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

[Billy Bob Dick]

IMDb message boards

 

[ZsaZsaBinks]

What about BrainPOP?

 

[习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想]

I used to love going on Overclockers Club. The users there were incredibly helpful when I was doing my first PC build and first took a stab at overclocking, and the product reviews the staff posted were pretty helpful. They're still around, but the forums are largely dead, and the site is a shell of its former self.

Also, who could forget zombo.com?

 

[Vibromatic Heart Bed]

The Sims 1 website from the early 2000's. There was this BBS/sims exchange where you could upload photo album stories and discuss. People would put sooo much work designing their sim characters, posing them mid-game play, and staging detailed photos with captions. You could rate the stories out of 5 stars, sort by most popular/genre and just spend hours reading away. There were some really great stories... wish I knew how to take screenshots back then. I remember one particularly scary murder-mystery about a babysitter, a really stunning multipart fairytale, and a hilarious rags-to-riches tale (Maggie Malone!)

There were some weird shitpost stories too, I remember one where the author staged these sexualized pics of the NPC paper delivery girl and every photo caption was "the paper girl DELIVERS!" the community was in an uproar lol

Then there were the fun Sims spinoff sites like 7 Deadly Sims and Parsimonious. It was a fun time to be a kid on the internet

 

[D.Angus]

I miss a lot of the virtual world type online games, where you'd make a character and just set off exploring whatever the developers and/or players made. Maybe you'd come across some people and have a conversation. I feel like that doesn't happen anymore as in no one really wants to talk for fear of upsetting the Alphabet people. Games now feel so quiet, even though voice chat is built into everything. I just miss the days of hopping onto whatever game and just enjoying whatever conversation was going. Teenage me still remembers that late night GTA 4 session where everyone was just casually asking a stripper questions respectfully.

The other thing I miss was when people did stuff just because they wanted to. People would upload their blogs, comics, videos, what-have-you just because they thought someone else might enjoy it. Now everyone does things for clout, doesn't matter what it is, it is always just for that sweet sweet attention with potential to make money. It's why I cannot stand a lot of content on the Internet, it's all passionless.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I remember for a brief period when i was super into Cracked.com and would open their site pretty much every day. Every writter on there is probably a lolcow, looking back most of it was big bang theory tier humor, most of the stuff there probably doesn't hold up. They started making videos with the editors talking later on and it was pretty cringe.

 

[Toolbox]

I miss a lot of the virtual world type online games, where you'd make a character and just set off exploring whatever the developers and/or players made. Maybe you'd come across some people and have a conversation. I feel like that doesn't happen anymore as in no one really wants to talk for fear of upsetting the Alphabet people. Games now feel so quiet, even though voice chat is built into everything. I just miss the days of hopping onto whatever game and just enjoying whatever conversation was going. Teenage me still remembers that late night GTA 4 session where everyone was just casually asking a stripper questions respectfully.

The other thing I miss was when people did stuff just because they wanted to. People would upload their blogs, comics, videos, what-have-you just because they thought someone else might enjoy it. Now everyone does things for clout, doesn't matter what it is, it is always just for that sweet sweet attention with potential to make money. It's why I cannot stand a lot of content on the Internet, it's all passionless.

As close as last year worlds.com was online, likely still. I'd recommend trying it out as it still has a small but active community and a cult following, though you're unlikely to get all of the old internet memories from it, especially since it's heyday is long gone and some of the new fans definitely are rainbow mafia, but I have yet to encounter them. There's people there that'll take you on tours of ancient worlds made as ads by companies that may or may not even still be around, as many were .com boom founded. I wasn't exactly around for the era of online chatrooms, but that feel is special.

 

[Synthetic Smug]

Cybersight, FiskerMUD, and a lot of the old Mondo 2000 vibe. A sort of high water mark for part of the Gen X experience. Not easy to fully communicate and very difficult to package, like zines before the entire masthead of Ben's Dead showed what complete lolcows they were.

 

[anustart76]

The Sims 1 website from the early 2000's. There was this BBS/sims exchange where you could upload photo album stories and discuss. People would put sooo much work designing their sim characters, posing them mid-game play, and staging detailed photos with captions. You could rate the stories out of 5 stars, sort by most popular/genre and just spend hours reading away. There were some really great stories... wish I knew how to take screenshots back then. I remember one particularly scary murder-mystery about a babysitter, a really stunning multipart fairytale, and a hilarious rags-to-riches tale (Maggie Malone!)

There were some weird shitpost stories too, I remember one where the author staged these sexualized pics of the NPC paper delivery girl and every photo caption was "the paper girl DELIVERS!" the community was in an uproar lol

Then there were the fun Sims spinoff sites like 7 Deadly Sims and Parsimonious. It was a fun time to be a kid on the internet

Man, that reminds me of those old promotional websites that we used to get for some games and movies. Instead of just a bland static site, we'd get all kinds of fun little promotional stuff, like I remember the Mario Party 6 (I think it was 6) website let you design your own wallpaper with pictures of the characters and such, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga had something like that too, and I think Spider-Man 3's video game had a website with a similar thing. I miss those little time-wasters, so much fun as a kid. They're all lost now, especially with the archive sites not supporting Flash.

 

[Grift Garrison]

AOL Grandstand message boards.

 

[frap]

I remember for a brief period when i was super into Cracked.com and would open their site pretty much every day. Every writter on there is probably a lolcow, looking back most of it was big bang theory tier humor, most of the stuff there probably doesn't hold up. They started making videos with the editors talking later on and it was pretty cringe.

There were a couple articles I found amusing on there but it all went to shit when they started with the videos. My impression from the limited bits I've seen was that they all thought louder=funnier.

 

[Lev El Shmeckle]

uCoz based sites and forums were fun. There also were a lot of exploits that were, granted, a good way to wreck some havoc and do a little trolling.

 

[PinstripeLuns]

Not super old but ScrewAttack Top 10s with Stuttering Craig were my childhood. That one song that used to play in the intro is burned into my memories. I remember being like 8 and watching "Top 10 Boobs in Gaming".

 

[Swordfish]

I played Club Penguin pre-Disney probably in 2006. I remember loving the events. After Disney bought it I played for years. Private servers were fun before the truth about Riley came out, now most of the servers are gone or are taken down almost immediately. Wish I could find one that’s decent for the nostalgia.

 

[Triple Flutz]

I really miss Xanga, I was part of a little community there (at most 100) and some of us still talk to this day despite having nothing in common beyond that shared experience anymore. I know it still exists as 2.0, but it's really nothing like it used to be, the people there don't feel as interesting, and afaik we all migrated from it in the late 2000s to early 2010s though some made the transition to Livejournal or Tumblr. I also had my first experiences with personal lolcows on this website, none of which I can find any archive for, screenshots of, or any current Internet presence for, so when I found the Kiwi Farms for the first time a few years after deleting my Xanga, it was a great continuation of something I felt I had lost.

I also remember avidly reading Oh No They Didn't! on LJ in the mid-to-late-2000s, but I never felt moved to participate. Same for DataLounge- they had good figure skating gossip, but I'm not a gay male so I never felt like it was a place for me to participate, just observe and laugh at.

Vanity is Perfection were some of my favorite lolcows as well, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who remembers reading about Courtney's cocaine habit, the emo guy who suddenly started spray-tanning to an oompa-loompa coloration, Lÿcka or whatever their name was whining about people looking at them weird on the Swedish bus even though everything about their physical presentation was attention-seeking, or Ophelia coming in once in a while and seeing the masses basically crying, screaming, and pissing themselves in adoration. Good times.

 

[Baggywrinkle_v2]

Cybersight, FiskerMUD, and a lot of the old Mondo 2000 vibe. A sort of high water mark for part of the Gen X experience. Not easy to fully communicate and very difficult to package, like zines before the entire masthead of Ben's Dead showed what complete lolcows they were.

I was just thinking of cybersight the other day. I have no idea how I found it or even the main purpose of it except that I would troll some of the music forums on it. That led to some fun html chat trolling as well. Back when everyone would get death threats and correctly just laugh them off.

 

[Maskull]

I never played around on any of these sites during their heyday but I really like their aesthetic and I wish this sort of interactive chat room were still popular.

 

[Rozzy]

I miss the old Macromedia Flash animations and games from the early 2000's, they are still available on the Internet archive but no longer play in a browser window as Flash is no longer supported. Most can be played offline using Gnash player.

 

[Ether Being]

That one song that used to play in the intro is burned into my memories.

I'll be metroid dreading if anyone doesn't know about this, is this too much for one samus to handle????

I missed when old YouTube animators didn't cared about how good it looks and only cared about how funny it was, especially this one with the smooth crude animation of 60fps into 24fps which is very rare to see that PilotRedSun can only deliver. Hits hard in the gamer's soul when your games deleted/gone every time this scenario happens, I think of this cartoon.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I am not sure if this korean game was popular in other countries but it was huge in mine during the early 00s. Wasted more time on it that i care to admit and i quit because i thought i was getting too hooked.

Most people i knew didn't play the official server but a private one called Acacias, same thing but less grind was needed. I think some of those people are still going keeping that server alive even to this day.

The music gives me ton of nostalgia, also its the only online rpg i played for a long period, i played others but always quited them after a few days, mmorpgs were always boring to me.
There's also a newer Mu game that came out, not the same, i don't care to even try.