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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

As the creator was born in 1999, it's interesting to me because she's nostalgic for a period she did not fully experience. It's something I did, and it's neat yet strange to see it being done to a part of my past.

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I'm not a lot older than her and have a similar fondness for that æsthetic. While it's true I didn't fully experience it, a lot of late 90's sites were still online, more or less untouched, in the late 2000's, so they were there to be appreciated even though they were a relic by then. At that time, IE stagnation was still a thing, and MIDI playback was still in browsers, so the 2008 experience of a 1998 site was probably fairly authentic.

Similar to how I did not experience the late 70's but gained a fondness for it by watching "Taxi" and listening to Television.

I am in a similar age range and I am drifting towards this aesthetic. I think it's the counterculture of the increasingly sleek websites, with their overcomplicated 3D animations. Not saying either is better than the other, just it is the opposite end of the spectrum and way of still having fun when creating a website while making it feel personal.

it reminds me of the phenomena of parodying 'I Love Lucy!'. Even though it hasn't seen new episodes since 1957 it is included or mentioned in some way in nearly every popular media.

The constant revitalization of the parody through new works ensures that the future will also include some mention. I think 90s aesthetic/internet-culture is a bit like that -- the projects that include those themes beget new similar projects in the future as long as they have some level of audience exposure.

I feel this. It seems like somewhere I would have thrived and immensely enjoyed, and I hear people's nostalgia for it, but it's something I never got to experience myself. (~18yo).

Yeah, it was freakin' awesome. All my friends and I made websites. We linked to each other, shared sources of good GIFs and images, chatted on IRC, eventually shared mp3s when those were a thing. It was a seriously badass time to grow up. I regularly feel very thankful/lucky to have grown up in that time period and have my own online computer to experience all that stuff!

>It's something I did, and it's neat yet strange to see it being done to a part of my past.

Agree. I read recently that digital cameras have been taking off among younger people in the way vinyl took off among millennials. I'm excited to see how people that grew up with excessive, toxic social media manage to find better solutions for dealing with the internet

This is common among the younger people joining the internet. An the creator of SpaceHey.com was nostalgic for the days of old social media that happened when he was too young to experience it.

Add me if you have a SpaceHey account! https://spacehey.com/josh

I have a soft spot a mile wide for SpaceHey, there's just something about the whole idea that's really nice. I'm not sure how much of it is because building a whole social media platform out of nostalgia is a very hacker-like thing to do and how much of it is just because it's nice to see a social media platform that's not so aggressively monetised and manipulative but either way I'm really happy it exists.

I'm nostalgic for the Amiga despite being born in the late 90s!

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