I used the website stumbleupon.com. I used to waste hours on that site and just shuffle websites within my interests. It was a good way to find new websites to frequent.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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Small forums where everybody knew everybody (there's still some kicking around). Personal websites/blogs were fun. I think they could make a comeback now that it's easier than ever to host and big social media is going to poo.
The era of personal websites was something else. I remember the weird and wonderful creations you could find on GeoCities.
I once met a person/team, that did what was basically a direct precursor of VTubing, except it was a webcomic formatted as a blog, and you could interact with it's characters through MSN messenger and e-mail. Too bad it ended quickly likely due to production issues.
If someone is interested, you can find it here: http://fan-chan.blogspot.com/ (It's in Hungarian, might translate it in its unfinished glory if there's a need for it)
It was cool to be a 12 year old kid getting pokemon advice from other 12 year old kids who were allowed to have whole ass websites. It was a weird and funny time to be alive.
I think the only 'problem' I have is that the content is relatively scarce. I too need to put more effort into commenting and posting, like every one else should too.
That being said, I do like the idea of not using reddit anymore. I swear I am way more productive, even with the time spent on Lemmy. The community seems (at least generally speaking) more wholesome.
There are subreddits that I do miss, I am checking every week if they migrated, hoping they will make it!
The crazy thing is that I find myself commenting way more in here. If I was to answer to an askreddit thread, it would just get lost, but since the community here is smaller, it feels like every comment has more relevance
I had the same experience moving to mastodon from twitter, I get way more engagement on mastodon. Feels good!
USENET. Actually useful USENET.
Is USENET still useful? I havenβt used it in over a decade and I hope itβs still around, but I would be kinda shocked if itβs still relevant.
I still have an account. It is still useful for grabbing binary content like TV shows and movies, but that takes a lot of setup.
What I really miss are the discussions. There, itβs not as useful as it once was. All the groups still exist, but many are overrun by spam. It would be nice to see a solution that makes USENET actually useful again.
Yea, I was really sad when my then-current provider did not offer Usenet access.
Actually, being able to group or sort instances hierarchically like rec.books.whatever might be helpful in organizing all these discussions. Currently this feels like alt.everything. When lemmy grows further, this maght become even more confusing.
I miss the mostly text-based content that was replaced by low effort memes
I feel like reddit was a constant hunt for smaller and smaller subreddits bring back the feeling of 2009 reddit.
Pre Reddit? I miss Digg and Diggnation podcast.
Post Reddit, I miss the size of the communities, but honestly, they quality of responses I've gotten here is much better. It's also nice seeing all these new communities popping up. Soon you'll be able to find a community for just about everything
Digg and Diggnation were so crucial to me seeing how the internet was really becoming something new (and I was obviously a TechTV fan before that). It lead to me learning about so many things about computers and OSes and made me give Linux another chance when Debian and Ubuntu were brought up on the vidcast (and attempting to use my laptop as a Hackintosh though it wasn't able to go things like go online or do any 3D but was cool to try). So I guess other video/audio-casts were fun to see take off. The great Blu-ray keys protest that flooded the Digg site was also one of the first kind of big internet protest I was able to watch in real-time and participate. lol
Going outside
IRC and Usenet. I was an avid user of both, even met my partner on IRC. I really miss the close knit communities on both. Oh and yahoo groups at the beginning.
I miss the old forums and discussion boards that we had pre "web 2.0". I read a YA book series as a teenager that had a forum, and met one of the best friends of my life on it. I know people still do such things, but I've never really had a close knit community like we had back then, not since the likes of Reddit and other social media giants have dominated the way we all use the internet. I'd be very happy to go back to the internet of the early aughts and just stay there.
It was before my time, but from what Iβve heard I would have to agree. Some smaller subreddits and discord servers can emulate some elements of those communities, but itβs just not the same. Especially discord, it loves shoving nitro in your face, and finding old discussions is impossible unless messages happened to be pinned at the time.
Maybe the digg photoshop contests.
But really, I thought reddit was the perfect site when it came out. Iβm very sad it has been taken over by a Musk clone.
feature phones
Being part of a smaller community.
I had even stopped reading usernames. No subreddit has ever felt like a community to me. The only online places that did were my WoW guild, some other guild-based games, a brief period on Crunchyroll a long time ago, and more recently a Discord anime group which is all but inactive now.
The internet has changed in such a way. But so have I. Making friends online used to be super easy (talking 15-20 years ago). Nowadays, I can only do it in person.
I always miss many of the online friends I used to have and regret deeply how I didn't put more effort into keeping them. I see a lot of people make the same mistake. I suppose friendship loss is something most of us need to go through to learn to value it.
forum games and community events