[neotek]

When I think back over my childhood, there's nothing I miss more than the way being on the "old" internet felt. The Geocities sites, the webrings, ICQ, Trillian, mIRC scripting, stileproject, the birth and death of E/N sites, image macros, and a million other things that no longer exist and don't have any meaning to the vast majority of internet users today. It was a special club, almost nobody I knew in the real world had any idea that this stuff existed and wouldn't have cared if they did.

And then DALnet was attacked. Days of downtime extended into weeks and eventually months, and by the time it ended DALnet was a shadow of its former self. So many tens of thousands of people just moved on and it was never the same again. I tried moving to efnet as so many did but it didn't have the same vibe. I didn't realise at the time just how much I'd actually lost and how much things were going to change. Man I'd give anything to go back.

Edit: Speaking of netstalgia, here are a few random files from the archives that some might recognise:

https://n1ckn4m3.com/?page_id=976

https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/romjul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ljsPqIfPD0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3sexvJM5Go

[adnanh]

Oh yeah, I feel you! I was also on DALnet, and saw the exodus to other networks, EFnet, IRCnet, Undernet, QuakeNet... But as you said, they just didn't feel "right". I.e. some of them had "weird-looking" services as opposed to the DALnet's ChanServ, NickServ etc... :-)

Do you remember "PHP-Nuke" craze, everyone was creating community portals where members were able to post news, polls, etc...

Good old times :)

[neotek]

Haha yeah, PHP-Nuke sites and vBulletin forums, what a duo!