Loving Arc! I kinda like how it doesn’t really make a distinction between tabs and favorites, and at the same time I kinda don’t.

Do you have a solution for links you want to have access to someday but don’t really want as pinned tabs or favorites? I have some pinned tab folders at the moment, but I don’t love that solution. I’ve used Pinboard in the past but, 1) I feel like that product is dying and 2) I’d like tighter browser integration.

Yes, this is the problem. Search engines used to be a way to find stuff. They slowly evolved into more and more effective platforms for monetizing internet users, meaning the only content you can effectively find now is content that’s selling something (or perhaps content that is selling you).

Breaking out of that bubble can reveal that content that isn’t built for selling is still there. It’s just like you said: it’s gone underground. Not by choice but because the ground got moved.

Holy crap, I had totally forgotten GameCopyWorld! Thank you for this!

That’s awesome to hear! I can identify because I did spend hours going through them all! 😅 It was really fun! Took me back to that time. The stuff is still out there… it’s just hard to find because search engines don’t care about it.

I didn’t run in exactly the same internet circles that you did, but I do still crave the sense of discovery of the early web. A few months ago, I put together a list of “old web” on-ramps to sate the hunger.

Neocities is a big hub for weird web sites that aren’t trying to make a buck. For me, that’s the key. What’s the motivation for this web site? Is someone trying to sell me something, or do they love this thing they’re talking about so much, their enthusiasm has spilled out onto the internet?

When search was bad, finding something cool on the internet felt like finding buried treasure.

I’ll always remember Illucia: The Town of Final Fantasy. It was a Final Fantasy fansite started by some college student (I assume since it was hosted on some university’s web hosting; maybe UC Santa Barbara?) named Tatsushi Nakao in the early 90s. The page greeted you with original art of a pixelated Final Fantasy style town. You could click on various buildings to go to sections of the site. It felt like a place, and it was fun to explore.

I remember the Quake web community in the mid 90s — a bunch of web sites, sometimes linked together and sometimes not — all with Quake-related content. Large portal sites would organize around interests, and they would seek out smaller sites about niche parts of that interest, bringing them into the fold to offer hosting and services. PlanetQuake is the one I remember most around Quake. The PlanetQuake site was a place you’d go to get the latest Quake news, but then they also hosted more niche sites.

The first practical “programming” I ever did was in Quake macros… and that’s probably a major part of why I have the career I have today. There was a whole site dedicated to Quake macros (probably hosted on PlanetQuake, but I can no longer say for certain) that helped me get started and even helped me along when I got stuck.

I recall another site which I believe was called the House of Mouse which existed solely to extoll the virtues of the keyboard/mouse control scheme for Quake. When Quake was released, the prevailing way to control a shooter was with the arrow keys on the keyboard. Doom guy wasn’t able to look up or down, so the mouse wasn’t necessary. (You could control Doom with the mouse, but moving the mouse forward caused Doom guy to walk forward. It was a terrible way to play!) Hence the need to convince people to play with the mouse and keyboard.

I miss the early web. Smaller communities like this, Tildes, and Mastodon give me those same vibes again.