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

Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

jarredsumner.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 283 posts

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#161

Post by projektfu »

NoGravitas wrote: post #46
ren_engineer wrote: post #22

most people are boring/normal by definition and the internet is now mainstream. The internet used to be filled with a pretty weird subset of the general population but now that is drowned out by the masses. The old school internet still exists to some degree but you are going to have to look harder to find where the weird people are at and most the people claiming they want the "weird" internet back would probably co…

> most people are boring/normal by definition and the internet is now mainstream. The internet used to be filled with a pretty weird subset of the general population but now that is drowned out by the masses. That doesn't explain MySpace, though. Extremely mainstream/mass-oriented, but still fun and weird, while it lasted.

Eventually it got to the point where comments on people's pages were making them unreadable or crashing the browser. That was too much customizability.

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#162

Post by BrainVirus »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #144
BrainVirus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All 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. In other words, it's a bunch of dead websites and there is little incentive to create anything out of the ordinary.

Dead in what sense?

The web in the 90s was an evolving, alive ecosystem. Without the ecosystem, websites that approximate something old-school are standalone entities. Flowers in a vase. They might look the same or even temporarily feel the same, but they are both authored and browsed in an entirely different context.

For example, browsing a website that looks original, but is likely abandoned is a very different experience from browsing it in the 90s or early 00s when it was a part of something big, new and exciting. Even if the content is identical. The same principle applies to authoring.

I have seen countless claims that all the technology that someone could use in the 90s is still available. Regardless of whether it's true or not (mostly not), it misses the point. The social project that was web 1.0 is now defunct.

Paradoxically, the only way to create something equivalent to old-school web now is to invent something entirely new.

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#163

Post by ghaff »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #70
kossTKR wrote: post #9

I 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…

>I wonder why it wasn't viable. Because for the most part, people making content would rather earn money for their content than not earn money. The silos of TikTok and Instagram and YouTube allow for sufficiently low transaction costs such that this market of advertisers interested in buying attention and content creators interested in buying money can exist. Maybe stumbleupon was too early, but the fact that the app…

And even if the vast majority of them don't in fact make material money, many of them have a hope of doing so and act accordingly.

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#166

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #126
kossTKR wrote: post #9

I 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…

IMO it's not just about being bite-sized, memeable content catering to the lowest common denominator. It's that nearly everyone making content is copying marketing strategies. Back then it was more of a show-and-tell vibe, now everything is trying to sell something.

Yes, I think people miss the genuineness more than the fun. Everything happening nowadays seems to be geared towards selling you something. It seems to go further than the internet too. Reading the discussion on pubs closing on this site, some people seem to genuinely have internalised that they themselves are a product which should be optimised in some form of globalised meat market. Late stage capitalism is a bit depressing.

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#167

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

munificent wrote: post #149
vitaflo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has become a sellout. When I was growing up this was considered a bad thing. Today it’s a virtue.

Maybe less virtue and more necessary evil. It was a lot easier to not be a sellout in the economic boom of the 90s when you could find that paid the bills. The younger generation now is barely scraping by. They aren't into hustle culture because they love it, they do it because they're broke.

I don’t think people are broke per say. They have been promoted to and have internalised the idea that if you are not a huge success you are a failure but in absolute term most people seem to be doing fine.

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#168

Post by marginalia_nu »

BrainVirus wrote: post #162
marginalia_nu wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead in what sense?

The web in the 90s was an evolving, alive ecosystem. Without the ecosystem, websites that approximate something old-school are standalone entities. Flowers in a vase. They might look the same or even temporarily feel the same, but they are both authored and browsed in an entirely different context. For example, browsing a website that looks original, but is likely abandoned is a very different experience from browsin…

I don't get what you mean. That ecosystem is still alive, though. It's easy to miss because lives in the shadow of another parallel ecosystem, but it's still there, and it still roughly functions the same.

Web 1.0 was and still is a fringe project by and for oddballs. Just like most people in the '90s didn't know how to get on the web, most people today can't find their way past google and social media. In that regard, it's very much still the same.

Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)

#169

Post by schnevets »

vitaflo wrote: post #134
ineedtosleep wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not just about being bite-sized, memeable content catering to the lowest common denominator. It's that nearly everyone making content is copying marketing strategies. Back then it was more of a show-and-tell vibe, now everything is trying to sell something.

Everyone has become a sellout. When I was growing up this was considered a bad thing. Today it’s a virtue.

This is especially ironic since the original article was using nostalgia to sell his new codeblog service...
Post reply on HN