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I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

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Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#221

Post by krapp »

ricardobeat wrote: post #16

I miss GeoCities/Tripod, and the time where search engines would always return new, quirky pages for whatever you searched for - no big media publishers or professional bloggers. Lots of fan-built pages, or just people showcasing their hobbies. These days I find myself stuck in a loop of HN, BBC, Reddit, eventually designernews or YouTube. The latter makes me feel trapped but is still mostly valuable content, whereas…

>I miss GeoCities/Tripod, and the time where search engines would always return new, quirky pages for whatever you searched for - no big media publishers or professional bloggers. Lots of fan-built pages, or just people showcasing their hobbies.

Thank Google and SEO for ruining that.

A lot of that old-school and personal content is still out there, (obviously not on Geocities) though... but the process of discovering content on the web has been ruthlessly optimized to favor content aggregators and corporate sites, and as a result, a lot of communities have either moved to those platforms or just go dark.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#222

Post by Gosper »

ricardobeat wrote: post #16

I miss GeoCities/Tripod, and the time where search engines would always return new, quirky pages for whatever you searched for - no big media publishers or professional bloggers. Lots of fan-built pages, or just people showcasing their hobbies. These days I find myself stuck in a loop of HN, BBC, Reddit, eventually designernews or YouTube. The latter makes me feel trapped but is still mostly valuable content, whereas…

I've seen a few references around here lately to https://wiby.me

I've made a habit of visiting to press "surprise me...", which delivers delightfully retro gems like, just now, the RollerCoaster Tycoon Technical Information Depot: http://tid.rctspace.com

It's a small breath of fresh air from the rest of the web that merges into a unsatisfying blur of over-produced, monitored, and hyper-optimised-for-engagement "content".

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#223

Post by Gosper »

paxys wrote: post #141

This entire thread makes me realize that what people are missing isn't the internet but their own childhood.

Yes, I've succumb lately to reminiscing on the halcyon days of the early web too. I happened to be a teen then, so the memories are fondly intertwined.

I recently learned the term reminiscence bump that it looks like some folks are also enjoying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscence_bump

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#224

Post by qrbLPHiKpiux »

ricardobeat wrote: post #16

I miss GeoCities/Tripod, and the time where search engines would always return new, quirky pages for whatever you searched for - no big media publishers or professional bloggers. Lots of fan-built pages, or just people showcasing their hobbies. These days I find myself stuck in a loop of HN, BBC, Reddit, eventually designernews or YouTube. The latter makes me feel trapped but is still mostly valuable content, whereas…

Lol yes! Now, if I search something into google, guaranteed the first few links, not the ads, ar links directed to some store for a sale, rather than information.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#225

Post by krapp »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #84

Great! We're all old here it seems (I'm 42), a few of us joined back in the 90s... It started as a great human experiment, such fun. It became co-opted by commercial enterprise. The two largest gateways into the experience are now Google and Facebook. Really, what did we expect would happen? Probably best to take it back now.

> Probably best to take it back now.

Why? The internet isn't for us, it shouldn't be a quirky clique only for the technorati, it should to be for everyone.

"Normal" using the internet for mainstream, banal and commercial content that doesn't appeal to us is more or less the culmination of the dream. The world has been liberated (at least in part) and connected.

Let's please at least take a moment to appreciate what's been gained for humanity as a whole as we mourn the loss of our own cultural relevance in the greater scheme.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#226

Post by CosmicShadow »

ruytlm wrote: post #91
dannyw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smallness and novelty of the internet made it more of a community. If you played TF2 in 2008, I would say the interests of each player is more homogenous and compatible compared to Overwatch in 2018. I think this is one factor at play. The other is the shift from desktop to mobile, from community participation to content creation or consumption - almost mutually exclusive. Finally, deprioritization of the identit…

In terms of gaming, it's also the result of a shift from dedicated servers to matchmaking algorithms. On dedicated servers, a community of 'regulars' forms through repeated interactions. Modern matchmaking is a more disposable approach - here's a set of players that you'll be up against for 10 minutes, and then you'll never see them again.

I agree with you for the most part about the matchmaking stuff, but one lucky thing I've found while playing Heroes of the Storm is that if you play consistently at a certain time of day that isn't common like 7am-noon EST you can start to see a number of names over and over more frequently both on your team and opposing team. Eventually you start adding people as friends who did awesome and then they invite their friends and you add them if they were good and now I've got a slew of people who are as serious and/or as skilled about the game as I am, whereas for the longest time I played solo.

It's still not the same, but it's cool when you start to see the same names over and over, it makes you feel like the world went from an endless mass to something with size boundaries and you can tell who some of the other hardcore players are. You can hate them for always being too good or playing the same character and know what to expect, and then eventually they are a friend of a friend and then a friend.

In a similar vein, now that voice chat is there by default it can be easier to get to know people and connect or be repelled. People you respected as good players turned out to be super annoying weiners on mic, while others just regular dudes or gals talking about their life. It definitely feels like it brought a new angle to things.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#227

Post by eswat »

y2bd wrote: post #61
gkoberger wrote: post #44

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Yeah, there's a lot more content to consume now. However, it doesn't feel like a community... it feels more like watching reruns on TBS. I remember making actual friends on message boards. Friends I eventually met in the real world. I don't think relationships like that are really formed anymore. Most of social media now is a broadcast, not a conversation. People (m…

This is pretty much how I felt as a long-time TF2 player super excited for Overwatch to come out, and then very sad once I realized what kind of game it was. You grab your friends and play Overwatch, while you play TF2 and meet your friends. And also a parallel, TF2 obviously still exists, but all of the servers I used to play on are gone now. Haven’t found anything else quite yet. FFXIV actually was super enjoyable…

I’ve also felt this experience when it comes to content creation for games.

I missed the modding communities in the late 90s/early 00s that had a sense of place and community. Things tended to gravitate around their IRC channels and those of the actual game. Was great to develop relationships online with not only the modders but the people developing the games.

As an example, Epic Games were super-accessible back in the Unreal Tournament 99/2003/2004 days to chat with on IRC and not just about modding or stuff related to their products. There were also some game servers where you know certain employees made it their haunt.

But now everything is hyper-optimized so both Epic and customers waste the least amount of time talking to each other to solve a problem. It definitely feels more like you’re talking to a corporation than engaging with a community of creators now.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#228

Post by always_good »

maltalex wrote: post #199
mseebach wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a major factor is the fact that the internet is now mainstream. In the early days, you had something in common with everybody, simply by being on the internet. The place was silly with people absolutely floored by the idea that they were casually chatting with someone halfway across the continent, something only possible on very expensive phone calls until then. Everybody was also, by necessity, an early tech…

There’s still some of that in IRC. IRC clients serve as a barrier that filters out a surprising number of people.

There's still some for sure, but I can't help but notice how empty IRC communities are these days.

Bigger ones like #node.js/#javascript on freenode are about 10 people strong if you actually count the regulars.

Frankly I think something like Slack is a better middleground for most communities. People are filtered out because they have to be bothered to install Slack and join the community. Yet it has community-building features that IRC doesn't have, like the likelihood that someone will get messages when they are offline/away and that they will actually come back.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#229

Post by konschubert »

gkoberger wrote: post #44

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Yeah, there's a lot more content to consume now. However, it doesn't feel like a community... it feels more like watching reruns on TBS. I remember making actual friends on message boards. Friends I eventually met in the real world. I don't think relationships like that are really formed anymore. Most of social media now is a broadcast, not a conversation. People (m…

> And now, real identities are involved, so they have to be professional.

My Twitter profile is linked to my real name, but on Mastodon I'm trying to stay anonymous.

It's amazing how much more stuff I'm willing to post on Mastodon than on Twitter.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#230

Post by senorjazz »

cityzen wrote: post #6

I have been saying I've "reached the end of the internet" for awhile now. I am 44 and have been working on the web since mid 90s. I remember so much cool stuff from then. Trying to get a 56k modem to work, dealing with the fact that you couldn't always get online or if you did you could get kicked off at any time. I remember streaming the Tibetan Freedom Concert with realplayer back in '98. The first mp3 i got, napst…

I agree with you and am of a similar age and experience. But how much of the above is because "we were young"?
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