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It would be fun to bring back web rings. Alliances of websites that promoted similar content.
Those were the really fun days of the internet.
When surfing the web was actually an adventure and you'd actually discover things.
Not that I could ever go back to dial up speeds, but damn those days were fun.
That's why I loved StumbleUpon when it first came out. I discovered so many cool niche things that way.
StumbleUpon was my jam. I could procrastinate my homework for HOURS with that toolbar!
The temptation to explore felt real. Not like clickbait.
It was that wonderful time on the internet where you got the chance to enrich your knowledge without having an algorithm force stuff on you because it thinks it knows what you like.
I love being surprised and love learning new things. The algorithms, AI, and SEO have stripped all of that curiosity and discovery away.
StumbleUpon was incredible. I actually engaged with the larger internet, rather than mostly sticking to the kiddy pool of comment sections. It's actually where I met my longtime partner, and now very good friend, so it had "real world" implications for me as well
I love being surprised and love learning new things. The algorithms, AI, and SEO have stripped all of that curiosity and discovery away.
I feel this as well. Everything I see or read now is accompanied by the slight suspicion that I'm reading fake content. Like is this picture or article something that another human put time and effort into, because they were trying to communicate something, or is it just generated based on what will garner eyeballs?
Try cloudhiker
Try viralwalk, works quite the same.
I saw some active webrings on neocities sites!
Oh damn, forgot all about those