Favourite "Old Internet" stuff - Let's reminisce about the Wild West days

I was (sometimes still am) a MASSIVE Runescape fan. As a small kid I was super into computers, loved them so much, old crt fat things, watching my family play on them even as a small child, Id sit there for hours. My siblings and I would take turns on the sims 1, neopets, and of course runescape classic. My family was strict and there were a lot of us all wanting to use the computer, so getting that time was sacred and so exciting. I remember later on when I got a school laptop to borrow, being able to access kongregate and jamming those games, downloading music (and viruses) and chatting with friends on the first ancient versions of msn. Those were the days.
Also seeing you guys post all the things I saw back then, I'm having such a massive wave of nostalgia and rememberance!
 
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not "old internet" old internet as in way old, but fuckkk I miss Tumblr's 2015-17 aesthetics. Mainly the tagging system. This was back when kidcore and appreciation for those aesthetics were a very niche community. Since it was niche, the tags were nice and clean. It was only images and gifs posted that match the aesthetic nothing more.

Now the tags are completely shitted up. I don't wanna see your digital art of your fursona or whatever "inspired" by that aesthetic with huge walls of text as a caption, I dont wanna see your text walls, I dont wanna see your headcanons or ANY fandom related material. Stop shitting up the tags.

Its so niche and minor but it irks me a lot since I was there from the beginning. I always feel for the people that hate the mainstream and despise it when their interest becomes mainstream. Its not so much pretentiousness, its the fact that once something becomes popular it becomes impossible to moderate and gatekeep to maintain quality control.

I miss my eye candy communities lol
there wasnt any "culture" around it either, no special identity. Just image and gif sharing meant to invoke a certain feeling. Thats why aesthetics have their names and why I despise it when people slap the word "core" on something or use a term too vague, the worst offender is "weirdcore" to me.
 
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deermeat said:
Thats why aesthetics have their names and why I despise it when people slap the word "core" on something or use a term too vague, the worst offender is "weirdcore" to me.
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I don't understand why "core" is being randomly attached to words at all. The word "hardcore" means something that is extreme, immersive, pervasive, and excessive. I know that the meaning of words in any language is constantly moving, but can someone please explain to me how we went from "hardcore" to short lived, tacky fashion trends?

When I was a kid, I swore that I'd never be like old people with their "young people today" spiels, but I am seriously wondering if it's time to get a set of dentures and complain about my arthritis.
 
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glass_houses said:
I don't understand why "core" is being randomly attached to words at all. The word "hardcore" means something that is extreme, immersive, pervasive, and excessive. I know that the meaning of words in any language is constantly moving, but can someone please explain to me how we went from "hardcore" to short lived, tacky fashion trends?

When I was a kid, I swore that I'd never be like old people with their "young people today" spiels, but I am seriously wondering if it's time to get a set of dentures and complain about my arthritis.
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Everything's a fucking "core" now. I first saw it attached to music, which is more understandable then whatever random outfit you put on and decided was derivative of something because you need to be special. :roll:
 
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This is gonna sound odd but I don't really miss a lot of the old internet. The aesthetic and functionality of the old net just kind of sucked dick, which isn't to say the aesthetics are any better these days, but there are a lot of things on the internet now that I wouldn't give up for the old.
What I do miss from the olden days is the lack of corporatization, censorship, and advertiser-cucking. Back when the capital I Internet was an untouched, virgin series of tubes as opposed to the dystopian hellscape of social bubbles that it is now.
glass_houses said:
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When I finally aged out of 4chan, Trollface was still going strong. That was the last time I saw him in the wild. I don't miss him, but I sometimes find myself feeling nostalgic for old memes. Nowadays, I have to search knowyourmeme to know what the new ones are. I'd probably have more idea if I used Reddit regularly, but fuck Web 3.0
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I would give a thousand disgusting, overwrought soyjacks for the simple elegance of the trollface.
 
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Did anyone else lose their edit button? I wanted to edit my post. Since I can't, here goes.

Sometimes I'd bring my cereal bowl to the computer and I'd very carefully eat while browsing. It was a big deal, I had to be careful so I wouldn't spill anything.
 
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It disappears after some time, not sure exactly how long. Was the post you wanted to edit more than a few hours old?
 
I miss cool/retarded usernames on forums...one of the many reasons i love it here, the ability to create usernames...gay nigger association of america was good too, although my experience there was limited to sending the link to everyone so they would eventually be assaulted with " HEY EVERYBODY, IM LOOKING AT GAY PORNO!!" with zillions of gay pop ups...good times :lol:
 
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Fagnacious D said:
Most websites these days are built off of churning out content as quickly as possible. Gaming the algorithm so that they can have more traffic to show ads to is the goal. Quality isn't secondary or even tertiary; it's a byproduct at best. The internet has been over-monetized for quiet some time and its extremely hard to find anything non mainstream these days because search engines have been gimped.
Old internet directory styled sites and webrings may be the best way to go but, modern politics may prevent them from working. Having your website kicked off of the directory because some tranny saw somethign vaguely offensive is a likely scenario!
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Ah, yes, back when they didn't know what to actually do with html and just copied what you did with gopher.
 
Tablet County said:
The aesthetic and functionality of the old net just kind of sucked dick
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The limited functionality of the internet was a barrier to normalfags. The one-touch, retard-proof, formatted-for-portrait-mode internet contributed massively to the internet going to shit. There's a point somewhere between 2008 and 2012, where I'd be okay with limited functionality if it prevented normalfags completely invading the internet.
 
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AWizard said:
The limited functionality of the internet was a barrier to normalfags. The one-touch, retard-proof, formatted-for-portrait-mode internet contributed massively to the internet going to shit. There's a point somewhere between 2008 and 2012, where I'd be okay with limited functionality if it prevented normalfags completely invading the internet.
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also when phonefags came in, everything became a simple svg lineart image. I miss when you got high-detail skeuomorphic bitmap art
 
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I miss Kazaa and Limewire. I miss getting weird viruses in stupid ways and having to figure out how to either use an antivirus or reinstall windows without my parents finding out.
I miss the fact that every goddamn thing back then was a shitty and poorly-translated bootleg you'd get off p2p. Each of them was unique in their shittiness and you'd have specific bootleggers and translators you liked and trusted. I miss there being a barrier to entry, before every moron had internet access shoved in their faces nonstop and encouragement to use it.
I miss having all different kinds of small websites and bulletins with their own tight-knit communities and cultures. I miss having niche websites that catered to different audiences.
I miss having usable fucking interfaces that aren't so busy trying to larp as "minimalist" that they were just empty and impossible to navigate.
I miss stuff like the recently-departed bash.org, where small groups of people posted fun little things from their own personal worlds with friends because they wanted to share them.
I miss the times before social media was dominant and everybody thought their every fucking thought had any importance or value to it. I miss having a thread or conversation without every retard alive adding a worthless reply that was just 3 "words" of nigger gobbledygook with no meaning to any of them. I miss having some degree of anonymity, and I miss the Internet feeling like something separate from real life rather than yet another fake and gay aspect of it.
I miss the lack of corporatefagging. Nothing was "professional" or sanitized, it was popular to have a section of the site for the owners to post hatemail they'd received. They used to ban users for being disruptive faggots when their disruptions did nothing to contribute to the site or its culture.
I miss being able to do fun things online like play a fucking flash game without having to download two apps and make five accounts for shit I will never fucking use, having to come up with unique passwords for each that will inevitably leak and not be usable again. I miss being able to use a goddamn site without a paywall, twenty ads that scroll the page randomly at random intervals, and six gorillion plugins that are only there to violate my goddamn privacy.
I miss my free cupholder.
Instant_Pot_User said:
Spineworld, a quirky little Swedish MMO-chatroom that was killed by the 2008 financial crash. It had an inimitable sense of style and a great soundtrack for a browsergame; I'm pretty sure the Spineworld soundtrack influenced my taste in music. There have been multiple attempts to revive the game, but it's long gone now, except in memories and in the portfolios of the people who worked on it.

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I almost cried seeing that someone else remembers Spineworld, every few years I get a sudden desire to find source code or some kind of archive or record of it, but it's shockingly scarce.
 
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Macho Man's Rabbi said:
I almost cried seeing that someone else remembers Spineworld, every few years I get a sudden desire to find source code or some kind of archive or record of it, but it's shockingly scarce.
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I never got into it, but I'll archive the soundtrack here just cuz'
I miss back in the day downloading doom wads all day on the beige monster only to get a virus. I remember at one point IE loaded up with 3 toolbars and my dad chewed me out. Also does anyone remember/have the old VIP audio pack swfs? I always liked downloading my music like that, got me into protracker
 

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I used to watch j-pop music videos on early YouTube, and then I’d get my uncle to download the dance shot versions and put them on my Nintendo DS flashcart so that when I was at home and didn’t have internet access I could use Moonshell to rewatch them in glorious 256 x 192 screen resolution and try to learn the dances. I also had some episodes of the X-men cartoon on there too at one point.

Also, anybody remember Weebl’s Stuff? The Weebl and Bob parody of Take on Me by Aha was the first time I ever heard the song, so now whenever I hear the real one my brain always thinks of the parody lyrics.
 
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Elysian said:
I used to watch j-pop music videos on early YouTube, and then I’d get my uncle to download the dance shot versions and put them on my Nintendo DS flashcart so that when I was at home and didn’t have internet access I could use Moonshell to rewatch them in glorious 256 x 192 screen resolution and try to learn the dances. I also had some episodes of the X-men cartoon on there too at one point.

Also, anybody remember Weebl’s Stuff? The Weebl and Bob parody of Take on Me by Aha was the first time I ever heard the song, so now whenever I hear the real one my brain always thinks of the parody lyrics.
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Was this by the same people who made Homestar Runner?
 
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