Odd. This is a promotional post and but because it has a fun headline no one seems to care.
Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
91–100 of 283 posts
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#92I remember the thousands of interesting and weird pages listed on StumbleUpon - directories of obscure topics, avant garde art projects and detailed field specific blogs - many of them both pretty and thoroughly made. Mind expanding stuff. I feel like today all of that has moved to silos like tiktok and instagram, in extreme short form formats that are easily disposable - so almost no one creates truly great "compila…
> so almost no one creates truly great "compilations" of stuff, directories, blogs, galleries or whatever I did this for quite awhile using bookmarks, and the link rot is real. If 10% of my historical bookmarks were valid, I’d be pleasantly surprised.
Anecdotally, my own search engine index starts to feel stale after about two months. I wonder what the half-life of a link is.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#93Ok, I made something weird, recently: https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2022/philosophia-mechanica
In case you asked, there's also an explanation for this. :-)
(Notebook or desktop preferred, at least some mobile browsers seem to have issues with scaling SVG origins.)
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#94I remember the thousands of interesting and weird pages listed on StumbleUpon - directories of obscure topics, avant garde art projects and detailed field specific blogs - many of them both pretty and thoroughly made. Mind expanding stuff. I feel like today all of that has moved to silos like tiktok and instagram, in extreme short form formats that are easily disposable - so almost no one creates truly great "compila…
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/bifurcated/rivets/ - This is pretty great, run by my old professor (and I graduated in '95...)
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#95Because Google is the gatekeeper to what you see, and Google prioritises the boring and bland and CEO-friendly websites you see.
Google also prioritizes what is new over what is original. This rewards the lazy borderline plagiarism copycats, resulting in perpetual soulless regurgitation of content.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#96TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram have tons of cool content. This isn't 2005 anymore.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#97I remember the thousands of interesting and weird pages listed on StumbleUpon - directories of obscure topics, avant garde art projects and detailed field specific blogs - many of them both pretty and thoroughly made. Mind expanding stuff. I feel like today all of that has moved to silos like tiktok and instagram, in extreme short form formats that are easily disposable - so almost no one creates truly great "compila…
It's called TikTok. The internet evolved dude.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#98No post body was provided.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#99I remember the thousands of interesting and weird pages listed on StumbleUpon - directories of obscure topics, avant garde art projects and detailed field specific blogs - many of them both pretty and thoroughly made. Mind expanding stuff. I feel like today all of that has moved to silos like tiktok and instagram, in extreme short form formats that are easily disposable - so almost no one creates truly great "compila…
It's called TikTok. The internet evolved dude.
The post you are replying to mentioned TikTok.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#100All the fun and weird stuff is still around, it just typically doesn't SEO well and doesn't show up on Google, and is too long-tail to show up on popularity-based algorithms like those of Reddit or Facebook. I've spent the last year or so building tools and algorithms specifically to dig up "fun and weird". It's still there: https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random
There's still something to be said about the fact that all the mainstream internet platforms don't really encourage much in terms of "internet creativity" outside of the tight boundaries that are allowed (uploading a video, writing text, posting a picture, etc)
The fact that MySpace was mainstream and allowed for HTML/CSS hacking did exactly what the article said -- it tricked a generation of teenagers into learning how to do that "weird internet stuff."
For the most part, if you want to do anything like that now you're gonna be stuck figuring out domains and hosting and whatnot which isn't nearly as fun as typing some HTML into the platform you and your friends already use. So not as many people are going to do it.