Small forums where everybody knew everybody (there's still some kicking around). Personal websites/blogs were fun. I think they could make a comeback now that it's easier than ever to host and big social media is going to poo.
USENET. Actually useful USENET.
Is USENET still useful? I haven’t used it in over a decade and I hope it’s still around, but I would be kinda shocked if it’s still relevant.
I still have an account. It is still useful for grabbing binary content like TV shows and movies, but that takes a lot of setup.
What I really miss are the discussions. There, it’s not as useful as it once was. All the groups still exist, but many are overrun by spam. It would be nice to see a solution that makes USENET actually useful again.
I think the only 'problem' I have is that the content is relatively scarce. I too need to put more effort into commenting and posting, like every one else should too.
That being said, I do like the idea of not using reddit anymore. I swear I am way more productive, even with the time spent on Lemmy. The community seems (at least generally speaking) more wholesome.
There are subreddits that I do miss, I am checking every week if they migrated, hoping they will make it!
The crazy thing is that I find myself commenting way more in here. If I was to answer to an askreddit thread, it would just get lost, but since the community here is smaller, it feels like every comment has more relevance
Void Yelling. Sometimes I should start typing what I thought would be a helpful response, but stop when I realized it was a major sub and it's been up for 5 hours.
I had the same experience moving to mastodon from twitter, I get way more engagement on mastodon. Feels good!
I miss the mostly text-based content that was replaced by low effort memes
I feel like reddit was a constant hunt for smaller and smaller subreddits bring back the feeling of 2009 reddit.
I used the website stumbleupon.com. I used to waste hours on that site and just shuffle websites within my interests. It was a good way to find new websites to frequent.
forum games and community events
Going outside
Maybe the digg photoshop contests.
But really, I thought reddit was the perfect site when it came out. I’m very sad it has been taken over by a Musk clone.
Aren't photoshop battles a form of photoshop contest? Or were photoshop contests something else?
Pre Reddit? I miss Digg and Diggnation podcast.
Post Reddit, I miss the size of the communities, but honestly, they quality of responses I've gotten here is much better. It's also nice seeing all these new communities popping up. Soon you'll be able to find a community for just about everything
Being part of a smaller community.
I had even stopped reading usernames. No subreddit has ever felt like a community to me. The only online places that did were my WoW guild, some other guild-based games, a brief period on Crunchyroll a long time ago, and more recently a Discord anime group which is all but inactive now.
The internet has changed in such a way. But so have I. Making friends online used to be super easy (talking 15-20 years ago). Nowadays, I can only do it in person.
I always miss many of the online friends I used to have and regret deeply how I didn't put more effort into keeping them. I see a lot of people make the same mistake. I suppose friendship loss is something most of us need to go through to learn to value it.
feature phones
IRC and Usenet. I was an avid user of both, even met my partner on IRC. I really miss the close knit communities on both. Oh and yahoo groups at the beginning.
I miss the old forums and discussion boards that we had pre "web 2.0". I read a YA book series as a teenager that had a forum, and met one of the best friends of my life on it. I know people still do such things, but I've never really had a close knit community like we had back then, not since the likes of Reddit and other social media giants have dominated the way we all use the internet. I'd be very happy to go back to the internet of the early aughts and just stay there.
It was before my time, but from what I’ve heard I would have to agree. Some smaller subreddits and discord servers can emulate some elements of those communities, but it’s just not the same. Especially discord, it loves shoving nitro in your face, and finding old discussions is impossible unless messages happened to be pinned at the time.
Niche web forums still exist around a discrete interest group, they have lost a lot of traffic to enshittified giants but I think the people who post their lazy questions on facebook groups are better off there anyway. Repeat questions was an issue on web forums and still is, but I think having an additional torrent of ask-before-search users would make forums untenable now.
The internet was amazing when only technically-capable people were on it. Or in other words, everything gets ruined by being too popular.
Repeat questions was an issue on web forums and still is
I hope that ChatGPT will eventually solve this problem.
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