MansionNET Forum

came across a screenshot i had taken in 2002 apparently. made me yearn hard so i decided to make you yearn too.

Man, seeing all this stuff makes me so sad. I remember when the PS1 came out and it was amaaazing. Then the PS2 came out and it blew our minds. Everything seemed so amazing and improving all the time.

Now we have bullshit like subscriptions and the thing we are told to look forwards to is no physical media, libraries that disappear if you forget to log in within a certain time... Plaargh.

Hardelli wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2026 4:23 pm

Everything seemed so amazing and improving all the time.

the optimism of late 90s early 00s was intense

web_724 wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2026 5:36 pm

Hardelli wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2026 4:23 pm

Everything seemed so amazing and improving all the time.

the optimism of late 90s early 00s was intense

It was so intense that even though we ran out of things to be optimistic about in ₂₀₀₈, we still had that feeling of optimism until 2015-ish

I wrote a whole thing about this on my site.. would it be cool if i cross-posted it here?

Here's some randomness reminiscent of days past for your enjoyment:
https://killing-machine.neocities.org/
https://webhamster.com/
https://webring.theoldnet.com/

If you want to have fun exploring some old school sites, try out this search engine and hit the random button a few times: https://wiby.org/

kezla wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2026 6:44 pm

I wrote a whole thing about this on my site.. would it be cool if i cross-posted it here?

Sure is!

kezla wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2026 6:44 pm

Here's some randomness reminiscent of days past for your enjoyment:
https://killing-machine.neocities.org/
https://webhamster.com/
https://webring.theoldnet.com/

If you want to have fun exploring some old school sites, try out this search engine and hit the random button a few times: https://wiby.org/

I'll add www.kagi.com/smallweb to the list

Alright so here's some ramblings I posted elsewhere that I am crossposting here. Dont mind the verbosity of it, thats just how i be sometimes. The title I gave this was "The Halcyon Days of the Old Web", and this is just my perspective, experience and opinion of course, but I think it fits nicely in this thread.


I've been reminiscing alot lately about my early forays into the internet. Now I realize everyone will have a different idea of the ideal time of the internet, and we could argue 'till the beavers come home on when that was, but for me, it'd be late 90's-2000's as that's when I really started using the internet.

I have fond memories of back when the internet was not yet a staple in everyones lives, and was a place to be accessed occasionally and deliberately. To access the internet back in the late 90's I had to tie up the family phone line and therefor had restrictions on how long i'd be able to be connected for. Sometimes i'd get lucky and be able to chill in the wired for hours, other times i'd be begging to get a half hour so I could look up some Mortal Kombat 3 cheat codes. The internet was a place I visited and explored, but not a place i lived. It felt vast and mysterious, much more so than today, even though today the internet may contain many more webpages and much more information, for some reason today the internet feels much more contained (and i have my thoughts on why).

I used to get home after school and head straight to the family computer (usually located in the kitchen), to fire up MSN messenger and surf the web. I had such fun just communicating with people over the internet, mostly people I knew irl at first, but eventually forging friendships with other netizens who shared similar interests. Those truly were the halcyon days for me. I was young, had no 'sponsibilites, and the world was my oyster-tree, and believe me, I was plucking those oysters by the dozens. I had some great times chatting with my friends online, talking shit about people we mutually disliked, raving on about niche stuff we both enjoyed, etc. Screen names and status messages were the ultimate form of expression back then. People actually sent and engaged with chain-letters. It was truly a different time.

In the earliest days of me surfing the web, most the content i looked for was tv, music or video game related as those were basically my only interests at the time. There was no google, i'd search with ask jeeves or yahoo mostly, and search engines were still hit and miss. A lot of navigating the web was done through webrings and topsite lists. Webrings were a pretty cool thing, where websites would link to similar websites creating a group, or a ring. They would have a banner at the bottom of their site, listing the name of the webring and it would have a back, and a next button, and usually also a random button. There was no hierarchy to the webring, it was a just a ring of somehow connected or friendly sites. Because of this being such a common way website were discovered, nobody worried about things like SEO. The websites were simply built in the webmasters image. Back then, just coming across a cool site for a show or video game you liked was a big win, you'd explore the site and bookmark it to come back later and see if anything had changed. These were the days before the commercialization of the web, when you were more likely to be coming across sites built by individuals as a labour of love. There was no money in it for them, and in fact those individuals had to pay money (and time) to create and maintain those sites. Perhaps that was what made them so good, they were being made without the motivator of money, and purely out of interest. It was all shrines and fandom, with people creating websites dedicated to their favorite interest, whether that was an artist, a show, a video game, or even a single character or person! The internet truly felt like a place people went to express themselves and share their interests with the world. If you had a niche interest, you could find others who shared that interest, which may have been impossible to do irl if you lived in a smaller city or rural area. For many people, it would have been the only time they'd ever connect with people who shared in their niche interest.

Back in the late 90's, early 2000's, the internet had still not yet been homogenized and sanitized. Web design was truly the wild west, with marquis and blinking text, lots of gif images, frames in websites, and plenty of browser compatibility issues. There was a war going on (casualty = Netscape), and we were navigating it. Every website looked different, unique, with all sorts of nooks and crannies to explore. There was no templates being used, people were building (mostly) from the ground up. The randomness you could accidentally discover was epic, and man do I miss that. Common elements across many types of sites I remember are things like hit-counters, flaming under-construction gifs, bleeding dividers, space backgrounds or tiled backgrounds, soundboards, and guestbooks. All stuff you dont really see anymore. Examples here: https://www.cameronsworld.net

Everything used to be so golden. So unique and expressive. People created thier own spaces to express themselves and expressed themselves fully. It was a great contrast to today, when people all flock to the same five or so websites and express themselves within the confines of a corporations terms of service. I read a news article the other day about a bunch of people who had their facebook accounts deleted and those people were crying out about all the memories and whatnot they lost.. and all I could think was, why didn't you OWN your memories? Why did you simply post to a corporations private site? Did you not have other copies of your photos and whatnot? Did you not understand that facebook is NOT a public site? It's private and they can do whatever they want. Read their terms of service and their privacy statement... It's sad.

Well, that's about all I got to say on it right now. Just some thoughts and nostalgic memories of times past. I'll just say one last thing I guess: We can all still create our own spaces on the internet. Get outside the confines of the walled gardens of the large tech companies and explore a bit, you dont need to post where the most people are. Create your own space and let people find it, the internet feels much bigger that way.

Peace.

kezla wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2026 9:53 pm

Alright so here's some ramblings I posted elsewhere that I am crossposting here. Dont mind the verbosity of it, thats just how i be sometimes. The title I gave this was "The Halcyon Days of the Old Web", and this is just my perspective, experience and opinion of course, but I think it fits nicely in this thread.....

The positive thing is that people are growing tired of the corporate bullshit and being stuck in facebook, reddit or whatever. Obviously its not the majority of users, but who needs the majority? If 10% of internet users ditch facetagram etc, thats still millions of users. And the people who are ditching the corporate web tend to be the ones who are more artistic and care about things. The people who just want to have content blasted into their eyes don't really contribute much, other than discord (not the chat software, I mean disagreements/negativity), those people can stay in the corporate world and fight with like minded people there.

The MansionNET community is already proof enough for me, that if you just do a bit of digging, you'll find your little corner of the internet. Doesnt have to be hundreds of thousands of users, 50-200 is enough to have nice things happen.

So although your post was kind of talking about a place and time that doesn't exist, I think there lots of reasons to look forward to that world being brought back. Parts of it are already here, other parts you have linked, your website is part of it as well. Its like that quote from a movie or something, "if you build it, they will come." We've built some stuff, people have come. We will keep building, people will keep coming.

Hardelli wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 9:46 am

And the people who are ditching the corporate web tend to be the ones who are more artistic and care about things.

this was what made the internet so special in late 90s, only nerds/quirky people were on it. and the rest are banal anyway!

web_724 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 12:02 pm

Hardelli wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 9:46 am

And the people who are ditching the corporate web tend to be the ones who are more artistic and care about things.

this was what made the internet so special in late 90s, only nerds/quirky people were on it. and the rest are banal anyway!

As a completely talentless and uncreative person, I feel like I need to say, we do need normies as well. But the kind who care about stuff, not the kind who accept AI slop and fake news without questioning lol

Hardelli wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 9:46 am

So although your post was kind of talking about a place and time that doesn't exist, I think there lots of reasons to look forward to that world being brought back. Parts of it are already here, other parts you have linked, your website is part of it as well. Its like that quote from a movie or something, "if you build it, they will come." We've built some stuff, people have come. We will keep building, people will keep coming.

I agree that a shift has been happening, it's sorta been happening along side the younger generations interest in retro tech. People are looking for un-smart phones. People are joining irc. Even vinyl sales are rising, and believe it or not vinyl sales are at their highest point since the turn of the millenium. People are having more of an interest in physical media, now that they are realizing we could lose it if we do not purchase it. I see these trends as linked in some indirect way which i'm unable to articulate at this point.

I also think more and more people in general are starting to wake up to the fact that we have been shoe-horned and pigeon-holed into walled garden communities online, not for the betterment of our experience, but to increase profits for multi-billion dollar corporations who profit off selling us to advertisers and maintaining databases of our private information. These essentially have become the large landlords of the world wide web, and have a great influence on public opinion and even an individuals perception of the world around them. It has not been great for independent thought. The experiences on the large platforms leaves much to be desired, and the last ten years has been a downward spiral in this regard.

I feel that whether most people are consciously aware of it or not, there is a general wanting for a more organic experience on the internet. Algorithmic feeds, and upvote/downvote rankings are diametrically opposed to this. Surfing the internet and discovering new things used to be, essentially, a default for many people. Now the vast majority of people spend their time on the same five websites and are exposed to little outside of what the algorithm is pushing on them at that time. It leaves much to be desired, though many people still haven't realized this.

In general, I do see and am happy to notice more people shifting away from spending all their time on these ultra-large platforms, and beginning to branch out and seek a more organic experience on the internet. It is a nice semi-revival that is going on, and i'm here for it.

Hehe, I've totally contributed to the rise of vinyl sales lol

Hardelli wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 7:14 pm

Hehe, I've totally contributed to the rise of vinyl sales lol

Heh, you and me both, my friend. If I really love an album I want it on vinyl. I love the format for the larger artwork, as well as I personally enjoy the process of selecting an album, cleaning it, dropping the needle and listening from beginning to end. I may take a break between sides or lp's to grab a drink or have a smoke, but i'll generally listen to an album as a whole. For some reason I just get a fair deal more enjoyment out of an album this way.

As for why my 15 year old son has a record player.. Well, I made some guesses in my post above. I've asked him and he told me "he just thinks it's cool, and likes it", which would be correct.

It seems to be a general trend. My dad got rid of most his records and gave me his old Technics turntable many years ago, but over the last few years has bought a new (expensive $$$$) turntable and is buying more vinyl.

It is a good format in general. I mean, what other medium will last 100 years?

kezla wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 7:29 pm

Hardelli wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2026 7:14 pm

Hehe, I've totally contributed to the rise of vinyl sales lol

Heh, you and me both, my friend. If I really love an album I want it on vinyl. I love the format for the larger artwork, as well as I personally enjoy the process of selecting an album, cleaning it, dropping the needle and listening from beginning to end. I may take a break between sides or lp's to grab a drink or have a smoke, but i'll generally listen to an album as a whole. For some reason I just get a fair deal more enjoyment out of an album this way.

As for why my 15 year old son has a record player.. Well, I made some guesses in my post above. I've asked him and he told me "he just thinks it's cool, and likes it", which would be correct.

It seems to be a general trend. My dad got rid of most his records and gave me his old Technics turntable many years ago, but over the last few years has bought a new (expensive $$$$) turntable and is buying more vinyl.

It is a good format in general. I mean, what other medium will last 100 years?

Ah yes, the ritual of putting a record on. Cant beat that. Putting in a cd or making a .mp3 playlist play cant compete with that

I'm not one of those people who insist that the audio quality is better, because it just isnt. Or if it is, something is wrong. But you cant beat the feeling and ritual side of things. And the fact that it sort of "forces" you to listen to the whole album, to quote Jack Black "like its meant to be listened!"