Does anyone else enjoy exploring the old net?

[Cobra!]

I do now and again, though I haven't done it as much recently. I feel like the modern internet being so centralised has ruined the fun of it. You feel compelled to stay on sites you know and you have to "force" yourself to venture out of your comfort zone.
Though when you do, it's always fun!

Gemini is great at recreating the old net in the sense that it's decentralised and exploration is even encouraged! Gopher is still kicking, and is literally the old net, as it competed with the WWW in the 80s and 90s. I tend to use Gemini more, but exploring Goper is still fun!
There are even several capsules/gopherholes made for the purpose of exploring random pages!

Old websites are a lot like old paintings for me. Uniquely of the moment they were made in, with particular techniques of that time, and are the result of someone's labor of love. I will never forget, one day I was using Wiby's surprise me feature and it landed me on some kid's website, which was a shrine to his favorite dinosaur, ankylosaurus (also happens to be my favorite.) It was so in-depth, citing tons of books, and was made in '97. I like to think that kid went on to live a full life, and I feel honored that I got a glimpse into a pure expression of love in this small, intimate moment of his life. I hope he knows that it made someone smile many years later.

I still occasionally fire up Wiby to see what treasures are still out there, but these days my internet exploration is mostly following trails from interesting links on forums like Melonland.

I actually have Wiby's surprise me link as my new tab page on Firefox. So I can open a new tab and it'll take me to a random site!

[Phoenix]

I've done this since I was a kid and probably will never stop! Sometimes it makes me sad for the days I was too young to experience, though 

This is honestly exactly how I feel :((

[bees]

Definitely! I love the feeling of just aimlessly surfing and going from page to page through links. It really takes me back!

[Melooon]

I actually have Wiby's surprise me link as my new tab page on Firefox. So I can open a new tab and it'll take me to a random site!

This is a fantastic idea, I set it up too! On Firefox you have to get an extension called "New Tab Override" to set custom urls on new tabs, but after that it works and it makes new tabs very unexpected

[Cobra!]

This is a fantastic idea, I set it up too! On Firefox you have to get an extension called "New Tab Override" to set custom urls on new tabs, but after that it works and it makes new tabs very unexpected

Yeah, that’s the extension I use. On iOS you don’t need an add-on for it. Just as well, since you can’t use add-ons on that version anyway.

[bees]

Does Wiby's surprise ever produce NSFW/NSFL results? I kind of want to try the idea of having Firefox open a new surprise tab each time but I'd worry about that.

[Melooon]

Does Wiby's surprise ever produce NSFW/NSFL results? I kind of want to try the idea of having Firefox open a new surprise tab each time but I'd worry about that.

I have not run into any yet after a few days of using it (but Im sure its possible) - occasionally I do encounter bad humor though! Also a site that appeared to be dedicated to cataloguing and playing air raid sirens opened while I was in the library, but thankfully my laptop was muted 

Most of the tabs are only vaguely intriguing, sometimes it a bit annoying when you just wanna open a fresh new tab, but sometimes they are very interesting: Iv had this one about their first-ever ever spam-email from 1978 open for a while: https://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

[bees]

^ I'm really neat when it comes to tabs and can't imagine keeping something for a while rather than bookmarking  but thank you for letting me know about all this! I might avoid the "automatically loads when I open a new tab" but just make a shortcut to make it easier to do the random site thing.

[Misanthropic Monster™]

Its been a new hobby on mine recently. It feels like exploring forgotten relics of the past and rediscovering old things. Anyone else do this?

I spent a decade wandering aimlessly around way-back-machine and internet archive looking at sites I used to frequent or be a part of back in the late 90s and early 2000's and that is precisely how I stumbled upon MelonLand. 

[lunarrose]

I love exploring the old net. Even in the early 2000s, I loved finding abandoned angelfire websites and the such. It felt like a personal diary, a time capsule. A momento. And it's so special. It always has filled me with immense wonder and sadness. I feel as if I'm looking at phantoms. Similar to Melon's sentiment, it does fill me up with sadness and this vast emptiness, and I feel for the abandoned pages. Seeing something like "Last Updated in 2002" hits me in a weird visceral way.

even when I visit my old abandoned freewebs page that I made in 2004 through the wayback machine, I get this feeling of sadness.. and I know what happened to that person!   

But I can't stop. I love the quirkyness and the adventure that the oldnet provides. Now that I'm actively seeking spaces like this, its so stark how commercialized and curated our internet experience has become, and how much is lost from it.
Exploring the old net is something that I will never stop doing, and it inspires me to dabble into web revival.

Thanks yall. 

[BUTCHBONEZ]

I think that's one of the main pillars the web revival was built upon. In short - yes.

I absolutely love it !! It's fascinating to me how much the internet has changed since the early 2000's . 

[WG2k]

Hell yeah. I have a bunch of sites I like bookmarked

[Misanthropic Monster™]

Hell yeah. I have a bunch of sites I like bookmarked

Hehe same, I am also hooked on this site: 404PageNotFound Old Web Archive It's an archive of still active/still live VINTAGE WEBSITES, OLD WEBPAGES, AND WEB 1.0 - some sites have still been going since the early '90s. One of my faves is the Chupacabra Homepage because this one I actually found originally in 2001 so seeing it again here filled me with joy! I remember wondering why a random website for a cryptid was hosted on the Princeton website. That is just bizarre in and of itself. I also love this weird site called Tokyo Toilets - as the description reads: Photos of toilets at Japanese train and metro stations…Watch the Flash movie of how to use them, but watch out for the explicit images of graffiti… There have somehow been 670,000 visitors to the site since 1996. - the concept of this site is just brilliant, reviewing toilets in other places back then was a golden idea! Love it.

[Rosesarered]

I don't like..I LUV MAKING ITS!!!! I PASS ALL MY DAYS making its!!! XD 

[sibusen]

I just got really into this the last few days!! It's just what the doctor ordered for my nostalgia and also to look for some design inspiration.

It is a bit frustrating though. When searching Old'a Vista I get pages and pages of results of some books or something, samey results on the topic I'm searching - not personal sites. I think I need to get better at searching the old web... If anyone has any tips...?

Or maybe I just need to be more patient and go through 100s of pages before I hit a gem...