The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

How many of you mourning the old internet frequent neocities or have their own personal website ? I don't think the the answer is 'a lot'.

Everyone on HN complains about everything being turned into a business but everyone also wants to create their own start up and turn it into a unicorn.

Anecdatum: I have maintained my web site since 1995 and have my own domain since 1999 (http://t3x.org). I have never had a "business" nor have I dreamt about big money. Give me back the old internet anytime!

Best analysis I've read on HN in a long while. Straight to the point. My generation (the people between 35 and 50) is the most nostalgic about the good ole Web of yore, yet we are the generation that turned it into the ad-ridden cesspool we currently complain about. What we're missing is not the Internet-that-was, rather our ability to spend time on useless projects in a wilder environment without thinking about the economic implication. In a way we just miss being young. Our only advantage was that our parents' generation mostly didn't know what we were doing (especially here in Europe), so they certainly didn't expect for us to get a dime out of that blipety-bloop computers or whatever-they're-doing-in-their-room. The good news is that a big part of that Web is still alive, in different ways, in small secluded forums and communities, inside multiplayer gaming platforms, and so on. The problem is that today EVERYTHING can be monetized, and everyone is sort of expected to do that. Just remove the layer that tech capitalism has ingrained in our brain, and you'll see the old internet is still here. We just changed, and capitalism adapted is all. Do something for the sake of doing it. On the Internet or otherwise, and you'll magically get back at least a sliver of that feeling you're missing.

I've been running my own self-hosted blog server, IRC server, git server and (more recently) Nextcloud server for almost two decades. And I definitely have no interest in turning them into unicorns: they're just my space on the Internet, and not everyone is willing to turn their houses into party mansions. Most importantly, nobody but myself (or maybe a massive DNS/BGP outage) can take these spaces down, which is a pretty big pro in today's centralized world.

But I'm also aware of being an exception. I'm aware that people, on average, don't like to run their own servers. So just let people be people. I don't like all this nostalgia about how good the times of BBS, IRC, RSS feeds or self-hosted websites were, because these things still represent they way I consume the Internet in 2022. People have changed all around, sure, hype mounts and dies, but I don't care. People are people, let them put all of their pictures and sensitive information on a computer run by a creep like Zuckerberg if they like. But I'm unwilling to compromise and follow this craze.

I like your 'Who am I page'.

I have started an 'old internet' like website about 3 years ago and I love working on it. It is my space of creativity and freedom. If you want to check it out it is in my bio.

I think the reality is that no one really want these websites anymore.

... well there goes my weekend. Great looking site!

No.

I have several personal websites, the oldest contains some fun and personal stuff since 1997 (https://web.archive.org/web/*/cobbaut.be) that is still found. One other contains books that I write and give as pdf for free (linux-training.be).

I'm at http://erik.itland.no and also my old blog is available online at https://techinorg.blogspot.com

I also have a mastodon account.

I'll happily make money from my efforts, but my thoughts goes in direction of creating something useful and offer hosting for it, not ads. So far I have created "nothing" (at most something I created was used by up to maybe a couple of hundred happy souls for some years to simplify the life of a local community, and I didn't make any money from it).

I simultaneously want to downvote you for your dismissive attitude towards everyone here while I also want to upvote you to bring all examples provided to the front. I chose to upvote but now you know the reason.

Also remember: many people here are shy and won't post so I think there is probably a lot more going on.

1995 webmasters unite!

Just for anecdotical purposes, I do have/host a few of my personal projects on a dedicated Linode which I've had since the summer of 2011, that's more than 10 years now (wow! times does fly).

Never ever have I thought of "monetising" them, I mean, even if I wanted that I don't see there being that big of a market for people interested in the location of Medieval villages in Walachia (even though some of them had first been mentioned in documents written during Vlad the Impaler's reign, maybe I could market that) nor for knowing where exactly were the locations and houses that used to belong to former Bucharest Jewish residents (that is until they were nationalised post-WW2), as I also have an interactive map for that.

I've worked for most of my career (~15 years now) in start-ups and small companies (that's what I think actually made me pursue those personal projects, I think working in a big company/corporation would have numbed me down) and I don't personally find unicorns that interesting, there's one located just down the street where I daily walk my dog and I don't feel any need to stand behind a big thing like that, I would have way less time to walk my dog plus I'd feel that experience would also numb me down, in a different way from working in a corporation, but numb me down nevertheless.

> How many of you mourning the old internet frequent neocities or have their own personal website ? I don't think the the answer is 'a lot'.

I don't, but I've been meaning to have one for a long time now. I even started and got a vps from hetzner but they blocked me. I can't really decide where or how I want to host it.

> Everyone on HN complains about everything being turned into a business but everyone also wants to create their own start up and turn it into a unicorn.

That's not true at all. Today I want creative communities and community-built software & hardware projects more than ever. I wouldn't mind having my own business that is beneficial to a community (same way e.g. how Olimex or Raspberry and PCB manufacturers are beneficial to people building open source hardware and don't have the means to fabricate circuit boards at home) but I don't think everything should be monetized and turned into business.

Well said too.

Those NOT doing what is "expected" of "big money" need to a better ways to connect, support each other and work togther against those expectations.

Love your book covers and your book Lisp From Nothing was a fun read. Thank you.

"who am I" is fantastic. Thank you.

http://t3x.org/whoami.html

I have have a couple sites that I have both hosted locally, cloud, static, WordPress.

I think the future is modern tools + old school feel