What are some old websites that should be re-remembered?

[PallElendro]

I remember a time when we used to browse more than the same ten or fewer websites. The Internet has gotten smaller in the last ten years to the normie because of how big companies have tried centralising the Internet into social media sites and Amazon. I just scrolled through Armor Games, Miniclip, and Newgrounds for the first time in years, and man, have times changed. Sadly, I don't have my computer from 2007 before I had a browser with server-stored Internet history available at my fingertips, or I'd browse through some other sites I frequented just to see how good we used to have it when it came to content. I would love to have a bookmark for a website that's just a database for these websites.

[5crownik007]

Giantitp.com
Though I actually can't think of any old websites which should be re-remembered. They are either still popular (and so don't qualify for remembrance) or died off because they were garbage (and therefore not worth remembering).
... I dunno... wiki.evageeks.org?

[Ninja_Prawn]

tumblr dot com
{Scrubbed}

I remember back in school (2000-2007) we used to play miniclip games all the time. And robotduck (which no longer hosts games), slime football/volleyball. Sporcle and Vector TD are still available, and QWOP obviously. I highly recommend Foddy's GIRP if you like QWOP.

[Peelee]

[pulls out walker]
Let me tell you of the live journals, back in the fabled Cities of Geo.

[Imbalance]

Purple.com for the decades it spent as literally nothing more than a purple screen until finally purchased by a mattress company the other year.

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

www.thinkgeek.com

Got bought out by Gamestop, who closed them down. Shame.

Stumbleupon

http://www.stardestroyer.net/

The Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia.

Back when EVERYTHING PUBLISHED was CANNON one hero started posting it all on the internet. Person mentioned in one magazine in japan? He had the write up and citation. Not only was it more through then any off the official sources, it was pre-wiki and he had higher standards. Eventually wikis took over, and of course, quality suffered, made worse by Lucas and Disney ret-cons, which was something which had previously been verboten.

You could search by name, category (planet, alien, allegiances and the list goes on).

Truly it is an example of what the internet once was, and what we've lost with internet 2.0

https://www.theforce.net/swenc/default.asp

[Peelee]

http://www.stardestroyer.net/

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.

[Resileaf]

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.

I sense a disturbance in the Internet... As if millions of websites have been bought out by Google... And then were suddenly closed down.

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.

I still visit, from time to time.....

[Aedilred]

During the inexorable rise of Facebook in particular, most commentators took the view that all its predecessors had eventually failed and been supplanted by a newer competitor. Myspace, Friendster, Friendsreuinted, etc. They failed to anticipate Facebook's aggressive ruthlessness or its ambition to become not only the primary social network site but the homepage for the internet. They also failed to anticipate how little its users would care about its data-harvesting and disregard for privacy or the rule of law, until it was way too late.

There is a sense though that the big beasts of the internet now aren't really doing anything new; they've just supplanted predecessors who were less successful, and spread their reach across a wider range of services. This has led to some changes in how the internet is used, but given how business works it was probably always the direction of travel unless specific measures had been taken early on to preserve the anarchic nature of the early internet.

I'm inclined to give Amazon a little bit of credit compared with other internet megafauna because while they are a monstrosity, they've also been in it from the start. They may not have invented internet shopping but they were the ones who popularised it, who made it acceptable, who turned the internet into the place where you bought everything, and they've been doing it since the early days of dial-up. There aren't really any great lost shopping emporia of the past which Amazon toppled. It's always been them.

Since the rise of YouTube, and especially since Google bought it, internet-based entertainment has become largely centralised, and very video-heavy. Back in the day, video wasn't so viable (bandwidth and all) and certainly the videos in question where they did appear were less long. They were also more spread about.

I remember bored.com as an early entertainment aggregator. I also remember places like Weebl generating a lot of memes, back at a point when you had to actually visit specific websites to see memes.

Geocities has been mentioned, of course. There were whole hosts of blogging sites. Livejournal used to be a site I visited multiple times a day.

All those old search engines like webferret, askjeeves, hotbot, etc. None of them was as good as Google and all of them were supplanted by it, but there was in fact a time before Google. Yahoo is still trying to pretend that's what we're living in.

There was also a time before Wikipedia: who now remembers Encarta?

[J-H]

Youtube has killed many content-heavy sites. Why would someone write a 2000 word article on how to do something, when you can just look up a 10 minute video on Youtube?

I actually prefer prose, it's faster than watching a video.

[Peelee]

Youtube has killed many content-heavy sites. Why would someone write a 2000 word article on how to do something, when you can just look up a 10 minute video on Youtube?

I actually prefer prose, it's faster than watching a video.

Depends on the application. If I'm trying to fix my dryer, a video showing me exactly what I'm looking for is worth a thousand words.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Encarta! I was using that daily in 1999! So many school projects! Also, that dungeon exploration game with the quiz questions and the matches was actually brilliant. Mind Maze, it was called. Good times.

I was on MySpace, too. It was so much better than Facebook. Everyone around me jumped ship in 2006 though, claiming that the clean, professional look of Facebook was more 'now'. They liked how everyone's page looked the same, which created a more egalitarian atmosphere than MySpace. So basically, we sold our souls for a trendy blue & grey interface.

[Peelee]

I was on MySpace, too. It was so much better than Facebook.

On the one hand, I have to disagree hard. Opening up a MySpace page to be hit in the face with cheesy music autoplaying while I try to read the text over the glitter-bomb background was insane.

On the other hand, MySpace never got into massive privacy invasion, data collection and sales, and disseminator of false information/echo chambers. Granted, that may have been due to not having enough time for that, but even then I doubt they would be anywhere near as ****ish as Zuck.

....I think I'll just go with the "the big social media platforms are pretty terrible in general."

[Aedilred]

Youtube has killed many content-heavy sites. Why would someone write a 2000 word article on how to do something, when you can just look up a 10 minute video on Youtube?

I actually prefer prose, it's faster than watching a video.

It depends, I think. As Peelee says, instructional videos for practical purposes can actually be really useful, moreso than a written article. But a lot of the time, I agree, video is less efficient than prose.

Prose also has the advantage that you can skim it to see whether it will actually tell you what you want to know - or something close to it, and if appropriate skip to the relevant part, before wasting your time reading it in full, whereas with a video you just have to kind of keep watching and hope it gets to the point eventually.

I get frustrated with audiobooks, podcasts, museum audioguides, etc. for related reasons. In many cases, where there's no advantage to the audio format, I'd rather just read the material.

[Tvtyrant]

It depends, I think. As Peelee says, instructional videos for practical purposes can actually be really useful, moreso than a written article. But a lot of the time, I agree, video is less efficient than prose.

Prose also has the advantage that you can skim it to see whether it will actually tell you what you want to know - or something close to it, and if appropriate skip to the relevant part, before wasting your time reading it in full, whereas with a video you just have to kind of keep watching and hope it gets to the point eventually.

I get frustrated with audiobooks, podcasts, museum audioguides, etc. for related reasons. In many cases, where there's no advantage to the audio format, I'd rather just read the material.

I tend to watch any video game streaming or instructional videos on double speed, I have not time for slow videos of someone talking about why you should only do an exercise from the floor to protect your shoulders.

[Mordokai]

Stumbleupon

Oh man... I miss *that* one.

[Spore]

Depends on the application. If I'm trying to fix my dryer, a video showing me exactly what I'm looking for is worth a thousand words.

Honestly depends on the video. I was looking for a video to clean my coffee machine, and I had a 45 minute monster. Dude, I am not filthy but I spend 45 minutes on my whole kitchen not just the coffee machine. It's called multitasking. I don't have to sit in front of a machine doing its descaling program for 25 minutes.

I dont know if the English internet knows this but ogame.fun It is a browser game about dominating space. The servers reset regularly, there is a good amount of depth and politics while the whole thing doesnt explode in complicated spreadsheets like another spacefaring mmo.

[Tarmor]

On the other hand, MySpace never got into massive privacy invasion, data collection and sales, and disseminator of false information/echo chambers. Granted, that may have been due to not having enough time for that, but even then I doubt they would be anywhere near as ****ish as Zuck.

Yes, Facebook really Zuck's in this way. I can't believe how so many people put everything into it, and don't know how easily that data can be abused. So many of them are all too ready to complain about invasion of privacy or misuse after the fact too!

[Azuresun]

Yes, Facebook really Zuck's in this way. I can't believe how so many people put everything into it, and don't know how easily that data can be abused. So many of them are all too ready to complain about invasion of privacy or misuse after the fact too!

It's okay, though. According to the message someone forwards me every three months or so, I just need to write in a comment that I don't give Facebook permission to use my data in any naughty ways! I do wonder if privacy is going to be a foreign concept to future generations who grow up on dumping their lives online.

Before Youtube devoured everything in its path, I hung around Gametrailers quite a bit. I also used Photobucket for years--you know, before they became an ad-riddled hellhole and started actively blackmailing their customers.

[Aedilred]

Yes, Facebook really Zuck's in this way. I can't believe how so many people put everything into it, and don't know how easily that data can be abused. So many of them are all too ready to complain about invasion of privacy or misuse after the fact too!

In retrospect, the world was foolish, but hindsight is always 20:20. Facebook started relatively innocuously as a way to communicate easily with your friends and share jokes and photos, and the like, and it was limited to the university/workplace network you were in unless you reached out to specific individuals beyond it.

Nobody really understood the importance of data. We understood the ad- and to a lesser extent the cookie- based monetising of the internet, but the idea that data was being aggregated on such a large scale and sold off for profit was an alien one. And in line with the generally optimistic principles of the early internet, nobody - or at least nobody anyone was listening to - identified that this sort of network would allow dangerous misinformation to spread just as quickly as pictures of nights out.

This changed gradually, but by the time it was rolled out to the general public Facebook was generally considered an inoffensive and useful tool, with an established, loyal and influential user base.

Things that happened over the next few years caused that perception to change, and people gradually woke up to what Facebook really was, and the dangers of it. That was about 9-10 years ago. But by that point the tumour was too big to remove.

[tomandtish]

Giantitp.com
Though I actually can't think of any old websites which should be re-remembered. They are either still popular (and so don't qualify for remembrance) or died off because they were garbage (and therefore not worth remembering).
... I dunno... wiki.evageeks.org?

Not sure I completely agree with this. Websites may die because they are garbage. They may also die because the owner loses interest/dies/has a major life change.

Case in point: If the creator of a popular webcomic died tomorrow, and their heirs decided they didn't want to maintain the site and shut it down, would that mean the comic was garbage?

(Not that I want anyone to die tomorrow).

Another example: Law and the Multiverse. it's one of my favorite sites. but real life has apparently gotten in the way, with only 2 posts in the last 2 years. I suspect it has reached the end. Doesn't mean it was garbage though.

[Imbalance]

Ted hasn't updated his caving journal in quite some time.

[Crow]

Speaking of caves, the Cave of Magic. Though I think that one's gone.

[Algeh]

I miss The Brunching Shuttlecocks. I have the book, but it's not the same. I also miss some of Lore's other post-Brunching projects, like when he was doing a D&D monster manual inspired comic for a while.

[Aedilred]

Not sure I completely agree with this. Websites may die because they are garbage. They may also die because the owner loses interest/dies/has a major life change.

Erfworld, for instance.

Strictly speaking, that went behind a paywall, rather than dying, but for the majority of users the effect is the same. The majority of newspapers have done the same.


On a similar basis, are we allowed to mourn websites that still exist but are shadows of their former selves?

Like cracked.com

Or for that matter nuklearpower.com which still hosts one of the best webcomics of all time, but inexpicably rejigged its page archive so that all existing links broke and individual pages are now almost impossible to locate - and now the comic has concluded, searching the archives has assumed a much higher relative importance.

Or, the hell with it, tvtropes, which is still alright, but lost a lot of what made it special several years ago.

The old Games Workshop website is something I missed for a long time (until I emerged from the cave and saw the light). It was a total mess but there was some great stuff on there, all of which they expunged to replace it with a generic webstore.

[No brains]

I sort of miss the old layout of Snopes.com. I find its redesign unappealing.

[J-H]

Or for that matter nuklearpower.com which still hosts one of the best webcomics of all time, but inexpicably rejigged its page archive so that all existing links broke and individual pages are now almost impossible to locate - and now the comic has concluded, searching the archives has assumed a much higher relative importance.

Or, the hell with it, tvtropes, which is still alright, but lost a lot of what made it special several years ago.

Wow, I hadn't thought of 8-Bit Theatre in a long time. I feel like I remember the ending, but I don't know what it was. I know I had read past the Armoire of Invulnerability while keeping up with updates.
My webcomic reading simply trailed off. I'm down to Dilbert, Foxtrot, and XKCD and have been for a long time. I keep getting tempted to go back to Sluggy Freelance, but the idea of re-orienting myself and slogging through 10 years of archives is a bit much.

TV Tropes, for me, became less interesting when they made the trope names generic instead of keeping them linked to the trope namers (like The Worf Effect).

[Peelee]

Wow, I hadn't thought of 8-Bit Theatre in a long time. I feel like I remember the ending, but I don't know what it was. I know I had read past the Armoire of Invulnerability while keeping up with updates.
My webcomic reading simply trailed off. I'm down to Dilbert, Foxtrot, and XKCD and have been for a long time. I keep getting tempted to go back to Sluggy Freelance, but the idea of re-orienting myself and slogging through 10 years of archives is a bit much.

TV Tropes, for me, became less interesting when they made the trope names generic instead of keeping them linked to the trope namers (like The Worf Effect).

Might I recommend SMBC? Daily updates with hover text and votey, so you get three jokes per day, but no overarching narrative (or even occasional, intermittent narrative, like XKCD's black hat), so if you miss a day or month or year there's never any problem.

[veti]

I miss The Brunching Shuttlecocks. I have the book, but it's not the same. I also miss some of Lore's other post-Brunching projects, like when he was doing a D&D monster manual inspired comic for a while.

Yeah, Lore gave me more guffaws per view than anyone else on the Web before or since. I miss that too.

Much of Brunching is still available on the Wayback machine, but it's hit and miss whether any given page survives and still works.