What intresting old web lore do you know?

[Melooon]

---==== Old Web Lore:dunno: ====---

One piece of lore I like to think about is how landing pages (big empty pages with an enter button like on my site) were originally intended as a place to put your webrings, and they are super handy for that even today!

What lore do you know about the old web? (Specificity related to website making!)

[easy_breezy]

Well, I was going to mention John Titor but in terms of web design. The guy who invented the pop-up ad regrets it now.

[Karius]

Most of "old" web lore I know has to do with Neopets I learned most of it from Pet Simmer Julie though, my favorite video of hers is this one.

[xX_irkeneonz_Xx]

I know so much about the internet history of otherkin, therians, and systems.

For otherkin it heavily intersected with spiritual sites online in the early internet, and there was a lot more of an emphasis of your inner soul. Otherkin started with elves and fae in the 60s and those groups were big in the early internet too (fun fact, the word otherkin comes from "other" for non-elves and kind, as in humankind. The word was originally elfinkind and no one knows when the d was dropped or why), but dragons also were pretty big as a group although not always dragonkin and more of a separate dragconic subculture. The same goes for vampires.

Fictionkin started to be more of a thing in 2006 with otaku-kin, but existed prior to that point (the original elfinkind in the 60s were more speciifcally tolken elves, and there were a lot of pernese or other fictional dragonkin), but otaku-kin focused more on fictional character-based identities. They also overlapped more with soulbonding, which also involved an abnormal link to a fictional character, and so most early fictionkin groups were both fictionkin and soulbonding.

Therians started in a horror mailing list for werewolves where it became talking about real werewolves, people who identified as animals and the original word for it was were, but eventually became "therianthrope" based on "lycanthrope" to prevent confusion of physical shifting. Actually most terms came from trying to prevent confusion of physical shifting, theriotype as the word for what one identified as was originally phenotype and shifting where one gets into a mindset or experiences phantom limbs of their theriotype was originally shapeshifting. These terms would later join the kin community with kintype and general shifting.

The system community was kind of always a mess tbh. Like there was in-fighting and drama even back then, and some of that still exists today (system gatekeeping can be sourced to livejournal drama, the more popular systems in the community are also some of the worst people you'll ever meet, groups can be insanely toxic or abusive). But that aside making your own website for your system was a lot more popular, and systems would have sort of like walkthroughs or guides through their headspace which was extremely cool. Systems really used the internet for creativity in a way that was very unique, which is starting to come back I think.

Anyway that was my infodump

[Melooon]

I know so much about the internet history of otherkin, therians, and systems.

This was a SUPER interesting read! I think the evolution of web based cultures and communities (Particularly when they evolve into alternative perceptions of identity) is one of the most interesting things of the last 50 years and I would never have known about these ones without this post. Id love to hear more!
 

[MrsMoe]

I'm really interested in internet downfalls, so two things that really interest me is the clusterfucks that were Beenz and Gaia online. It's both sad and fascinating to hear about how huge phenomenons fall apart :omg:k:

[xX_irkeneonz_Xx]

I know so much about the internet history of otherkin, therians, and systems.

This was a SUPER interesting read! I think the evolution of web based cultures and communities (Particularly when they evolve into alternative perceptions of identity) is one of the most interesting things of the last 50 years and I would never have known about these ones without this post. Id love to hear more!
 

Thank you! I don't really have too much else to say, but I'd recommend House of Chimera's website since they have a lot more archival of alterhuman history and documents about it written by them and others

[BradE]

I was there when Google killed Geocities and the other free hosts.

Okay, killed is a bit strong, but it was the beginning of the end for Geocities.

I was a member of a large webmaster/SEO forum. The web was becoming rapidly commercialized and Google was quickly becoming the number 1 search engine.

There were complaints from both corporations and SEO's about the best Geocities sites taking up to many of the top spots in Google. "Googleguy" was the Google rep to that forum and he announced that Google would be downranking all free host sites. This would effectively move them back to like page 20 of the Google returns. The kiss of death.
Eventually banner ad revenue declined with the loss of traffic and Geocities had to shut down.

Think about it: The Geocities sites were older than Google. They came from a time when search engines were really bad. People surfed the web to find websites and webmasters fearlessly linked out to whatever they liked, so just about all those early sites had link pages which is how we surfed. Some of those Geocities sites were written by experts, they attracted a lot of links from other free sites and had been doing so for many years. Many of those sites were listed in the important directories like Yahoo! and Dmoz which gave them added weight. For a search engine like Google with their PageRank algo which counted heavily on link popularity, these Geocities sites naturally ranked really well on Google often crowding out commercial sites from the first or second pages.

BTW: the death of Geocities helped pave the way for Wikipedia. Before Wikipedia people built sites to share their knowledge and expertise. They were the decentralized encyclopedia of their day. Once they were gone or un-findable it made sense to make something like Wikipedia.

[easy_breezy]

I'm really interested in internet downfalls, so two things that really interest me is the clusterfucks that were Beenz and Gaia online. It's both sad and fascinating to hear about how huge phenomenons fall apart :omg:k:

Yeah, maybe giving people infinite money was a bad idea

[wris]

I'm afraid these aren't quite about making websites, but they are really good, so perhaps you'll forgive me? Some of my favourites from the archive, in no particular order:

1. ZZZZ Best
2. The Flight Simulator 2020 obelisk
3. The 500 mile email
4. Magic/more magic
5. The final moments of MMOs

[TheFrugalGamer]

I'm afraid these aren't quite about making websites, but they are really good, so perhaps you'll forgive me? Some of my favourites from the archive, in no particular order:

1. ZZZZ Best
2. The Flight Simulator 2020 obelisk
3. The 500 mile email
4. Magic/more magic
5. The final moments of MMOs

Oh man, these are great! I had read the 500 mile email before, and I love quirky stories like that. I work in IT in my offline time, so it's always fun to collect strange little stories like that. The Flight Simulator and Magic/more magic stories were fun too. Cadnomori on Neocities has a page that they've made called "Rabbit Holes" that's full of this stuff here:
https://cadnomori.neocities.org/writings/preface.html

I spent a whole bunch of time reading about the stuff listed there, and I think it's a neat idea for a webpage. I'm considering doing one myself eventually!