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

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

#221

Post by krapp »

researchers wrote: post #151
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…

A lot of that content has moved to newsletters and Twitter threads. If you know the right people to follow, there are a lot of niche, quirky, and insightful pieces that remind me of the homepages of yore. One problem is that these things get lost in the timeline. So I made a StumbleUpon for Twitter threads [0]. Check it out! [0] https://mood.surf

Also, video. All that "weird and fun" stuff that was in text 30 years ago is in front of a camera now.

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

#222

Post by xeromal »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #80
ajvs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit and other social media has largely replaced it I'd say (not to the same quality though).

Huh. I feel like Reddit doesn't really have links anymore. The subreddits that have external links are usually spam subreddits which humans don't visit. The human-inhabited subreddits seem to mostly be favoring selftext, images, youtube videos, maybe wikipedia, and possibly some image hosts (but they are falling out of favor since imgur turned to shit). Very rarely do they seem to link to other websites.

I don't think they're talking about links but about content. No need for real links when the content is within reddit. For instance, I've curated my subs to all my hobbies: farming, watch collecting, coffee stations, coffee in general, musician fan pages, etc and they're mostly very small and have content very much like the old web I grew up on.

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

#224

Post by barbs »

hbn wrote: post #78
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…

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,…

Awesome site. For those looking for a summary:

In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were personally interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. Google isn't great at finding them, its focus is on finding answers to technical questions, and it works well; but finding things you didn't know you wanted to know, which was the real joy of web surfing, no longer happens. In addition, many pages today are created using bloated scripts that add slick cosmetic features in order to mask the lack of content available on them. Those pages contribute to the blandness of today's web.

The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet. In addition, Wiby helps vintage computers to continue browsing the web, as pages indexed are more suitable for their performance.

https://wiby.me/about/

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

#226

Post by marginalia_nu »

xeromal wrote: post #222
marginalia_nu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I feel like Reddit doesn't really have links anymore. The subreddits that have external links are usually spam subreddits which humans don't visit. The human-inhabited subreddits seem to mostly be favoring selftext, images, youtube videos, maybe wikipedia, and possibly some image hosts (but they are falling out of favor since imgur turned to shit). Very rarely do they seem to link to other websites.

I don't think they're talking about links but about content. No need for real links when the content is within reddit. For instance, I've curated my subs to all my hobbies: farming, watch collecting, coffee stations, coffee in general, musician fan pages, etc and they're mostly very small and have content very much like the old web I grew up on.

Yeah, but in that sense, it hasn't replaced StumbleUpon as a way of discovering websites, as the only website you're discovering is Reddit.

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

#227

Post by kurupt213 »

BrainVirus wrote: post #138

>Codeblog is powered by MDX, a new flavor of Markdown that supports JSX. With MDX, words look like words, and code looks like HTML. Or, you know, you can write HTML and avoid all that complexity. About 100 lines of PHP code to add navigation, feed and routing. About 50 lines of CSS to avoid cringe nonsense like P tags while retaining the power of everything else in the browser. (The main ingredient being white-space:…

I think the point is to provide the entry level access for people who can’t do that yet

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

#228

Post by CobrastanJorji »

fleddr wrote: post #218
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might phrase it, "whatever is embraced by the masses becomes more appealing to the masses." Broadening in appeal is not necessarily worse, although it's surely worse from the perspective of the initial specialized interest group. Yes, the Internet of yesteryear was more interesting to our type of people, but it had no appeal whatsoever to anyone else. The world is better off today with an Internet that billions fin…

Honestly, I think we have a discovery problem. There's plenty of room for both groups. In a way the internet is limitless. A lot of that weirdness still exists, it's just incredibly hard to find.

That's a good point. I'd love to find a small chatroom full of a couple dozen strangers who share my interests, and many thousands of such chatrooms surely exist, but I'd never find one unless I had a friend point me to it.

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

#229

Post by alexalx666 »

fleddr wrote: post #201

It's an awkward and elitist thing to say, but I believe it to be true: whatever is embraced by the masses, suffers in some ways. The expert/nerd internet was pioneering, weird, edgy, cooperative. The internet for the masses is...different. You'll see the same effect in movies, following "safe" formulas. Every movie must have a romantic side story, no matter how irrelevant. It must deliver to the broadest audience pos…

Once you realize you Can choose what you do online and what music you listen to you can get the best of the best. What helped me is deleting Facebook, Whatsup, Instagram, LinkedIn, Apple Music. Im building my new music collection mainly focused on classical music (the best performers). Im reading quanta magazine, harward magazines etc. You can get anything, the only question is what you really want

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

#230

Post by xeromal »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #226
xeromal wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they're talking about links but about content. No need for real links when the content is within reddit. For instance, I've curated my subs to all my hobbies: farming, watch collecting, coffee stations, coffee in general, musician fan pages, etc and they're mostly very small and have content very much like the old web I grew up on.

Yeah, but in that sense, it hasn't replaced StumbleUpon as a way of discovering websites, as the only website you're discovering is Reddit.

I can get with that. I'd say it's mostly semantics because at the end of the day, we're just trying to find interesting content and both ways accomplish that but there's really no way to win that argument. Lol
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