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Ask HN: I miss the internet of the 90s/00s. What should I do?

38 points by ryeguy_24 ↗ HN
I really miss the internet of the 90s and 00s. It wasn’t exploited with advertisements, short videos and other addictive content. It was simpler. We didn’t have to accept cookies on every page. It was exciting and it was adventurous. It felt like a hike through the forest but not it feels like a walk through Times Square. I miss things like IRC chat rooms, bulletin boards, newsgroups, DOS prompts, under construction websites. I find myself sucked into the addictive world of the platforms and want to desperately stop and get back to experimentation and adventure. Where can I go to get back some of that feeling?

53 comments

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sva_
> No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it's not the same river, and he's not the same man.

- Heraclitus

ryeguy_24
I love this quote for some reason.
mejutoco
except Parmenides. Parmenides always swims in the same river.

P.S. Kind of the opposite POV to Heraclitus.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
yieldcrv
Tor and i2p destinations are somewhat like that, especially if you’re also reminiscing fondly on spotty connectivity

Dread, jabber and forums

mips_avatar
One thing I recently started doing is not caring about what I "should" be doing when I program. I used to love coding up random sites in basic html javascript with a few jQuery calls. But I was told I "should" be using react js, node js, hosting on specific cloud providers instead of a vps. I'm not saying all the new tools are bad, but I think the problem with the modern web, is it's less about building what you want and much much more about building what is considered "best practice". I think if you want adventures in the web, just start building janky weird stuff. AI is a help in that if you know what to ask for. Just have fun.
steve_adams_86
This is a great point. Back in the early internet days, that stuff we enjoyed was proper garbage on the inside. It was the ugliest stuff I ever saw. But it worked and we loved it.

I’d rather have garbage code I love using than best practices I’m not particularly interested in working on or using.

A friend of mine is such a pro at slapping stuff together that is technically bad, but definitely works. And he has great ideas, so his outputs are awesome despite the internal quality. I really envy how good he is at just making stuff. He has no shame about any of it. If anything he would feel shame about not letting his ideas out, which is so much more sensible.

I am a huge fan of janky weird stuff. It’s the best way to get your ideas out there.

mips_avatar
I think Kanye West put it best "if every move you make you're trying to meet people's expectations, then every day is a test day. And what day was the most stressful in school? Test day"
rchaud
The "shoulds" start piling up when the motivating factor for creating a website is to "get a job". As a result, most of those sites are useless Hello World/Todo projects or the same Ghost/Hugo blog hosted on Github pages that a million other people have.
mettamage
I'm doing this with chrome extensions
dave4420
There were absolutely ads on the internet in the 90s. It’s why today’s web browsers come with pop-up blockers built in.

I think you are wearing rose-tinted glasses.

You can still fire up a shell today if you want to. You can even run dos in a vm if modern command lines aren’t what you’re looking for.

silverquiet
I remember flashing banners and blink text as a scourge of the early(ish) web. The worst was the “porn storm” which if I remember was a mid aughts feature where one pop up would open up many more. There were stories of teachers getting in trouble for them.

I also miss the early web. I basically grew up along side it so obviously there’s some nostalgia, but I wouldn’t pretend it was all good either. There are links that will be known to millennials (and I’m sure some older generations as well) because they were shared amongst us for their shock value.

nunez
True, and those recursive popup ads were the absolute worst. But the ads were static, so you didn't have to worry about bad ads delivering malware straight to your PC without asking. You also didn't have to worry about drive-by autoplay ads (since video wasn't possible back then, though GIFs were an early precursor to this) or relatively huge tracking scripts on preload.
rchaud
Ads were static and displayed at the top of the page or on the side, instead of being shoved into the middle of an article. That's where the term "banner blindness" came from: every site used the same approach, and our eyes began being able to ignore them after a while.

Today we have the hellscape of sticky elements where ads stay visible inside the viewport, and real-time-bidding systems where the ads change after x minutes, and of course, 5 minute video ads that destroy your mobile bandwidth. Absolutely nothing is off-limits.

axblount
I'm not sure what you're asking. All those things are still out there. There are IRC chat rooms, forums, communities focused on building personal websites, and more. If you're asking how to feel what you felt all those years ago, I'm afraid you're out of luck. You can blame the world for changing, but you changed as well.

https://neocities.org/ https://tildeverse.org/ https://libera.chat/

Calamitous
There’s still some of that feeling in little pockets around the Internet. The tildeverse (https://tildeverse.org) might interest you; it’s a loose group of servers that offer free shell accounts for hosting simple web pages, chatting, programming, or playing around on a mostly unrestricted Linux box.

I run http://ctrl-c.club, one of the oldest tildes. We’re (mostly) closed to new signups, but if you’re interested, send me an email to admin@ctrl-c.club and we’ll get you in.

hkt
IRC is still good! Libera (née freenode) is alive and kicking and has sane people on it. It is worth just.. having an idle in a bunch of channels and checking them out.

We're also pretty lucky to have the fediverse now, which the 90s lacked. Think of it as WordPress ping backs which iirc started in the 00s.

As for other stuff, remember to use indie search engines. I forget the names now but some are hobbyist creations with a niche angle - perhaps some other commenter can help.

Older communities are great too, like sdf.org

Mostly though this feels a bit like it might not be entirely about the internet: I'm wondering, how many of the kinds of places you're missing had friends on them that you lost touch with? Personally I've only crossed the streams between (say) IRC and IRL a handful of times and would lose touch with people I care about a lot if IRC went away. One of those crossings did result in me being best man at an IRCer's wedding many years later. So maybe it'd be worth you trying to hunt out old communities you've been part of too, and bridging the gap to IRL friendships. That's the real antidote to platform addiction, imo.

trevett
I've accepted that we kind of lost the net to the money people and bureaucrats. Mid-late 90's it really was a frontier full of adventurous nerds. I would spend entire weekends on Efnet learning and experimenting with a tight group of people. Since a parallel non-commercial web has never taken off (and VR fizzled) I've ended up adventuring outdoors, the old school way. It's less intellectual but triggers similar feelings of discovery. There's a lot of experimentation and improvisation once you get into things like ski mountaineering because something always goes wrong. The camaraderie is also strong.

Another alternative is simply Science, if you can handle the barrier to entry.

steve_adams_86
I like your point about the outdoors. My best adventures happen there these days. One of my most recent hobbies is using a fine net to capture microfauna from random bodies of water and checking it out with my microscope. It sounds lame but my god, I’m enthralled by what I find in there. Every time there’s something new. I’ve been writing a blog post about it for weeks but I can’t finish because I keep finding cool new stuff I want to write about. Maybe I need to do an ongoing series, haha.

I also started cleaning urban creeks and streams (with permission from my city) and made a little project out of it. It’s related to my business, but primarily just a volunteer project I enjoy. Definitely find some weird stuff. It’s a lot of fun just discovering new spots and pulling trash out of nature though.

I don’t think that’s a good idea for anyone but the possibilities are pretty much inexhaustible for a lot of people. Outside is big.

trevett
That's funny I'm also setting up a home lab and buying a vintage microscope (state of the art 1999 from auction) to look at the creatures living in my pond. There are always new avenues.
steve_adams_86
Ponds are amazing. Really, I think tons of urban homes should have them. They make an incredible difference to local ecology. You’ll find so much cool stuff!
throaway89
Yeah, I was always a high-achieving, intellectual kid, and I've been really struggling as an adult to recapture that same love of learning. I think maybe some of it is actually a love of adventure and discovering new and interesting, exciting things. Not necessarily academic or intellectual pursuits. The Internet used to provide so much of that, it just doesn't anymore.
rchaud
> Since a parallel non-commercial web has never taken off

There's Neocities, but it's kind of a graveyard as well.

steve_adams_86
I think the solution is to be the change you want to see.

Lately a few friends and I have been switching back to basics of the olden days and enjoying it a lot. Our websites are hosted from home servers again (although my personal site is still on digital ocean… I’ll get to it), we don’t have analytics or ads in our apps anymore (not that anyone cares, I’ve got like 50 users across two apps), and we’ve stopped using social media. We’ve got a simple forum we share that’s hosted on my friend’s server. We’re actively trying to cultivate the internet experience we miss. Does it make a difference in the scheme of things? Not really. We could almost replace our forum with WhatsApp or Discord. But in our participation in the internet, it feels pretty good compared to say 5 years ago.

The pandemic really spurred out unhappiness with the way things have become. It’s still a choice to use the internet like we used to, for the most part. It’s affordable to build and host sites with no ads. You can still have an IRC or bulletin board-like experience. It’s all there still, but you have to choose to use it.

The experimentation part is all about doing things instead of thinking about things, and seeking out people doing the same. Experimentation is an outcome of action. Ideas come first of course, but you need to build and try things out and see what needs to come next. A lot of my friends get stuck in thinking mode (and I do too), but the solution is invariably to just DO something and follow through. Don’t worry if what you’re doing is high value or necessary or whatever. You’ll spend less time doing it and finding out than you would otherwise worrying about possibilities and not doing anything.

It's hard with so many distractions and with so many ideas already being executed on by massive companies with deep, deep pockets. The trick is to not care. Who cares. I don’t care. Explore what interests you. Cultivate curiosity and wonder and use it as intrinsic motivation. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing or has already done. Find other people like this, and I think that element of experimentation will return to your life. It certainly has in mine. It’s not quite the same as 20 years ago, but it’s there.

graycat
> get back some of that feeling?

New Web site on the way: Free. No cookies, user IDs, logins, passwords, popups, overlays, or icons. Minimal JavaScript. Ads only in standard sized rectangles.

Privacy: Any two users giving the same inputs on the same day get the same results, i.e., no user tracking.

Crucial core, some own original applied math (based on own applied math Ph.D.) users won't be aware of and smarter than AI so far.

Intend that users "love" the site.

Simple Web pages that work the same on smart phones, laptops, desktops, etc. Web site code in .NET running. Doing system management, e.g., to recover from a disaster, getting files from backups, wrestling with Windows 11 after a hard disk failed on a Windows 10 system, etc.

Giving site a critical review and then an alpha test ASAP ....

lemonwaterlime
You've been working on this for a while. Google founders' statements about the end states of any ad-driven search engine remain true. Have you addressed that fundamental foundational truth?
graycat
Thanks for your interest!

> for a while

Yup, a disaster, etc. did get in the way.

I DO have the Web site code in .NET running, and it does what it's supposed to do.

But since I'm a sole, solo founder, with no bosses, BOD, or investors and since my expenses are tiny, no one else is concerned and I'm not very concerned.

> end states of any ad-driven search engine

I don't know what you are referring to.

I'm guessing, maybe correctly, that I see a need that so far is poorly met.

Maybe enough users will "love" the site.

Common wisdom is (A) don't give up, (B) keep on chugging, and (C) use TIFO -- try it and find out, (D) if it doesn't work, make some changes.

lemonwaterlime
The seminal research paper that Google founders wrote is that ad-driven search always (an axiom) leads to focusing on the advertisers to the eventual detriment of the users of the search. That prophecy came true and new offerings such as Kagi charge users as an attempt to get to another outcome.

So if you go ad-driven, yes it will be nice and minimal ads at first. And the search will be amazing. But then one day, it won't. And that's an axiom.

Maybe that's the only way. People can get their value in the now from the search engine for 15 years or so. And then another graycat can make the thing to break the market at that point.

rambambram
RSS.

It stands for Really Social Sites, if I recall correctly. ;)

I built my own reader - as a part of my website package - but there are more. You are on HN so you probably know what an RSS reader is already, so no need to explain what it is, I suppose.

I follow around 1200 feeds/websites with it, mostly blogs I found on HN and I think are interesting. At first, big tech's social media sucked me back in every time. Reading blogs, essays and articles linked to from a boring UI didn't gave me the 'sugar rush' that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Youtube gave me. But over time - especially after Youtube started showing me some stupid chicken video on every row of my subscription videos - I started to rely more on the peaceful oasis that is my own RSS reader. With content from 'channels' that I choose. In essence, I use a white list, not a black list.

Long story short: it takes some time to get used to consuming content this way, but it is out there and it is possible.

Besides, the web is already social media. No need to put unnecessary middle men between me and the web.

wetpaws
Create your own community.
paulcole
> Where can I go to get back some of that feeling?

You can’t. It’s one of the side effects of being 25 years older than you were back then.

throw9932sd
Play `Hypnospace Outlaw` ;). You will find that feeling there.
rchaud
The first thing is to accept, difficult as it may be, that that era of the net is gone and can't come back. I say this as someone who desperately wants that not to be true, but it is.

The number 1 reason for that is that the internet is everywhere now, whereas it wasn't before. That's why it was magic. Stumbling through Geocities sites and AOL chatrooms, it was always possible to find bits of arcane knowledge posted by a human who was educated and tech-savvy enough to even be online long enough to author something on it.

That's not the case now. Most of the arcane knowledge has been on Wikipedia or similar sites, or hoovered up by some chatbot that spits it back out to you in the most listless writing voice possible. Moreover, you consume thousands more pieces of content daily than you did back then. If you came across something special, how long would it be before you abandoned it out of boredom and desire for a dopamine hit from somewhere else?

Everybody is online now too, so forget about finding charming little outposts online; the best modernity offers is an occasionally funny social media account from a person who is almost certainly trying to sell a book, or course, or these days, a paid Discord channel. They create content for the sake of showing up on people's feeds, and that gets formulaic and performative real fast.

So, making the types of personal websites people used to want to browse through, is largely pointless for somebody not in the tech/media industry. There are a thousand better ways to communicate info to others.

drewcoo
I think you're wearing nostalgia goggles.

There was visual garbage everywhere then. Popup banners. Blink and marquee tags. Every site had a "cute" sign to let the world know that it was a work in progress. All sorts of horrifying uses of Flash.

> Where can I go to get back some of that feeling?

MySpace is very different now but seems to have carefully preserved its obnoxious aesthetics.

bmgoau
That form of the web is still there, its just in the tail. Try creating a bookmark search macro for these engines: https://millionshort.com/ https://wiby.me/ https://search.marginalia.nu/

For blogs https://blogroll.org/

Sites that are light https://1mb.club/

For youtube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/de-mainstream-youtu...

Create a Google Custom Search that excludes the top N sites or sites you find unpalatable https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/134847/how-to-fi...

bdjsiqoocwk
Am I the only 40 year old that doesn't have a sense of nostalgia for this period of the internet. Before wikipedia I had internet, but don't remember getting much value from it.