Does anyone else msis the old Internet when we used to be on like My Space and shit like that

[cityscapes]

Disclaimer I've never actually used any of these websites but liike from what I've heard they used to be really cool and stuff. They had like these essential qualities that we don't see nowadays on "Twitter" or "Facebook" or anything like that. What are these essential qualities? Well... For instance, Smogon dot com, the site you're browsing right now (!), is a receptacle of Forum Culture, something really cool that has to do with like unchained flows and long-form discourse on the intenret. And also small indie sites, soemthing which is dying and can never be revived, taught people how to learn HTML which nothing is doing nowadays.

Don't get me wrong I do love me some Posters, but I don't feel that they can really measure up to novelty websites that I visit when someone links them in a thread about novelty websites, spend 30 seconds on, then unceremoniously leave. That stuff is next level epic, like an internet art museum... Highbrow stuff, for the discerning eye. And the old internet was like...that, but like more. Like a whole universe of kinda interesting art pieces. Real democratized art, not like the NFT slop we have Today. Man...the internet was a better place when STEM didn't try to sink its tentacles into the humanities...

Also I feel likek this was kinda tied to free speech somehow.. Like 4chan, or Reddit, though don't get me wrong these places have become terrible now, back in the day it really meant a lot to be able to just explore new ideas. But again I wasn't on these places so I couldn't even imagine what it was like. It must have been like modern Reddit, but, like, more untamed. The Wild West of the internet.

Do you ever think about a completely polluted Earth? Garbage everywhere, and if not garbage at least a continual repetition of the same? Someone living in such a place would have a hard time distinguishing between garbage and everything else. So the idea of an unpolluted area, even local, would be completely alien to them. They couldn't even imagine what it would look like.

This is why I love the Internet, because it acts as a model for things I can't understand. The garbage everywhere in my brain parallels the garbage on the Internet. Fuck you, Serial Experiments Lain.

 

[BestDatrix]

I don't msis it sorry

 

[Sijih]

big text a

Smogon dot com, the site you're browsing right now (!), is a receptacle of Forum Culture

I'm at the point where I've basically eliminated all forms of doom scrolling from my daily routine (reddit's tendrils were particularly hard to excavate), so the only site (besides for nytimes.com/crosswords and one or two definitely not copyright infringing sports streaming websites) that I spend significant amounts of time on is smogon.

i've given a bit of thought to why I like smogon and consider it different from things like reddit and I settled on the "Forum Culture" thing too. I think the fundamental reason (the crux of the set if you will) is that you can actually recognize posters.

the root causes of being able to actually recognize people are that:
- everything is built around the thread, which is chronological and focused. smogon doesn't do the instagram thing where they reorder your timeline to confuse you and stop you from knowing where you left off. nor does it do the twitter thing where posts are anchored to individuals, and you can only find posts from others if you follow them and they appear on some transient timeline. on "Forums" every post has a home in a specific thread, and you can see how things play out within a context
- threads are text based. human society is built on words and although everyone loves videos and images, pure writing can do things that gifs of anime girls and images of obama saying "not bad" can't
- threads are archived. in discord something from more than 4 hours ago is de facto gone forever. on smogon you can go back and like a themantyke post from 16 years (5844 days) ago.
- the community is small. there are >656995 smogon accounts, but half of them want to advertise online gambling and will soon be spam cleaned by me, noble protector of the forums. for a forum like smogoff there is a manageable enough number of people who are regulars that you can keep them all in your brainspace at once

what all of this combines for is that when you spend enough time on the forum you can begine to say "oh this is the person with the cow avatar's tenth post about ice fishing." having that background lets you claw back some of the context that is automatically lost when you move from face to face conversation to the internet. it doesn't really matter what your conclusion about cow avatar is. it could be "wow i want to try ice fishing" or "wow this cow avatar person is fucking cringe" or "i can't believe cow avatar wrote a massive post just to self delude into thinking smogon isn't a waste of time". what really matters is that you can understand posts within a context and in reference to a person. it humanizes everything, makes things less abrasive and more understandable for our little primate brains. on smogon the idea that there is a person somewhere on the other side of the world wide web query is much more believable than on reddit.

i think some evidence for my theory is that when you go to basically any random profile of a person who has grey badges and who hasn't logged in for a while you will see messages like "man miss u so much farting_dewgong_47. remeber how much fun we had doing c&c for gen 5 nu?". i'm not saying that the point of smogon is to find your bff and invite them to your wedding, but i think "Forum Culture" is a big reason you see stuff liek that here and not on reddit or mastodon (does anyone else love le epic FOSS) or whatever.

big text b

Garbage everywhere, and if not garbage at least a continual repetition of the same?

I think you'r right that modern social media is pretty shit. all mainstream social media has homogenized into machines built to sell you ads and completely devour your attention and time and take advantage of your pitiful little brain chemistry. and that happened because all the big sites are for profit advertising machines.
don't get me wrong, i don't actually think people being motivated by an incentive is fundamentally bad - in fact I bet the smogon dex would be a let less wordy if not for the custom avatar working as a carrot on a stick. but I do think it's fairly obvious that money is the reason behind tiktok and youtube shorts and instagram reels and all the other things an algorithm can feed you for hours until you're in more of a trance than any opium den regular has ever been in.
when you see someone post a youtube video, you can assume it's because they have some sponsor that's giving them money, and you can assume the things in the video are there to pad it out for ads rather than because they're necessary for communicating some message. smogon's incentives are so irrelevant in the grand scheme of life that people basically only do it for the love of the game. if someone writes 8000 words about why tera should be banned in gen 9 natdex QuiteInfrequentlyUsed, the only assumption you can make about their incentive is that they actually just want tera banned. if someone signs up for a tour, then they want to play. simple as!

big text c

the internet was a better place when STEM didn't try to sink its tentacles into the humanities

I've never been a particularly nostalgia inclined person and I would be a bit wary of missing something I didn't experience. grass is always greener on the other side right? also, at the end of the day the internet is still too intangible for me I think. even the most transcendental digital experiences will often feel less authentic than just joining a sunday bowling league or some shit, at least imo.

and, despite what I just said about social media specifically, I'm going to try to be positive and say that the internet as a whole might actually be better now.
the internet at the start was a lot smaller and was 100% people who had specific tech skills. they could use html and php (lol) and etc to have full control and create interesting art pieces, and because they all had those skills it was all art. (btw quick tangent, a staple of the "old internet" was USENET, and if you actually go through the archives people who used USENET could be some seriously mean bastards)
now the internet is a lot bigger and a lot more people have access to it. so the percentage of interesting things is lower because of SEO content farms, but the total amount of interesting stuff is higher, and when you do find a hidden gem it's even more impressive, and you don't have to be part of a special club to use the internet.
modern internet lets us have wikipedia like we know it now. modern internet lets you find any book and watch any event. modern internet has more odd and wonderful and niche games on itch.io and steam and wherever than you could ever conceivably play. modern internet has infrastructure that lets you bank and video call and interactively learn new skills. and so many more peopl regardless of economic background or location or whatever can access all of those resources. a lot of things are getting a lot worse, but maybe we can hope that the other things are getting better quick enough to make the world a better place in sum.

and thus concludes my response... q.e.d. and such

big text d

sorry i just cant help it

now I imagine a lot of what I just did is probably reiterating something Immanuel Kant said in the 1700s, except my way of saying it is much stupider and less eloquent (any other categorical imperative enjoyers here (I've never read a philosophy book and I never plan to)). I also imagine that none of what I said is truly creative or insightful. and is probably wrong on top of thaat. and now that I reread I realize I lot of what I said is a digression that's orthogonal to the stuff you talked about. however I still liked writing it because writing is nice and helps you organize your own thoughts. i'll be happy if even one person finds even one thing I said interesting. if not then oh well, bellsprouts go in the bottom right etc. I guess I'll use this time to thank you for making the op, it's always nice when something gets the steam engine of your train of thought running

the little parting gift i'll leave you with is that if you want a little dewdrop of the "old internet's" ambrosia, buy an old source engine game made by valve and find a community server. I've spent so many hours of my life on valve community servers (particularly the OG day of defeat). in an age where modern games chew you and 9 other people up in the matchmaking mill and spit you out broken and bloodied just for you to crawl back, playing a community server where you have no responsibility and no real goal and where you know that NOOBDESTROYER is going to log on at 8pm exactly every day... well, it's just kind of nice. it heals the soul.

hope u have a nice day. hope whoever's reading this doesn't have heartburn rn.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

broadly agree with the above beyond a couple of small points which i shall now deal with in allegedly-humourous fashion

Like 4chan, or Reddit, though don't get me wrong these places have become terrible now, back in the day it really meant a lot to be able to just explore new ideas.

on reddit back in the old days i think the main "new ideas" being explored were just various forms of child porn

(any other categorical imperative enjoyers here

immanuel kant can suck my nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

the early internet does sound cool to Me, A Zoomer tho. i was listening to a podcast about david bowie and there was a guy talking about how he was talking to this guy pretending to be david bowie online for years and eventually he realised that it was actually david bowie

 

[monkfish]

an underrated feature of the old days of the internet was that you could post your real name and picture without fearing that it would end up intruding into your real life somehow. i would still recognise the names and faces of lots of the old firebot posters, but these days all you have to go on is a username and a changing avatar. maybe thats one of the reasons why i keep my avatar the same these days

 

[chimp]

The internet is objectively an ugly place nowadays. Sure those old geocities sites could burn out your retinas, but they had a sort of personalized charm at least. Now you can’t go to any site without being bombarded by ads and popups, shit taking up half the damn screen sometimes. What used to be the wild west is now commercialized. Its like if they put billboards in outer space.

If you’re looking to engage in a little nostalgia thumping, I’d highly recommend Hypnospace Outlaw. The game is all about exploring the “old” internet, with loads of geocities-esque pages. Top choice for GOTY for me so far.

 

[Shinto7654]

an underrated feature of the old days of the internet was that you could post your real name and picture without fearing that it would end up intruding into your real life somehow. i would still recognise the names and faces of lots of the old firebot posters, but these days all you have to go on is a username and a changing avatar. maybe thats one of the reasons why i keep my avatar the same these days

Hey, its technically not the same since I recall it used to not be animated was only the bird with a question mark over their head back when this was still called Firebot

But yeah, a lot of what Sijih posted about rings true, even as someone that mostly came up as forums were being shifted out for social media platforms, but I will say that at least back when I was using Smogon more regularly (so around the early 2010's), there definitely was a large current of people being performative as shit to get clout and prestige on the site. I'm not saying this is a thing thats gone away, but it's a thing I sure as hell noticed during my time on here. Also, a thing I think people either forget or downplay is just how more on average garbage the environment was back then, both on here and the internet as a whole? Like, just casual bigotry being way more accepted, toxicity as a whole being cheered on much more, just heinous shit being done in PM's and DM's and whatever you called it on IRC, it all felt much more prevelent and in your face. I'm not saying like the current Internet is in a great state regarding that, but it definitely feels like, less casually hateful

 

[igiveuponaname]

i think some evidence for my theory is that when you go to basically any random profile of a person who has grey badges and who hasn't logged in for a while you will see messages like "man miss u so much farting_dewgong_47. remeber how much fun we had doing c&c for gen 5 nu?".

I like to dive through old threads and accounts on smogon from time to time and this is something that always gets to me. Seeing old accounts that have gone untouched for who knows how long always has me thinking about stuff like "where are they now?", "do they still remember these forums every now and then?", "did they simply grow out of mons or did life simply get too busy for them?", and those thoughts always lead me to "When will the people who I interact with on here stop logging on to the forums? Will I ever get to talk to them on here again? When will I end up doing the same? Will there be people on here who will remember me years after I stop coming here (probably not)?". All those old accounts remind me of how all of our time here (both on this site and with life in general) is temporary and how people we've made connections with and care about can just disappear from our lives whether we like it or not. It scares me to think about that. Maybe I'm just thinking too much about it. Probably that.


Anyways does anybody else miss this?

 

[gvmgvm40]

Also, a thing I think people either forget or downplay is just how more on average garbage the environment was back then, both on here and the internet as a whole? Like, just casual bigotry being way more accepted, toxicity as a whole being cheered on much more, just heinous shit being done in PM's and DM's and whatever you called it on IRC, it all felt much more prevelent and in your face. I'm not saying like the current Internet is in a great state regarding that, but it definitely feels like, less casually hateful

That's mostly because how everything became centralized around a few major platforms, and those major platforms are doing their best to milk their audience for clicks and ad revenue. The current sanitization of the major platforms is more of a side effect of the advertisers' demands. If they deem it's in the platforms' best interest, they absolutely will promote heinous shit (from simple misogyny to actual calls to genocide), or censor people and causes they deem as transgressive. The old internet wasn't as monetized, for better and for worse.

 

[Shinto7654]

That's mostly because how everything became centralized around a few major platforms, and those major platforms are doing their best to milk their audience for clicks and ad revenue. The current sanitization of the major platforms is more of a side effect of the advertisers' demands. If they deem it's in the platforms' best interest, they absolutely will promote heinous shit (from simple misogyny to actual calls to genocide), or censor people and causes they deem as transgressive. The old internet wasn't as monetized, for better and for worse.

Considering that it's a noticeable shift that i've noticed happen in places that aren't beholden to advertisers, not really sure this holds that much water frankly.

 

[Blizihguh]

when you see someone post a youtube video, you can assume it's because they have some sponsor that's giving them money, and you can assume the things in the video are there to pad it out for ads rather than because they're necessary for communicating some message. smogon's incentives are so irrelevant in the grand scheme of life that people basically only do it for the love of the game. if someone writes 8000 words about why tera should be banned in gen 9 natdex QuiteInfrequentlyUsed, the only assumption you can make about their incentive is that they actually just want tera banned. if someone signs up for a tour, then they want to play. simple as![/SPOILER]

I see your point, but I feel like this is too cynical. Or at least it only really applies to like the top 1% of videos (and streams, podcasts, etc). Internet content creation is notoriously difficult to break out in, requiring a massive amount of work and dedication to have a small chance at building a middle class living. But in absolute terms, there's huge caste of people who do it as a job. Most of those people could have spent that time finding a "traditional" career that would be easier, better paid, and more stable. Most successful content creators end up in that line of work precisely because they have stuff they're passionate about and want to make a living sharing with the world. Of course there are the scummy mega-celebrity types who just want to be rich and famous, but those people have existed since time immemorial and they can and will fester at the top of any human social structure.

For what it's worth, I have a ton of early internet nostalgia (well, earlier anyway). I think we whitewash a lot of stuff with memory, but actually the bigger issue is that finding the cool places has always been time-consuming and random. That's just part of human social life. I love forum culture, and I spend a lot of time on Smogon partly because of it, but it's not like forums declined and now all socialization takes place on Twitter. Cool new social spaces are popping up on Discord, and when Discord gets old they'll start popping up somewhere else. But it's harder to find them, because smaller social circles are cooler, and the older you are the more shit you have going on. And the more social circles you've already found to participate in, usually.

sorry i just cant help it

Agree wholeheartedly with this btw

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

Cool new social spaces are popping up on Discord

this is true but ime (personally)(not generalisationing)big public discord servers are very terrible. i need a smallish server where i am revered as a messianic figure or at the very least tolerated as a funny little freak in the corner (idt it's a coincidence that the only discord servers i rly hang out in are smogon-related)

that said i don't use any other online fora besides this one (unless reddit counts? which ig it does but it's a p diff beast and also an evil evil place) so maybe this says more about me than anything lol (or possibly smogon is an outlier.hmm...)

idk this is getting rambly and self-indulgent but nothing rly quite captures the feeling of getting 35 luvdiscs for posting about wet dreams on the internet's premier pokemon website. ((true story))

 

[Local Dog]

I miss old 4chan. I learned English on this website and I liked it as a kid a lot. It was always somewhat degenerate but its so deeply rotten and boring now. Old YouTube too. When YouTube poop ruled and when corporations didn't have rights that regular users don't have

 

[doipy hooves]

this is true but ime (personally)(not generalisationing)big public discord servers are very terrible. i need a smallish server where i am revered as a messianic figure or at the very least tolerated as a funny little freak in the corner (idt it's a coincidence that the only discord servers i rly hang out in are smogon-related)

that said i don't use any other online fora besides this one (unless reddit counts? which ig it does but it's a p diff beast and also an evil evil place) so maybe this says more about me than anything lol (or possibly smogon is an outlier.hmm...)

idk this is getting rambly and self-indulgent but nothing rly quite captures the feeling of getting 35 luvdiscs for posting about wet dreams on the internet's premier pokemon website. ((true story))

I think the trend of download links and knowledge bases moving behind Discord servers is especially unfortunate. The main difference between Discord and forums/wikis is that the latter is publicly accessible and indexed on search engines, so if you want to find a solution to a problem, then you have a good chance of finding discussions from people who have had similar issues in the past, whereas with Discord you need to find and join the right server and hope that someone has happened to talk about that issue and someone else was there to know the answer. Especially with the website formerly known as Twitter nowadays being harder to access without an account, I feel that forums are still valuable for preserving and discovering niche information within a community, with even Azure Heights still preserving the culture of the RBY/GSC era today.

Relevant articles:
Please stop making Discord servers for things that shouldn't be Discord servers
Stop. Closing. Forums. For. Discord.

It's also worth mentioning the 90-9-1 rule of inequality where 90% of users in a community are typically lurkers. In Smogon terms I would say they don't have accounts, while the 9% are those who make accounts and the 1% are those who still actively post. As I write, there are currently 269 members and 4262 guests online, as well as a bunch of robots that I'm not sure are counted or not, and things really peak in leak/prerelease season as a static source you can rely on for collecting new discoveries. I would say that kind of phenomenon is lost on Discord servers you have to actively make an account and engage in.

 

[faint]

an underrated feature of the old days of the internet was that you could post your real name and picture without fearing that it would end up intruding into your real life somehow. i would still recognise the names and faces of lots of the old firebot posters, but these days all you have to go on is a username and a changing avatar. maybe thats one of the reasons why i keep my avatar the same these days

when i was 15 my friends and i would prank call mods that posted their phone numbers in the smogon yellow pages database. one time i unknowingly called jumpman during the NBA finals and made him sign onto shoddy because i said there was harassment occuring. he was not happy.

nowadays you'd get yourself banned for doxxing if you posted your own number.

 

[uppa]

i just miss flash games i remember there was a ben 10 game on the cartoon network website that has a level creator and it was really cool and i cant find it anymore. nothing has any soul on the internet anymore because everyone uses templates for websites and goes for a generic professional style. i like when modern websites are really ugly and antiquated like smogon /pos

 

[yureion]

the one site (that while still around) I miss the old design and community of more than anything is last.fm when they still had the forums, journals, groups, etc.

 

[bdt2002]

You know... I did miss it for a second, but then I remembered some of the obnoxiously weird sh** people would post on Miiverse of all places. Yeah. Freaking Miiverse. Certainly at least one of you remember that.

 

[Mathy]

You know... I did miss it for a second, but then I remembered some of the obnoxiously weird sh** people would post on Miiverse of all places. Yeah. Freaking Miiverse. Certainly at least one of you remember that.

i got banned from miiverse, twice