I was thinking of how people on the old internet would just create and share stuff for the simple sake of doing it, without trying to grind the algorithm. This woman in the mid 00’s would bike through Chernoby, taking pictures and checking rad levels along the way.
Her anglefire page is defunk, but she has a youtube page now.
And for an added level of interesting, here’s the slashdot page where I originally found it.
I used to be one of those people. It was a much different place then. It genuinely felt like a place to share useful information and help others or connect with folks from all over the world. If you had a question, or needed to fix something, it was usually pretty easy to find.
I used to prefer Altavista over Google as I found it served results closer to what I was looking for.
Now most of the internet is trash - pages and pages repeating the same crap, useful information or tutorials are hard to find without first wading through irrelevant search results or tutorials that are unhelpful but know how to capture the algorithms to generate cash, my ad blocker now telling me it’s blocking hundreds of ads instead of just a few, tracking and spying almost everywhere, clickbait hot takes, artificial and disingenuous lifestyle filtering, information desert eeeeverywhere…
Many days now I long for the internet of old.
*defunct.
Thought I’d just dip my toes in but ended up reading all the way through. It feels like ancient history but in my childhood, people happily lived their lives in these places. I forgot how much I appreciated individuality and eccentricity.
Maybe we all don’t spend enough time alone. Maybe we just aren’t really enjoying each other while we’re together. Maybe it’s just me.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I remember seeing her pics. And that’s the /. page where I learned of them. God fucking damn that makes me feel old. It’s already been slightly more than 20 years. Cheers.
