I still spend a lot of time programming (and thus a lot of time on the computer) but other than that, absolutely nothing appeals. Its a wasteland in my mind.
While sites like Neocities are trying to keep the old web ideals alive, even there it can be difficult to find much of value.
As tired as I am seeing the constant stream of LLM stories (and even worse, vibe-coded projects) on HN i'm getting just as tired of the regular posts complaining about how much the internet sucks as well. HN never seemed to be very full of joy or whimsy to me (the culture seems to afraid of "being like Reddit") but lately it seems like nothing left but vitriol and bitterness. I feel like I need to limit my exposure to this place the way I do other social media platforms because it's just too toxic.
Ah well. It was fun while it lasted.
Reddit is full of the same hundred jokes being endlessly recycled in slightly different variants, along with people desperate to come up with a good pun to make their life complete.
It's basically the same picture, and if we're talking about the spirit of the "old internet" that everyone seems to miss, Reddit hits it far better than HN.
I had also a box with audio tapes.
Audio tapes are still functional. Links in bookmarks are 95 pct dead.
Internet is vanity. It was meant to be a communication tool. Now it’s some species of messy yellow pages.
On my grave, I think it won’t be written that I was a really good member of xyz bbforum :)
I would rather be remembered as a valuable member of local discussion club…
It maybe a reason why frequent internet users who remember the past, feel tired.
Appreciation on the internet is mostly fictional (not really real) and we feel it unconsciously…
I've started to go to tiny forums like forums.bladerunner.net and hobby-specific forums like rpgpub and vogons to hang out at the water cooler around others.
Awhile back, I dropped into Libera.chat's lobste.rs room and asked about this topic, which got no traction, but we ended up chatting for a bit, I was given the classic noob treatment. One user complained I was a bot at first, then asked me absurdist non-sequitors to haze the newbie, another user complained that they should close membership off from randos like me (and another user argued with him that they need new members eventually), and a third user told me not to post more than a few sentences without using a pastebin because their terminal IRC client looks ugly.
So I had a very nostalgic web 1.0 world: 1)the angry troll trying to kick me out 2) the tired mod trying not to tap the sign 3)the grumpy greybeard who never left emacs and 4) nobody really addressed the topic I was hoping to talk about.
If that's not congealed 199x internet exchanges, I don't know what is! It was very nostaglic and comforting in a way, the only thing it was missing was some erectile dysfunction pop-up windows and a gaudy internet radio widget.
The web as we know it is out there, I saw it on the lobste.rs libera chat just a few weeks ago! So maybe you have to go as far as islands like fediverse and simplex which are so isolated, most of the users there only want to talk about the tech itself, but , fellow web rando, have some hope, because I didn't go out there and I found some true internet recently, it can happen to you too!
Ask your search engine or LLM to help you find small-medium sized forums ased on hobbies you like, and start lurking, just like we used to 20(!?) years ago.