[klntsky]

I think there is an important thing that many of us miss: while people who did their homepages in the 90s were truly web innovators connecting to communities of other like-minded individuals via websites, nowadays it's nothing but nostalgia or worse yet, teenagers in their romantic phase roleplaying as... IDK, someone who is saddened by the eternal September.

[nicoburns]

> people who did their homepages in the 90s were truly web innovators connecting to communities of other like-minded individuals > teenagers in their romantic phase roleplaying as... IDK, someone who is saddened by the eternal September.

I mean, a lot of the people creating homepages in the 90s were teenagers. It ended up being pushed out by facebook who's UX was so polished that it trumped the desire for personalisation, but I personally think that kind of thing - a virtual space they can make their own - is still likely to have appeal to young people, and may well make a comeback (albeit perhaps on a smaller scale) now that facebook has pushed everyone away.

[wredue]

Facebook pushed us out because it had scrabble. It had little to do with UI polish.

[reactordev]

that virtual space is on their phones, not on some website. It's an app. And they have been doing this for about a decade. There's no going back to the Web 1.0. Those days are gone. Saddled by corporations and laws and governance and greed. Now, it's an autobahn to fast cash, narcissistic content creators, award-winning ones too, decentralization, digital-byte-ponzi-schemes, and front-end developers creating 100,000 more packages then they have customers. Now, it's all about the stars baby!

[nicoburns]

The mainstream is, but I think old-style web is becoming a niche interest (as it was before it went mainstream) akin to any other hobby.

[reactordev]

You may be right, but it was always there. It's not like it's coming back. Sure, some people may create things that resemble the old web but the old web is still out there, getting it's AARP card.

[syndicatedjelly]

My memories of early 2000s internet are from when I was a young age, and are now growing distant in memory…

That said, most of the internet then felt very informal, teenage, and “cringy”. Being a computer nerd back then was actually weird, at least all the way through high school (late 2000s for me) Normal society called you a “geek” and a “loser” for being a net surfer.

People with rose-tinted glasses of those times are imagining something other than what I remember, though