Ask HN: How do you find the weird parts of the web?

Few ways, in no particular order:

- are.na seems to attract people who have odd interests and it’s full of quirky websites

- webrings are still a thing and there’s a bunch out there worth checking out

- directories like https://512kb.club/ are usually full of interesting sites

- by following links on blogs and sites you find interesting

- some cool forums are still out there (https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php)

Shameless plug but I am currently curating https://theforest.link precisely because of the issue you’re describing.

Do you or anyone else have webrings that are interesting for someone who is into programming, math, fantasy, and sci-fi?

I knew a few were still around, but I'm not aware of any that are actively maintained.

I'm aware sci-fi is technically fantasy, but that categorization has never sat well with me.

sci-fi is technically fantasy

Interesting you’re looking for niche stuff then un-niche-ing SF and fantasy, when you could so easily go many parsecs down that rabbit hole. Here’s one guide to their subgenres - https://larawillard.com/2014/12/10/guide-to-sff-science-fict... - and there are many.

You could do this for almost any topic. Drill down down down. Fungi and unsolved math puzzles and flatbread and occlupanids.

Get far enough down and you’ll find people discussing and writing. These are the hedgerows of the Internet. Nerds are in the details.

Sadly no, nothing that specific comes to mind. I'm personally part of the Indie Web Webring but that's as far as I go when it comes to involvement with web rings.

That said there's a few listed here you might want to check https://sadgrl.online/cyberspace/webrings.html

And if none of those is what you're after I say be the change you want to see in the world and start a new webring!

theforest feedback: I like link sites to open in the same tab, like HN

Shouldn't this be up to you and something you can change in your browser?

Interesting. You’re the first person to ask for same tab opening. But it might make sense for this particular case. I’ll have a think.

I'm the opposite. I actually wrote a small browser extension to make HN links open in a new tab because it annoys me so much.

I can't disagree with what others have said about making it user-choice though. Maybe some kind of toggle switch that lets users set the behavior one way or the other would work?

I think trust people to know and do what they want: left click or middle click. The problem with making the new-tab choice for them is they can't click in such a way as to keep the same tab. I have literally written browser extensions to fix auto-new-tab links, it's that frustrating.

This is a compelling enough argument for me to switch the default.

Another data point: I open almost every link in a new tab, but I also find it very frustrating when a link opens in a new tab by default.

A link should always open in the same tab by default, unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise: for users who prefer to open in a new tab (like myself) they can use the appropriate shortcuts, menu options or click combinations. If you configure links to open in a new tab, it’s impossible for a user to open it in the same tab.

I've found some really interesting reading on are.na. Something that I particularly enjoy about that mode of discovery is that it is more about curation and discovery. The smallness of the community (it feels small at any rate) means that there doesn't seem to be a big incentive to degrade the overall quality by using SEO-like tactics.

> Something that I particularly enjoy about that mode of discovery is that it is more about curation and discovery

Agree and also it feels like no one on the platform has anything to earn from their curation and as a result they use the platform as an actual tool for themselves. And so most collections are views into other people's interests and passions.

The other day I casually found Neocities... a sort of Geocities revival that I found interesting: https://neocities.org/browse

I also like Fosstodon, a FOSS-oriented Mastodon instance. Plenty of interesting people to browse and follow: https://fosstodon.org/explore

You may like my Mastodon or Twitter bot:

- https://twitter.com/IndieRandWeb

- https://mastodon.social/web/@FunRandWeb

They post every two hours a link to an indie website.

Source code for the curious: https://github.com/xojoc/randomwebsitebot

The websites are taken from https://stumblingon.com/ at the moment, but I'll add more sources in the future.

Random thought: if the commercial web has all but devoured the original web, leaving only a fraction of the interesting parts behind and which are no longer really growing in number, isn't this counter to the reason why we decided we needed search engines altogether? Wouldn't it be nice if someone made a modern Yahoo! Directory equivalent for those random olde worlde curios we all pine for? Something like a modern decentralized Geocities

You can try SearchMySite:

"The searchmysite.net search engine is a niche search, focussing on the "indieweb" or "small web" or "digital gardens", i.e. non-commercial content, primarily personal and independent websites."

https://searchmysite.net/

Turn on posts from banned users on this site. I’ve seen some genuinely deranged stuff on here. One time a poster got into a really heated debate about censorship and ended up posting links to a detailed guide on how to commit suicide for some reason!

It wasn’t particularly fun but it was genuinely an odd thing to come across on today’s internet.

I respect the people who have been banned years ago, know it, and instead of creating a new user continue to post dead comments, screaming into the void.

It was weirder than that. I can’t remember the domain off the top of my head but even if I could, I think we’d be drifting solidly off-topic.

While I think the other suggestions here are more what you're looking for, https://neocities.org have managed to grow a community of sorts with a 90s/early 2000s "home page" feel to them.

StumbleUpon was the king of interesting yet random content. It seriously needs a reboot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon

stumbled.to is a pretty good replacement. doesn't have the same categories and features, but I find some interesting content on there.

Thank you! I was going to mention StumbleUpon as well, but couldn't remember the name, haha. Used to use it way back.

Second this. You can find all kinds of interesting writing and documents with this search engine, I actually came here to say this.

There's also places on the web that are not right off the highway so to speak, you can find them by delving into smaller communities like forums, fediverse is a good place to find stuff like that. weboasis.app has links to a ton of small back road link aggregators and forums. The real internet exists, it's just google and Facebook aren't going to show it to you.

All you had to do was ask.

Here’s one I found recently: http://www.betainfoguide.net/

The social tech of 2007 in the web tech of 1997 for the tape tech of 1977. I swear if browsers still supported the blink and marquee tags there would be some of that on display here.

I don't know about blink, but there is a marquee tag on the front page and it works as expected in Edge.

Not to diminish the quality of the content in the answers of other respondents, but don't link directories and self hosted HTML blogs filter for a certain potentially unwanted writer bias? i.e. 30-something, male, agorist, nostalgic for the old internet, oddly niche hobbies, English as first or second language, ...

> don't link directories and self hosted HTML blogs filter for a certain potentially unwanted writer bias? i.e. 30-something, male, agorist, nostalgic for the old internet, oddly niche hobbies, English as first or second language, ...

Why is this? (genuinely asking)

>but don't link directories and self hosted HTML blogs filter for a certain potentially unwanted writer bias? i.e. 30-something, male, agorist, nostalgic for the old internet, oddly niche hobbies, English as first or second language

I suspect the bias is wanted, consciously or not. Part of the nostalgia for the 'old web', which this specific thread is a subset of, is for a return to the sense of homogeneity and community from when the web was primarily the playground of white male adolescent nerds, a culture with common referents and ideals. It's a kind of "white flight" from the modern web in that sense.

It’s a flight from SEO optimized nonsense and junk food content. I don’t care at all if a creator looks like or thinks like I do. I want to read interesting content.

As an example, Gemini has a strong collection of LGBTQ+ and furry creators. I am in neither of those groups, and I’m enjoying the content immensely. Not because of how the authors identify, but because they are writing with passion and detail into interesting topics. That’s what I crave

Attributing desire for “the old/weird web” to Some kind of identity monoculture is a disservice.

Except there's plenty of interesting content on social media platforms and "commercial" sites. Lots of content by LGBTQ+ and furry creators. Plenty of writing with passion and detail on interesting topics, although granted much of that writing is for video.

And as far as Gemini goes, I suspect it's far more homogeneous, culturally and politically, than even the early web was.

If anything the opposite. The goal is to return to a web before facial verification was required to create accounts and before everyone knew you were a dog.

Search for strange and controversial topics on http://yandex.com . The results are totally different from the mainstream search engines which try hard to prevent fun "misinformation" by always sending you to the sites that never say anything strange.

For example, try "solar warden" (not the video game or the novel which is what the mainstream sites want to tell you about) on Yandex if you want to go down a fun rabbit hole.

A search for Solar Warden on DuckDuckGO [1] finds results for me, if you're referring to top results on Yandex about 'The Secret Space Program & Black Budget'?

I stopped using Google years ago as I find their search results, aside from being plagued by ads and people trying to game the results, have just become less useful. Which mainstream search engines are you referring to (I think DDG use bing).

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/q=solar+warden

This was indeed a fun rabbit hole, thanks for sharing. I love learning details of these secret technologies, even if it's all bullshit. There was another good rabbit hole I went down recently from a reply I got to a comment, may be of some interest to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32148218#32148898

I like that the mAiNStrEaM SIteS actually provide relevant results instead of placing fringe, absurd conspiracy theories first. Seems in line with Russian destabilisation campaigns though so maybe that on purpose?

And providing rt.com's propaganda as #2 on "Ukraine invasion"? Totally not suspicious.

OP asked for "manages to steer clear of hateful/racist/bigoted patterns of thought" though.

How is the idea that the u.s government has a secret space program that is flying around the universe under our noses with godlike technology hateful/racist/bigoted?

Is it now racist/hateful/bigoted to believe in alien technology conspiracies just because anything that's not official government information can be automatically labeled as such? I think the whole solar warden thing and the universe of b.s around it is kind of fun in a timecube kind of way and that attitude that anything that contradicts the government is racist/hateful/bigoted has killed a lot of the fun of the internet.

It's part of the post-fact world that was built up by Dugin's design. This is central to destabilization efforts. They've been trying this for a very long time - Eastern Europe was flooded with shoddily printed ufology magazines in the late 90s, often mentioning topics or sightings in Russia, and in retrospect probably just straight-up translations of centrally written articles.

I'm with you, it's fun. I got Coast to Coast vibes reading one of the pages on it. and I remembered Gary McKinnon from a Count Dankula video about him - didn't realize the conspiracy theory was connected to what he saw when he hacked NASA in 2002.

Its the new communism.

Anything I do not like is racist/hateful/bigoted.

It's the new nationalism.

Anything that wasn't in an official press release from my government, party, or King is foreign subversion.

Feels similar to the new McCarthyism.

Anything I do not like is communist.

Well done citizen! +50 points.

You have unlocked access to bank loans and your children can now go to a level 2c school!

> steer clear of hateful/racist/bigoted patterns of thought

If you want to widen the spectrum of humanity that you're exposed to, you're inevitably going to come across these people. Personally I thought it was well worth it. Plenty of good and bad to be found.

The choice isn’t to avoid such people completely, it is impossible. The problem is minimizing contact with such patterns as much as possible, and this is getting increasingly difficult.

There is a treasure trove of amazing stuff on Reddit, Twitter etc. But finding that stuff is getting harder and harder. There is much more money in promoting hate, bigotry etc than positive, interesting stuff.

As long as you know the difference and know where you stand yourself, morally / value-wise.

I believe there's a big percentage of people who hadn't yet had their moment of self-actualisation or whatever the phrase is, who listened to the right(wrong) people at the right(wrong) time and ended up believing the earth is flat or the holocaust never happened.

And bear in mind that your internet browsing may be logged by your government.

You have to join the hidden un-Googleable communities where the people who create such things gather.

Yes, this. I've recently been reading a lot about OSR and indie zine-like TTRPGs. Almost indiscriminate link-clicking seems to be the safest way to end up in the weird zones of any hobby. The beauty of it (in this specific case) is that the farther you go from mainstream, the more you encounter people who create stuff. Weird, wonderful stuff.

the farther you go from mainstream, the more you encounter people who create stuff

Well said and often true. There are quiet corners.

Well it's def not the best way.. but I find mostly a subredit for any weird of wonderful interests I might have at that time, sorting the post by top-x (week, month,all time) can give you some quick domain-knowledge or important urls. YMMV(Greatly)

Use your imagination. Think up keywords for weird stuff, type them in on search engines, eBay, Etsy, everywhere and see what turns up. Be somewhat vague, like "wireless LED". Also try searches on things you already know of and see what is related. Try "Webb Wilder" and "Subgenius" and see what sites are returned and don't look at those pages but at the sites themselves. Be persistent, you may have to wade through a lot of non-weirdness.

http://www.theoddityarchive.com/ "psychotronic" http://sainteuphoria.com/

I subscribe to https://webcurios.co.uk … weekly curated list of unusual projects and finds…

Mostly my social bubble and of course reddit! I even read hackernews through reddit, thanks to the sub forum. Otherwise there is the good old google bang for site:reddit.com for anything of interest =)

I can safely reccomend the appollo app for your phone.

You read what other weird people write and follow your nose.

Reddit has a lot of such rabbit holes, but one needs to wade through a lot before finding it.

I think these things have always spread by message boards. Today that probably means Reddit.

You're familiar with the (now sadly degraded) deoxy.org?

Always read the comments on HN.

This is the way.

I am on a pair of discord servers that have a bunch of weirdos. I know better than to advertise a small community though.

wiby.me takes you to older websites. Some of them can be weird.

oh this posting is not good for my productivity...

There are many great sites out there. People may think they are dead or lost because they don't attract millions of view per day, but "back when the web was good" there were just less people on the internet. And a lot of the bulk of the people online padding out the numbers these days are never going to be interested in these sorts of things anyway. To find new sites it can be fun following a topic down a wikipedia rabbit hole looking for external links etc. for example start with discord on wikipedia and eventually end up with something like http://www.principiadiscordia.com fnord

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles

Various other lists on wikipedia. (I think there is a "list of lists" with thousands of lists).

Sites that show lists of subreddits.

There are things like "first world problems", "secod world problems" - and much much stranger stuff the higher you go ("I wanted to bake a cake from scratch, but in order to do that, I had to create a new universe").

I like looking at neocities. You can find some weird shit in links on message boards.

Try to go to i2p darkweb: https://geti2p.net. "Eepsites" like planet.i2p collect stuff from various corners of it.

TIL they have Discord

their megathread is way better than r/piracy

any list which doesn't include Pahe, PSA and Knaben is for me not worth reading

edit:

Greetings everyone, as you may know our discord server was nuked weeks ago along with several others, and so we have made the decision to move to revolt entirely.

You can get started by:

Registering[1] an account at https://divolt.xyz and logging in Join the server: https://fmhy.divolt.xyz Some points to note: 1 - this is an entirely self-hosted instance, so you must register a new one even if you already have one on the official instance.