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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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I remember just the sheer wonder and awe. The raw thrill of exploration.. It hadnt been corprotized yet, So there wasnt any real ads or anything. Just a vast existence that felt like raw, unexplored territory, every keystroke unveiling a new and wonderous world hidden just behind the next hill.
Websites had visitor counters, which further enforced the thrill of exploration when you stumbled upon a website that had a visitor counter in the single or double digits. Discovering the bleeding edges of human civilization, where a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent had dared to tread.
The raw exhilaration of it all causing time to seemingly stop for you, until you realize 36 hours has past in the blink of an eye, and suddenly crash for 12+ hours of sleep.
There is no magic to the web anymore. Its just..a utility. Boring, and sterile. Dangers more from the corporatization and ads thananything else. Changing constantly only in the pursuit of shifting trends expressly and only for the purpose of improving metrics.. because getting 30,000 hits that'll never come back looks better than 5,000 people that regularly engage.
God fucking hell I'm depressed as fuck now.
@Dubious_Fart
Visit counters! That was such a big thing for a while.
And does anyone remember web rings?
Webrings were so great. Never knew where it was gonna take you next.
A great way to discover new websites before search engines were a real thing.
God I wish I could go back 30+ years and experience the fresh and innocent internet again.
but at least my depressions increased, so I got that going for me.
The thing I remember is the thrill of realizing how.much.stuff. was out there (even though by current standards it was tiny). There was a repository hosted by WUSTL.EDU that had a ton of software source code, binaries and other stuff; you could submit requests to it by e-mail and back would come your files uuencoded, split across multiple e-mail messages. You had to cobble the pieces back together before you could decode it.
I had completely forgotten about that particular method of file delivery. I wonder how many other things I don’t remember as well?