How Far Are You Willing to Go? (A Thought for the Revival of the "Old Web")

Corporatization and Centralization killed the internet.

I think that's a statement that's factual when you look at how the internet looks now compared to then. What was once a large scale digital highway in and of itself has become a large hub controlled by larger companies. We live in an era where no matter where you go, almost every website is under some monopolistic company's control and thrives off of some form of advertisement. No longer are the days of fun games and safer spaces for younger users, now they're easily exposed to material that shouldn't be seen by their impressionable minds. No longer are the days of discovery and exploration on the internet, now we go to the same websites and social medias for entertainment. What's left of the era of the internet I dubbed "the personalized internet" is only upheld by users interested in the revival of the "Old Web." You know, janky HTML, fun little GIFs, userbars, blogs, GeoCities, funny memes like Awesome Face and Nyan Cat? The Old Web.


...


wait, that's not it...

there's a portion missing from the internet at those points.

Sometimes I see people fawning over the "old days" of the internet. Sometimes they say they want it back. Some say it's better than now. And most of the time? It's all aesthetics, just that old Netscape MSPaint smiley face aesthetic. Webcore, I believe it's called, is one of the major driving points for the interest in the "Old Web", Epik Wafflez error windows and all. But something keeps giving me this itch. An itch for that missing piece. The part of the internet not many people like to speak about anymore, yet is part of the shaping of internet culture as a whole. Why do we never recognize the mother and fathers of the internet? Why do we never recognize the impact places like 4chan, 2chan, Something Awful, YTMND, and quite possibly thousands of forums left out from the aesthetics of webcore and Y2K had on the internet? I could think of a few reasons, but I'd like to ask one thing. If most of us on SpaceHey are here are interested in the "Old Web", then..


How Far Are You Willing to Go?

(haha she said it! she said it!)

This might seem easy, just pick and choose what aspects of the internet back then are acceptable. But isn't that just remaking the Modern Internet with an older paint job? That's the thing about the internet in recent years, people have become more sensitive to what is acceptable and is not. This has led to a distaste for some users of this day and age; Trigger Warnings? You're a snowflake. DNI list? I ain't reading that. Callout posts? What a waste of time. (These are just examples, not my real feelings.) Some users believe that in order to experience the true "Old Web", you need to lower your standards, start to deal with it, and only take action on your own if it seems necessary. That seems like an issue with more modern users, people are more interested in calling out people and making it everyone's problem instead of taking action by themselves and hoping others see what's wrong. 

(However I can't blame them, in recent years it seems like internet moderation has dropped to an all-time low as less human reviews are making the decisions, automation has allowed some questionable people by like no issue.)

Abandoning this moral high ground already seems like an issue that most users would not like to do. But if we're going to talk about morality, we need to talk about the humor of the old web. Does anybody remember watching youtube videos of different gifs and videos of the hottest fads at the time? You know, like Shoop da Whoop or lol, internet compilations? Well, if you were like me, you also may have encountered many a video with humor that normalizes some very taboo topics. Whether it just be making fun of the disabled, based in racism, poking at rape, or straight up pedophilia, you bet your ass that was going in a fad compilation of whatever YTMND or 4chan was cooking that month.

Anybody remember pedobear? An hero? ***** stole my bike? Literally any anime meme from before 2010? The humor of the time wasn't just fun youtube or icons, people were making memes of some of the most vile topics imaginable of this age. And yet, people gloss over it like a soviet officer being removed from a photo of Stalin. But it isn't just recognizing the way the internet acts today, it's also recognizing how different we are from what once was.

To understand, you have to realize...


The Internet was Privatized At One Point.

Privatized in this sense meaning that the Internet was more or less a place for folks to find each other in a niche community and begin integrating with their fellow people. Unlike today's friendlier approach to providing context to people unaware of what's funny about a ridiculous video, if you weren't knowledgable about a certain thing or not part of a certain fandom, you stay in your lane and figure it out yourself. Not sure what was funny about a man time travelling with no guarantee for safety? Find out yourself, don't ask some anon who already knows. Not sure what to think about an edit of different anime girls being stalked by a png of a bear set to a certain Oingo Boingo song? Tough shit, maybe you'll find it funny next time. 

It was an era where you just had to be there to fit in. Nowadays everything is public for all to consume. It also shows in our meme culture, whereas fads were for people in the know, you can just pick up the funniest video on twitter or youtube, laugh, and move on. No context required. My best example for this is the case of Azumanga Daioh. In the era of the 4chan-born fad, every character had a kind of balance of appreciation. Just a whole bunch of Kimuras attracted to their favorite character and making funny little pictures to post around the boards for others to pass along. Then you look at now, where Azumanga has gone through a surge in interest, Osaka has overtaken every other character's popularity. And that popularity comes from many people who have not taken a look at the source material, anime and manga, they just look at Osaka and say "wow azumanga daioh awesome it has autism in it"

Unfortunately, while I see gatekeepers as spiritual successors to the private ways of the "Old Web", it's useless to gatekeep such a monument like Azumanga Daioh. Think of it as trying to gatekeep a rickety shed, it's unstable and anybody could just knock it over and steal whatever was in it easy peasy. That's just the thing. Returning to the old web means that you need to get in or get out. And with the ever declining attention span of a modern internet user that seems almost impossible to do now. So with all of these paragraphs full of nothing out of the way, let me ask you again.


How Far Are You Willing to Go?

Do we truly want the "Old Web" back? With all of the aspects of inside jokes, private communities, normalized taboo topics, and overall lower standards, do you want that past back? It's not a matter that I can answer for you, because I have mixed feelings on the topic. I believe that while I believe the internet should return to its former privatized ways in the midst of overmonetization and overcentralization, I believe some things are best left in the past. We already know what has happened to the websites that built the internet fad by fad, user by user, community by community, 4chan has become a crazed shell of what it used to be, YTMND has died from neglect, Something Awful is mostly a memory, and forums are a dying art. 


So, what do you think? Are you really wanting the "Old Web" back? Or do you want a Neo-Y2K sanitized experience? I think most would want the latter.


TL;DR: people have forgotten most aspects of the older internet and i'm wondering if the true "old web" is something people want


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alienz4real

alienz4real's profile picture

People just want something that isn't designed to get them addicted to it. Everything in modern society is designed to make you addicted to it so they can show you ads and get more money off of you. That's why everything is worse nowadays, corporations have realized people will pay for stuff, even if it's bad quality.

Back to the point, I think a Sanitized version of the old web would be far better than having to recreate all of the vile stuff 1:1. Also, I could argue that vile jokes still exist on the internet and wasn't only an old web thing. I know they're not as common or widespread but they're still there, like on YouTube shorts. I'm pretty sure vile humor is just an internet thing because you don't have to deal with the consequences of it in real life.


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PerfectMistake ☭☭☭

PerfectMistake ☭☭☭'s profile picture

I think it's kinda funny to see people oogle and oggle about how 4chan was the best thing old web was

"is a crazed shell of what it once was"? It was always horrible and crazed and racist and homophobic and every ism and phobic. It was made for the people that 2chan (a site racist enough to cast out all americans) wouldn't allow because they spoke english. Sure, you may ramble about the good old days when everything was anonymous and everyone was nice and the kids frolicked around posting silly youtube videos and you all wore lemons on your belts and crap, but that doesn't even fricking exist and never did. It's like a reverse strawman.

I was like that too once, it was only a few months ago, maybe 5 but that's when I still used Heyuri, which was 4chan except with more pedophiles. I thought everything was cool and happy and crap, and I ignored the face that if they knew my race (I'm black), they'd skin me and hang my corpse on a tree then set it on fire and parade it around. I even ignored them saying the n word and other slurs for black people because of that.

4CHAN ISN'T GOOD AND NEVER WAS.


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Alveus Nosville

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I'd take the old web any day. Well the old ways of it. I wouldn't want it's version of wikipedia tough some things were indeed functionally better at some point in the past too - namely search engines.
Shortening attentions spans are not even the main issue, "the feed" at large devoided pretty much everything from context, together with removing any need for it. I have not seen even one positive thing that ever served and it seems that this one change affected literally everything about the net and then beyond.


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wuppycat

wuppycat's profile picture

as someone who has trauma from being bullied as a child over the old internet, i think what i really want is an internet thats not constantly trying to sell me something.


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antukent

antukent's profile picture

it's very reminiscent of those youtube comments on old music videos saying, "i wished i lived in the (insert decade), it was so much fun back then" without realizing that the way of life we had then isn't exactly better than what we have now. nostalgia can partly be influenced by looking at the past with rose-tinted lenses, and that's the bad part about it - people will have the tendency to ignore/forget the bad parts.

personally, i'm in favor of the "neo-Y2K" sanitized experience because as you've said, some things are best left in the past. i'll admit it was the early internet that exposed me to questionable morals being normalized, but it was also the same (but more developed) internet that taught me all of that was wrong. with the massive number of people using the internet, surely i'm not the only one who has experienced that. however, there are other external factors to take into account like language, culture, geography, etc., so i doubt change will happen for everyone, though.

the aesthetic of the past can definitely coexist with the moral norms of the present, but it'll take time - and massive efforts from internet users - for us to get to that sweet spot.


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𝐻𝒜𝐼𝐿𝐸𝒴 𝒢𝐿𝒪𝒪𝑀𝐼𝐸

𝐻𝒜𝐼𝐿𝐸𝒴 𝒢𝐿𝒪𝒪𝑀𝐼𝐸's profile picture

I wish we could bring forums back :((


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Emaemaema

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If you analyze, in both eras young users were exposed to things they shouldn't, and both had unsupervised young users (the amount of times I saw porn propaganda on pirate anime sites is unbearable). Also, if we compare, in both we have a high percentage of bad people with straight-up bad integrity as humans; and nowadays it still is hard to actually report and hold them accountable for what they say and do publicly on the internet. I mean, how many times the content that you reported was successfully taken down?

One of the biggest differences between now and then is that it was way less overwhelming to use it. It didn't have 500 different types of content on the same platform.

Another thing is how the public real spaces got less and less welcoming to people walking around with their friends or having a picnic. We can barely sit to wait for the bus because they want to banish homeless people from public places even though THEY DON'T HAVE A HOUSE. It's obvious children and teens, young adults even, will spend their whole free time on the Internet, how else are they supposed to talk to people if they can't go out anywhere? Since I graduated from high school, I haven't been able to be with my friends more than twice, so I just spent the time in the room talking to them over the phone.

And the biggest problem, at least for me, is the blatant exposure of gore on old web revival platforms. I saw one video of a guy shooting himself in the face and another one with just racism and racism. The video was on the main page of access to the platform. I mean, at least in mainstream social media people are obligated to minimize their hatred and not be aggressively hateful. And they also can't post literal homicides and suicides on the platform without it being quickly removed. I just can't be on a platform where people "walk" around with Nazi symbols and with videos of gore.


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This is so true, people can't just go places and hang out, especially teenagers. The fact that "loitering" is even a thing is outrageous. People can't do anything in real life anymore without buying something.

by alienz4real; ; Report

yukari

yukari's profile picture

good point, but id honestly want to go back so i can argue with people on monochrome heaven because they have no sense of real peoples boundaries


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𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬's profile picture

The Internet has fallen.

Billions must return to tradition and MySpace aesthetics


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MetalHeart

MetalHeart's profile picture

I would give 200 kudos


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NITSA

NITSA's profile picture

i really enjoyed reading this!! and i think you’re right no one really wants the “old web” back and some things are better to be left in past.


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