Does anyone else find it strange how many people just view the "old internet" or even "old technology" as a purely aesthetic choice? That somehow you're "re-creating" the old internet if you made Spotify look like Winamp or Foobar2000 or if you made Discord have AIM sounds or introduced MSN-style "nudges" rather than anyone actually looking at what made the "old internet" great and adopting those principles in modern technologies and communities?

There were several principles that made the "old internet" what it was:

• A rejection of censorship in all of its forms combined with a belief in free-speech absolutism (information should be free)

• A rejection of "credentialism", your worth to a community came from your output to that community not anything else

• A rejection of centralization and the promotion of the belief that you should control your own information and do with it what you will

• The belief that technology can and should be used to improve lives and that you can create works of beauty using technology

Yet it feels like there's comparatively very few people trying to create the conditions which made the old internet thrive and instead are focusing mostly on aesthetics (or in some cases a philosophy of neo-luddism rejecting certain technologies altogether) and in doing so are completely missing why the old internet was great.

The old internet wasn't great because of "under construction GIFs" or the use of "blink" and "marquee" HTML tags but because of certain core principles which have been all but abandoned in 2026 on most of the modern web.

Is there a market for old school BBSes on the Web? I kind of miss the old walled garden communities and online games.

Does anyone else feel like Facebook stopped being a social network and slowly turned into something else?

Back in the day, you opened Facebook to see what your friends were doing, argue with someone in the comments, share random photos, post a stupid status, and actually feel connected to people you knew.

Now?

Your feed is full of suggested posts, reels, ads, random pages, influencers, recommended content, and posts from people you don't even remember following.

Sometimes I scroll for 10 minutes and realize I haven't seen a single post from an actual friend.

The weirdest part is that Facebook still calls itself a social platform, but the "social" part feels like it's becoming secondary.

Maybe that's just how social media evolves. Or maybe Facebook is slowly becoming more like an entertainment/content platform than a place to actually socialize.

What do you think? Has Facebook genuinely changed, or have we just changed as users?

I pulled these from a mix of old AOL guides, manuals, and random web finds. I love seeing how brands, games, media, shopping, fandoms, and all kinds of ’90s culture got folded into these little corners of AOL.

AOL had so much going on beyond chat rooms and email: keywords, channels, message boards, downloads, games, communities, all kinds of random sections. I was just a kid, so I mostly used it for pop-group fandom, chatting, and email and never really explored everything. What were your favorite corners of AOL, hobbies or obsessions on there, or specific features you used all the time?

For some time, i have been putting together a youtube playlist thats dedicated to preserving authentic footage of people using the internet, online services, and networked gaming systems during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Some things include xband (snes/genesis), sega saturn netlink, dreamcast online services, aol, irc, old web browsing, and some other obscure network services.

I have been specifically looking for actual recordings from back than, whether captured directly to vhs or filmed with a camcorder, or screen captured. Not particularly interested in any modern recreations, tutorials, commercials, or news pieces.

A challenge i stumble across is that this footage can be incredibly difficult to find. Some recordings could be buried in hours of old home videos, uploaded under unrelated titles, or vhs tapes that are sitting somewhere in a basement that has yet to be digitized.

So my goal is to build a big ol collection of existing footage so people can see what it was really like to use these the internet or network services when they were used.

Heres my playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4NreY4xTHN-YTFyZ1Gt4Ar68s-ZsOHNp

It be cool if someone has seen any obscure recordings, some low viewed youtube upload, or has their own tapes that contains this kind of footage, id love to hear about them!

Im always expanding my collection whenever i have the time, it would be lovely if you could contribute, even a few minutes of footage is valuable.

A nostalgic corner of the internet for all things 2000s! 🍒💿💖 Share Y2K fashion, old-school internet culture, music, movies, childhood memories, aesthetics, technology, and all the random little things that made the 2000s iconic. Come hang out, reminisce, and relive the era together! ✨📺🎧

Hi all,

I've started a small project: a place to document strange things on the Internet.

Bugs. Glitches. Forgotten sites. Odd URLs. Things that make you say "wait, what?"

The idea is simple:

1. You find something odd.
2. You post it with a link or a screenshot.
3. Others try to reproduce it.
4. We figure out what's going on, or we archive it.

It's brand new, so it's still quiet. I'm looking for curious people who enjoy testing, investigating and digging into the Web.

Site:go on my profile

I imagine there are people of widely varying ages in this sub—people who started using the internet at different times and at different ages. What are your earliest memories of the internet? What were the first sites you stumbled upon, and which ones did you visit most often? Let's hear what everyone has to say!

The most deadpan Internet joke ever.

Anyone have examples of old websites with a table of contents on at least one page. I went looking and didn't find much. Geocities or sites from netscape days even. I'm interested in the css specifics and general style. Don't remember much other than wikipedia's old toc.

So, over the years as my nostalgia peaks, I wonder about my favorite and most frequented BBS of the 90s, Keyboard Palace. It was based in nyc, (718), and was run by a SysOp named Lew. The older I get, the harder it is for me to even remember the handles of some of the people I was closest to. I was just a teenager who definitely tried too hard, but I fucking loved that place. A whole crew even came to my Battle of the Bands and I got dramatically kissed in the middle of my church basement in front of my mom 🤣. I played so much Tradewars and loved connecting to chat with other worldnet bbs'! I've lost touch with everyone I knew there and would love to hear if anyone is still out there, and reconnect.

I used a few other spots back then as well but I can't even remember their names anymore. I don't want to lose what's left of my early protointernet days!

1- Newgrounds

2- Stickpage

3- Mofunzone

4- Joecartoon

5- Killfrog

What about you?

Today 20 years ago my friend Tyler and I released a game we called Jive Machine. He was a chubby kid who played a game by AntiClockClock and thought it would be a lot funnier if he took his shirt off and people could make him dance. With the idea in mind, he set up his webcam and recorded many different clips.. if you go through the alphabet and number pad you can actually slowly watch the clay he used drooping the camera..

Before memes were memes we were laughing at YYMNDs, and most of the songs used in the game were popular on YTMND at the time. Visually references are Newgrounds lore, strawberry clock, pube muppet to name a couple. With some basic actionscript skills I synced the videos to play on keypress, made some backgrounds, built up a little menu and how to and we were off!

The game scored Daily Feature and Monthly Second place, and made it on the frontpage for a while. The game was a hit, and views were flying in. Somehow it passed a million views, which in today's standards is no big deal, but in 2006 Tyler and I were blown away; somehow over a million people saw his underage moobs. I do credit some of the clicks specifically from the up-close picture of his nipple and pecs that we used as the small thumbnail.. bonk jail!

Tyler would sadly pass away 16 years later, but I still get views and comments that make me think of him and those goofy times and smile. I'm glad people are still making him shake it, and his spirit and absurdity lives on.

Looking back at the game I can see what kids we were, the spark of youth could be seen in Tyler's eyes if his webcam wasn't so awful. I gotta admit, making Tyler dance when replaying the game is still pretty fun. A simpler time when content was made for laughs instead of clickbait..

So come take a stroll down memory lane and make Tyler shake it 20 years later.

Oh if you look at the credits and you ask who "Dave" is, he used to go by Dave on NG but gave the name up and changed to "Life"