this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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In honor of the death of Reddit (I hope), let's harken back to a simpler time, perhaps when we old-timers were migrating from BBS chatting to Slashdot to Reddit. My favorite "oldie" is "The Website Is Down," from 2009-ish. It perfectly captures what IT support is like.

What's your fave?

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[–] zeldis@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

newgrounds (The Impossible Quiz, anyone remember the square root of an onion?), Numa Numa, The Evolution of Dance, Shortbits 2, Badger Badger Badger (and other Weebl animations), Onyxia Wipe Animation, bash.org, Stumble Upon (a useful toolbar?!), all sorts of great stuff from that time

[–] sarsaparilyptus@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

StumbleUpon was great, I miss it.

[–] zeldis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ironically I remember it bringing me to reddit a few times and I did not like it at all at the time haha. I just wanted to see more crazy websites and read the SU comments. It was always fun to find yourself on some website through some other means, and then checking to see if there was any comments about it on stumble upon and being pleasantly surprised when there was

[–] HannahBecz@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

StumbleUpon is what actually brought me to Reddit when Cracked started to decline in their articles, and probably the same story for a lot of us between 30-40 that are in exodus from Reddit currently.

I actually tried to get away from Reddit probably 6 or more years ago to this federated thing but couldn't get into it then - but now with Apollo going away and the CEOs opinion made clear how users like me are viewed, even if they reverted their API pricing I won't be back.

This is the style of community I'd like to be a part of.

And don't forget about Group X or the insane number of stick figure fighting flash videos. Shfifty-five.

[–] SevenSwell@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Came here to say StumbleUpon too. I had "cats" as one of my tags and my parents thought I must really want one because they always walked by when I happened to be on a cat page. So that's how I ended up with a cat for my birthday. Don't get pets as gifts, people.

[–] Tai@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Square root of an onion... the answer was shallots wasn't it?

[–] TheAfterman@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I miss AIM. The days where you would race home and log on to see if your crush would come on, and then inevitably not message them if they did. I had the cash register noise set to their screen names.

[–] Celediel 1 points 1 year ago

The days when people had to actually be online in order to message them. I had that Coldplay piano intro set as my outgoing message sound because it was a paid one I somehow got for free. It annoyed the shit out of all my friends haha. And setting your own font style/colours! My go-to were always lime green on neon pink on a black background, and getting messages from people with white backgrounds was startling. What a time!

[–] Gary@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago

GameFAQs video game cheats.

I remember walking to the library specifically to look up video game cheats on GameFAQs, printing them out on dozens of pieces of paper so I could fold them up and keep them in the appropriate game cases.

I'd go so often and get so much exercise from it, my parents didn't even bother limiting my video game time.

[–] specialdealer@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

God this was a trip down memory lane. Thanks for this. I miss bash.org stuff, maybe some of the old ytmnd stuff, new grounds flash portal, etc.

And IRC…

[–] bermuda@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I really liked "Freeman's Mind" (link to episode 1 from nine years ago). It was super simple, literally just a first-person perspective playthrough the Half-Life games with narration instead of commentary. The narrator acted like the mind of Gordon Freeman and it was really funny. Sort of harkens back to a simpler time on youtube, when 9 minutes of a guy talking as if he were a fictional character while playing a video game was prime content. I remember watching this and in the comments I was begging Ross (the creator) to do Half-Life 2 when he finished with 1.

This is AMAZING.

[–] Acester47@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Damn I remember this. I can still hear the sound of the beginning of the videos in my head

[–] themobyone@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

This was such a blast back then. It felt so genuine the way he did it.

[–] jossbo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I'd never seen this. Will definitely be watching it all!

[–] netburnr@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] TheAlrightGatsby@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Strongbad emails were my jam back in the day. Trogdor still gets mentioned periodically with friends to this day. Truly timeless entertainment right there.

That was perfect!

[–] Noonecanknowitsme@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not exactly a fav but I’ll always remember when Omegle was brand new. It was before they had video and it wasn’t full of bots. I was probably around 11 or 12 and I had a convo with someone I vehemently disagreed with some or other topic about. We were friendly tho and continued talking on AIM (friendly, never more) and at some point family came up and he explained how things that my father had done to me was abuse and showed me rainn.org. It was such a huge revelation ofc and led to me telling my family and getting my dad prosecuted. That’s why I like discord sometimes I get that old feeling of genuine convo.

I'm so sorry that happened to you. How brave you must be to have dealt with that.

[–] ninjaphysics@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Wow, what happenstance that you got help in this way. I'm sorry to hear you went through that, but so glad to hear you were empowered with the knowledge to break the cycle of abuse.

[–] dawnerd@fedia.io 4 points 1 year ago

I spent an unreasonable time at the albinoblacksheep forums. Also Flash Flash Revolution was my jam!

[–] Cowbob45@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was a kid in the 2000's so for me the oldies were playing the flash games on cartoon network, miniclip and armor games. My first real exposure to social media was YouTube 2006-2008 somewhere around there watching Smosh and whatever crap was there back in the day.

[–] Acester47@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

all your base, peanut butter jelly time and numa numa were the height of humor. I used to love old ebaums world

[–] Jeef@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't think it's online anymore but at it's peak I used to read every post on mlia before it became garbage

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This just made some very rusty neurons fire, and I remembered FMyLife for the first time in 10 years.

...and it turns out it actually still exists, wow.

[–] lucas@lemmy.lucaslower.com 1 points 1 year ago

FML was the best. I had some app for it for android, not sure if it was the official one, but it was essentially just text and a few basic buttons. I could spend hours scrolling that thing.

[–] ABlackWaltz@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh man, MLIA and FML were staples of my internet browsing once upon a time.

[–] ZapBeebz@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

My first doomscrolling experiences were FML and I Can Haz Cheezeburger

[–] confusedwiseman@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Stickdeath.com was great back in the day. Remember when flash was cool and not evil.

[–] Kwakigra@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Crap, I recognize almost everything in this thread and some of it I consider relatively recent.

I loved forums and participated frequently on a roleplaying forum. Got started roleplaying on Neopets, moved on to gaiaonline as I "matured," and ended up on a regular forum midway through highschool.

I once spent 12 hours on Newgrounds watching the most extreme content it had because I couldn't bring myself to work on a project that was due the next day in middleschool.

[–] Skooshjones@vlemmy.net 3 points 1 year ago

Finding a solution to an obscure computer problem in a YouTube video recorded with Unregistered Hypercam, Windows XP/Vista background, notepad instructions being typed at 15 WPM, playing Down With the Sickness, Breaking Benjamin, or one of those 009 Sound System songs lol.

[–] bbbhltz@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

FenslerFilm's GI Joe PSA Spoofs

playlist

In particular.... https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YlcXposa2I8


Edit:

The company gained a reputation in 2003 for a series of short films which parodied the public service announcement (PSA) safety messages used at the end of every episode of the 1980s animated series G.I. Joe, based on Hasbro's toy line. [...] By 2004, the videos had been considered viral hits, and Hasbro had sent Fensler a cease and desist order.


Wikipedia

[–] Celediel 2 points 1 year ago

I still routinely quote from these. I think they'll probably live rent-free in my head for the rest of my life, lmao.

Are you Buzz Lightyear?

Hey kid! I'm a computer. Stop all the downloadin'!

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

There was a search engine called like crazy Pete and its tag was faster than a space horse. I remember it took over 4 mins to find a result and there were certain hours where Pete would personally get a result for you.

I was young so I'm not sure how accurate that was but I imagine that it's run by an English man from a computer in his garden shed. From 6-7pm he sits in his shed smoking a pipe and serving people web results.

[–] Bluejay@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maplestory has my heart and probably part of my soul too. I played Maplestory from ages 5 to 13 and pretty much made a full time job out of it. In fact, last time I was on a forum was basilmarket - if you know you know!

[–] Opteryx@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Typing JOSHUA in Terminate, the dialup BBS terminal client, to unlock the war dialer. It let you sequentially dial every phone number in a range and would record each one that answered with a modem handshake.

[–] mooseknee@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I spent a lot of time on killsometime.com or something like that. I also watched so much Strongbad...

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

That video reminds me of You Suck At Photoshop, which actually did teach me a good amount of basic photo editing knowledge.

[–] Saturdaycat@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Hmmm well besides forums I would say one thing I miss a lot is Oekaki. I was really into this for a while.

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago