DJ Feelz's Soft Memecore Dreams @internetlandfillradio - Tumblr Blog

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It is I, DJ Feelz of House Trashfyre, first of his username, the Unblocked, Lord of Livejournal and the First Memes, King of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Breaker of E-Mail Chains, and Beater of Dead Horses (metaphorical).

#yeah lol #me

coolxatu

government is trying to ban tiktok meanwhile millions of poor and disabled americans are about to completely lose their internet access at the end of april because congress wont renew funding for the affordable connectivity program

hell fucking world

coolxatu

if you want to help us convince congress to do something that actually benefits society, please check out the link below. we only have roughly 45 days of affordable internet service remaining from the time this post has been written

Dedicated to ensuring affordable and robust broadband for all.

coolxatu

say that shit

biggaybunny

I know it's been talked about before but I still don't think it's been emphasized how *fucked* today's internet experience is for children. I didn't know what the word "discourse" was when I was 8, or 10, or even 13. I was too busy playing the nigh-limitless amount of flash games out there on the internet and making sure my neopets were fed. Like I cannot stress enough that if I had free time on the computer, 9 times out of 10 I could go and play a jaunty little game someone had whipped up and put out there for no other reason than that creating games was awesome and easy to do. Or go to some page that existed just to collect memes; you see back then there were more than 4 sites, and you didn't need accounts to visit them. I didn't get targeted ads. I wasn't exposed to any sort of political ideology. I spent a lot of time on the computer but no one site monopolized my time or tried to fucking manipulate me into using it more. The internet was for more than one thing back then, and honestly I don't think enough people realize how much has been stolen from us.

vriskakinnieaynrand

don't know what internet you were on but when i was 13 i was absolutely getting into iraq war forum arguments with thirtysomethings from military families

thahxa

yeah by 10 I was using the internet to look up arguments against believing in god to annoy my friends

prettyponyprincess-prancespiety

I was Wikipedia binging possible ways the world could end

tototavros

I was 13 trying to understand gnosticism and neoplatonism because of Homestuck, before that I was trying to herd ~50 people about my age into building a Pokemon game and getting far enough for a completely novel Pokedex.

centrally-unplanned

Yeah kids were debating whether or not 9/11 was a conspiracy by Bush & the Israelis on Gamefaq forums the moment it happened - and those forums were often paid for via banner ads. This is an imagined utopia.

swarnpert

just like malware is short for “malicious software”, delaware is short for “delicious software”

dduane

Twitter: the beginning of the end continues

Elon Musk’s latest tweak to Twitter, the former name of what he now calls X: Users will no longer be able to block other accounts — as Musk

...Mmf.

I've previously been intent on more or less riding my Twitter account into the ground in synch with the fail of the platform, a la Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove. This new announcement strikes me as suggesting that the riding-it-out option's going to be more difficult than I'd previously thought.

Will have to think a little about how to proceed if this move goes forward. :/

ETA: Noting this also --

vague-humanoid

cetitanhasmoved

catgirl-catboy

No, kids should not have unsupervised acess to the internet. Yes, I got that and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Its a paradox.

fiovske

ivy-michaels

lazy-digestive

Fuck you

therealhoodiewearer-deactivated

worst post ive ever seen anywhere ever

the-cassquatch

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

paradoxical-question

The devil works hard, but the volunteers who run Ao3 work so much harder

#rock on internet servicers

desperate-acts-of-capitalism

Yes Elon is bad at running Twitter. It should be noted that he is more than likely intentionally tanking the value of Twitter, so he can declare bankruptcy. He must do this while looking like he's doing his best.

Remember, all this happened because he joked on Twitter about buying Twitter to temporarily spike his Twitter stock. This is blatantly insider trading, and the sort of thing the SEC loves punishing people for.

This put Elon in a tricky place. He could say he was joking, and risk getting investigated by the SEC. Or he could double down, and actually buy Twitter to prove he wasn't lying to boost his stock price. These were both horrible options for Elon. But being investigated by the SEC is the type of thing that rich people have nightmares about.

So he was forced to buy Twitter. He could not afford Twitter. So he was forced to engage in a leveraged buyout, meaning he had to pay a big chunk of the check in Tesla stock. This was a shit deal for Elon. Twitter was well known for essentially being at the peak of it's profitability, and the previous owners were looking for a nice exit. They were happy to sell the company to Elon for what was probably the highest price tag Twitter would ever have.

What this meant for Elon, was he had just used several billion dollars of his actually profitable company, and had to tie it's ankles to a company that would only drop in value. (and a company he had no idea how to run.) If Twitter drowns, Tesla does too.

His only way out is to tank Twitters value so the company can declare bankruptcy, sell off the assets, and stop bleeding money. But he can't LOOK like he's doing that ON PURPOSE for the same reason that he had to double down on buying Twitter in the first place: the SEC is very scary.

thats-what-sidhe-said

Elon Musk owes nearly $2 billion to a Saudi prince and that is a debt that will not be erased by bankruptcy. That's not a great debt to have.

Elon Musk is a fucking moron. He's not playing 3D chess. He's not some clever businessman who figured out an exit strategy for his problems. He's a dumbass who made a 420/69 joke and had to legally go through with it, and now he's trying to bail out the Titanic with an $8 bucket. He fires anyone who tells him no, so there's no one with any sense left to fix this mess.

If he were a regular person who had maxed out their credit cards to create an essential oil-infused yoga mats business which flopped as hard as someone who tried to do a half lotus tree position on a greased-up yoga mat you wouldn't go "Oh, how clever they are, to burn down their house without insurance and put themselves in bankruptcy!" No. You'd think they were dumbasses.

But someone has "richest man in the world" in his resume and you automatically think he knows what he's doing. No. He bought other people's ideas and he paid for the right to call them his own. He'll probably get through this because that's what pricks like him do, but never doubt that he's landing safely because he's got a whole pile of money there to cushion the fall. He has earned nothing in his life.

memecucker

James Kaposztas made his first AMV in 1982 by hooking two VCRs together while playing The Beatles' ‘All You Need Is Love’

I remember reading about this guy when I was researching about the early weeb fandom in the US. Like the article says he was one of the main organizers in the 1980s NYC anime fandom and iirc AMVs were directly inspired by the legendary Daicon III opening animation and Kaposztas’ desire to make similar music video style anime-mashup shorts but obviously didn’t have access to an animation team so he did the next best thing and used his video editing skills (I wouldn’t be surprised if he was an early fansubber)

centrally-unplanned

I discussed this on the Twitter as well - in the early 2000′s AMV’s were the peak of ‘intense’ fandom in Anime, they were the highlight event of cons, people learned about shows from them, memes were born from them, etc. Its niche but Kaposztas is an innovator who played a role in building a slice of culture, its a real achievement.

Also love that the Kotaku article just puts the Evangelion/Tribute Mash-up AMV in at the end just because why not, that video dominates, definitely watch it.

mtfoss

We need a digital archive of LGBTQ+ works of art, science, and every other conceivable work we can share between each other because we are beyond the genocide warning level in most countries in the west and they're already trying to purge us from libraries.

mtfoss

If other people are interested I'll make this a priority

cannilyuncanny

Speaking as someone with a background in archives, stuff like this does already exist. No need to reinvent the wheel. Creating an archive and making sure it's accessible and searchable and actually preserves things for the long time (especially digital things) is actually a huge undertaking. Show some love to these already existing collections and maybe even consider contributing. There's the Digital Transgender Archive off the top of my head. I know more I just have to think.

cannilyuncanny

The History Project, based in Boston, is an LGBTQ+ community archive that's existed for decades. Many of their collections are digitized.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives, based in Brooklyn, is similar.

The Digital Public Library of America covers a great many topics, but they also have LGBTQ+ stuff.

I'd also recommend searching "lgbtq+" and "libguide" in your preferred search engine. Many universities list helpful resources and databases, some of which are freely accessible.

Many public and academic libraries in the US and Canada (not sure where you're writing from) subscribe to the Gale Archives of Sexuality and Gender. If you have a library card or are a student at a given library, you can access it for free.

In general, I'd really recommend searching around to see how you can support existing museums, community archives, college and university archives, etc that specialize in LGBTQ+ history and media local to you, whether that's in your same town or regionally.

foreign-dorian-deactivated20250

The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in a

About / Visitor Info — GLBT Historical Society

UMKC Libraries | GLAMA

Arts & Culture

metadata-uber-alles

You are not alone! People are working on this and some of them have institutional budgets!

But also kind of looping back to the first post: you personally might have relevant records. Photos of Pride or protests you've been to, journals, a blog full of trans headcanons even. That's all part of queer history and that's the stuff these archives and museums are made of.

Label your stuff carefully, make backup copies, and get to know your local organizations!

jstor

We're also working on building an open access archive and actively looking for content contributions! https://about.jstor.org/revealdigital/hiv-aids-the-arts/

womaninterrupted

What happens when the world’s knowledge is held in a quasi-public square owned by a private company that could soon go out of business?

surroundedbybooks

Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of this, but of course.

ndcirque

This is something that historians have been warning about for a couple of decades. How much of our history was not just on Twitter, but on MySpace, on blogs and web sites that came down after a few years, on e-mail, on texts. None of that leaves a record. Once the file is deleted, the server shut down and scrapped, the backup disks decay into being unreadable junk, that history is gone.

Does anyone remember when Obama and Clinton each held town hall campaign events on MySpace? Good luck finding anything about those now other than some news articles that say they happened. How many business zoom calls have formal meeting minutes taken? We are not saving histories. We aren’t even writing letters. I’m as guilty as anyone. My art is online and kept in the cloud. I make my Christmas Card every year, but I haven’t printed and mailed one in over a decade. It’s all sent electronically. Meaning that a generation from now no one will remember.

So the problem is bigger than Twitter. We are now a couple of decades into an age that will not leave any detailed historical record.

That is not good.

macleod

In pseudo and acadamic circles this has routinely been called the ‘digital dark age’, I even wrote on the subject a few years ago but can’t find that article right now. [There is even a Wikipedia article on the concept] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age#:~:text=The%20digital%20dark%20age%20is,technologies%20evolve%20and%20data%20decay).

It’s thought this might just be a black spot of knowledge, there are organizations working to stop this — archival websites primarily, but these are not able to penetrate all these corporate gated gardens, where paywalls, sign up walls, and more block access to. There is an ongoing campaign by megacorps to shutdown as many archival sites as possible.

This coupled with the fallibility of hard drives, CDs (make sure to back them up! They only have a 20-30 year lifetime!), and more and there is a chance that even though there is more information than ever before, more primary and secondary sources than ever, we may become just a strange blank spot in societal and cultural history. Digital decay is a terrifying concept that we are already beginning to live through.

@xkcd-for-that

This is exactly what I’ve been saying. It’s a loss of history. And, given how important it has been for activists of all sorts, it will be a loss for the future as well.

elfwreck

Download everything you love.

Ideally: Have backups. Keep them up to date. Move them to new drives, new storage devices, as those become possible.

But at least: Download so you have a copy. Make a PDF of that interesting article and throw it in a folder. Download the fanfic you love. Save the fanart to your images folder with a title like “3361284dfvw4385.png.” Pirate that meme-heavy youtube essay/rant. Collect the whole set: the initial rant, the three rants in favor of it, and the twelve that screamed about how how terrible it was. Screencap the tweets. Grab the ROM hacks of that video game.

Because you NEVER FUCKING KNOW if someday you’ll have the only one. Or the only one that can be identified.

puraiuddo

FanFiction.net is not gone.

Right now it's a victim of DNS (Domain Name Service) spoofing. This means that a malicious party is trying to trick people into thinking that they are the real FFn (/steal traffic/make money/whatever) by purchasing a very similar domain.

So if you want to read fanfiction and not see leaves, you have have to type out "www.fanfiction.net"

gorbling

Im enjoying the longevity of tumblrs recontextualization style of humor. a seemingly innocuous post followed by like "posts that a gnome would make" or like "are you a phone"

gorbling

hapalopus

sour-charity

varijacija

amuseoffyre

Looks like fanfiction.net is gone. Probably should have backed up the fic I had there. Woops. Too late now.

tartrazeen

amuseoffyre

Okay, this is very weird. The green leafy thing is what I’m seeing but apparently there are multiple people who can still access the site? I’m very confused right now.

dracothelizard

I did not have access to fanfiction.net on my phone. Did have access to m.fanfiction.net. On my desktop PC, I’ve got access to both. Might be some sort of technical issue but if you have fic up there that you haven’t crossposted or saved, now is a good time to do it!

darcylindbergh

It’s somewhat difficult to download fics off fanfiction.net or even to copy-paste, so here is a link to a web-based downloader that will download fics from ff.net to your format of choice - it automatically downloads as an epub, but you can also get downloads for mobi, pdf, or zipped html. this side is also compatible with a number of other text-based fanfiction sites. this is what i’m using to archive my earliest fanfictions - 2002 and 2003!

FicHub.net

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