Alta Vista as my search engine. I started my habit of setting my preferred search engine as browser home page with AV.
Deja News. Back in the pre-WWW era of the internet, we had Usenet. And I was pretty busy on Usenet. It was good having a web-based search engine for Usenet content. Then Google took over and it went to shit. :mad:
AlbinoBlackSheep. Before there was Youtube, there were Shockwave animations. And ABS had all the good ones (All Your Base, Irrational Exuberance, Lobster Magnet, Terrible Secret of Space. I could be wrong, but I think also stuff from RatherGood like Viking Kittens or We Like tha Moon.)
Along the same lines, Joe Cartoon. Tasteless, gross, no socially redeeming value. Highly recommended.
You’d think I used the Internet to no good practical purpose. You’d be right.
Does anyone remember ARMM? Moderation-geddon! Stupid F’ing cancelbots. Software lasers nuking the entire Usenet-sphere.
THIS is why I fear true AI. We’ve already seen epochal events driven by Artificial Stupidity (set into motion for Natural Stupidity). What will happen when the software doesn’t even need that to start it down the road to hell?
Since I only had a Unix Shell account, I did more Gopher and Telnet than the web. I honestly am having trouble remembering individual sites. I would press G and type in site names from a book or search randomly on Yahoo. With Gopher I remember going to the main gopher page.
I mostly just remember downloading a ton of programs. I even eventually got this web browser that worked over a Unix shell. It would use Lynx to download a web page, then use it to download each picture. First porn I ever saw was using that thing.
One problem with Webrings was that they would frequently break when sites dropped off the Internet or decided to drop their Webring memberships. So one night you would be “surfing” along the ST:TNG Webring and suddenly you would end up on a page that didn’t have the Webring gizmo to let you navigate to the next one. Sure, a browser plugin or frames (remember those?) could have been used, but I guess the effort was too little and too late.