My favorite bit of the old, weird internet was Portal Of Evil.
Which took the "look at the weird stuff I found" aspect of stumbleupon, and used it as comedic fodder to poke fun at all the weird stuff.
Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
111–120 of 283 posts
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#112There are lots of fun and weird things on the internet, but SEO prevents you from seeing most of them---you end up seeing only the parts that someone is motivated to pay to get you to look at. That's essentially Google's business model.
I'm always thinking of building an old-school directory of interesting sites on a limited number of topics. With the only automation being checking if the website is still up and either removing it or redirecting to an archive.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I'm highly tempted to run a "caching" proxy 24x7 just to keep archives of some of these decaying gems around past their lifespan on the web.
I'd say I could just use archive.org (or similar), but their (admittedly necessary) respect of robots.txt makes their archive incomplete.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#114> Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? Because everything is complicated now. To code your own website you have to learn hundreds of hours of web technologies. There is no clear way and a lot of old, now wrong, advice in old blog posts. This limits the creativity that can be expressed a lot and is probably the main reason why "everyone" is now using "platforms".
I disagree. its no harder to program today than it was 15 years ago. in fact it is easier. its less meaningful....less satisfying....and has been eroded by copy-cats and everyone spinning up a product instead of a passion project.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#115Individuals want customization, novelty and the ability to relate between one another and share and show off.....companies want ubiquity and uniformity amongst their user base......
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#116Because Google is the gatekeeper to what you see, and Google prioritises the boring and bland and CEO-friendly websites you see.
Google isn't my gatekeeper. Stop using them and giving them power
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#117I 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…
https://stumblingon.com/
I like this clone.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#118All 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
>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.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#119Honestly, the internet has seemed somewhat barren to me since the death of Flash.
Re: Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)
#120I created instant.gallery (no spam, no ads, no notifications) to be a fun and weird website - the problem is getting quality sites noticed without a huge ad spend. The big funnels (twitter, google and fb/ig) have taken over.