what is your favorite part of the old internet?

[ryha11a]

for me, it probably has to be when i was in middle school. we were given macbook airs to do our work on and they let us take them home, so before i really had a laptop this is what i had to browse the internet on.

i used to spend tons and TONS of time on Kongregate.com (before it SUCKED!) playing different multiplayer games with random people. peak of flash games honestly...makes me wish i had made a newgrounds account during its peak as well. i loved to play everybody edits and shellshock live 2. i still have my old login too which makes it all the more sad when im able to log into the website, see how they've EVISCERATED the sauce from that website, browsing through old messages and friends lists. coolest part, each game had its own dedicated chat room next to the flash game window, so you could chat with people playing the same game OR just whoever was online on the website at that moment!

i think what a lot of us, or at least I miss about the old internet is the sense of connectivity it brought. i don't feel connected at ALL when i just scroll and like posts all day on instagram or twitter (IT ISNT X!!!), but i did feel connected when i would randomly make a friend playing the same game as me. and i feel more connected writing down this post on this forum board than i do on modern platforms!

anywayz, i just wanted to hear everybody elses stories / memories from the past, learn about what i missed out on and check it out!

[nihil0]

KONGREGATE..... I haven't heard that name in years omg. I used to play Falling Sands (1 and 2) often because I thought it was fun to just make up little scenarios for the little dudes and check out everyones' setups.

I just looked it up and IT LOOKS SO BAD?! They gave it the spyware flash game site treatment, what in the Deviantart Eclipse bs is that???


Apart from that I remember I used to religiously play the Barbie.com flash games, I was obsessed with Mermaidia, Race Car Cutie and the art game that I can't remember the name of right now. I'm glad stuff like ruffle and numuki are around to archive these things

[ryha11a]

LMAO IKR?! site looks like you would get a virus from it if you clicked on anything ;w; there was NO NEED for them to gut the site like that

barbie games sound nostalgic, i was on the opposite end as a child, i was absolutely gaming on the hot wheels website playing all their games xD

btw unrelated, but i saw your website and think its super dope :> gonna use it as a bit of inspiration for my site

[Eunice]

I know I've said this before, but I miss the women's groups. The Gardenhouse, for example, Netsisters, The Garden of Friendship, which were the biggest ones. There was so much "community" in them. We all made personal websites, and there were groups set up to help with that. There were lots of committees and groups, within each one. If it was your birthday or wedding anniversary, they would make special pages for you, and add gifts. I just miss it all so much.

[nihil0]

I know I've said this before, but I miss the women's groups. The Gardenhouse, for example, Netsisters, The Garden of Friendship, which were the biggest ones. There was so much "community" in them. We all made personal websites, and there were groups set up to help with that. There were lots of committees and groups, within each one. If it was your birthday or wedding anniversary, they would make special pages for you, and add gifts. I just miss it all so much.

That sounds so lovely! While I guess we have rings and cliques still kicking around, I guess we haven't had anything that in-depth form yet, I remember a lot of fan groups, specifically fanfiction groups, around when I first started surfing the web, though it wasn't really my favorite because those turned very catty very quickly lol, your groups sound a lot better, I know we'll all find that kind of community again eventually :]

LMAO IKR?! site looks like you would get a virus from it if you clicked on anything ;w; there was NO NEED for them to gut the site like that

barbie games sound nostalgic, i was on the opposite end as a child, i was absolutely gaming on the hot wheels website playing all their games xD

btw unrelated, but i saw your website and think its super dope :> gonna use it as a bit of inspiration for my site

No way!!! tysm! Your site is wonderful too, I'll be sure to nab your button :D

[dream]

I know I've said this before, but I miss the women's groups. The Gardenhouse, for example, Netsisters, The Garden of Friendship, which were the biggest ones. There was so much "community" in them. We all made personal websites, and there were groups set up to help with that. There were lots of committees and groups, within each one. If it was your birthday or wedding anniversary, they would make special pages for you, and add gifts. I just miss it all so much.

Sounds wonderful. There is something to be said for setting. For gathering in a warm, cozy mountain cabin a day away versus a sterile waiting room twice the size down the road. A place of one’s own, created, worthy of the label home, warm, welcoming to others, pictures drawn, framed by hand, hung on the wall painted on a whim that one day when rain startled all. Those communities and the many like them then were nothing short of the human experience digitized. Once tasted, you’ll never cease in the pursuit for more.

[DJoftheCoven]

There are a lot of things I miss about the early internet, but I think one of the biggest things I miss is just... the excitement. I used to be so hyped to get online after a long day outside and the web felt so magical. Stumbling on homemade websites, playing flash games, having search engines that actually gave you what you were looking for instead of ads--actually, that's another thing. I miss when youtube ads were unintrusive. I'm not even that old, but talking to teenagers about what the web used to look like when I was a kid feels so sad because they don't even have a frame of reference for what it looked like before advertising and corporate junk was omnipresent.

I digress. Although the older members of melonland may not consider this a part of the old web, I'll also nominate kids' virtual worlds like animal jam (which does still exist, granted) and fun minigame hubs like the myscene website. They were so lovingly designed.

[eezstreet]

I think the thing that I miss the most about the old web, like the poster above me alludes to, is how genuine it was. Back in those days, if you saw a review of something, you’re basically guaranteed to be looking at what someone actually wrote as an account of their experiences. Sure, there was trolling and bullying, and definitely some degree of people acting in bad faith. But for the most part, the people who were acting in bad faith would stick out like sore thumbs.

These days, I can’t even guarantee that the website itself is actually a legitimate website and not some auto-generated stuff to soak up SEO ad money. Think about it though. The website you’re using to buy stuff is now loaded with fake reviews. The dating websites are loaded with fake profiles, some using AI to seem like convincing matches. There’s people who pay professionals to “text” for them. The video site you’re on might not at some point even be real videos. The forums and social media sites you’re on are definitely cooked with false posters that are trying to push foreign or political agendas.

This is possibly exacerbated by the further slides we’re seeing in the world becoming a trust-free society. Things like anti-theft devices on shopping carts, spamming anti-theft devices on all kinds of things in fact. I don’t feel comfortable letting my children outside, despite the crime rate being lower when I was a kid, just because I can feel myself getting a tongue-lashing by some Concerned Yet Nosy Citizen. Don’t even get me started on the political radicalization going on here in the States.

I think I’ve heard the argument before that the web is “too corporate these days” and I don’t know if that holds up to scrutiny when you consider the sheer scale of the dot-com bubble. We had Super Bowl ads for web companies in the 90s! I think the bigger problem is that corporate greed is what’s ultimately responsible. The pattern of short term stock investment portfolios have utterly wrecked the global financial systems. Why would I waste my time holding my stock in a company that is going to offer only slow return on investment? Regardless of the social or technological good that this company may be doing, of course.

YouTube being more aggressive with ads is just a symptom of this corporate greed. Line needs to go up faster, after all, and Premium would likely make it go up faster.

Unfortunately though I think the cat is a bit out of the bag. The only places that you’re going to see some semblance of the old, trust-included Web is going to be small little forums like this on the Web Revival project. There’s just not a huge incentive to try and manipulate people here because of how low the traffic is.

[candycanearter07]

Unfortunately though I think the cat is a bit out of the bag. The only places that you’re going to see some semblance of the old, trust-included Web is going to be small little forums like this on the Web Revival project. There’s just not a huge incentive to try and manipulate people here because of how low the traffic is.

And there's actual passion behind the projects! You have to go so far out of your way to get something up and there's no real way to make returns off something like Neocities, so it kinda weeds out all the corporate interests and stuff I think.

[GarbCat]

I try to avoid romanticizing or idealizing the past too much as it can have unfortunate side effects to the brain, but a lot of people can agree that it's kind of cool when websites gave you a lot of freedom when you're not logged in/don't have an account, right? I associate this with the web of the past even if some sites are still like this because a lot of major sites have *really* been eroding the privileges of users with no accounts lately. Have you ever tried to open a facebook link on a device you're not logged in on? It's disgusting.
I really love when some websites allow people with no account to interact with the website they're on, to make posts and interact with the community to some extent. There's a lot of very good reasons to disable this sort of thing but it feels like a way more welcoming environment than when you say, click on a Twitter link and the website gets on its hands and knees and begs to you like a dog to pleeeeeaaaase give it your email address just to see this one stupid little meme. pretty please?
Basically I kind of miss the feeling of being a "guest" to a website when you're not logged in, opposed to feeling as if you're staring at the website 50 feet away with a pair of binoculars. Does that make sense? Video-sharing or gaming sites are usually better about this but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube started walling off video content from guest users for the lulz.

[JINSBEK]

Flash games were a time. Everyone talks about playing them, but think about the people making them. I don’t think game development—and building rapport with other game developers whom you would later collaborate with—is as accessible now as it is then. You let the big studios make their big console games, and everyone was also happy with the scale and production value afforded to them by even hobbyist Flash game makers. Nobody was competing in the “time and attention company” in a desperate attempt to get their game in front of eyeballs. You made a game, people liked it, talked about it, linked to it, posted about it, ratings would go up, you would be featured and even if you weren’t, you’d steadily build up a portfolio of games. It was never catastrophic if your latest game wasn’t popular, you just learned from the experience and made another one without incurring horrific losses and forcing yourself into the crunch time and development hell that is pervasive throughout the indie game industry as well.

Nowadays you have to sit through hours of lectures on social media and viral marketing and add Twitch integration and understanding the legal nuances of paying influencers and that’s all before you start screaming into the void because now your userbase is split across both X and Bluesky so all that crap you learned about Twitter/X deprioritisation rules is completely irrelevant and also your audience is fragmented and OK so Hootsuite doesn’t have a Bluesky integration so you have to manually post all your game updates after scheduling and automating everything on Hootsuite and nobody uses game forums anymore and Game Informer is dead so I guess it’s time to set up a Discord and I guess we’ll pay for Codecks because it has a Discord bot that takes user feedback so we’ll slide it into our toolstack even though the rest of the tool is irrelevant to how our team does project management and what are the two hashtags we should use for tomorrow’s post?

Also, web development not looking like this. Lmao.

[eezstreet]

Nowadays you have to sit through hours of lectures on social media and viral marketing and add Twitch integration and understanding the legal nuances of paying influencers and that’s all before you start screaming into the void because now your userbase is split across both X and Bluesky so all that crap you learned about Twitter/X deprioritisation rules is completely irrelevant and also your audience is fragmented and OK so Hootsuite doesn’t have a Bluesky integration so you have to manually post all your game updates after scheduling and automating everything on Hootsuite and nobody uses game forums anymore and Game Informer is dead so I guess it’s time to set up a Discord and I guess we’ll pay for Codecks because it has a Discord bot that takes user feedback so we’ll slide it into our toolstack even though the rest of the tool is irrelevant to how our team does project management and what are the two hashtags we should use for tomorrow’s post?

Also, web development not looking like this. Lmao.

I think you’ve touched on something here which is sort of important I think and speaks to something that has bothered me about one part of this whole New Web Revival movement.

A lot of manifestos make it important to state that the web needs to be accessible. Yet, if you consider accessibility on all levels, you increase the barrier to entry and make things more complex to develop for. I guarantee you that there weren’t any frontend developers in 2004 (even the concept of the presentation layer being its own job on its own is a foreign concept back then) who were concerned about making sure that their website was accessible to screen readers, making sure that their web page works on all browsers, making sure that their website works on all resolutions, making the website handle touch controls OK, making sure their website has good SEO and, and and! Making sure that their site is accessible to bots that can scrape a page for metadata that makes it presentable for a social media post. The maturation of the web has lead to a lot of inherent barriers here. I think one of the very nice and understated aspects of the web back then is that nobody was doing any of that. Everyone only really wanted to get content out there.

[fancypengy]

TBH I think what I miss most is not really what was on the internet itself (I was quite young before the internet became... erm, what it is now... so I can't speak to a lot of what y'all are saying, but what I /really/ miss is how the internet was grounded to a Place. I remember having a home/family computer and sitting down at it and putting a game in the PC's disk drive or going on Club Penguin or whatever I was up to as a kid lol, and then when I was done, shutting everything down and then Leaving It. The internet feels, and /is/, so pervasive now.

When I was in my late teens/college years, I was obviously processing a lot about my identity and whatnot, and I realized that my online identity felt just as important as, if not more important than, my real life identity!!! I'm pretty sure a lot of people feel that way. I've been trying hard to be intentional about cultivating an offline identity and, to get back to the original point and answering the question lmfao, getting back to that mindset I guess of grounding the internet to a place instead of having it follow me around everywhere I go. I know that will never be the same since society has basically structurally changed, but there are still things I can do as an individual.

I know I went off on at least a few tangents, hopefully that more or less still answers the original question >w< have been thinking about this a lot and I am very sleep deprived rn   

[wygolvillage]

I miss when lurking was encouraged- like was mentioned, most websites don't let you view content without an account, which really sucks.

I miss when the web was full of games and little interactive bits and bobs everywhere too, which is why I fill my own site with them 

Also, something that always hits me when I read through One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age or Geocities archives is how many people using Geocities and making websites were just normal nobodies and amateurs. They weren't web design nerds or techies or anything, they're just regular people who make websites to share their dog pictures, movie reviews and more (there was even a neighborhood just for kids getting into making websites which is one of my favorites to look at). When I look at these old 90s sites I get a much more tangible feeling that there was a real person on the other side of the screen compared to social media. I don't know, there's something really endearing about that era to me.

[JINSBEK]

I think you’ve touched on something here which is sort of important I think and speaks to something that has bothered me about one part of this whole New Web Revival movement.

A lot of manifestos make it important to state that the web needs to be accessible. Yet, if you consider accessibility on all levels, you increase the barrier to entry and make things more complex to develop for. I guarantee you that there weren’t any frontend developers in 2004 (even the concept of the presentation layer being its own job on its own is a foreign concept back then) who were concerned about making sure that their website was accessible to screen readers, making sure that their web page works on all browsers, making sure that their website works on all resolutions, making the website handle touch controls OK, making sure their website has good SEO and, and and! Making sure that their site is accessible to bots that can scrape a page for metadata that makes it presentable for a social media post. The maturation of the web has lead to a lot of inherent barriers here. I think one of the very nice and understated aspects of the web back then is that nobody was doing any of that. Everyone only really wanted to get content out there.

Ah, I don’t think that’s accessibility. To me, accessibility means a blind or low-vision person can use a screenreader to understand the content of your website, and not using neon colours against white backgrounds for the rest of us with vision (lmao). Advertisers and marketers these days bang on about optimisation. And the only reason you have to worry about that is because everyone is using JavaScript up the ass, and you have to use certain tags to make your link previews in Facebook, Discord, and Twitter/X look pretty. But other than that? The average hobbyist isn’t worrying about SEO, and never has to. It’s the professional end of web development, which I don’t consider part of the Web Revival movement, that’s gotten the end of the short stick on webweaving, here, where the client (except for Warren Buffett) expects every website to run like a dynamic piece of installed software seamlessly, and you have to check if these new CSS features are baseline or you have to create a fall-back for all the old people still on Internet Explorer. Clients don’t want to share static content, they want immersive experiences, and that by itself isn’t a terrible thing. It’s just a shame that JavaScript is such a messy language, im&o.

TBH I think what I miss most is not really what was on the internet itself (I was quite young before the internet became... erm, what it is now... so I can't speak to a lot of what y'all are saying, but what I /really/ miss is how the internet was grounded to a Place. I remember having a home/family computer and sitting down at it and putting a game in the PC's disk drive or going on Club Penguin or whatever I was up to as a kid lol, and then when I was done, shutting everything down and then Leaving It. The internet feels, and /is/, so pervasive now.

When I was in my late teens/college years, I was obviously processing a lot about my identity and whatnot, and I realized that my online identity felt just as important as, if not more important than, my real life identity!!! I'm pretty sure a lot of people feel that way. I've been trying hard to be intentional about cultivating an offline identity and, to get back to the original point and answering the question lmfao, getting back to that mindset I guess of grounding the internet to a place instead of having it follow me around everywhere I go. I know that will never be the same since society has basically structurally changed, but there are still things I can do as an individual.

Right. On an individual level, it’s actually not too bad to go back to this. The partial solution for youth is for parents not to give their children smartphones until the age of 18 (or at least lock down every app and browser with parental controls if they need the smartphone for transit fare) and not to let children keep computers, tablets, or smart TVs in their bedroom, but to have a shared computer in a shared space. For adults, they can practice the same thing. I have to have a smartphone, but I don’t use it outside of transit fare, navigation, Flowtoy LED control, and accepting and retrieving deliveries; I’m perfectly happy with using my dumbphone, MP3 Walkman, and digital camera for other dedicated functions.

I miss when lurking was encouraged- like was mentioned, most websites don't let you view content without an account, which really sucks.

I miss when the web was full of games and little interactive bits and bobs everywhere too, which is why I fill my own site with them 

Also, something that always hits me when I read through One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age or Geocities archives is how many people using Geocities and making websites were just normal nobodies and amateurs. They weren't web design nerds or techies or anything, they're just regular people who make websites to share their dog pictures, movie reviews and more (there was even a neighborhood just for kids getting into making websites which is one of my favorites to look at). When I look at these old 90s sites I get a much more tangible feeling that there was a real person on the other side of the screen compared to social media. I don't know, there's something really endearing about that era to me.

No-pressure lurking was great. It was fun to see things as an observer, and then decide to dive in… or never. You weren’t pressured to produce content to promote user engagement on the platform. Nowadays, every app is trying to compete in the attention economy, and do unholy things to that end. It sucks and is one of the reasons I’m very glad to be outside of professional web development. Personal websites, and even professional commercial websites back then used to be much more personable... Ah, the human aspect. That’s one of the reasons I’ve insisted on posting my selfie on my own website, in the “ABOUT me” page. Yeah, the rest of the design is fairly sleek for an “indie” website, but there really is an actual human being behind this website—and I’ve given the Journal part of my website a completely different, cozy, low-tech design.