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…
Here's a site I like to link whenever this discussion comes up (not associated): https://wiby.me I love hopping in and hitting the "surprise me" every once in a while, and reading some obscure webpage written by an actual person with a passion for a subject. In the past I've seen a site dedicated to the soundtrack for a film series (I can't remember which), not even necessarily streaming the soundtrack or something,…
Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
261–270 of 283 posts
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#262The answer to the title's question:
"There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever." - George Orwell, 1984
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#263My hope is that with ipv6 everyone will be default have a static IP address. That would make it much easier for people to play around with their own personal websites etc.
IPv6 addresses aren't going to be any more static than what we have now. And even if they were, the fundamental problem of self-hosting is reliability, not getting a static IP address (which you can work around with dynamic DNS services easily). But most people just don't want to play server admin 24/7 and having a site down for days just because you went on vacation just isn't a good way to a run a site.
I think the only way to get back on track is if somebody comes up with a way to make publishing content on the net both trivial and robust. It needs to be a feature of your browser, not something you have to fiddle around with, with other tools.
IPFS kind of promises that and at least in theory would be a great tool to rebuild the Web, but the performance is downright miserable right now and doesn't seem to be improving either. So maybe that's a dead end.
Publishing aside, web browsers also need to get much better at discovering and keeping track of content. Bookmarks haven't improved in 30 years or even gotten worse, thus making it impossible to look for new content on small sites that don't update frequently. Having RSS support removed from all browsers was another big loss.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#264I 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…
Here's a site I like to link whenever this discussion comes up (not associated): https://wiby.me I love hopping in and hitting the "surprise me" every once in a while, and reading some obscure webpage written by an actual person with a passion for a subject. In the past I've seen a site dedicated to the soundtrack for a film series (I can't remember which), not even necessarily streaming the soundtrack or something,…
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Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#265I 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 was at StumbleUpon at shutdown and for a few years before. I'm creating a single-purpose account to avoid doxxing myself on my main account. Here's a non-exhaustive list of things that killed SU. SU relied on individual human curators to discover worthy new web pages instead of trying to crawl the web in bulk. Our most passionate users, the people who would submit great new URLs, tag URLs, rate heavily, and curate…
Taking into account the technical limitations, couldn't SU simply link to/open the site in a new tab?
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#266Because Facebook and its uniformity bringing uniformity to the uninformed letting them stay uninformed.
Also, bootstrap.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#267Earlier 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.
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Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#268I 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 miss old internet stuff to, but in a way I think it’s just morphed. First you have to look past the influencer/marketing cruft trying to pass as authentic but I find real great content is predominantly being created on YT and other video channels. The production value I see some amateur folks take is insane and has to be a massive hobby in of itself. Also have to just realize the web is now public transport where i…
> The production value I see some amateur folks take is insane and has to be a massive hobby in of itself.
Doesn't YT share some ad revenue with you if you're over a certain amount of views? :)
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#269Earlier 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.
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Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#270There's a new social media site called Cohost that actually allows stuff like this inside of posts. It lets people, say, recreate Blender's UI or make a Warioware microgame. It's a nice middle ground between the hellscape that is Twitter and the more self-contained DIY sites of Neocities (which is also cool, but never really stuck with me).
Could you share an invite code for Cohost, if you have one?