Types of sites that should still exist today and just don't?

[stinkerdoo]

The #1 thing I dislike about the current web is how EVERYTHING is Javascript. People's personal blogs are heavy and laggy with hideous vibecoded JS animations, YouTube loads like ass on anything that isn't Chrome because of JS, entire desktop applications are made in Electron and run fucking horribly even on high-end hardware because it's all JS.

I guess it's not really a "type of website" that I miss, but rather, I miss when the web wasn't trying to be Everything. I've tried my best to minimize my usage of "heavy" webapps like YouTube, Discord, Reddit, VSCode, and all the other shitware from monopolistic companies, but their influence has crippled most alternatives.

 

[Mopeybloke]

Also, more independent video-sharing sites. YouTube has it's algorithm and metrics, sure, but it's also just incredibly easy to just link or embed a video file hosted wherever these days.

There are other video websites, but running them is very expensive.
Shoutout to Odysee for being ad-free too.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

There are other video websites, but running them is very expensive.
Shoutout to Odysee for being ad-free too.

I'm liking Dailymotion more and more as time goes on.

You can find so much stuff in there... And it's basically the only way to watch many movies and TV shows due to their lax copyright bots.

 

[Mopeybloke]

You can find so much stuff in there... And it's basically the only way to watch many movies and TV shows due to their lax copyright bots.

I guess I should look into it too. It's been years since I've used it, but I remember disliking the interface.
Edit: so I searched for "Dailymotion" there and got back a bunch of full movies. They have the first Sam Raimi Spiderman movie. Perhaps too lenient.

 

[saturnsh2x2]

The #1 thing I dislike about the current web is how EVERYTHING is Javascript. People's personal blogs are heavy and laggy with hideous vibecoded JS animations, YouTube loads like ass on anything that isn't Chrome because of JS, entire desktop applications are made in Electron and run fucking horribly even on high-end hardware because it's all JS.

I guess it's not really a "type of website" that I miss, but rather, I miss when the web wasn't trying to be Everything. I've tried my best to minimize my usage of "heavy" webapps like YouTube, Discord, Reddit, VSCode, and all the other shitware from monopolistic companies, but their influence has crippled most alternatives.

Seconding this. A lot of tasks people use computers for are the same as they were 20 years ago, and sometimes it feels the extra CPU cores and cycles are being wasted on doing the same things, but way more inefficiently.

Also, "vibe-coding" is for people who are too scared to write a simple Python or bash script themselves. Somehow.

 

[breremarer]

i miss those fan sites that people used to make just for fan

This is probably the one I miss the most, too. Anything that calls itself a 'shrine' is a-okay in my book. Some of those are still up, albeit abandoned. I used one as a walkthrough when I played through Phantasy Star IV last year. Haha!

I'm liking Dailymotion more and more as time goes on.

You can find so much stuff in there... And it's basically the only way to watch many movies and TV shows due to their lax copyright bots.

Agree with this, as well. I was pulling for Vimeo for a while, but DailyMotion is more reliable when you need to dig up that real obscure stuff.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

MySpace

It was just the antitesis of what we have on social media today: a simple way to build something by yourself. Each MySpace was their own mini website embedded with the charisma of its creator.

Sadlty in the end Facebook won the battle and the slowly standardization of... well everything, won. It is a shame, I dream of a timeline where Corpos didnt get into the internet (or gaming) and standarize everything so they can get more money.

 

[suzunami]

Old music based forums. There was Monochrome Heaven but it's private now lmao. Also Tonberry Torrents (which I mentioned before) just redirects to Google now.

I dislike how now you have to join a Discord just to discuss your hobby, or in my case to talk about a music genre. Most servers tend to have people that are not exactly mature and I get a little tired of being around teens who can't even act sometimes (no offense)

 

[skramz]

I've found that a lot of these previously extinct sites have started to come back (though in that awful "mobile optimized" vertical format.) For example, Spacehey is a rebirth of the original Myspace, which I use frequently and I love.

even my beloved mongolian basket weaving forum has more adequate moderation than spacehey. please save yourself the trouble of making an account. the owner is a hack who never even used myspace.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

I dont know if it's still a thing but there was this company called Juno that
was kinda like AOL back in the day. They kept sending me free CDs and
as long as I kept switching my username I had free internet forever. (well not forever. lol)
This might of been back in the GLORY days of Windows 98

Good old dial-up internet.

 

[Adrastia]

I dont know if it's still a thing but there was this company called Juno that
was kinda like AOL back in the day. They kept sending me free CDs and
as long as I kept switching my username I had free internet forever. (well not forever. lol)
This might of been back in the GLORY days of Windows 98

View attachment 147671View attachment 147678 Good old dial-up internet.

Dial up. Great until mom needs to use the phone.

 

[suzunami]

even my beloved mongolian basket weaving forum has more adequate moderation than spacehey. please save yourself the trouble of making an account. the owner is a hack who never even used myspace.

Not the person you're replying to, but I will agree with you on Spacehey, though my problem with it comes from 80% of the people using it being underage. I pretty much found no discussion on there because it really was just a bunch of kids who, while they were friendly I just ended up deleting my account. But it's good that sites like it exist since at least others can enjoy it.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Not the person you're replying to, but I will agree with you on Spacehey, though my problem with it comes from 80% of the people using it being underage. I pretty much found no discussion on there because it really was just a bunch of kids who, while they were friendly I just ended up deleting my account. But it's good that sites like it exist since at least others can enjoy it.

Is it really that bad? I just made an account & I'm trying to get to know it better before jumping right in.

WHY is it that bad?

 

[Badseed Badseed]

Dial up. Great until mom needs to use the phone.

I had to wait until everyone was sleeping, then I remember plugging in my Dreamcast on a really long cord to our kitchen phone jack.

 

[suzunami]

Is it really that bad? I just made an account & I'm trying to get to know it better before jumping right in.

WHY is it that bad?

So i made a spacehey bc there was a jrock community on there apparently but it turns out most of them don't know how to have forum discussions Also I feel weird being the oldest there so I just left lol. I guess I should've said minors don't interact on my bio but I didn't wanna do that its a little unfair to block just for that.

Also I wanted to talk about my own childhood in my own page on there (which isn't even that old imo) and a lot of people didn't really know what a DS was. (Maybe there are are people on there who I would get along with but I'll probably just leave it be lol)

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

So i made a spacehey bc there was a jrock community on there apparently but it turns out most of them don't know how to have forum discussions Also I feel weird being the oldest there so I just left lol. I guess I should've said minors don't interact on my bio but I didn't wanna do that its a little unfair to block just for that.

Also I wanted to talk about my own childhood in my own page on there (which isn't even that old imo) and a lot of people didn't really know what a DS was. (Maybe there are are people on there who I would get along with but I'll probably just leave it be lol)

I see... Yeah, that'd throw me off pretty hard as well.

It's weird because that's not the impression I got from the forums (although, I admittedly didn't dig deep at all), yet that's exactly what I'm seeing on the homepage.

Thanks for the reply, at any rate (:

 

[Metroid_Hybrid]

Back in the early 2000s, it was fun scouring the interwebs for unique skins & player models for Quake 3 Arena. Every once in a while you could find something really neat hosted on a random geocities site, and no where else. That's gone the way of the Dodo..
I also think search engines have gotten demonstrably worse over time. The downfall started with the likes of AskJeeves, Yahoo, AltaVista, etc. There was a reason why Google was so good when it first came out, but then they overly-monetized like the rest, while buying everyone else out. Now, rather than organic search results, everything is algorithm-based... It sucks..
There's a reason why "Dead Internet Theory" is a thing..

 

[stinkerdoo]

I also think search engines have gotten demonstrably worse over time.

Not to sound like a total corpo shill, but I've been using Kagi for over a year and I love it. It has a monthly subscription cost (uuuuugghgghhhhhhhhhh)*, but the price has personally been worth it for me because I am searching obscure things all the goddamn time, and it ACTUALLY serves me results that are relevant.

I did a test a while ago to compare Kagi results with Google, Startpage, and Bing results, and when searching for obscure music I liked, Kagi was the only search engine that had relevant results on the first page. I tried searching for a song titled "Piano To Your Head" and all Google gave me for the first 2 1/2 pages were tutorials on how to learn piano lol. Kagi got me a link to the song on result #3, with the other results being information about the musician that made it. Every once in a while, I'll go back to Google just to see what it's like now, and I'm always astonished by how enshittified it's gotten since I moved to Kagi.

*While I hate monthly subscriptions, I trust that Kagi is actually sticking to their word that they don't collect user data. If a service is free, the price is always your privacy. I'd rather give Kagi an hour out of my paycheck than have them hoard every single personal thought I've ever had in my life.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

The more I look at other sites, the more I like RGT.

That's for damn sure.

 

[breremarer]

Not to sound like a total corpo shill, but I've been using Kagi for over a year and I love it. It has a monthly subscription cost (uuuuugghgghhhhhhhhhh)*, but the price has personally been worth it for me because I am searching obscure things all the goddamn time, and it ACTUALLY serves me results that are relevant.

Iiiinteresting. I've been using DuckDuckGo for the last month or so, to at least sidestep some of the AI search summarizations/ads. It's like... okayyy??? It's better than Google, at least. This is the first I've heard of Kagi, and I might try out the trial tbh.

The more I look at other sites, the more I like RGT.

That's for damn sure.

 

[Masterofthefalcon]

I used to go on a website called Kirby's Rainbow Resort. It was a great Kirby website back in the day. Would check on it while checking the Brawl Dojo and later when checking for new Brawl in the Family comics. It's still up, but the forums are gone and it hasn't been updated in over a decade. One site I'm glad that's still up and being posted to is the Kitty Corp Meow Mix/Brawl Vault. Used to spend a ton of time on there back in the day.

I really do miss stumbling on random fan websites though. Like Sonic Central and other fan shrines. The modern internet just makes me bummed out. Thank goodness for RGT though.

 

[Spyrone]

Dial up. Great until mom needs to use the phone.

Or until 2008 when your still using it and the only thing that will reliably load before the heat death of the universe is Wikipedia. I did manage to get the teaser trailer for Gears of War 2 to load fully so I could watch it all the way through once. In 360p.

 

[SherionVane]

I dont know if it's still a thing but there was this company called Juno that
was kinda like AOL back in the day. They kept sending me free CDs and
as long as I kept switching my username I had free internet forever. (well not forever. lol)
This might of been back in the GLORY days of Windows 98

View attachment 147671View attachment 147678 Good old dial-up internet.

forever :D