What Do You Miss About The Internet?

[Nightingale]

@Nightingale: I'm surprised anyone is still paying for it if no one who runs the place has access to their staff powers any longer. Even if it was the deceased webmaster I'd have expected their bank account to no longer be open after their death to fund the site. It sucks that the place went under due to a botched install; I wonder how long it would've gone on for if that hadn't occurred.

Best I can tell, a relative to the webmaster still holds admin powers and pops up every once in a while, but it is almost certain that the site will never be restored (in fact, going through the archived pages, a lot of sections have been REMOVED).

I also caught a glimpse of an old timer (from 2003!) who still posts tutorials, but only for bots to see... I swear, it is all shrouded in mystery.

[Nightingale]

Something that's rarely talked about and I believe that deserves mention is that the "scene" was pretty cutthroat and brutal back then.

You just needed to drop by the Abandonsocios forums (a ring designed to bring together all Spanish-speaking abandonware sites) and look in awe as their webmasters essentially tried to destroy each other on a daily basis... to great success. All major member sites were forced offline by 2007, whilst all the rest went under by 2012.

Even the archived versions of these "battles" (from 2005-7) are extremely tough to swallow because you were witnessing a real effort to destroy hundreds --if not thousands-- of hours of work and all that energy was being spent by the same people who put the work and had built all of that content in the first place. It was a thing of madness.

I'm not kidding, the largest Latin site went offline because of LEGAL THREATS by the largest Spanish one.

The internet from back then was truly awesome, but it definitely had its dark corners.

[Moonface]

Yeah, and I think as more people noticed that drama gets traffic that it encouraged it during that era. Even on forums that didn't start shit with another, they'd just do it in house. I remember my first forum I joined was for graphics and wrestling covers and the level of ego on there was insane, and an entire area was dedicated to ranting and arguments. Grind My Gears threads are like kindergarten compared to the absolute savagery that brought out.

The only site I know that was notorious for apparently starting beef was the Zathyus News Broadcast. It's the only forum Brandon personally went out of his way to deal with every time it tried to come back after its initial demise, and I believe was what got the rule implemented that no forum on that network was allowed to use any Zathyus materials or words in their branding in any capacity.

[WR91]

To answer the question at hand, not much. I think the internet has done more bad for the world then it's done good.

[Moonface]

To answer the question at hand, not much. I think the internet has done more bad for the world then it's done good.

I think the internet itself was fine, it's social media and corporations and brands jumping on board that sullied the waters. None of that was present back when the internet was basically like the wild west and was full of wonder and seen as a nerds endeavor.