- Joined
- Dec 19, 2022
Favourite "Old Internet" stuff - Let's reminisce about the Wild West days
- Thread starter Sneaky khajiit
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2023
I miss Mister Metokur. To me he embodied the spirit of the old Internet, and the Internet without him it's a more sanitized and boring place
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2020
Back around 2007ish there were a couple of prank groups that used vent, socks, and ip relay to make prank phone calls. 4chan vent and partyvan pranks. Would get stores to pull the fire suppression systems, prank called the police, and even convinced some people in a hotel to drink piss. It all came down when the FBI caught one of them who was phoning in bomb threats to universities for money got caught.
Large Marge
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2018
i loved prank U back in the day. convincing burger king employees there was a gas leak in the restaurant, and then getting them to smash all the windows was the funniest shit. listening to those prank calls live was surreal.
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2020
Absolutely insane what they convinced people to do over the phone. Called a hotel, managed to get passed over to a random room. Convinced the person in the room that there was some sort of biological event and they would need them to pee in a glass and drop it off at the front desk. Then convinced the person at the desk that a representative for an apple juice company would be dropping off a sample for them to rate.
Apparently a bunch are on youtube now
It's so much funnier knowing know it was a 16 year old kid telling netgear employees that he's going to slap them across their face with his 32 inch penis and tea bag their anal cavity. And knowing he spent 4 years in federal prison under the fucking Patriot Act because the feds were having trouble building a case and trying to strong arm him into accepting a plea.
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- Joined
- Jan 16, 2023
You know, I kinda miss when webcomics were a bigger part of internet culture.
Like, of course they're still around! Don't worry, I'm not that boomer. But I miss when they were... I dunno, more ubiquitous? When stuff like CLASSIC Penny Arcade and Something*Positive were big things online and a lot more webcomics were willing to cross over with one another. It's mostly offset by the passage of time revealing how screwed up all those creators were - learning about Dave Willis really puts a lot of the "Walkyverse" into hilarious context, Loss will be forever hilarious - but I will admit I miss the at least-perceived innocence of those days. Just a buncha nerds trying their best to make something entertaining or fun with the increasing scope of the internet, and if they're lucky, make some money from it.
Thinking on it... pure speculation here, correct me if I'm wrong... but did the rise of XKCD or however it's spelled, and Reddit, herald the end of those days? Webcomic solo and aggregate sites alike collapsed underneath Reddit's convenience and XKCD heralded the ugly basic-ass art and "akshually/in-tuhl-lek-shu-al" cynicism a lot of comics that now try to get attention on twitter are like.
Like, of course they're still around! Don't worry, I'm not that boomer. But I miss when they were... I dunno, more ubiquitous? When stuff like CLASSIC Penny Arcade and Something*Positive were big things online and a lot more webcomics were willing to cross over with one another. It's mostly offset by the passage of time revealing how screwed up all those creators were - learning about Dave Willis really puts a lot of the "Walkyverse" into hilarious context, Loss will be forever hilarious - but I will admit I miss the at least-perceived innocence of those days. Just a buncha nerds trying their best to make something entertaining or fun with the increasing scope of the internet, and if they're lucky, make some money from it.
Thinking on it... pure speculation here, correct me if I'm wrong... but did the rise of XKCD or however it's spelled, and Reddit, herald the end of those days? Webcomic solo and aggregate sites alike collapsed underneath Reddit's convenience and XKCD heralded the ugly basic-ass art and "akshually/in-tuhl-lek-shu-al" cynicism a lot of comics that now try to get attention on twitter are like.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2015
A lot of oldfag hobby forums are still running, kitbashing forums such as Whatifmodellers and Beyond the Sprues and forums such as Lead Adventure, Secretprojects etc.
A lot of hobby stuff was on Yahoo Groups and Google Groups and that is gone forever though.
A lot of hobby stuff was on Yahoo Groups and Google Groups and that is gone forever though.
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2020
I would put the blame on Homestuck. It kind of broke the "meta" of the webcomic scene, to the point that the only webcomics that have any kind of success nowadays are things like Kill Six Billion Demons, Unsounded, or Gunnerkrig Court, big and complex stories with above average art.
The XKCD style of shitty comic strips mostly migrated to having a presence on Twitter, things like Bike Cuck or that one with the ayy lmaos that got a tv show now.
Other than that, there's just legacy stuff that predates HS (Penny Arcade, Sinfest, etc), stuff that heavily panders to a particular political side (general political comics, like StoneToss or Matt Bors, or those comics full of faggottry or trannies like Questionable Content), and of course, the porn.
Now, a confession: I had a webcomic. It was shit. A shitty "friends talk about current games" trash strip. It doesn't exist anymore. No one remembers it, and no one will ever find anything about it.
And another, more related to what I said before about big stories: I had another planned, this time a serious story with a lot of fight scenes and shit. I had most of the story figured out, and one day I sat down to map things out, see how many pages and chapters and such I'd need to tell it. With a semi-reasonable update schedule, it would take like....
TEN FUCKING YEARS? No way, I'm not doing this, forget it.
And that's how the dream died. Fortunately, while obviously the story isn't that similar, Kill Six Billion Demons is pretty much the kind of thing I wanted to make. So I get to read it instead of slaving away, on top of normal work, to put the comic out for a fucking decade.
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2021
The non-intrusive adds everywhere, the colorful GIFs, flash games, the disney movies on youtube and vimeo...everything, they take everything from me... 
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2015
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2016
I didn't realize at the time, but YTMND had such a big influence on my taste in music. So many YTMNDs had such memoriable, unique, funny, interesting, or just plain catchy sound backings. To this day I still randomly get various things stuck in my head and when I listen to them they still hold up.
![LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]](http://uploads.kiwifarms.st/data/avatars/l/61/61177.jpg?1699571951){kind=avatar}
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2020
They were ahead of time with that formula. Some of those were real brain worms, can't unhear
Quiproquo
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2023
Instead of mentioning something in particular I'll mention what I liked in general terms, with a comparative eye to the current shit:
- Search engines that actually worked.
- Countless communities that allowed the building of online social circles, rather than the 5 websites we have now where everyone is a complete stranger.
- No dirty e-celebs.
- Little to no e-begging.
- Good online games with people that actually knew how to play.
- No socio-political sperging unless you were looking for it.
- Acceptably close to the US legal definition of free speech.
- Potentially subjective, but I remember people helping each other more, simply out of kindness.
Mongo0o
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2019
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2020
Was watching some old-ass onion news videos from like 2008 and when looking at the current shit the onion makes which is basically tiktok with an unironic soyjak talking to the camera it was just fucking depressing how low the standards are now, they don't even bother anymore...
On the other hand with stable diffusion anyone should be able to make webcomics now.
The problem is that we just can't have a laugh anymore, some groups are beyond criticism (at least in the mainstream) and every small joke is taken as a jab at somebody, it can't be a joke for the sake of fun it has to be some sort of political or ideological commentary/attack or mockery against "the other" and such even if you make a joke for fun most people will rather look for the hidden message that doesn't exists rather than just have a laugh for once.
Not the best example, that comic screams tumblr all over the place, even the art style is from around the GG era when uglyness became the norm but before the lazyness of calarts and corporate memphis added to it.
On the other hand with stable diffusion anyone should be able to make webcomics now.
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Fag Albert
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2015
Does anyone remember this one video where some kid's on a ventrilo or teamspeak chat and says "Hey Dawawon. We were on our dwuids and-" then whoever was recording makes a fucking soundboard out of it? I've tried a few different searches but haven't found it
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2021
Can't stay it's a favorite but it is the first real meme i ever saw.
This is a sperg but what i really miss is the obscurity. Most people in the 90s didn't have a computer, didn't know how to use them and had no idea what the internet was. Which means the average iq of the internet was 30-40 points higher than it is now. High quality discussion with good signal to noise ratio, high technical competence, absence of bots or shills, very limited and failing corporate media presence, weird unchained autism, and the pages were not filled with css and java shit because your pentium 75 with a 28.8 could't render that shit.
For a time I hoped tor would take off among autists because the slow speeds and shitty browser would turn away the singed-into-google-chrome niggercattle but that never materialized
This is a sperg but what i really miss is the obscurity. Most people in the 90s didn't have a computer, didn't know how to use them and had no idea what the internet was. Which means the average iq of the internet was 30-40 points higher than it is now. High quality discussion with good signal to noise ratio, high technical competence, absence of bots or shills, very limited and failing corporate media presence, weird unchained autism, and the pages were not filled with css and java shit because your pentium 75 with a 28.8 could't render that shit.
For a time I hoped tor would take off among autists because the slow speeds and shitty browser would turn away the singed-into-google-chrome niggercattle but that never materialized
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2021
I'm late, but agree. I miss when debate was fun and flame wars were funny, people trying to be snappy or clever rather than just "yes it is, asshole" "no it isn't cunt.". Banter, dunking on someone, laughing at your own dunking, without seething to the point of total retard war. Senses of humor.
And I miss when people debated things with actual facts. Too many people throw out assertions and think they are facts, or just cannot or do not process or pivot or rebut when confronted by actual facts. That's not debate; that's just boring. Used to be an art form, something to hone. And peanut galleries paid attention to who was winning or funnier, rather than just doggedly neg-rating whoever they came in disagreeing with. The incuriousness and rigidity of people "these days" is extreme, and extremely dismaying.
On the flip side, I also miss the possibility of getting to know people fr. I have people I have kept in touch with or still see and talk to live, from forums I was on decades ago. We shared life events (good and bad) and connected in real life - though those were purpose-specific or profession-adjacent forums, so the people tended to be at similar life stages and there was a certain comfort that they were not going to be creepy clown freaks trading underage incestual fantasies from their parents' basement. Definitely miss that.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2023
I was going to initially focus only on the last paragraph (and will still be the one I do) but damned if it all isn't true.
Isn't it.... weird that in this day and age we find less connection than ever despite being so plugged in as a collective? I mean, I KNOW why, endless bots and corporatism and political/cultural polarization, but nonetheless it weirds me out how hard it is to find people you click with as at least online buddies nowadays. I don't think it's me being a grumpy old man either - younger folks seem to have the same issue. And even when you do find an actual person the internet's become so fucked up it feels harder than ever to get to know 'em for real as you said. And with how collectively lonely more and more people are becoming in real life but finding no social respite or satisfaction online... yeah, powder keg forming. Snail's pace but nonetheless forming.
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2023
can confirm