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0 pointsstarkparker2y ago0 comments

> I remember being a kid and having a blast on the 2000's internet, but it was really hard to bump into a really good site. Tbh most of them were kinda crappy.

> Like with past friends and past games: I missed the good times, but if I tried to recreate today the same things like I did in the past, I realized that everything changed: Some friends stayed friends, but some others simply didn't. And some interests didn't interest me anymore.

I think it runs both a bit deeper and broader than just "what I liked then, I don't like now".

In the 2000s and prior, the promise of everything involved seemed infinite. We looked at some small or bad website and saw the potential for it to become bigger and better. If it can do x, maybe it can do y, z, and more.

Today, we know what the full potential of a website is, and it's not nearly what we thought it was. So when we see a small or bad website now, we know that all it can do is maybe be a little better, but trying to improve it could just as likely make it unwieldy and worse.

In our disillusionment, we try to recapture that awe-inspiring feeling of infinite potential, but instead of making something new that's full of potential we only pantomime what we were doing 20-30 years ago, by forcing arbitrary virtual restraints on ourselves inspired by what were once the limits of our reality. Gemini, Hypercard, virtual game consoles, etc.

At best the result feels as artificial and empty as a more emotionally detached examination of the motivation might've suggested, and upon recognizing that we move on from it. At worst, we recognize how much of that potential wasn't ever realized — and the often arbitrary and cynical reasons why — and feel even sadder, because our memory of that infinite potential is tainted by the reality.

It's like the moonshots of the 60s and 70s leading to people thinking we'd be colonizing the solar system or breaking the speed of light by now.

Just like any limitation, all of these virtual-limitation experiments have some legitimate uses and can inspire creativity. But it's become clear that the people who dove into it for the doomed nostalgic hope of recapturing that feeling of potential have recognized that and moved on, either to newer pastures of actual limitation-breaking potential or other nostalgic boondoggles.

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Pannoniae2y ago

Yup, nostalgia projects often don't work because people don't really want the exact same thing as before, they want something which realises the potential of what there was before.

Good example is the game Minecraft - when it was new, everyone liked it for the sandbox nature and the endless possibilities. Now that most of the creative things in the game are either dead or stagnant, and the developers are actively working against the game's potential, now it feels like a dead end. It's similar to the web in this regard.

Nostalgia projects should just start from the old principles and build something which is an improvement over the things we had back then and which we have now.

indigochill2y ago

> Today, we know what the full potential of a website is, and it's not nearly what we thought it was.

I mean, people attribute Arab Spring to Twitter (maybe it's even when traditional news outlets started paying attention to social media? I don't remember, exactly), so I'd say the potential of a website is pretty significant, although it really has nothing to do with it being a website. More about being a place for people to communicate.

I still have basically the same rose-colored glasses for the web. Sure, websites are not as exciting as they once seemed, but not much about the web's potential for people to connect has changed, aside from increased awareness by parties who would stand in the way, but in response ways of avoiding their attention have also arisen.

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