Allow me to switch to asshole mode for a minute:

"Things used to be so good" is mostly rose-tinted glasses: What exactly WAS the "old web" anyway?

100s of half-baked sites hosted on Geocities, Yahoo, about pointless stuff? Epilepsy simulator websites splattered with gif-vomit? Everyone and their grandmother asking you to install their 10 toolbars?

Honest, serious question: What actually was of objective substance on the old internet that's nowhere to be found now?

You can find random pointless stuff now too, just that except Geocities/Yahoo it's Intsagram/TikTok/Twitter etc.

If you mean self-hosted websites, they're still here, and nothing's stopping you from creating your own.

If you loved all the Flash toons on Newgrounds etc there's unironically a lot more shorts and animations on YouTube or even Vimeo now, if you but search for them (the old gods like Weebl, David Firth are still there, and I suggest Sechi, DoodletmeGo, Nondescript Video Club, and からめる to start with then let the algorithm soak up the weirdness)

Just as the "internet" supplanted newspapers, magazines, and broadcast television for many people,

and how the newspapers replaced the town criers before them,

why shouldn't the "internet" be supplanted by a more accessible medium?

There's so much crap on the "old" and "middle age" internet: ads, scams, anal mods, trolls, bandwagons, vote wars, low-effort content and other repetitive noise that could be bypassed by just asking AI about something and make better use of your limited mortal lifetime, like watching that anime you've been putting off for years.

For me that's not the old web.

The old web was local forum created by gamers for gamers who hosted real life events. You could post asking for super specific advice to your locale. It was eaten by reddit.

There were cool IRC servers for all sorts of niche projects and topics. This still exists of course but a lot of it was eaten by Discord or Slack.

While I never participated, sites like LiveJournal provided both a unique outlet and view into other people's lives. I think a lot of social media like Instagram and Facebook eat this up.

I'm sure everyone has their own versions. And this is the old web that was gobbled up by mega sites which aim to commericalise the crap out of everything.

Btw I consider HN part of the old web.

> ads, scams, anal mods, trolls, low-effort content

and don't forget Big Billy's "no more tears" guarantee on all anal mods purchased from the official BBAM shop!

> What exactly WAS the "old web" anyway?

Pre-Google, specifically, pre-PageRank, and even more specifically, pre-SEO.

Your post is oddly hyper-focused on pointing out the negatives, probably due to the asshole hat you put on. There were lots of good sites with tons of good, free information, and because the main way people searched was using directories, we weren't inundated with 1,000s of results on the same topic, vying for a top-placement. The writing itself was much more laid back because SEO-optimization didn't exist. Also, those "half-baked GeoCities sites" were awesome! Of course there were a lot of junk ones, but again, it was just a bunch of people writing about themselves, their interests, and generally being creative. And again, NO ONE WAS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY, they were just doing it. No "like and subscribe." No gaming an algorithm. I used to love finding guitar tabs on those sites and I had a couple of sites with lots of tabs I did on my own for two different bands.

> There's so much crap on the "old" and "middle age" internet: ads, scams, anal mods, trolls, low-effort content, that could be bypassed by just asking AI about something and make better use of your limited mortal lifetime.

I feel like this was GP's point, no? Because people are just using AI for search now (this is the main reason I use it) that there will be no point in making these spamming sites anymore, which "opens up" the internet a bit for those of us who enjoyed the old way. Yes, it's all still out there, but it's kind of hard to find, and it would be kinda neat if more people discovered making their websites outside of walled gardens.

I think it is a case of, it is easier to find those niches nowadays but when you do it is a more shallow and controlled version of said thing.

On the old web, you would just stumble onto something deep but the barrier to get to it was fairly high. It could also just be total nonsense but at least you could see the passion behind it.

I agree with your general take. People talk about the old web as 'the good old days' but it really wasn't that great. I do have some fond memories of the mid 2000's when it was all starting to mature but also before corporate capture took hold. Even then, you would just end up stumbling around blindly most of the time.

Ya know a while back I intentionally locked myself out of my HN account so I'd stop egnaging with the drivel. But you have such a delightfully awful take I had to respond. I can't tell if you're trying to gaslight folks, you're too young to have used the "old internet", or if you're just a true believer but here goes.

  Honest, serious question: What actually was of objective substance on the old internet that's nowhere to be found now?

  If you mean self-hosted websites, they're still here, and nothing's stopped you from creating your own.

  If you loved all the Flash toons on Newgrounds etc there's unironically a lot more shorts and animations on YouTube now

Honestly I loved having domain specific forums that weren't beholden to a unified shareholder friendly content policy. Now they've been supplanted by a Reddit that's trying desperately to monetize content.

  why shouldn't the "internet" be supplanted by a more accessible medium?

  There's so much crap on the "old" and "middle age" internet: ads, scams, anal mods, trolls, low-effort content, that could be bypassed by just asking AI about something and make better use of your limited mortal lifetime.

Those scams and that "crap" largely still exist on the "new" internet. Only now you're going to have to prove you're a human to view them. Where things have evolved is that instead of human written SEO drivel you've now got AI generated SEO drivel. It's to the point that I have to add "-deepwiki -ai" to pretty much every DDG search.

The problem is that AI companies are going full scorched earth. AI provides dog shit answers while ruining traditional search results. Or if you'd like a physical example they're physically destroying rare books to come up with poor, largely irrelevant AI drivel for the masses.