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

Fuck Epic for abandoning their old games...

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It's sadly gone and I have yet to see if it's been preserved by any archiving site, but there used to be an interesting website called "Project A.F.T.E.R.". I can't say specifically what it was about, because it hosted a variety of content, but I remember it fondly because they found proof of Bleedman's pedophile drawings and were among the first to break the story about that sick fuck. That alone made me respect them.

I didn't go there as much as I wished I did, but I also enjoyed the METOKUR website. Yes, the same website that "Jim" took his namesake from. They too had a wide variety of content and were a pioneer of what the kids today call "cringe culture". Had I known that one of the guys in charge would develop troll's remorse and go full SJW, I would have saved a bunch of screenshots and copied the articles, but this was before I learned how fragile the internet could actually be with anonymously created content.

I want to end on a more positive note, so here's some classic internet that's still around: I really enjoyed Michael Swain's Blockhead series when it was still new. I'm not sure what he's doing these days but there is proof of him still being around in some manner, as he contributed to this year's Madness project. So here's hoping he might still make a comeback proper.
 
really stretching 'old' and 'Internet' but when i was in 1st grade we used to use a drawing program called KidPix (delux 3d version iirc)
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Lots of good memories on old macintoshes, like trying to coordinate the shift button to capitalize and thinking about how ridiculously long email addresses were.

Mackiev, the devs, seemingly have not updated their site in ten years and its also fun to look at.
Going to the computer lab back in elementary school just to mess around on KidPix was the shit :)

I can still hear the “my bad” sound clip in my head
Kid Pix was the shit, the ones we used was even more ghetto. I liked how the images would make sounds when you applied them. The 90's aesthetic one is kino.
Check out the browser version:

 
There's a small community of people who are into some sort of old web revival with making their own websites via Neocities, etc., and using things like webrings to link to each other.

I'm super glad some people still want to do this, but it would be really cool if that community had more goddamn normal people in it instead of just pronoun-listing furries who are too young to remember a time before Facebook. *sigh*
 
There's a small community of people who are into some sort of old web revival with making their own websites via Neocities, etc., and using things like webrings to link to each other.

I'm super glad some people still want to do this, but it would be really cool if that community had more goddamn normal people in it instead of just pronoun-listing furries who are too young to remember a time before Facebook. *sigh*
From what I understand most of them care more about the aesthetics of old internet stuff rather than actual preservation of history or creating sites that emulate the culture of the web at the time.

I know how you feel about it. In an ideal world I'd love to create a forum using old forum software and abiding by old forum site rules (basically "don't be a dick"). But that's nigh impossible in today's current climate.
 
randomly had this tune pop into my head
it was the intro song to an old youtube show from 12 years ago. so, in terms of other stuff in this thread, it's not that old. but i didn't think there was anywhere else right to post this haha.

i miss flash animation music videos. they were so good.
 
I recently remembered this video existing and found it floating around on Youtube. I can't even remember where it was originally posted the watermark is for a porn site for some reason. Johnny Cage looking mofo in the background topless always gets me.


I miss old Newgrounds stuff when it was the most random shit. Just people making whatever comes to mind instead of trying to get clout or make a masterpiece. The song from this one has been stuck in my head for years. https://youtu.be/elESjSAyNEI


The old Zone flash animations for 4chan are nostalgic as fuck. Before 4chan saw a movie based on a comic book that falsely paints Guy Fawkes as somebody who was fighting government oppression when he was actually a religious extremist who was trying to restore a Catholic monarchy and put the Pope back in control of Europe. Then they all wore masks based on a religious extremist and acted like making videos and holding signs was going to save the world. Was more fun when it was degenerate weebs hiding in dark corners of the internet and pranking daytime TV shows.



 
One of the things I miss the most about the halcyon years of the internet is the culture of near-complete anonymity. In obscure forums (and not-so-obscure social media sites), I spent my nights talking to a variety of online friends who, to this day, I still have no idea what their names might've been or what they looked like, despite having such fond memories of them. Conversely, no one knew these things about me. Your identity wasn't asked for or expected of you, all that mattered was that you contributed something to the conversation.

Flash forward to now-- just from first-hand experience, I've seen Facebook require government ID to access your account. Instagram asks it's users to self-report race in surveys. The age of anonymity has ended not with a bang or even a whisper, but with a new audience of users who capitalize on identifying factors and protest when these factors are not required by the websites they use. I agree that the powers that be running these websites are corrupt, but they're also unfortunately just giving this new wave of internet users what they ask for.

I remember from the late '00s to early '10s, when I first dove into forum culture, it was a genuinely exciting experience, and I think the anonymity was really what made it. It made me happy to finish my daily obligations, boot up the computer, and see what my friends from all around the world were up to, even if all I recognized them by was a username and an icon of whichever online craze was the flavor of the day.

KF aside, I don't believe this culture exists anymore, and logging into modern social media is a chore.


real shit i also miss how you could still speak your mind, and how "cyber bullying" would be a joke in 2008 when i graduated hs

- imDb's old forums, seems like the internet hasn't figured out an effective way to discuss movies/tv since then. they should have left them up, but talking about real art can get offensive like that


why in the fuck did they get rid of those forums?
 
Honestly, for all the anonymity mentioned - and that's true - it felt like people were more real then as well. Not just because bots weren't a thing back then, but you didn't have the morass of society terminally online.... but rather just a bunch of regular, slightly weird people just like yourself just surfing the internet. That meant it was a lot easier to get to know someone in my opinion - you had to talk to them, be polite still, and whaddyaknow, it meant you could actually get to know someone as a friend through a common hobby or interest and actually bond in a healthy way. Some of my longest friends are from now 20-some odd years back I found just through a livejournal comment here, saying hi on AIM here, and so forth. Now you get a full blast of someone curating their public self ever-so-carefully yet feel more fake and artificial than ever.
 
my buddy used to pretend to be a girl on coke music so dudes would give him couches and pinball machines or whatever
and before you get mad, we were kids and thought it was the height of comedy
we would take turns talking to just a whole list of different dudes

eventually he started doing it on habbo hotel
which was even funnier because the britbongs got their parents to spend real money on that gay ass game
in america at that time, most parents were vehemently against the idea of spending money on the internet,
yet, despite this, he was rolling in the furni

it all ultimately culminated with him pretending to be a girl to get peoples' WoW log ins
he was eventually banned lol
 
my buddy used to pretend to be a girl on coke music so dudes would give him couches and pinball machines or whatever
and before you get mad at him, we were kids and thought it was the height of comedy
we would take turns talking to just a whole list of different dudes

eventually he started doing it on habbo hotel
which was even funnier because the britbongs got their parents to spend real money on that gay ass game
in america at that time, most parents were vehemently against the idea of spending money on the internet,
yet, despite this, he was rolling in the furni

it all ultimately culminated with him pretending to be a girl to get peoples' WOW log ins
he was eventually banned lol
Please tell me that he didn't eventually troon out for real.
 
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