Ortiz On: The Revival of the Old Internet

I’ve been noticing a trend and I wanted to bring it to your attention. Lately I’ve been noticing a rise of apps & services that emulates websites and apps that give you the experience of the internet of old. For example I’ve been noticing a rise in the userbase of the website Spacehey, which for those unaware is a social network that emulates the classic Myspace of the early 2000’s. I’ve been on the site for 4 years and when I log in I’m always seeing a new set of their “Cool New People” that they feature on my homepage.

Another example is the recent revival of the news aggregation service Digg. As I’ve been alpha testing it I’ve been seeing a whole lot more users get in on the platform and get involved with other users. There’s a certain air of coziness with these services as it feels like these apps & services aren’t getting decimated from new internet stuff like ragebait content & AI slop, though the Digg revival does have AI summaries for articles that get posted on the service but it’s mainly out of the way from what I’ve experienced.

There’s also some extensions and modded apps that I’ve been using lately that gives you the experience of popular apps & sites that give you the experience of the website’s glory days before everything went to shit. For example I have an extension in my Zen Browser where combined with a user style & Stylus makes my Twitter experience look like how it used to in the early 2000’s. Complete with a timeline overhaul to make it look and function like it was back in the day.

There’s also similar browser plugins & themes I use for Reddit to give it the old style because the current one is utter garbage, ads and all.

The last piece of old internet that’s making a serious return from what I’ve noticed is Geocities, albeit under the new name Neocities since the original name is essentially dead. Neocities is basically the same as the Geocities of old where people create their own websites with the classic HTML & CSS flairs & everything. It’s incredible to see some of the creativity of people on Neocities with the limitations of HTML & CSS.

It’s lovely to reacquaint myself with the internet I grew up on and see that others are as well or are acquainting themselves with it for the first time. Hopefully more and more people catch on to the rise of old internet and that companies will listen and stop making horrid changes to the internet we know and…currently tolerate.