2000-2007 Internet

I think it's pretty comparable. Just less bloated. But then there was more Flash everywhere.

>>61900336
It was objectively shittier, uglier and slower BUT you had to be more creative to gather good information and to create attractive content

That made the whole experience way more adventurous and social since you interacting with humans and sharing experiences really helped

Nowadays you can always explore the web in a similar fashion (and you definitely should if you are looking for facts / reliable information) but there is so much content and most importantly so much copies of the same content that it's somewhat harder

>>61900336
life as a whole was better back then. that makes it seem like the internet was better. speeds were atrocious but the internet felt more.. personal, I guess. now it's so lifeless and filled to the brim with retards. in the past, there were idiots no doubt, however they came in much smaller numbers compared to today when everyone and their grandmother has a smartphone. 01-03 is the era I wish we could go back to.

i thought the consensus was that 2006-2011 was the best time in the history of the internet so far. the relative primitiveness of technology contributed to the comfyness of that era, and so too did the lack of phoneposters. nothing ever lasts forever though

>>61900523
not to mention the complete takeover of everything by social media. this has killed a lot of the original allure I saw in the internet. I liked when myspace and ebaums users stayed where they came from.

>>61900532
this, mobile users are the worst.

>>61900406
>Less bloated
Nah. Today we are bloated with JavaScript and html5. Back then we were bloated with flash, pop-up ads and gifs

Yes.

>>61900662

>pop-up ads

Better than javascript that actively subverts everything to create a popunder

File: 1478148719175.jpg (31KB, 406x419px) Image search: [Google]

31KB, 406x419px

I used to find vloggers and download their videos then edit it and make a very creepy video of them. I done it to this one girl for 2 years, I had thousands of people spamming my comments on my profile. I ended up finding where she lived and kept sending creepy letters and printed out images.

One day she killed herself on stickam. She downed a bottle of valiums and then drank a 1lt bottle of vodka.

>>61900809
Why not lie with 10 litres, there would be no difference

File: 1487288785771.jpg (113KB, 1024x768px) Image search: [Google]

113KB, 1024x768px

>>61900809
evidence pls

File: 1472978470406.gif (22KB, 400x300px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 400x300px

>>61900836

i can tell you are very new, friend. definitely <18

File: d985ab901.png (32KB, 240x177px) Image search: [Google]

32KB, 240x177px

>find an old website from 2002 swarming with animated gifs for menus
>loads nearly instantly
>go to modern blog site that's mostly text
>laptop fan spins up and screen is blank for about 2 seconds before it starts slowly rendering

What the fuck how is this possible?

Yes
>No useless whitespacing
>High info density
>Net was used to distribute info and have discussions instead of social media bs
>Articles were to the point instead of having 4 introduction paragraphs with bs
>Articles were to the point instead of starting with full-screen unrelated stock photo
>No hijacked scrollbars
>Opera with Presto master race
>No Chrome botnet

>>61900477
>>61900523
>>61900532
>>61900587
>>61900967
A mix of these posts.

>>61900906
Like 3 megabytes of third party Javascript.
Or should I say EMCAScript.

File: (16).jpg (60KB, 550x366px) Image search: [Google]

60KB, 550x366px

>>61900336
take me back

>>61900587
>not to mention the complete takeover of everything by social media. this has killed a lot of the original allure I saw in the internet.

Yeah I probably regularly visit like 5-10 websites at max now. I remember when the internet felt like the Wild West with all the active forums. I might visit a blackhat forum, not because I was interested in hacking or being a script kiddy, but because it felt like I was listening in on a conversation between two Russian bad guys and it felt cool.

The internet is becoming so compartmentalized I'm afraid it's gonna turn into cable TV and be sold that way as well, given the FCC selling us all out.

2000 to about 2008 were there golden years. Something awful before the cancer, the fun years of 4chan before anonymous. The average poster on the internet was a geek. Less social media like subscribe whoring. There are still good things out there but the signal to noise ratio has been getting worse since the usenet days.

>>61901389
What doesn't help is that all the people with a vested in interest in keeping the internet in its intended form are instead thinking of things in a manner of television channels. "YouTube doesn't want us? We'll make our OWN YouTube."

We're at a point where the traditional "network of documents" vision for the web would guarantee that we'd never have to worry about information retention or distribution ever again. The UTZOO tapes would fit on a modern hard drive or USB stick tens, possibly hundreds, of times over.

But nope! Got to cater for the normalfag-ification of the web and their HD video broadcasts and hundreds of awfully compressed phone pictures that are 4MB in size but should be about 200KB.

>>61900906
That website did not load instantly at the time.

>>61900967
>>No useless whitespacing
wrong, web design was worse than ever in the early 2000s as technologies like flash became used for fucking everything, don't you remember that fad of "flash sites" where it was just a little flash box that was surrounded by tons of empty space on any resolution higher than 800x600? websites in general would not work very well outside of the specific resolution the webmaster created it for

>>High info density
wrong, you had to sort through a sea of irrelevant garbage to find information on the internet back then, search engines were terrible and useful sites for most things were few and far between. it has literally never been easier than it is today to find information on the internet

>>Net was used to distribute info and have discussions instead of social media bs
>implying forums with attention whore women and power tripping mods weren't just proto-social media

>>Articles were to the point instead of having 4 introduction paragraphs with bs
i'll give you this to a degree

>>Articles were to the point instead of starting with full-screen unrelated stock photo
this too, but the lack of such images was not a conscious design choice designed to make reading the article easier for the consumer, they just physically couldn't put them on it due to speed constraints of the time

>>No hijacked scrollbars
flash sites

>>Opera with Presto master race
agreed, i absolutely loved opera back in the day,

>>No Chrome botnet
instead you had the IE botnet which was far more pervasive than chrome is

>>61901672
That's not really the point, is it? Surely a post that is (in theory) 99% text should be even paster than a site covered in animated gifs?

>>61900336
yes it was. the minute "social media" and smartphones came, the internet was never the same again.

>>61901861
It took at least a few years for it to have a real effect on the internet as a whole, I'd say 2010 was the point of no return for the internet and it started changing in the mid-2000s.

>>61900906
Javascript is the culprit there. Block Javascript and pages load WAY faster.

>>61900336
it was before the modern age of narcissism.

anonymity was respected, freedom of speech was revered, and content was rarely restricted. if anyone thinks this was a bad time for the internet you're retarded.

>>61901672
I think you missed the point.

File: perspective.png (74KB, 652x632px) Image search: [Google]

74KB, 652x632px

People on the internet had to either be creative, tech savvy, or have a lot of time. That lead to a lot more interesting content and people. There was a time when there was absolutely no normies on the internet.

Before social media people had somewhat know what html was and what a web server was and what ftp did. Once again, today everything is normie and retard friendly. Lowering the bar and killing the wild west.

>>61901672
and the blog site he visited would have loaded for multiple hours back then

>>61900336
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
but with phones.

>>61902346
Also, one thing I won't miss are pages hijacking your cursor with some stupid shit.

Equally shit, instead of JS you had muh flash content.

It was just more distributed.
Bulk of modern internet is just a handful of sites owned by even smaller number of corporations.

>>61902118
>People on the internet had to either be creative, tech savvy, or have a lot of time
yeah no all my normal friends in high school used the internet in the 2000s

>>61902400
everyone "used" the internet, but mostly just for basic social media or wikipedia/google.

File: 1472516276005.png (22KB, 1366x640px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 1366x640px

Ad blockers didn't need anti ad blockers and sites didn't try to fuck people over for using ad blockers.

>>61900336

Technology wise of course it wasn't better.

Culture and content wise the internet's golden age was 2001 - 2006.

File: Screenshot at 2017-08-14 16-40-44.png (8KB, 1033x281px) Image search: [Google]

8KB, 1033x281px

>>61900662
I just did that, you're right, web is suddenly as snappy as it was back then, but nothing works, including 4chan. is there a trick to it?

>>61901389
The Internet is becoming the opposite of compartmentalized

File: thicc bugs.png (249KB, 248x459px) Image search: [Google]

249KB, 248x459px

Do you think a movement could be formulated that used plain text files rather than even using HTML? I'd totally be down for that.

are you kidding me ?

Of course it was better... how fucking young are you?

the internet of today is not even in the same universe as the one of old.

>>61900336
xhtml.gz sites, wml wapsites, sgml pages used to load blazingly fast.
>click link
>50ms delay
>it loads all text entries
>all images are then loaded
>wise usage of cache due to limited resource (ram and cpu)
>javascripts that make your browser windows do weird stuff (you'd deliberately visit the site and be unable to close the browser and force restart).
>MIDI sounds while browsing

internet today:
>download link is hijacked by an aggressive javascript to link to their ad
>even worse: the site is automatically redirected into the ad due to n00b webadmin
>popups everywhere
>zombie cookies
>html5/DOM storage and flash supercookies
>cache/canvas fingerprinting
>browser itself fingerprints you through addons/extensions
>built in metadata
>metadata everywhere
>big data everywhere
>somewhere out there is your browsing profile
>even your relative's contact number are slurped in by botnet ads, you'll receive ads on text or on email (because you used your number to register and they already sold it in the data market)
>gps is 4 fucking fags
You are the product.

>>61900336
You have to be 18 or older to post on this website

>>61902544
Everyone would complain about their phone screens not responding well to 80 column text.

>>61900523
The decline of the windows OS was due to outsourcing development to india. That's what killed windows.

The web's decline into a javascript bloatware helll hole all started with the women in tech meme. After SF homosexuals and dykes figured out they could make a living writing atrocious web pages on their macbooks in coffee shops that was all she wrote. It's all been downhill from there.

What the white man needs to do is rewrite the web from the ground up. This time without javascript and web sockets and all that aweful crap. There needs to be a new standard drawn up and make it sort of like mark down language. Simple no frills just straight to the point.

>>61903420
It's called Gopher.

>>61903420
That would simply mean going back to boards/chans/BBSs and basic html homepages.

But that ain't gonna happen. IRC still living because techies still use it and chans will live because techies still use them to. problem is, it drags in all the CP and /pol/ maniacs

>>61903440
that's text based. you still want images and shit, you just dont want to make it so the sodomites can put auto playing videos as the fucking background in every web page. but yea a few png's wont hurt nothin.

>>61901672
ADSL and cable was already commonplace in the early 2000s, at least here in Yurop.

Back then, browsers and websites ran very smoothly even on an old toaster and the response felt instant. Now websites are so bloated with JavaShit and 10000x10000 pixel images that are scaled down to 500x500 on the fly that everything feels slow and laggy even on a fast computer.

>>61903524
>you still want images and shit

>implying.

>>61903420
Why do people on this board act like the web was ever "lightweight"? Lightweight when used with modern internet speeds, yes, but the average website in 1997 on an average internet connection of the time took 10x as long to load as the average website in 2017 on an average internet connection of the time. Web design was also awful back in the """good old days""" too, awful flashing gifs, flash, java, nagging JS that does shit like prevent you from leaving the webpage, and so on everywhere. And god forbid you don't use whatever resolution the person who designed the webpage happened to be using. On top of all that shit nothing was standardised and you'd need to have multiple different browsers installed to use the web, and using anything other than Windows was totally out of the question.
>open page in netscape
>some sort of specific css/javascript or activex fuckery that needs IE
>open in IE
>navigate to new page
>doesn't work in IE
>have to open netscape again
>repeat ad infinitum

I wish people would stop spreading misinformation about the ""early internet"" on here. The good parts about the web were the communities themselves, the web itself was awful and nobody who was sentient then actually thinks it would be good to go back. It's just people born in the mid-late 90s who get nostalgic for their childhood.

I used to download music videos from DC++ 12 years ago

>>61903647
It's about context. Yeah, no shit a modem that pulls down data at 2-4KB/s to a machine with a 100MHz. But an internet connection at least 100x as fast an a computer that's functionally thousands of times as fast should not struggle with a fucking web page any more.

>>61903755
Are you using a Pentium 3? A 10 year old core 2 duo makes a perfectly fine webbrowsing machine today.

>>61900532
Nice try but 2006 was the tipping point

>>61903786
I had to overclock my C2D just so I could browse the web.

>>61903812
No it wasn't. It was the beginning, but not the end. See >>61901876

>>61903814
Well I don't know what to say other than "works on my machine" in this case. Worked fine for things like 4chan and YouTube although it would struggle a bit at higher video resolutions.

2010 seems like it was the year when everyone and their grandma got a smartphone. I definitely don't miss stealing the neighbor's wifi for 40k a second download speeds and waiting to buffer even SD videos. I'm also surprised that this video link still works 11 years later, because basically none of my old bookmarks do.

>>61900336
The barrier of entry was higher for the fucking pleb.

The pleb was too stupid to find the IE icon on his desktop. And if you remove the desktop IE icon, the pleb will be totally helpless, because "the internet is gone!"
But on phones where you have fuckhuge icons, it's impossible to miss.
More plebs on the internet was the beginning of the end. Where the pleb goes, the advertisement industry follows.
Where the advertisement industry goes, things go downhill.

>>61900336
>2000-2007
That's oddly specific, why 2007? I'd say the prime of the internet was from 2000-2010, maybe to 2012. Idk how one comes to 2007, nothing bad happened to the internet that year.

>>61903897
And that's how we end up with the two biggest companies on the web being ad firms.

web 2.0 was the beginning of the end

>>61903882
This, everyone who says 2007 is retarded. 2007 was almost the peak of the web. It started all going downhill after 2010.

2009, when GeoCities died, was the end of the "old web".

>>61903814
thats straight up bullshit and we both know it.

The internet died when we let normies use it.

>>61900809
You're doing gods work anon

>>61903921
iPhone was released that year, normalfags could easily access the web everywhere they went without having to sit on their ass in front of the PC. Also, 2007/2008 is the year facebook took off.

>>61900336
No, it wasn't better. People were better.

The internet was way better back in the day. The one thing I don't miss though is cumming before the image would load on the screen.

>>61902490

It's true that some websites just don't work without js. Use an addon like uMatrix to only allow the scripts you need.

>>61904511
Yes, because everybody had an iPhone and took over the internet with them the moment they came out. Widespread smartphone adoption didn't happen until sort of 2010-2011, and even later in countries outside of the 1st world (which was itself a major part of the decline of the web).

File: 1403582036918.jpg (115KB, 1024x682px) Image search: [Google]

115KB, 1024x682px

>>61900406
I haven't used flash since 2010 but I genuinely miss it when compared with the js-riddled current year.

>>61905085
That image makes me think of something: when was the last time you heard anyone call the web "the information superhighway"? Or even talk about "surfing the web"?

>>61905085
then you are retarded

>>61905171
The idea of the "information superhighway" didn't exist for very long in the first place and "surfing the web" is still a common phrase, although the web has become so dominant that it's just referred to as the internet now.

>>61905171
>information superhighway
A long time.
>surfing the web
Pretty often actually.

>>61905178
>unique looking/functioning sites
>tonnes of games
>original 'video' content
>communities springing up around making content
I can't list all the negative aspects of js so I'm not even gonna try.

>>61905261
>functioning
Flash sites were one of the biggest examples of cancer in the entire history of the web. They were certainly "unique", but absolutely not in a good way.

>tonnes of games
Childhood nostalgia.

>original 'video' content
Literally don't need flash for this.

>communities springing up around making content
Yes, because this never existed before flash and ceased to exist after flash.

>>61905329
You seem to have forgotten that this is a comparison between web technologies.

>>61902841
>wml wapsites
eeuuuggghhhh

>>61905426
Flash was not a good "web technology" in the slightest and for dynamic content JS is infinitely superior. Just because people misuse it doesn't mean the technology itself is bad. Flash on the other hand is fundamentally flawed and cannot be used in a way that is user friendly and safe.

>>61900906
>>61900967
>>61901339
>>61901389
>>61901861
>>61901876
>>61902564
>>61902841
>>61903576
>>61903948
>>61903977
>>61905171


https://wiby.me/

help me rebuild the web then /g/ents
submit pages that are free of the bloat

>>61902118
that pic text reminds me on a trick someone played a while ago. he posted the text together with a "javascript" framework which enables you to write wonderful simplistic sites. skeletonjs or something. i looked in it and found out it was 40 lines of css styles and a call that replaces some links with the author's google adsense link. i keked hard.

>>61905995
submitted one

if you think the iphone made normies ruin the internet, there have been several recent articles about how interests are trying to go the last mile. they're trying to get the final billion people who can't even read online. it's going to get a lot worse because they're going to redesign things for actual retards.

No, it was shit. Before 2000, maybe.

Back then popup blockers actually worked. Now you get tons of "popunders" no matter what browser or adblocking extension you have.

>>61908660
time to start looking into project meshnet again. we need a /secretclub/

>>61902445
>That's okay
so then why do i have to turn it off? i hate these people trying to manipulate me with this "understanding" bullshit. just say outright you refuse to give me services until ive turned it off

>>61908681
yeah but 2000-2007 there was a sweet spot of signal to noise. now a panhandling crackhead can get a phone at 711 and start tweeting in direct reponse to the POTUS

>>61908681
like also you had some decent shit in early reddit. things were difficult enough and obscure enough, post quality was a lot higher. now the floodgates are open and all is lost.

>>61908780
seriously there are probably people getting decent salaries at amazon thinking of ways to get illiterate people to stop spending their money at walmart.

>>61908812
early reddit was just Digg 2.0. unoriginal right from the start.

>>61908957
nah digg exodused to reddit son

>>61900336
2006 was objectively the best year for the internet so far

File: 18403078_1270075483111480_6694835605228726667_n.jpg (13KB, 255x315px) Image search: [Google]

13KB, 255x315px

>>61900336
Is the pope Catholic?

>>61908757
>the content you want is now in the popup and the ad now shows up in the original tab

I like to think it was better back then because of the people who were using the internet, not so much the technology that was driving.

I think it was also a lot better back then because the internet really felt like the wild west in so far as there were basically no rules and you could post whatever you felt like posting and the only repercussion was to get your account banned from whatever board you decided to troll.

Does anyone else remember when being called a nerd was actually an insult and you would try to hide the amount of time you spent online?

>>61909162
I dreaded the PC culture invading the internet one day. Little did I know it was going to be so much worse than I imagined.

>>61909127
CAN'T WAKE UP

>>61909127
>mfw 2030
>zero production cost for digital ads
>ar ads literally everywhere

popups. bitch please.

>>61909127
and they wonder why people started blocking these obnoxious shits

Depends on what you mean by better.

More creative? Absolutely. This was back when forum boards were in their prime, and everyone had their own website.

Easier to use? No. The current internet is much more usable.

Better design? No. The modern internet has a better design.

More community? Absolutely. Sites like YouTube felt much more like a community instead of the social network it is now.

Again, it all depends on perspective.

>>61904031

Bloated websites like Amazon bog down every browser I've tried on my i3 laptop

>>61908796
Whitehouse actually had a website, man its cool to imagine a time where Bill Clinton got questions from Gen X/No Smartphone Millennial teens and he was actually smart enough to answer them unlike Bush would have been and they wouldn't be SJW shitty ones but actual substantive questions.

I think the worst thing about the internet today is how exposed everyone is which fosters a celebrity and attention getting culture where before this it was about personal and private communications and scientists and intelligent people had more of a influence.

>>61907354
Thank you sir

>>61910364
have you tried webkit browsers like surf for serious toast or midori for something inbetween surf and firefox? i feel like they are very toaster friendly

File: 2017-08-15-045402_514x352_scrot.png (36KB, 514x352px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 514x352px

>>61900967
I don't store pepes on PC, so I googled one to post, and this is what I have ended up with. Like, really?

>>61900336
>slashdot
>deviantart
I assure you those two site still live in that era.

>tfw early YouTube was original videos
>tfw current YouTube is music videos and vloggers who don't do it for free

>>61900336
I miss the "video responses" section to every youtube video. Autists would record themselves and there would be chains like 50 vids long of people replying back and forth to each other.

>>61905995
There should be more porn sites on there. Strongly considering making a simple lightweight porn indexer.

>>61900662
>flash
The days of newgrounds are dead and gone. Feels bad man.

1997-2004 was the golden age

>>61900336
>2006 youtube
Good times lads.

There was no real "golden age" of the web, it's always been shit over the years, just in different ways. The golden age of the internet was the late 80s/early 90s

>>61902118
>There was a time when there was absolutely no normies on the internet.

Revisionist history. Sorry, the internet was built by and for normies.

t. Usenet commando since 1995