old web bulletin style

[candycanearter07]

so, this is something ive been thinking about for a while and this is probably going to be very disorganized and stuff so sorry in advanced but..

How the old net used non-instantaneous communication to its benefit (in my opinion): an essay

i always found old protocols for web access fascinating. because of the limited access provided by dial-up, you simply couldn't expect everyone to be online at once, or at least to the degree that we are nowadays. the solution was clear: pool messages and let users read them later. most forms of communication in that time used that approach, but it did have an interesting side effect of giving you more time to put thought into what you're writing, because you didn't know when they were going to read it. of course, there was still things like irc, but those were for a different niche. because of the mindset that email and forums gave, it felt a lot more like a public bulletin board, and web development doubled down on it by not directing it to anyone! you were simply putting out what you wanted to be represented as, and waiting for people to come to you. thats what made it so special. of course, with the rise of broadband, that magic of slowness was lost for the majority of people, and thats what i think makes web design so appealing: it lets you make your own bulletin, and like slow down and just make something for you. theres no expectation anyone will even see it (especially with personal websites becoming a niche) and thats what makes it so beautiful to me at least

[milo]

I too miss the old "bulletin board" style of the Internet. You're absolutely right about people putting more thought into what they put online. You were less likely to fire off a bunch of stuff since it kinda took a long time to even post it haha.

Another drawback to moving away from the bulletin board style is that content is so fleeting these days. Forums used to be a place that you could use as a repository for information or resources. Nowadays, a lot of circles I partake in want to use discord to house this sort of stuff and I find using a chat client as a repository for info really confusing and clunky. The answer to "I'm looking for info about this" is literally "you have to search years worth of chat log and hope someone else had the same issue you had and got it answered, while sifting through lines of unrelated chat."