Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Death of the Cyberflâneur

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#21

Post by yolesaber »

bbctol wrote: post #18
alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

I've started collecting my weirdest links, though I'm not sure what to do with them yet. Hundreds of watercolors featuring Nazi war criminal Reynard Heidrich transforming into a female bird, a studio producing sexy anthropomorphized American warships that's started shifting towards Trump propaganda, a network of alt-right teenage girls' tumblrs, mostly based out of Nebraska, subreddits for conspiracy theorists focusi…

Please post them on a pastebin. The alt-right tumblr and conspiracy reddit sound amazing

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#22

Post by Apocryphon »

bbctol wrote: post #18
alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

I've started collecting my weirdest links, though I'm not sure what to do with them yet. Hundreds of watercolors featuring Nazi war criminal Reynard Heidrich transforming into a female bird, a studio producing sexy anthropomorphized American warships that's started shifting towards Trump propaganda, a network of alt-right teenage girls' tumblrs, mostly based out of Nebraska, subreddits for conspiracy theorists focusi…

And here we thought Weimar Germany produced bizarre art.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#23

Post by hood_syntax »

yolesaber wrote: post #21
bbctol wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started collecting my weirdest links, though I'm not sure what to do with them yet. Hundreds of watercolors featuring Nazi war criminal Reynard Heidrich transforming into a female bird, a studio producing sexy anthropomorphized American warships that's started shifting towards Trump propaganda, a network of alt-right teenage girls' tumblrs, mostly based out of Nebraska, subreddits for conspiracy theorists focusi…

Please post them on a pastebin. The alt-right tumblr and conspiracy reddit sound amazing

Yeah, who is this seemingly normal guy? I want to know!

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#24

Post by tvanantwerp »

alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

I used to enjoy visiting StumbleUpon and seeing what kinds of random places I'd end up. Then one day they asked me what kind of content I enjoyed, and wouldn't let me do anything else until I told them. Stopped going after that. I miss the ease of ending up somewhere totally unexpected that it once gave me.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#25

Post by ZenoArrow »

IsaacL wrote: post #12
alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

Here's a collection of jumping-off points to curious communities I've spent many a happy hour exploring: http://ribbonfarm.com https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/ http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ https://meaningness.com/ http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ Enjoy :)

Thanks for the links, I enjoy discovering sites with interesting content.

They probably wouldn't be classed as unknown/obscure, but I always seem to find something interesting on Brain Pickings and Colossal, worth a look if they're new to you:

https://www.brainpickings.org/

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#26

Post by whackedspinach »

Analemma_ wrote: post #15
IsaacL wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a collection of jumping-off points to curious communities I've spent many a happy hour exploring: http://ribbonfarm.com https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/ http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ https://meaningness.com/ http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ Enjoy :)

We need a DARE program to warn unsuspecting children about people like you ;) LessWrong is a rabbit hole you'll never find your way out of. Oh it starts off harmless. "I'll just read a couple", you say. But a year later you're mainlining SSC and pissing off all your friends talking about "virtue signaling". And then a year after that you're living in Berkeley, dating five people, and giving a third of your income to…

Please go back in time and invent this program. I definitely need to stop mainlining SSC.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#27

Post by Bartweiss »

monknomo wrote: post #4
alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

I'm a fan of finding odd corners on the 'net, what's your technique?

Strange subreddits are good. StumbleUpon isn't useful for much, but permitting tons of categories and going wild with it is a good way to get weird.

Anything that allows chaining is a big help, which is why people get to "the weird part of Youtube" more easily than the weird parts of the general internet. Sometimes you can exploit this by dipping in and out of linkable things (it's like recreating webrings). Try following chains of linked subreddits or tumblr accounts, then popping back out at some odd-looking link they point to.

But honestly, it's hard. I find a lot of 'weird internet' by reading the SlateStarCodex link collections, and otherwise letting other people do the hard work for me.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#28

Post by randomnerdiness »

alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

I used to enjoy perusing rationalviews.com - but it seems that they're shutting down.

Sorta bummed about that, but I get why. Too few people contributed to the discussions

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#29

Post by monknomo »

alva wrote: post #13
monknomo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fan of finding odd corners on the 'net, what's your technique?

I mostly find the odd places when searching on and for discussions of old stomping grounds. That usually leads me down a long path of links. Sometimes I discover by joining oddly named and sparsely visited IRC rooms. Occasionally great sites are posted to 4chan. A recent discovery was made when looking for recent references to Temple Of The Screaming Electron. This search led me to two weird corners (potentially NSFW…

Deep forum links on weird topics is my goto, but IRC may be something I should get back into.

I kinda miss the web being made of forums, I feel like that's a tradition that's less healthy than it was. Facebook groups or slack channel or Stack Exchange just don't do it for me the same way

Post reply on HN