9mo ago

Anon revisits early youtube

166 comments

Nowadays its all about monetization :/
Lemmy is kinda refreshing and reminds me a lot of the early internet/reddit.
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- As the cycle continues the more niche places will continue to have that feel. Always vigilant for the nuttos but comes with it being a non mainstream community. Good and bad.
- Thats the crux of it all. The a lot of the funniest videos 15+ years ago were just random videos on random accounts. There was no monetary incentive, so a lot accounts were just people who luckily captured something funny and uploaded it. Creative stuff felt authentic too, they were not chasing a trend, they were just trying to show off their original skills. I still love a lot of what we have today, but it is getting buried by trend chasers.
- Nowadays...
  If there is one eternal constant in human history, it's that every generation inaccurately believes that the problems they face are new.
  Human creates thing.
  Thing is cool.
  Humans exploit thing.
  Thing is no longer cool.
  Humans reminisce about how cool the thing used to be, and lament the loss of cool.
  If Lemmy gets popular enough, it too will be monetized and we'll al have to find somewhere else to go.
  
  Geeks, muggles, and sociopaths.
  
  If the future involves big popular mainstream paid instances, it sounds like the fediverse was a success.
  Lemmy won’t be what it is now, but our niche instances can still exist.
- I don't think there will ever be a place like the old web again. Lemmy is better than reddit, but lots of the crap from there is just as common here, stuff that really wasn't as common before. I'm absolutely certain a disturbing amount of people say dumb shit, make spelling mistakes and stuff like that simply to get "interraction".
  
  Culture changes. The best we can do is keep influencing it for the better, just wherever we're able.
  
  I can't speak for everyone, but I post more frequently here than I did on reddit because we gotta get those numbers up.
- Just with a lot more communists
  
  Explains why it's not monetized to shit
- It hasn't reached the critical mass for monetization. It's not ripe for the picking yet.
- I was to comment that this realization came to me when I've found an antique but active forum about gore, that I can't access it anymore, and I'm stuck thinking if it's for the better.

Whenever I feel like this, I just visit https://zombo.com and I feel better. Anything is possible at https://zombo.com.
- Where you can do anything! I love that this still exists.

Back in my day the Internet was better, no video, we had to connect with 56k moderns, the hardware cost a fortune, most people were in AOL, we had to upload both ways in the snow, had to wait for titty pics to load one line at a time, and we liked it that way…
You kids today with your tikky Tok and your faces-book don't understand
- I remember trying to pirate Doom at some point in the 90s over a 56k modem. It was a 10mb download. I got shouted at by my parents for tying up the phone line the whole evening but I persisted. Turns out it was just the demo for Doom so I didn't even pirate it really.
  Good times.
  
  I downloaded dude where's my car over 56k. I'd connect it at the start of the day before leaving for school and then pause the download when I got home so I could play StarCraft online. Took a week to get it, and then it wouldn't play.
  Figuring the file just got corrupted during the download, I wrote a program that would break the file up into segments of n bytes and generate a checksum for each segment into another file, then you could take that file and run it against another copy of the original file and find any segments that were different and generate a patch file.
  Surprisingly, the guy hosting the file on IRC was willing to run the executable a random user on IRC asked him to (probably noticed me taking that week to download the movie lol), but then his copy and mine were exact matches. Then, he taught me about codecs and I was watching that shitty quality 500MB movie just a little while later.
- had to wait for titty pics to load one line at a time, and we liked it that way…
  We really did not like that.
  
  Hey, speak for yourself. Some of us did get increasing fun with every pixel loaded, as the same image kept its novelty for like 5 minutes.
  
  face fetish
  
  I believe that's the joke my friend.
- Didn't be a dipshit. You can't understand their point?
  They're not talking about technology. They're talking about creative quality of content.
  
  He's making a hyperbolic joke.

It's a cycle we all go through. My "when the internet was good" was when long-form text content ruled, before memes and videos took over. The kids of today will fondly remember the deep fried memes and TikToks from before the human race became functionally extinct.

ITT: anon realizes the world doesn’t stop changing for everyone, what once was will soon cease to be
You’ll be alright OP
- All is temporary. Change is the only constant.
  
  Technically change isn't a constant. Eventually everything will stop changing, because all of the atoms will have drifted too far apart to react to each other, and the universe will just be a thin soup of everything that will never touch anything ever again. Tomorrow is Wednesday, though, so only a few more days until the weekend!
  
  Except war. War never changes.
- I met a traveller from an antique land,
  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
  Percy Shelley
  
  https://xkcd.com/1557/
- OP sails off into the west

While I'll agree the internet has been overrun by shortform shit, calling internet memes uncreative is such a boomer-ass take. This guy is just nostalgia baiting for points.
- What points on 4chan?
  
  Brownie points.
  
  From a 4chan premium account
  
  I think for 4chan any post that doesn't result in you getting called a slur is considered a +1
- Yeah, plenty of Gen Z memes still make me laugh. They're just in different forms, including some video "templates" where you just slap some captions on characters in the same scene:
  Starship troopers "I'm doing my part" montage interrupted with Tim Robinson "I didn't do shit!"
  Diary of a Wimpy Kid scene with kids auditioning from by singing Total Eclipse of the Heart, giving way to some kid who's actually good.
  Are they really that different from some high quality gifs or deep fried memes from the late 2010's, advice animals from the early 2010's, demotivational posters or absurd flash animations from the 2000's, or joke websites from the 90's?
  People will always be funny, and some internet jokes will start fresh before being run into the ground. Remember the ones you like, and then forget the ones you don't.
- They're molding after all
- spotlight ruined my humor the latest to do so.

Made this one for all the Anons out there

https://neocities.org/
It's basically Geocities in the modern world. You can explore rabbit holes, make your own site, and enjoy the wonders of the web of creativity.

Old guy here. Word.
- https://leekspin.ytmnd.com/
  YTMND
  Strange this site still exists, thought it would have been well gone by now.
  
  I've listened to leekspin for hour at work. It was great to numb my brain against the daily stress. I think my record was 6hours straight.

I've been using Protoweb on my 98 computer for some time now. Protoweb is a proxy for a old internet, mainly for old computers. (Not very secure, because http, but it is worth the time travel)
Anyway, it has WarpStream on it. It is basically a Old YouTube recreation, using unusual means to play videos (Flash, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player.) It has what this guy is looking for. Also it has new videos, but mainly from retro computer YouTube channels.
https://protoweb.org/2023/12/10/warpstream-net-video-streaming-for-retro-pcs/

Lasted about as long as the Wild West.

That's why I love lemmy. And now to the sponsor of this comment:
- Beans, jeans and 💩

the darkweb is literally just the old internet, plus or minus some racism.
It's great fun.
- Idk about the minus part
  
  it depends on where you go.
  And where you go on the clear net.
  There's tons of racism on the clear net, and theres tons of racism on the darknet.
  But there's also shit like cookbooks on the darknet.
- I think that's the whole point. But before, it was all just a simple Google search away, no SEO in sight. Being capable of surfing the web properly already was at the time THE test to get in, much like private forums often have some kind of interviewing process. It felt a little more nerdy, and well organized, as you actually had to be both things to contribute. As it always was.
  
  it's so much more visceral, in the sense that it's just fucking html 90% of the time. And it's incredible.
- Light the way friend.
  
  i am sorry i cannot do that for you.
  It would fuck up the name.
- Nice try, FBI agent
  
  hey! I'm a CIA agent!

I've always said the same thing myself: I miss the Internet just there for fun. Now they try to make a living out of it; either in good faith or scamming you.
- BackInMyDay.jpg we used the net for looking stuff up. Mozilla 1.0 was faster than gopher and something something altavista web crawler grey hair getOffMyLawn.gif
  But it was a special time, back at the uni in 92 and using the 56k link (!!) to play muds/moos on a server in f'n Bosnia. Or read the MTG mailing list. Uh, I mean, do class work. No commercial things even on there really. Before Amazon, Google, Myspace, etc.
  
  _Life Internet was so simple back then. None with all these fancy gadgets and instantaneous loading of ~~porn~~ images and videos! Just living in the moment, being patient to wait for your favourite Internet material to load for 2 hours!
- I remember being excited when people on the television or "irl" would mention anything to do with computers or even the internet.
  Like wow mainstream culture is talking about the niche nerd thing that I love!
  Now the internet is the mainstream culture.

Need that meme play list link.
I'm so over YLYL thread's full of fluigiwiggle shit
- generic influencer reacting to another generic influencer reacting to tiktoks (sometimes from another generic influencer)
- ... ... Wocky Slush

If you want to get really old school: I miss web rings.
- web
  real old school is BBS.
  
  BBS
  real old school is reconfiguring vacuum tubes in your warehouse sized computer
- Can you explain what that is for us youngsters? Something like RSS feeds?
  
  As a website owner, you would just register your site with a ring and then add a bit of HTML at the bottom of your page which would display the randomly-selected banner of another site in the ring (and your banner would sometimes be displayed on another site). So visitors could just click on the banners and be taken through a circuit of interesting (sometimes) websites.
- Sailor Moon Web Ring 4 Lyfe!
- In my experience a lot of programming blogs still have them, but then again those are the people who are most capable of adding them and who are mostly likely to find them

The day wasn't good, youth was. Now you're old and everything is shit.
also, remember when /b/ was good?
- Oh wow that meme brought my mood way down, childhood is long gone now.
- /b/ was never good and Milhouse is not a meme.
  
  Millhouse is not a meme is a meme

Eh, 2011 internet was already corporate garbage. The takeover was already finalized by then. The internet died circa 2003.
- The internet died when the eternal September started
  
  The Internet died when the second person logged on.
  
  I memeber... And I'm still salty about it
  
  I can only think of that green day song but I imagine you're meaning something more?

The creativity is still there, you just have to look for it. https://youtube.com/@Eltorro64Rus
There was always shit content too.
- Eeyp. If you remembered the stuff that isn't memorable, you'd run out of memory.

Capitalism loves to capitalise....
- One of the many features it shares with CamelCase

I’m surprised I’ve only seen one mention of the good ol’ Stumbleupon.com, I used to spend hours alone and with friends just hopping from one random thing to another. Found some pretty cool stuff too.
- LOVED stumbleupon. I even met some cool people IRL through it.
  These days kagi.com/smallweb is the closest thing I've seen. It's a lot of fun to stumble around, but of course the larger internet has changed. You didn't have all of these content streaming behemoths vying for your engagement back then.
- Seems like a pretty good use of /c/lost+found

Time for the industrial webvolution.

Yt turned from video sharing service to a shitty streaming one. Theoretically for free except you are the product.
It’s actually pretty insane that we prefer to watch some celebrity streamer talking than a movie or tv series. I think there was some brainwashing along the way or maybe it’s just a cope for loneliness
- The advantage of youtube is that it's user generation and low barrier to entry allows anyone to produce creations that are targeted to niches so specific, people would be unwilling to make something that targets them due to the lack of profit, if they are even aware of the existence of said niche. It also means that said creations can be made relatable to specific groups.
  Things like parasocial relationships also apply, where we watch someones videos in order to get to know them to the point you may unintentionally believe you are friends with them, Something let's players, bloggers, streamers and podcast/radio hosts all are able to effectively exploit. It probably helps that most start off being relatable to there viewers due to there similar (and often worse) economic status.

I feel like the last version of this kind of thing was the Important Videos playlist which was 2017-ish, I think
- How it feels to chew five gum
  
  How it chews to feel five gum
- Important videos is amazing

But do you remember YTMND? Like can you imagine trying to explain those memes to the kids online these days?
- It's still there!
  YOU'RE THE MAN NOW, DOG!
  
  Would fit right in to The Useless Web. Sends you to a random useless website from a curated list.
- Today's winner will receive the gift of Kool-Aid! Now available in all five food groups: Red, Urnge, Green, Blue, and Turqwise. Cause, you always need more Kool-Aid!
  Arnold noises

I have such fond memories of the days of rick rolling. I knew these two women who were into amateur choirs and they would come up behind people at parties and rickroll them IRL.

Wild web still exists. It requires a special web browser though. And it's full of illegal shit.

Mr T ate my balls.
- Andrew?

Ratsatsaa ja ripidabi dilla
Beritstan dillan dellan doo
A baribbattaa baribbariiba
Ribiribi distan dellan doo
Ja barillas dillan deia dooa
Daba daba daba daba daba duvja vuu
Baristal dillas dillan duu ba daga
Daiga daida duu duu deiga dou
- Ska-badabadabadoo-belidabbelydabbladabbladabblabab-belibabbelibabbelibabbelabbelo-doobelidoo
  I'm the Scatman Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Yo da dub dub Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Yo da dub dub I'm the Scatman Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Yo da dub dub Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Yo da dub dub
  Ba-da-ba-da-ba-be bop bop bodda bope Bop ba bodda bope Be bop ba bodda bope Bop ba bodda Ba-da-ba-da-ba-be bop ba bodda bope Bop ba bodda bope Be bop ba bodda bope Bop ba bodda bope
  Ska-badabadabadoo-belidabbelydabbladabbladabblabab-belibabbelibabbelibabbelabbelo-doobelidoo
  
  I'll never forget Scatman John due to how prevalent his songs were on SM64 bloopers from the old days of Youtube.

The north remembers operation soda steal

money-ass bitchernet, that's what we got now.

So much for dealing with my depression today
- Hey we're making a pretty cool little part of the internet for ourselves right here on the fediverse at least :)

People just moved short-form shitposty videos to Vine, then TikTok. YouTube incentivizes long form videos.
- Explain the long form 20 second videos i get in my recommendations then
  
  Those are mostly three month old tiktok videos 😅

I 100% expected him to have Rickrolled himself by the end, ngl

deep frying
Like, vocal fries? The Aguilara 'ehhhh-hhhhh-hhh' or how Britney began every line of every song?
- Nah, deep fried.
- It's when they crank up the saturation and lossy compression for... irony or something? Idk I'm old

It's nothing without ponies.
The 4chan community from back in the day sure was obsessed with them.
- Man I thought that was a joke when I first started seeing it. Nope.
  Though many of us remember the early internet pre-ponies; pre 4chan, even
  
  Those were fun times.
- Tfw I used 4chan for years before bronies were a thing. Those were truly the golden years.
  
  Couldn't agree more.

166 comments