an abstract answer, but everything is so featureless now.
@molly0xfff I might be romanticizing childhood, but I feel like there was a moment there where it was about sharing knowledge, information, content for the sake of sharing those things; for a sort of greater good. When it was about presenting accurate information, not making sure a particular page shows up for specific keywords. One page lead to another totally surprising page, and it was all pretty awesome. (1/3)
@molly0xfff in the 2000s I had a geocities website listing my favorite online flash games. I wrote it by hand after learning HTML from davesite.com and it had sparklies following your cursor around. Is that the good old days?
@molly0xfff Molly, it was nice when you could find information and not fight through every solicitation, related or otherwise, trying to separate you from your hard earned money. It is even worse now that bad actors are everywhere trying to scam you, con you, steal your Identity, etc. No one can be trusted.
The premise behind Battlestar Galactica is worth a moments reflection. The network in that world almost brought humanity to extinction. Only an air gapped (not networked) ship saved us.
@molly0xfff the golden age of blogging was pretty fun, lots of people reading each other's blogs via RSS and having debates by linking to each other's posts
@molly0xfff the decentralization. The internet wasn't about gaming a social media site's algorithm, it was about... well, it was about gaming Google Search, but at least it felt more even than this.
(d) When separate applications were useful or even needed, they were task focused instead of company-focused. Pidgin/Trillian/etc. for IM, Thunderbird/Eudora for e-mail, and so forth.
(e) Didn't have the feeling of "jumping ship" every time some service was bought out or tightened the screws. We were all spread out, with a lot less single-point-of-failure modes.
@molly0xfff the main thing I miss is people actually going to a variety of websites. I remember when Wordle just came out (and wasn't owned by NYT) somebody said that if there is going to be a web3, it'll just be people actually going to websites again, like they were with Wordle, and that resonated with me.
@molly0xfff AOL chat rooms, yahoo games, learning core web protocols (ftp, http, smtp, etc) for the first time.. I'm sure there's more but that's probably enough 😅
@molly0xfff I miss the (maybe naively) optimistic vibe. It was easy to imagine interoperability and openness being pervasive and building ever deeper stacks of functionality, but now it seems like those things are the exception not the rule, and often transient when they do exist.
@ZaneSelvans@molly0xfff yeah, there was a wonderful ~10yr period when lots of sites were defaulting to offering an unrestricted API and encouraging all kinds of innovative uses - then stuff like Cambridge Analytica happened and everything snapped shut again
@molly0xfff in 1994 we were talking about hacking the HP48 calculator in the comp.sys.hp48 newsgroup and Dave Arnett the designer of the calculator chimed in. I was in a country which five years before was behind the Iron Curtain. The ability to connect with everyone ... it was an undescribable heady feeling.
It lasted for a while... IRC and forums took over from Usenet but it was similar. It ended somewhere around 2012 (Facebook IPO) - 2013 (Vine launch, Google Reader shutdown).
@molly0xfff the web in the 2000s, probably mostly around 2003 but no later than 2008. Lines up with my teen years, and when I first got regular unsupervised access to the web.
Some of it is just nostalgia, but a few big things that come to mind:
You could still learn how to make websites by looking at the source code for websites that had interesting stuff on them.
It was relatively common for people to make quirky personal websites.
Small communities often had search engine indexed forums, instead of opaque Discord servers.
Google search worked a lot better. It was easier to find very specific information on niche topics. Now it feels like everything including google is trying to direct me away from that.
Online stores used to be a LOT easier to navigate and find things on.
Most of the predatory design patterns that are popular today hadn't been invented yet. Now days everything is trying to demand attention it doesn't require.
Instant messaging was a more common way for me to keep in touch with people. I worry I'm bothering people now if I send an IM if it's someone I don't regularly correspond that way.
Cryptocurrency didn't exist yet, so ransomware wasn't a thing yet.
More for the earlier end of that time range: big for-profit social media corporations hadn't pushed real name policies on everyone yet, so it was more common for everyone to have a quirky screen name.
Also on the earlier end of that time range: the internet didn't feel like some big super invasive panopticon surveillance state machine yet.
@molly0xfff I think maybe this is more of a me problem than the times, but I feel like the majority of socializing I do online happens here on Mastodon with 5k people potentially watching me pick my nose, and it kinda feels like the trueman show sometimes even though I'm not clowning around on corporate surveillance media anymore. I feel corralled into consolidating everything onto one account now.
@molly0xfff Maybe it's because years of fbook and twitter destroyed my old web habbits for socializing online, or maybe there's just something addicting about having the attention of a hundred or so people at any given moment depending on the time of day, but either way I feel like I can't compartmentalize my online identity anymore, and so I just have to pick and choose what parts of me fit that popularity filter, and the outcome is not always something I'm happy with.
@molly0xfff I think that pretty much everything on and about the Web was better, in some real sense of the word, in 2007 than it is now. The Web really peaked around 2012, but 2007 was the last time it felt like it wasn't out to get us and we were out to get them.
We were generally trying to invent new, not replace old with " but over HTTP"
We were generally ok with the non-dynamic Web Site
Individual creators and ideas mattered more than corps and agendas
@molly0xfff what I miss from the old web, I revisit in Hypnospace Outlaw.
Happening upon winding journeys through passionate knowledge dumps, niche humor, and/or grassroots community, all tenuously connected through links from webrings, forums, and/or irc messages.
Modern algos’ peddlings feel like fast fashion compared to the old internet’s antique shop. Sure there was technically less there, but it felt more infinite, with more charming possibility abound. All found instead of given.
In the early 1990s after I had left Cambridge, I could type "finger cellodad@mit.edu" in a UNIX window and the local server would tell me he's in the terminal room in the basement of Building 4, and has been logged into his favourite terminal for so many hours and minutes.
Innocent times.
(Then we'd open a zephyr window and chat).
(That was before the "cello" and the "dad" was part of our lives, but you know what I mean).
@molly0xfff people just having websites. You'd go to the websites to see the thing not just some twitter bullshit. Things that weren't mega corps would actually be shared and looked at
@molly0xfff I miss being able to stumble into small active communities having conversations around topics. this could be a chatroom, it could be a forum, it might be a series of linked pages like livejournal with comment sections. there were regulars and lurkers and new folks. it was often toxic, but made the world feel open and big (important to me when I was younger and had more time for the internet), and like people were in conversation, even if sometimes bad, rather than broadcast
@molly0xfff also. I miss having a notion of "being online" for chatting with friends, like via an instant messenger. I know we have cell phones now, but I dislike the implicit expectation of always being contactable rather than making yourself available for conversation
@molly0xfff The simplicity of it, and the fact you left being online behind when you left your desk. And the fact that every darned thing in your life didn't depend on being online one way or another. And that hackers and scammers weren't in every corner (yet).
@molly0xfff It felt like there were more websites? All of them small and niche - really catered to a specific set of interests.
I was a mod on a Green Day fan site. I was a mod on a small fan fic website. I built a Harry Potter fan site and connected it up to heaps of other HP fan sites. I spent a lot of time on Neopets and Habbo Hotel. Forums! So. Many. Forums.
And all of these sites looked different and functioned differently.
@molly0xfff I miss having RSS feeds of blogs. There are still some about, but it used to be that EVERYONE had a blog. Now, everyone's on social media, and most the social media is way down the enshittification curve.
@molly0xfff I have been online since before the general population was getting into dial up. I had unique and almost unfettered access to BBS and then eventually IRC, and the more general web.
The anonymous access to information and social groups, the ability to find a local resource of expertise, and the flexibility that online tools and communities provided are something I find myself looking for.
Experts are behind pay walls, subscription services, or being managed by shadowy unclear groups. Tools like Mastodon and others are quickly filled with droves of people struggling to design para-social networks and enrichment centers.
We as a society have monetized fun and hustle cultured our recreational areas. I miss the moments when I could message someone like you and have an earnest conversation. I don't mean that as a slight, just a living example.
We are both writers, but we are in different lanes. I don't particularly think you would enjoy my writing, but the expectations that I have in this environment is that I might be heard by you, but there will be a billion other responses...no really a good arena to trade thoughts and ideas. But it used to be.
Add comment