https://ooh.directory is constantly growing if you want to look for things to read.
https://kagi.com/smallweb Is a fun alternative way to discover new content.
I started a series almost a year ago to help people discover interesting humans and their blogs: https://peopleandblogs.com/
Bearblog has a discovery section: https://bearblog.dev/discover/
The spirit of the old web is still alive and thriving in places that are now no longer mainstream. It takes some effort to find them but great sites are still out there.
* https://search.marginalia.nu/
* https://neustadt.fr/essays/the-small-web/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3hn0a7/what_smal...
EDIT: and because this one just brings me joy, that it exists, with such excruciating detail (:
Forums were the cornerstone of the old internet and more or less completely extinct today.
Thanks for this. It's the best thing since webring. I recently switched to Kagi. I didn't know they were patrons of the spirit of the old web too. That makes me even happier to be giving them my money.
(Scroll all the way down; HN is mentioned first).
> 8. Ads can be good
No they absolutely cannot. Ads skew the incentives whether they are intrusive or not. Also the entire point of ads is to get the user to do something aside from his own goals so they are in direct opposition of point 1.
I think this is the answer. Once upon a time we were way fewer people, and many interests were shared among those people (because we pretty much were all "geeks"). We've always had trolls, spammers, etc. but it still felt like we were part of a big community.
Now everybody is here, and that feeling is no more. It's like moving from a small village or town (where everybody knows each other) to a huge city. It doesn't feel like "belonging" anymore.
Things are moving on, we are just getting old.
But today, HHGTTG is very nearly 45 years old.
For how many decades should references to novel fiction persist, do you suppose?
In 2009, we already had pocket supercomputers.
But to your question, Tolkien, Asimov, Lovecraft, et al. are still a heavy influence on modern Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Horror. Why do you think a mere 45 years should mean that something is no longer referenced?
But the sports fans never felt this way, and were always happy to cut out the geeks and nerds that didn't give two shits about the sportsball game they watched that weekend. Why should the geeks and nerds need to worry about including the sports fans, but not the other way around?
>I think social media, politics, streaming services, etc. have totally blown away these shared frameworks in society, and it's kind of a bummer, even though it's great to have lots of choices. People used to watch the same TV shows and talk about it the next day.
When Game of Thrones was the new hot TV show, it seemed like everyone and his dog was watching it, and that included the sports fans and the nerds too.
>I guess sports is basically the last thing that's shared.
Back to my first point. I don't know any sports fans in my circle of friends and work colleagues (who are all techies of course). If any are, they keep it to themselves, thankfully.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Why.
> People used to watch the same TV shows and talk about it the next day
That's the societal cost of having personalized experience. Nobody watches the content I watch because I pick content that's specifically relevant to just me. Even my closest friends watch different things.