151–160 of 231 posts
2009-2014? That's not the old web. Or I'm old. Take your pick.
Yeah, I'd say "old web" is early '90s up through about mid-2000s or so. Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, lots of standalone web forums, the early blogosphere, no social media, etc.
Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet,…
I don't believe the old web was filled with people pining about how the current web is awful and them participating in recreating the web they inhabit is better. People on the old web just posted things, because before that there was no non-old web to compare to. But that in itself is what makes the old web so appealing to people wanting it to return. Back then there was no other web necessary to escape from. So when…
TBH I do recall a lot of gloating over how AOL was full of clueless lusers who were inferior to the Internet
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> I didn't live long enough to see... Whoa, careful with your verb tenses! You just wrote a ghost story :)
Have seen. Too late to edit it now...
its interesting because it sounds more correct to use have not yet because your life is still going on but its going on in the forward direction, not backwards in time to overlap an earlier HN state. So you could say its not right, but the sentence sounds/feels more right to preserve that your life is still going on.
We like that you are still here with us.
Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet,…
I don't believe the old web was filled with people pining about how the current web is awful and them participating in recreating the web they inhabit is better. People on the old web just posted things, because before that there was no non-old web to compare to. But that in itself is what makes the old web so appealing to people wanting it to return. Back then there was no other web necessary to escape from. So when…
BBS / FidoNet, Usenet, IRC, and MUCKs would like a word!
Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet,…
Allow me to switch to asshole mode for a minute: "Things used to be so good" is mostly rose-tinted glasses: What exactly WAS the "old web" anyway? 100s of half-baked sites hosted on Geocities, Yahoo, about pointless stuff? Epilepsy simulator websites splattered with gif-vomit? Everyone and their grandmother asking you to install their 10 toolbars? Honest, serious question: What actually was of objective substance on…
Yes you can still find roughly all the same stuff. No it's not the same.
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I didn't live long enough to see the entire lifetime of HN, but it's definitely part of the old web in my book. Its functionality is the same it's always been, it's rock solid, lightweight and simple. No personalization or engagement maximizing, no modern-style ads. Being spun off from something as big as Y Combinator meant they can run this site almost indefinitely.
The only thing not "old" about it is upvoting, which is one of those YMMV features.
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Yeah, I'd say "old web" is early '90s up through about mid-2000s or so. Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, lots of standalone web forums, the early blogosphere, no social media, etc.
Pre-social media is probably the watermark. That’s what sucked all the content out of the web and into walled-garden platforms.
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Newer websites are filtered through what is acceptable from a corporate lens. The old web culture can't exist because advertisers won't let it exist on modern platforms. Additionally the spread of information is significantly less organic because of relentless pushes to use algorithmic feeds along with far worse distractions from content than there used to be.
> The old web culture can't exist because advertisers won't let it exist on modern platforms. Again, what's preventing you from buying a domain name and putting up your own website? bypass the advertisers? "Not enough people will see it", you say? So you want the reach provided by "modern platforms" but you don't want their rules?