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

[Pargon]

RealPlayer, before it turned into the goddamn shitshow it’s now infamous for, was at one point bleeding edge when it came to audio streaming. I used it in my high school’s computer lab to discover new artists because people used it to build internet radio stations for all kinds of genres. Heaven for a baby audio snob. The Internet was once a place you could rely on to point you right to the weird and cool shit you’d never heard before as long as you didn’t mind putting in a little work to look; if you wanted top 40 and alternative you could still listen to the radio or go to Sam Goody. If you wanted to get into ambient or house and you didn’t live on a coast (at least in the US) you had places like CD.com, where anyone or their brother could host their music and you could build mixes and have them burned to a disc and shipped to you. Fucking mind blowing for someone who grew up making call-in requests to radio stations so they could record them on cassettes.

Don’t get me wrong, the variety of music you can find now is astronomical, but esoteric stuff is much harder to find because all the services except things like Bandcamp are owned by labels, and even Bandcamp has to follow trends to turn a profit.

I had a vision as a collegiate freshman of the Internet as history’s largest record store, where you could dump a genre search and pull up the most purchased results right alongside something uploaded by some kid noodling on a keyboard in his bedroom, and I got to watch that vision strangled over inches by record companies to the point where I can type “dark ambient” into Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music and get identical results on the first two pages. Algorithms written to put things most likely for you to buy in front of your eyes and bury the rest. Seconds of attention commodified and the same five conglomerates clamoring for it every time you pick up your phone. The Internet is now a pipeline for money to flow from your bank account through your eyeballs to companies that hate you as a person.

And outsiders scratch their heads over why users fight so hard to preserve places like this. Because only in the darkest corners will you find sites that aren’t hitting you up for cash every ninety seconds.

 

[Boom Boss]

early 2000s newgrounds flash used to be my fucking entire life. I still reminisce on those days now.

For me it was mainly old flash games I used to play during school (Addictinggames, Kongregate, Armorgames, NinjaKiwi, ect.)

You can still go back. Good games are still being published there. Most flash sites still exist. BlueMaxima's Flashpoint has archived so many flash games, some of them being previously lost.

 

[Dalmatian Enthusiast]

There's a lot of things I miss about "the good old days" - even if I was only cognizant for the tail-end of them. The best part of early YouTube had to be that the partner program was limited to a few people here and there. This meant that the majority of people making videos weren't doing it for money, they were doing it for fun and if they went viral as a by-product then it was a win/win. Old YouTube was just more genuine - there weren't as many stuffed-shirts and stick-in-the-muds telling people that the only way to make videos was their way, there was unrestricted originality and creativity among the users (until the Viacom shitshows started, then you could still have fun as long as you didn't make YTPs), and probably the best part - you could customize your channel to your heart's desire. I don't go on YouTube much anymore, I saw that place go from something I loved to shithole beyond saving over fifteen years of using it - but sometimes I'll feel a little nostalgic and search some terms here and there with "before:2009" at the end of the query. You find some good stuff, stuff that no one's seen in years - stuff that the uploaders have long since moved on from - but genuine, real, and fun to watch stuff regardless. Artifacts from a simpler time, back when the trees were tall and life didn't suck. Here's one I found the other day (I was searching for old Columbine videos and scrolling through the comments at the time, those MCR profile pictures next to "RIP Reb and VoDkA" aged like a fine wine).

 

[Elysian]

You can still go back. Good games are still being published there. Most flash sites still exist. BlueMaxima's Flashpoint has archived so many flash games, some of them being previously lost.

I’ve linked this somewhere before (might’ve been earlier in this very thread actually) but http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/ was my go-to flash game site back in the day and still exists.

 

[Spangled Drongo]

Character creator/dress-up doll games were my favourite thing as a kid - which is why I'm annoyed that Picrew, the closest modern equivalent, has been taken over by low effort woke artists (though as long as you stick to the ones by Japanese creators it's decent)

 

[There Is Light At The End]

Mark Gormley

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Kazaa is the peer2peer software people most mention but the better one was Ares.

In Ares there was a chat option with many chatrooms , in that chat there was also the option to look at another user's entire library of files (if they didn't choose to hide them). I remember being the weirdest chat around and people had all sorts of fucked up files saved but i also found out about bands that way, just looking at weirdos music sections. Someone could see your music and open a chat just to tell you your music taste was shit. Sometimes people would have like family pictures and random stuff like homework files because they didn't realize they choosed to shared the mydocuments folder on Ares lol.

 

[Elysian]

 

[Tequila Jong]

RealPlayer, before it turned into the goddamn shitshow it’s now infamous for, was at one point bleeding edge when it came to audio streaming.

Man, I'd almost totally forgotten about RealPlayer until a friend of mine brought it up last week. I used it up until a friend introduced me to Winamp (which I still use, now in the form of WACUP) and from that, Shoutcast radio. It was an amazing feeling spending nights just typing in a genre, and then listening to someones favourite tunes they decided to broadcast with the world.

On a similar note, my favourite thing from the internet-that-was is Audioscrobbler/last.fm. Minor PL, I had an account from around 2004/2005 and around 2015 the website itself just started slowly dying, more whatever retard was in the charts being pushed, and the older users just fading out. When they got rid of the social functions like journals and groups, I ditched my account. Shame really, felt like saying goodbye to an old friend.

I think the sheer volume of music (the same can be said for all media I guess) available online at any given time has destroyed the enjoyment of discovery for a lot of people, I noticed it myself when I was using streaming services, its just too easy. Ditching Spotify and going back to sailing the seven seas worked wonders, I think searching yourself for new music and finding something you really enjoy makes it sound so much better.

Also forums around 2002 - 2006 were fucking sublime.

 

[std::string]

Kazaa is the peer2peer software people most mention but the better one was Ares.

In Ares there was a chat option with many chatrooms , in that chat there was also the option to look at another user's entire library of files (if they didn't choose to hide them). I remember being the weirdest chat around and people had all sorts of fucked up files saved but i also found out about bands that way, just looking at weirdos music sections. Someone could see your music and open a chat just to tell you your music taste was shit. Sometimes people would have like family pictures and random stuff like homework files because they didn't realize they choosed to shared the mydocuments folder on Ares lol.

You could send messages to people on Kazaa and a surprising amount of people just shared their entire hard drive for some reason.

Looking for tax returns and messaging people with their SSN was fun times.

 

[Pargon]

Kazaa is the peer2peer software people most mention but the better one was Ares.

In Ares there was a chat option with many chatrooms , in that chat there was also the option to look at another user's entire library of files (if they didn't choose to hide them). I remember being the weirdest chat around and people had all sorts of fucked up files saved but i also found out about bands that way, just looking at weirdos music sections. Someone could see your music and open a chat just to tell you your music taste was shit. Sometimes people would have like family pictures and random stuff like homework files because they didn't realize they choosed to shared the mydocuments folder on Ares lol.

In 2000/01 Napster had an honest-to-God discovery function where they featured artists that could be found on the service. Some of the bands that wound up there were ones I might have never discovered, and a number of them are still around today (The Album Leaf springs immediately to mind). The founders were fucking decades ahead of their time, and I really hope they’re doing well. They ought to be shitzillionaires for the foundation they built that every online music service uses today.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

You could send messages to people on Kazaa and a surprising amount of people just shared their entire hard drive for some reason.

Looking for tax returns and messaging people with their SSN was fun times.

It was set by default lol. As soon as you started the program for the first time it would upload everything in your default windows documents folder. Too many people never even realized it.

 

[ditto]

Man, I'd almost totally forgotten about RealPlayer until a friend of mine brought it up last week

Real Networks are still around but they're making creepy facial recognition software nowdays.

"Babe of the Week" or something like that, Usenet, the old Slate magazine.

Cindy Margolis was the Guinness Book of World Records "most downloaded" person of 1999.

And for peak 90s was in a movie with Carrot Top (*not* a favorite old internet thing)

 

[anustart76]

Real Networks are still around but they're making creepy facial recognition software nowdays.

Cindy Margolis was the Guinness Book of World Records "most downloaded" person of 1999.

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And for peak 90s was in a movie with Carrot Top (*not* a favorite old internet thing)
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Those were the days, back when women actually wanted to look attractive instead of homeless.

 

[CaseyTatumm]

Shock sites that were funny and not just edgy gore. Everyone in those circles now is like fifteen and namedrops rotten and ogrish for clout but you can tell an oldfag if they're reminiscing about snc or cj. There was a great mix of gross, weird sex and gore and you never knew which one you were going to get when you clicked.

I never thought I'd say it, but there was something so pure about linking people on instant messenger convos to bigbag, which was just a saline inflation nutsack guy sitting on a kitchen floor jizzing pina colada mix everywhere that he probably got a bladder infection from. A lot of the lesser known looping clip catfish links like that are gone for good.

Also jj.am. There were so many weird gifs on it before everything was video instead.

Did you ever go to DigitalEnd? That was a great one!

 

[Pobbylobby]

What the hell ever happened to Webkinz? I remember having a kickass lizard one when I was 9

 

[behavioral swamp thang]

Live leak.... too soon?

 

[Spangled Drongo]

I was only on livejournal at the tail end of its popularity, just as people were beginning to switch over to Tumblr (where the shitstorm truly began) but have fond memories of the various capslock communities for different fandoms, where you'd basically shitpost IN ALL CAPS about whatever game/anime/book etc. was the main topic. Got some good laughs out of those.

 

[Elysian]

I’m surprised nobody has posted any edgy sims 2 machinima yet tbh

 

[Fag Albert]

Mark Gormley

Watching this goofy fucker's power stance always makes me smile. The song is pretty typical for when he recorded it but I don't think it's that bad.