"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone.
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
@futurebird
Board hops and web crawls.
Those were excellent ways to explore the internet.First 'thing' I joined in '99, on my very own financed Gateway 4gb PC, was a mail group about the Art Bell radio show, run by someone named Happy Turtle.
-
All this time... they hate it. They hated how creative it was, they hated the serendipity, the intense meritocracy of memes and social vitality. All of the magical chaos that had me so delighted and charmed ...
I don't know why I didn't see this sooner.
@futurebird you can still find cool old internet places on wiby.me
they weren't replaced so much as distracted away from with social media and google
-
@futurebird the only way i can see this being a negative is when an independent website starts to present, say, medical/scientific/political bullshit and pretending to be a reputable source, but out of all the problems, that one wasn't solved by assimilating most of the internet into five websites -- in some way, that even made the problem worse, as same-looking profile pages make it even easier for anyone to pretend to be an expert source
@rnd @futurebird at least in the old days cranks looked like cranks. Nobody was going to take Timecube guy seriously.
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
@futurebird They're authoritarian down to their bones. If nobody in authority tells them something has value, they don't believe it does.
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
@futurebird I still miss Spike Webb and Walter Miller's Trailer Park serial. It broke my heart to learn that latter was a Boston (?) marketing team but that story was hilarious and apparently, lost to time.
I miss pre-W3 era and early W3 era. Commons design has its own ways and they are all worthy. Appreciate this thought from you. Agree mostly.
-
@paul_ipv6 @futurebird I still have a couple of "forums" discussing niche interests that I visit once in a while, but it's fewer every year. All of the communities that were spread around are now all just "groups" on Facebook or sub-Reddits.
The entire web feels somehow homogenized. It's as if the internet transformed from an interesting shopping district into a bland strip mall.@Ambulocetus @paul_ipv6 @futurebird who remembers stumbleupon
-
@futurebird they should piss off and create their own internet then.
@CarstenBoll
That's the bitch of it. We keep making our own spaces to create and share, but their worldview demands that not be allowed, so they invade and fuck it all up.
@futurebird -
@Ambulocetus @paul_ipv6 @futurebird who remembers stumbleupon
@discobeez @Ambulocetus @futurebird
i have memory of web "rings" and one option was to get sent to a random site in the ring. it was fun. kind of like sitting down with a random volume of the encyclopedia, opening to a random page and just reading.
-
@CarstenBoll
That's the bitch of it. We keep making our own spaces to create and share, but their worldview demands that not be allowed, so they invade and fuck it all up.
@futurebird@dpflug @futurebird well, we will have to keep going anyway
Mastodon is nice like that. So is reticulum. -
@futurebird
️ I hate that it's relatable. The thing about supremacists is they only care about what their community determines to be the best one, and all the runners up don't matter. It was easy for us tech colonizers to do the same thing we did with economics (using goods price as proxy for value) with websites (continuous users as proxy for value). But the rising price of eggs did not increase their real value my body still needs the same nutrients.Somehow these guys don't realize the contradiction between saying scarcity = goods price = stock value one one side and usercount = social value = share price on the other.
Here are some phenomenal sites for your troubles:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/lacingmethods.htm@Rtzq0 @futurebird Does your site use cleanstream for verification?
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
@futurebird all through the 1990s, and to a lesser extent during the early 2000s, most of the publishing industry, especially magazines and newspapers, was thoroughly hostile to the world wide web, and the fact that the world wide web enabled individuals and small underfunded groups to reach audiences without the enablement of traditional publishers greatly upset them. The WWW besmirched their beautiful oligopoly.
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
@futurebird On the bright side, many of us have been able to find each other on here. It's true that the disease is widespread. It's also true that we generate our own antibodies.
-
@futurebird On the bright side, many of us have been able to find each other on here. It's true that the disease is widespread. It's also true that we generate our own antibodies.
@futurebird (otherwise it wouldn't be taking them decades, rest assured that this is completely against their wishes)
-
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
@futurebird I found so many things I never expected to like, things outside of my usual. That's what made the old net so fun. I miss the rabbit holes so deep you pop out the other side totally bewildered. I was so into the John Titor thing it was ridiculous. Still kinda am lmao
Now it's just all the same. Everywhere. If it's not social media is promoting and selling something at every other post. The internet is a job now -
"People sometimes end up on obscure sites run by just... anyone. A page made by a local club is as easy to find as a corporate site."
I didn't realize that the guy I was talking with about the internet in 1999 thought of this as a *problem* to be solved... not what made the internet awesome.
All along there have been people who see everything you love about the internet as an unfortunate design oversight, something to be fixed. And they've been working for decades to make it happen.
I remember early Ebay;
your search for 'crystal cat sculpture' has yielded 214 results all unique basically the us was an online garage sale before the Power Sellers ruined it. Everything I posted sold. Now I am lucky to get one sale a month.now your search for 'crystal cat sculpture' has yielded 2,140M results out of which 95% are the same
I miss old ebay.
-
@discobeez @Ambulocetus @futurebird
i have memory of web "rings" and one option was to get sent to a random site in the ring. it was fun. kind of like sitting down with a random volume of the encyclopedia, opening to a random page and just reading.
@paul_ipv6 @discobeez @futurebird
I remember Webrings and stumbleupon. Everything was new and exciting back then. -
All this time... they hate it. They hated how creative it was, they hated the serendipity, the intense meritocracy of memes and social vitality. All of the magical chaos that had me so delighted and charmed ...
I don't know why I didn't see this sooner.
@futurebird@sauropods.win Who is “they”?
-
@futurebird@sauropods.win Who is “they”?
Facebook, Amazon, the people who promoted putting everything in the cloud.
-
All this time... they hate it. They hated how creative it was, they hated the serendipity, the intense meritocracy of memes and social vitality. All of the magical chaos that had me so delighted and charmed ...
I don't know why I didn't see this sooner.
@futurebird
The unwashed masses aren't supposed to produce content! They're supposed to consume it, and only from the giant media companies, and watch advertisements and pay subscription fees for the privilege!
What are you, some kind of commie?
