I miss the old internet

Jonathan Scott Griffin

Registered User

Is it just me or is today's internet boring and overly commercialized? I feel like today's internet is like a modern mall, sterile and boring with just main-brand clothing stores, a food court, and not a lot else. Whereas I feel like the old internet was more like an exciting urban playground. First off, yes, I know that the old internet was dial-up and you could get kicked off if someone picked up the phone. I also know it was much slower. I lived through it. I was in middle school when my dad got the internet in the mid 1990s, probably about 1995-96?

To elucidate what I'm talking about when it came to being more exciting, I mean it had more personality. Say you were a nerd and you liked Star Wars, Star Trek, anime, video games, or RPGs, you would type in whatever you liked, and you would get individually designed Geocities sites, some well-designed, some just plain garish, but each unique, each with its own personality, each a love letter to the particular fandom. Each site lovingly stocked with screenshots, synopsizes of episodes or games, and loaded with fanfiction and reviews. Now if you were to type in Nintendo, Super Mario, Star Trek, Star Wars, Hayao Miyazaki, etc, etc, you aren't going to get many of these individual fan shrines anymore. Nope. Instead, you'll be directed to online stores to buy their products and the main companies and corporations that release these franchises. The most personalized you'll get are wikis in which a bunch of people contributes to the topic. All these wikis have the same layout and are just dull, devoid of emotion. I miss the independent sites of Nintendo 64 vs PS1, or sites that praised Disney or praised anime, as well as sites that hated both genres.

It's not just nerdy stuff I miss. The old internet was also great for counter-culture. For example, I am a naturist, meaning someone who likes to hang out naked in nature and skinny-dip with other like-minded people. Clarification. No, I'm not a voyeur, a pervert, or an exhibitionist. Nor will I send nudes. I just subscribe to the body-positive philosophy of naturism for self-esteem, physical, and mental health. But if you look up naturism on a search engine nowadays, tons of porn pages come up now. Believe it or not, there were more legit naturist sites that came up in the late 1990s and early 2000s than there is now. It seems like the porn industry took over that word and warped it. Also with today's net, if not porn pages, it's newspaper articles about a clothing-optional beach or something from TNS or AANR. But those personalized naturist sites that sucked me into the lifestyle are all gone now. Again, the old internet was great for counter-culture, and not just counter-culture regarding naturists. I found an independent website which was just a collection of photos from all the Woodstock festivals of the 1990s.


Counterculture aside, the old internet was just strange. Sites like Fat Mouse and The Ultimate Ninja Webpage (which can still be found) were just built to be plain loony. Let's not forget Zombo, which has soothing music and promises great things, but does nothing else. One of my favorites was a joke site asking them to change the movie Return of the King to another name, a parody of the site that wanted them to change the name of the second Lord of the Rings film Two Towers to something else because they were worried that it would make people think of 9/11. On the joke page Change the Name of the Return of the King site, they used the argument that it would make people think that Elvis had returned. Just plain nuttiness when it came to websites. Some sites were so simple too, with just dancing cartoon characters. Other bizarre things were a site that advertised a book more evil than the Necronomicon, claiming that this book, though, was the real deal, and even scared the Nazis. Fake? Sure! But it gave me the heebie-jeebies. That last site I can't find anymore. Or it was strange sites dealing with bizarre spirituality, which can also be considered counter-culture. The oddest of all was the old video sites, like Homestar Runner and Albino Blacksheep. Each video site was unique, not a conglomeration like Youtube.

Last but not least, what about the links? Each individual website had a list of links, leading you deeper and deeper down the internet, making you explore for hours on end.

I could say that Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Google helped ruin the internet, but really it was that everyone started using it. The internet used to be a haven for nerds, geeks, artists, and bohemian misfits until the cool kids crashed it. Now the internet is dull and stale and overly commercialized.

That said, I realize I am a hypocrite. I have a Patreon account, hoping to make money off of my writing, and I certainly wish to make money off of Medium. Nonetheless, I still feel like the old internet is dead, and it's a great loss. At one time the internet felt huge. Now it feels so small, and so much angrier.