Why the Internet Isn't Fun Anymore | Hacker News Reader

Why the Internet Isn't Fun Anymore

newyorker.com

31 pointspseudolus10 comments

There are still pockets of the old web out there. As ever, they're promoted more through personal recommendations and click-through discovery.

Mastodon has it, COM in SDF has it. Heck, LambdaMOO still exists.

It takes effort to find that stuff, but it's so much more fun than doom scrolling, knowing your attention is being purchased and you're working for <social company>'s profit.

I've been collecting 'small web' blogs in a feed and it's a really pleasant way to do interneting. Most folks in that world really enjoy getting an email from a reader and will actually strike up a conversation. That long distance human interaction is still unique and just as fun as it was in the 00s.

Would it be possible to see this list of 'small web' blogs? As you write the pockets of the old web are largely discovered through personal recommendations.

Not parent, but Marginalia's list[0] of blogs is a great aggregation. I've also stumbled upon some webrings through some of the blogs (have them open somewhere among my 3000 open tabs haha).

[0]: https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/PublicData/blob/master/s...

That's quite an expansive list, I'll have a good look. Thank you!

I really like 'Old Hollywood' (especially Warner Bros) and I actually find tons and tons of niche little pockets of the web by using Yandex.

Even with search operators Google/Bing just...doesn't make it easy to find the little blogs (that are still publishing!) that cite niche little fan-hosted websites with literal treasure troves of pictures, media, newspaper scans.

I might be thinking the 'old-web' in a different sense than others here - but you find a lot just by poking around websites you find elsewhere and see where it takes you. Sites like neocities is really good for it but I'll just list some below.

https://tilde.town/users.html - kinda like neocities with tons of little self-made project sites that are easy to open 1 million tabs from

https://512kb.club/ - little sites, often link to other niche sites

https://1mb.club/ - same as above, just different size

http://oh-hi.info/ - just a website for street photography of humans

https://www.pointlesssites.com/ - just remembered this; it was something i used to check out every few weeks as a kid and it led me to being a fan of https://www.newrafael.com/websites/ who makes some fun stuff reminiscent of what is my age groups 'old web' from around 2008-onward lol

http://www.explodingdog.com/ - just a cute little site of someone who drew submissions people sent in

https://wiby.me/surprise/ - wiby is a cool project that was posted about here around the time i joined; i added it to my bookmarks bar so it can just take me to a random site every now and then - it's also a search engine so you can use it to just find other cool sites instead of their surprise feature https://wiby.me/

Excellent, thank you. I really enjoy these types of lists and will spend some time looking through them all.

[Edit] Huh, I'm surprised to find lichess.org in the <512 kb club!

Kagi has a “Small Web” lens to help surface relevant search results

I've been always wondering how such articles come about. Does somebody sends the author a spec, in talking points, and suggests a payment? Or the author just came from some kind of a meeting, where the main points were discussed, and decides to write an article about them? It would be fascinating to find out.

It's just hyper super ironic this article sits behind a paywall, isn't it? :>

Scrolling IS fun !

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