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0 pointsNeedMoreTea7y ago0 comments

The sad thing for me is that a lot of those strange, eclectic sites are still there, only they became really hard to find. Thanks to Google and other search engines prioritising recency and Brands (with a capital) in all results, the eclectic is penalised to the point of near invisibility.

There was never a point to them, but they were hugely interesting. Today there's no point bothering as it would be gone forever a month after posted to twitter or a Facebook group now bloody everything has to have a stream or timeline. So akin to a chilling effect it invisibly promotes things that have releases. Products.

Nostalgia is some of it I'm sure, but I really do think there's something more concrete there too.

0 comments

pishpash7y ago

I don't know that Google was ever the thing to find them. Various curated lists and word-of-mouth were how they spread. But yeah, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty terrible now for anything that isn't a ho-hum "conventional" query. On the other hand, the sheer volume of information has to count for something. You can reach a greater breadth and depth for directed learning online than in the 90's where it was mostly undirected novelty.

PhasmaFelis7y ago

> I don't know that Google was ever the thing to find them. Various curated lists and word-of-mouth were how they spread.

There was a period in the mid-'90s at least when you could find really interesting personal pages by punching any given topic into your search engine of choice. It may actually have been petering out by the time Google arrived in '98, though.

gbhn7y ago

google.com/search?q=human+echolocation brings up a ton of related stuff.

The thing is "what do you type into the search engine." I, for one, would never think to type in any of probably tens of thousands of topics that, having seen, I think are awesome.

mycall7y ago

Which are your favorites?

skykooler7y ago

I like this page, on creating 3d 'holograms' by hand:

http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html

MrEldritch7y ago

Oh man, amasci.com was one of my favorite Magical Internet Places back in the day; I can't believe I'd totally forgotten about it.

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hnzix7y ago

I remember Fjord Of The Net Vikings. Dan's Gallery of the Grotesque. I was too young for BBS culture but then I found the Hotline protocol, which gave me a new horizon of musical styles and I even made a music video with some random German dude by mailing CDs across the pond.

Just last night I remembered micromusic.net which introduced me to chiptunes and continues as a ghostship.

gpm7y ago

It looks like it hasn't been updated in years, but http://www.powerlabs.org/index.html has some cool content

Gracana7y ago

FWIW, everybody from his forum eventually made their way to 4hv.org.

nyolfen7y ago

not OP but this is what i thought of instantly:

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/el/microwave/

and this page in particular:

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/el/microwave/mladen_story.ht...

prolikewh0a7y ago

wiby.me is fun.

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