06/25/2022
Hey everyone. Kept you waiting for quite a while. I'm near finishing my duties IRL, so i'll be soon coming back to you guys! I'll be actively learning Javascript, Php, HTML and CSS and such, which will all be
required for AetherNetwork. I made this page to communicate with you more directly, rather than writing inside the never-ending changelog page. As you already see, my knowledge of web-design and programming are
for now quite limited, but this will get fixed in time. See this page as a mix between a dev blog and a personal blog, about the Internet, the Old Internet, how the project is really going, and more. I'll put a different CSS for this page because this one will be special compared to the others. Sorry if you have come to check the website frequently but never really saw much change compared to when I first started creating this page on Neocities. I am well aware also that the websites looks quite poor on mobile phones. In all honesty, it's the first time I get involved in a project, creating a community, creating something that I really care about. There are no fixated dates upon which i'll make a new post on this page.
To my knowledge, I do not know other websites that aim to create a forum purely to reunite people from the old internet and/or those who hate the current one. I do not know every page, but trust me, i've searched. And since I found none, I started this project. I admit it wasn't always clear to me if I was going to do it or not. I prefered to mourn the old internet and complain about everything instead of doing something, complaining about how it became, how great it once was, where memes were creative, when videos were truly entertaining and that really represented its creators, when the forums were a place to create a real connection with random strangers of the internet, where none knew what cool thing they would discover tomorrow on the Internet. It was like a journey, a never-ending trip of fun and discovery. Anything seemed possible. And if we traveled back in time (which is impossible in my opinion), back in the 2000s, if we told anyone how the Internet would be in 2022, no one would believe us. It would seem like a bad pessimistic and nihilistic joke. After all, how come something we loved so much be at this point destroyed? But that's what happened. And that's what really stuck with me.
This brutal change from the golden age to the dark age of the internet. Corporations, the killing of privacy, the instrumentalisation and creation of social medias as a way of influencing people, of encouraging a specific type of behavior or ideology. No creativity anymore, no joy or feeling of "new" even on YouTube. The old content gets slowly and silently deleted (which is why i'm glad I started to data hoard what I really like on the Internet), if you take any video from the 2000s, some got deleted or made private with no way of recovering them, their only remaining part is in our memory. No freedom of speech, anything you say can get you either in a lawsuit or attacked in any way possible. Or at best, you'll be permanently banned if you don't fit into the hive-mind.
Everyone is the same now, to the point where the comparison between an ant and the users of Reddit for example isn't that unrealistic. I've been using Reddit for two years, started in 2019. Things seemed a bit fishy the more I used it. You saw the same opinions come over and over again, the same generic comments, and the system itself. Upvotes, karma, downvotes. The three of these are used to either promote or discredit a specific idea or behaviour. Not a single one of course, but things that are popular among reddit. Even r/unpopularopinions is just popular opinions. I did found a couple of reddit posts of people like you and me (maybe?) who also felt and saw this massive shift on a new Internet. And most who responded were like "No, the new internet is better man, we get faster internet man!", completely avoiding what the creator said, which is comparable to what I sometimes say on this website, even more detailed than me honestly, i'm not really that great at conveying my thoughts, especially online. But even Twitter, or any social medias are no exceptions. Here's a video who sums well what reddit is now.
But how much creativity there was back then... FilthyFrank, Gmod Idiot Box , the stickmen fights, Alan Becker animations such as animator vs animations, the memes (who remembers nyan cat? or the stick figures like the troll or the forever alone one?), when everyone was either intrigued or scared by the anonymous or the lulzsec, when there was actual love and care put into videogames, Halo 1, 2, 3, the earlier Call of Duties, the SFMs about valve games, the Gmod movies or animations (like "Who's Cooking Tonight?"), the youtubepoops, flashdeck animations about counter-strike like DE dust2, the flash games, newgrounds, when youtube was "broadcast yourself", or the memes like leekspin, saladfingers, imma firin my lazer, badgers, keyboard cat, angry german kid (which was comedy even, everyone thought it was for real, sad what happened to leopold IRL because of that) or even the parodies of Angry german kid using the same sentences but as an entire different video or when they created his father using a more deep voice, this is sparta, peanut butter, awesome face, me at the zoo, fat guy singing numa numa, ronald mcdonald, dramatic look from a squirrel, the wilhelm scream, 'you are an idiot' virus, the forums, the IRC chatrooms, when L4D2 was being super hyped by players and by valve, when Valve made actual games, portal 2, when counter-strike source was in game cafes downtown, the office tv show, the guys who sings the troll song "trolololo" , when Xbox live was on and everyone liked played online and insulting each other's mothers in their old microphones which seemed at the same time average but also unique in a way or the "my dad works at microsoft", or even World of Warcraft raids with an angry raid leader, Leroy Jenkins , the nintendo DS, the kitty cat dance, cash cash overtime music, running the 90s music, the annoying orange, the rick rolls, the "what's the name of the song?" "darude - sandstorm", it's time to "dudududduel", "i like turtles", "tunak tun", banana phone, caramelldansen, the roflcopter , smash mouth all star, hatsune miku, the MLP adult animations from hotgiddydemon like DRESS.MOV or LUIGI'S DAY OFF, Team Fabulous 2 from kitty0706 (may he Rest in Peace), DOOR STUCK!, asdfmovies, "yee" meme, windows xp and vista, red vs blue in halo, "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA" song, smashbit animations, racist mario, Canon Rock (JerryC) - The Original cover from a guy in his bedroom, chocolate rain, angry videogame nerd old videos, even the pinball game on windows xp, mario in real life videos, old pewdipie videos, dragonforce metal songs, no early access games, no micro-transactions or DLCs, you had what you paid for, an entire unbuggy game, castle in the sky from dj satomi music, Trance - 009 Sound System Dreamscape song A.K.A the song that was playing in tutorials when people wrote on notepad their words, the old 4chan (compared to now, it isn't what it used to be), the websites on Geocities, mySpace, actual free-speech, when anyone was being laughed at for putting out his entire personal info online (and today you're encouraged to, easily doxxed) and when privacy and anonymity were actually cared about, and much, much, much, much more.
Remember that? See what i'm talking about? All of this was so incredible. And today?... Gone. But not in our memories. Not in this project. In AetherNetwork, i'll make a forum so all of us can try to emulate these old times, these old traditions, these old slangs and memes, or at the bare minimum make a new type of Internet. No propaganda, free-speech, creativity, and much more. If you follow me, we will all reunite once more. The question is...