My Musings @ethevagabond - Tumblr Blog

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

dj-of-the-coven

Long collection of resources under the cut.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.

xerxestexastoast

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

biothreads

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

A collection of 1,966 blogs about every topic

derinthescarletpescatarian

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry

headspace-hotel

try Radiogarden

rosiewitchescottage

And it's amazing that you can find information that you looked for, just in the off chance, never expect ing that it would really be there.

Are you a word nerd like me, and my father before me?

Then may I introduce you to...

The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of Eng

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

Thank you @headspace-hotel

lackabella

New edit! Ik edits don’t do as well on here as on Tik Tok but I worked so hard on it so I thought I’d post it here anyways lol.

EDIT: WARNING - video clips are very fast and have flashing colors.

emlovestarwars

And the lifeline is Obi-Wan putting his hope into Luke who in turn gives it to Anakin 😃

mugges

rivendellrose

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!”

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!”

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

et-regina

Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.

luidilovins

Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirable genetic traits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.

quasisnipr1048

Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.

daydreamodyssey

There was something bothering me about zombie/post-apocalyptic stuff that I couldn’t explain until this and last year

That borderline (if not blatant) social darwinism of you have to be incredibly fit and ruthless to survive

When really a lot of it is communicative teamwork, resourcefulness, and not succumbing to fear/paranoia. Fitness obviously helps, but it being the most important thing glances over so many others needed for human survival.

alarajrogers

I feel like we need to see a lot more fiction exploring this. Because I think when people just hear it, it doesn’t fit with the image that fiction’s been building in their heads. “How are you gonna work together when supplies are short and everyone wants to kill you?” “How do you work together when you don’t know who might be turning into a zombie?”

But show how it works, show people working together to survive, and it feels intuitively right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Each of my neighbors has different supplies and tools and knowledge, so if we work together we will survive better.

I recommend Cory Doctorow’s “The Masque of the Red Death” (yes, title deliberately borrowed from Poe) as a great example of the opposite of this. Rich yuppies think they’re going to ride out the apocalypse in a bunker. They refuse to share supplies with anyone else or cooperate with anyone outside. The end result is simultaneously depressing and satisfying. Like… you saw it coming but you kinda hoped the characters would get their heads out of their asses in time.

curlicuecal

So there’s a reason that popular zombie franchises like the walking dead tend to peter out (in both the games and tv) and that’s that the writers just will not let communities grow. They’re so committed to the post-apocalyptic dystopia vibe they shoot themselves in the foot by forcing society to remain impausibly splintered and nonadaptive.

Which I think is really sad, because it means there are whole genres of zombie lit that never get explored. If you live long enough, zombies are an inherently manageable problem, but they’re gonna change how you run a society, and that’s interesting. And the collapse and regrowth of society is also gonna change a lot of stuff and *that’s even MORE interesting.*

Like, hey, instead of a 6 years in everything is exactly the same, what about scattered, fortified communities that cooperate and exchange resources. You can still do suspenseful zombie action based around them having to run supplies through zombie-infested territory, and what happens if the armored trucks break down midway and the urgent medical delivery still needs made. Now you’ve got Balto, but zombies.

(Wait, I wasn’t implying you’d capture and harness a bunch of dangerous zombies to pull your sled of medical supplies, but NOW I am.)

Or, hey– what would a serial killer murder mystery story look like in a world where also zombies happen. The bodies would get up and walk away! And maybe also kill people! Your crime scene would be a MESS. How are you going to detective that, hm?

roach-works

you guys want Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series, which deals with the way society rebuilt itself around the enormous ongoing trauma of a fullscale zombie uprising and an ongoing situation of, people and any large mammal still do turn into zombies. safety checks, constant blood scans, paranoiac cleanliness and airlocks and no windows on the ground floor and daredevil livestreamers who go out into unsecured territory and poke the zombies with a stick on camera for fun.

it’s a very good series, if you like thoughtful horror and are sick to (un)death of manly man macho boy zombie stories that are all about the fighting and nothing to do with rebuilding.

seananmcguire

It makes me so happy that people still recommend Newsflesh. Thank you!

xenostalgic

in this house we believe:

this place is not a place of honor

no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here

nothing valued is here

what is here is dangerous and repulsive to us

the danger is in a particular location

the danger is still present in your time as it was in ours

stubborntaproot

This is a Nuclear Waste Warning Message.

midnightmacaroni

Y’all that link is an incredibly interesting read

vrabia

oh, i’m in love with this! the story behind this message is that we’re storing a lot of radioactive waste in an isolation plant in new mexico and we need to tell future humans: ‘we buried something dangerous here, don’t disturb it or you’ll die. this place should be left alone for 10,000 years. tell future generations as well.’ and this raises several problems: how do you explain contemporary time conventions to future humans so they understand what ‘10,000 years’ means, and starting from when? how do you account for the fact that we have no idea what level of technological development future humans will have? will they still understand any of the languages we speak today? and my absolute favorite: how do you combat humans’ natural tendency to immediately go do the thing they were just told not to do?

so in 1993 a report was developed by two panels of materials science experts, linguists, anthropologists, architects, geologists and astronomers to create a marking system for the site. they proposed different levels of messages to be placed in the area. and the language part of the report is amazing because they’re really trying to cover everything. my favorite parts:

should we just design the whole structure to look ominous and scary and not put any messages on it? no, because when has that ever stopped humans from doing anything.

but also some facial expressions are universal and have been basically since we’ve been around, so there should be pictographs of faces conveying horror and sickness, as well as ‘what is here is dangerous and repulsive to us.’

we have to explain what we buried here and what would happen if they went looking, because if we don’t they’ll absolutely go looking. so the expert panel suggested including both a detailed message where we explain in scientific terms what radioactivity is, and one that says: ‘the danger is to the body, and it can kill. the form of the danger is an emanation of energy.’

star maps will be used to convey the passage of time, and we’re including instructions on what they mean and how to use them.

we have to explain that this fancy structure isn’t actually hiding anything interesting. i.e. the tomb of some great leader that’s filled with treasure. hence the part of the message that says: 'this place is not a place of honor. no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. nothing valued is here.‘

but also we shouldn’t make it not interesting because there’s a lot of potential in designing the site so it develops deep cultural significance for future humans:

‘a monumental, intellectually stimulating system would enhance performance with higher probability than would a less energetic design based on minimal investment, thought at creativity. an oral tradition tethered to the marker system would emphasize (1) that it was designed to be the world’s longest lasting human artifact, (2) that it was intended as a gift to guard the health of future generations, and (3) that it is the world’s largest celestial ‘clock’ marking the millennia. hyperbole and altruism are strong themes in the world’s folk tales, songs and myths.’

and finally, part of the message: 'we have found it extremely difficult to imagine all the forms of human society and available technology that over the next 10,000 years might give people the desire and ability to intrude into the repository level and thus potentially bring great harm to themselves. nevertheless, we have done the best we can in the design of a marker system that will survive over this period, that will be understood by those who encounter it, and that will be effective in countering their natural curiosity to dig at such a uniquely marked and fascinating place.’

wondersmith-and-sons

#what really gets me#what really really gets me about the proposed message#is ‘this is not a place of honor’#because it’s meant to be very practical i.e. you won’t find any treasure here so don’t dig it up#but to me it really reads like ‘this terrible thing is our fault and we’re sorry’ (via @vrabia)

explorerrowan

I mean, it’s a little of both, right? “This is our extremely dangerous garbage that we have no idea of how to get rid of beyond sticking it in a hole for 10,000 years. Sorry, our bad, don’t poke it.”