Some time ago, I ran across “The Old Web” on Devon.lol, and was gobstruck by the memories.
tl;dr- I got tired of the commercial web, so I went looking for the Old Web. I found it through directories, blogrolls, webrings, and some weird search engines no one has heard of.
Unlike in the days of handbuilt HTML, MUDs, and BBSes, there are a number of reasons why you have to deliberately look for this today. A lack of monetization/capitalism and a relatively high bar to entry come to mind, but regardless of the reason, the end result was that the internet was not dominated by a few “superstores” or a row of cookie-cutter digital McMansions. It was organically grown; you were just as likely to find someone’s NeoPets fansite or collection of essays as you were to find an NFL team’s official web page.
And holy hell, has it just gotten worse and worse.
Whether through aggressive SEO optimization, thumbs on search results, TikTok’s algorithm, or how Meta has pretty successfully done what CompuServe and AOL had hoped to do, the internet has become… homogenized. Rather than a “marketplace of ideas,” it’s become dominated by siloed monocultures of both style and substance.
My delight with truly decentralized social media — Mastodon, Pixelfed, et al — has been with how gloriously strange it can be {1.} as opposed to the fascist midden heap of X and Meta. {2.}
There are folks who are resurrecting older tech forms such as gopher, or trying to craft new tech, to circumvent this problem, but… well, they’re workarounds.
But the old web — the strange and quirky web — is still out there. Accessible from your browser. Right. Now.
But let’s be honest: there’s a reason why the quirky web gets passed by. It can be hard as hell to find. An entire blog industry (such as boingboing grew up around simply finding other neat things to pass along. Some were bought by media conglomerates (see above about silos), some just shut down like StumbleUpon. And sometimes there’s simply linkrot where links or entire directories disappear.
But all is not lost.
There’s several onramps to being able to find the quirky web now. For a larger starting point, check out Onramps To The Old Web; they include blogrolls and obscure search engines. I’m going to focus on “stumblers,” or discovery engines.
WikiTok has gotten some press recently as an infinite-scroll kind of way to rabbithole into Wikipedia. Links open in a new tab, leaving the scroll page open.
Indieblog.page uses lists of blogs with RSS feeds to show you new, random posts that you might not have otherwise seen. Opens pages in a new tab, with no header bar.
Kagi’s Small Web also uses a hand-curated list of blogs with RSS feeds, and not only provides a completely free (and without login) site with a (small, useful, ad-free) toolbar with fediverse-friendly sharing options to let you keep exploring easily, but incorporates the results into their search engine. You can read about their methodology here.
The Forest’s methodology is opaque, and on purpose, as they’re wanting to bring back unpredictability. You are as likely to hit a home page as a blog with this site, which is opened in a new tab.
Cloudhiker does not require a login to use (though it does to submit a site); it uses cookies to select categories if you don’t have a free account. It has a topbar as well with single-line text advertising; it also has a premium version without advertising.
Mix was built (rather literally) using StumbleUpon’s code; it also requires a login, and is the “sleekest” of the bunch, with a strong emphasis on images and graphics. It appears that a lot of it is snagged from Tumblr and Reddit. In my experience, it is less a discovery engine any more than a summary of the Tumblr/Reddit/TikTok/Imgur pipeline.
Each of these six has their strengths and weaknesses, both in terms of user experience and the kinds of things you’ll be exposed to. I’m personally most partial to Kagi’s Small Web; the fediverse sharing options really make me happy, and it tends to offer up things that are eclectic without being utterly chaotic.
That said, all of them are a damn sight better than just doomscrolling.
Featured Image by GibetMoll from Pixabay
{1.} Currently this is somewhat skewed because of the trashfire of US politics, and how violently it attacks those who don’t “fit in”; St********@fa*************.com“>I’m definitely part of the problem there, though I’m making a solid effort to not just add to the doomscroll.
{2.} Seriously, why are you still on Meta/X? Are you really that comfortable with a place that thinks bigoted slurs are okay?