>+ wirefaux? Who's this? A reader of this article, who posted it around several "nostalgia" hivemind circles, only to be met with immense backlash and several bans from many tech circles as a result. They requested that they add more onto this article before Cyberix went back online for the public.
You can view the original article here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250825125337/https://cy-x.net/articles?id=13
# Digital Cargo Cult: How Zoomers Ruined Old Internet Nostalgia
## The Aesthetic Obsession
Walk into any zoomer's idea of "old internet nostalgia" and you'll be assaulted by virtual glitter, neon colors, and websites that look like a Lisa Frank folder exploded. They've discovered terms like "Fruitiger Aero" and "Y2K aesthetic" - keywords that literally didn't exist before 2018 - and decided this constitutes understanding internet history.
fruitiger aero computer on reddit.png >Surely by listening to my frootiger ayyrohh playlists on Google's YouTube platform while browsing r/oldyoutubelayouts and r/nostalgia, it will all magically get better!
But here's the problem: they've confused the wrapping paper for the gift.
The old internet wasn't good because of how it looked. It was good because of how it *worked*. And on that fundamental level, modern "old internet" enthusiasts have learned absolutely nothing.
2016 youtube bootleg.png >Because 2016 YouTube was clearly the best the "Old Internet" had to offer, right?
## The Discord Delusion
Windows Longbridge.png >Making Windows 10 skinwalk an older version of Windows? Having an entire website, but forcing people to join your Discord server instead of having an IRC channel or a forum?
I recently witnessed this cognitive dissonance firsthand while observing a group of students panic because their school was monitoring their Discord server and Reddit community for cheating. They were genuinely afraid of administrative oversight on these corporate platforms.
So I offered them a solution: move to XMPP and self-hosted alternatives. Actual privacy. Actual decentralization. The real tools that made the old internet independent and free.
The response? I was muted for an entire day, but then banned shortly after. Two users were "bawling their eyes out at the keyboard" claiming it was a scam and something malicious.
Think about that. They want the *aesthetic* of old internet freedom while rejecting the *actual tools* that provide it. They'll paste ASCII art and use retro fonts while remaining completely dependent on the same corporate surveillance apparatus they claim to want to escape.
The writing was on the wall. Corporate platforms always follow the same trajectory: attract users with freedom, then monetize by restricting it. The zoomers who got attached to early Discord never learned this lesson, so they're still trying to recreate that feeling within the same broken system. Many "old internet" revival projects attach themselves not to a forum or an IRC channel, but rather a **Discord server**.
## The Cargo Cult Mentality
This is classic cargo cult behavior. In World War II, Pacific islanders observed planes bringing supplies and tried to recreate the appearance of airstrips to make more planes come. They built fake control towers and wooden aircraft, missing the underlying systems that actually made air transport work.
wake up its the 2000s again fruitiger aero.png >Maybe listening to hours upon hours of music that happens to be labeled 'fruitiger aero' will help me truly feel immersed in the "old internet"!
Zoomers are doing the same thing with internet culture. They see the surface aesthetics of old websites - the bright colors, the GIF animations, the "quirky" layouts - and think recreating these visual elements will somehow recapture what made that era special.
Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring the underlying principles:
- **Decentralization**: The old internet was made of countless independent sites, not a handful of corporate platforms - **Technical competence**: Users actually understood their tools instead of being passive consumers - **Privacy by default**: You controlled your data because you hosted it yourself - **Resistance to corporate control**: The whole point was avoiding centralized authority
## The Manufactured Golden Age
gay windows.png >The Windows 7 logo looked like this and was also gay-themed in 2009. Don't question it! I need to stay immersed!
The most insidious aspect is that these "nostalgic" zoomers are being nostalgic for something they never experienced. When confronted with this reality, they become defensive and dismissive.
In a recent Discord exchange, when I pointed out that someone born in 2007 couldn't meaningfully remember pre-Web 2.0 internet culture, the response was predictable: *"people in the 2000s didn't care either... they just lived their lives... they visited websites to learn or connect with people, much as we do today."*
This reveals the fundamental misunderstanding. They think centralization happened *because* people preferred it, not because they were gradually manipulated into accepting it. They assume that because YouTube dominated video sharing and Google dominated search *by the end* of the 2000s, this was always the natural state.
They miss the entire trajectory: the corporate platforms **won** by offering convenience while slowly removing alternatives. People didn't choose centralization - they were boiled like frogs.
## The Centralized Decentralist
The Paradox.png This person intellectually grasps that centralization killed the golden era, but their actual behavior shows they're still thinking within the corporate ecosystem framework. Instead of building their own photo sharing solution or joining existing decentralized alternatives, they're asking for "an app like Instagram" - meaning they want someone else to build them a centralized platform that feels like the old centralized platform.
The macOS tweet is the cherry on top - they're worried about animation smoothness on premium Apple hardware while supposedly advocating for returning to simpler, independent web solutions.
They wish for the golden era, but are still latched onto the very things and concepts that took it away.
This pattern repeats everywhere: using Discord to organize "decentralization" projects, creating "old web revival" sites that require joining their Discord server instead of having forums, posting retro aesthetic moodboards from $1,200 surveillance devices while claiming to appreciate "simpler times."
They're trust fund babies or financially irresponsible people cosplaying as minimalists, with no understanding of how to navigate modern society, let alone recreate historical internet culture.
## Missing the Source Code
These zoomers don't realize that half their memes and cultural references came downstream from places like 4chan and similar communities, while platforms like YouTube and Reddit simply took and sanitized them. They use the language and references while completely missing the underlying ethos that created them.
Zoomers have inherited the outputs without understanding the inputs. They use the language and references while completely missing the underlying ethos that created them.
The old internet communities they're trying to emulate were built by people who: - Ran their own servers - Wrote their own code - Understood networking protocols - Valued anonymity and pseudonymity - Rejected corporate gatekeeping
Modern "old internet" enthusiasts do none of these things. They want the aesthetic rebellion without any actual rebellion.
## The Defensive Response Pattern
When confronted with actual alternative ideas and beliefs, the response is always the same dismissive pattern:
**Stage 1**: "Why do you talk like that?" (attacking communication style instead of addressing substance) **Stage 2**: "Go outside and tell someone on the street" (appeal to normalcy fallacy) **Stage 3**: "You have a superiority complex" (projection and ad hominem) **Stage 4**: Mob harassment and eventual banning
Notice the pattern: no engagement with the technical alternatives offered, just personal attacks and deflection. They're defending their corporate platforms the same way addicts defend their dealers.
## Nostalgia for the Unexperienced
When you point out that someone born in 2007 has usernames like "Xx_M4xH4xx0r1337_xX" and describes themselves as "a nomad of the interwebz," the response is predictable: *"And what does my age even say in this case? Will it invalidate my argument?"*
Yes, actually, it does. You cannot be nostalgic for something you never experienced. Your "interwebz" persona and leetspeak username aren't authentic old internet culture - they're Halloween costumes based on pop culture representations.
The irony is that they frequent modern 4chan (a hollow shell of its former self) while claiming to understand internet history. Modern 4chan is just pornposting and political bait - the actual culture and original content creators left over a decade ago.
## The Design Language Trap
When pressed, they fall back to: *"the entire point for those people IS the design language... they were never interested in anything else."*
This misses the point entirely. Design languages emerge from underlying technical and cultural constraints. Skeuomorphic design existed because early computer users needed familiar metaphors. Web 1.0 aesthetics emerged from bandwidth limitations and HTML constraints.
Recreating the visual style without understanding the context is like wearing a spacesuit to the grocery store - you've got the appearance but none of the function.
## The Convenience Fallacy
They claim centralization won because it was more convenient, ignoring that this "convenience" came with invisible costs that only became apparent after lock-in occurred. Early YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter were free and open precisely to eliminate competition. The restrictions came later, once alternatives had been killed.
People in the 2000s didn't choose surveillance capitalism - they were gradually acclimated to it through a series of small compromises, each individually reasonable but collectively devastating.
## Aestheticizing the Corporate Shell
OHHHHHHHHHH PENK MEDYSINE OHHHHH FROOOOOOOT AERO.png >taking medysine gives me nostalgia! i feel so nostalgic rite now for chugging tasty pink medysine as a child! give me medysine now, mammy! my froootiger ayyrooooh nostalgiacore setup demands it or i won't feel immersed!
The cruelest irony is that the aesthetics they're obsessing over weren't even representative of the actual 2000s internet. The "Y2K" look they worship was mostly corporate branding and early social media platforms. The real independent web looked nothing like their glittery recreations.
They're being nostalgic for a commercial interpretation of an era they never experienced, while ignoring the actual principles that made that era valuable.
## The Real Alternative Still Exists
The tools to recreate the actual old internet still exist and work perfectly:
- **XMPP** has been around since 1999 and runs on every platform - **IRC** still provides real-time chat without corporate oversight - **Self-hosting** is easier than ever with modern tools - **RSS** still delivers content without algorithmic manipulation
But suggesting these solutions gets you labeled as suspicious, difficult, or having a "superiority complex." Why? Because actual independence requires effort and technical understanding. It's easier to slap some glitter GIFs on a Carrd page and call it "old web revival."
## The Consequence
This matters because it represents a complete failure to learn from history. The old internet offered genuine alternatives to corporate control, surveillance, and centralization. Instead of learning those lessons, a generation has reduced it to aesthetic trends they can consume and discard.
They've turned internet history into fast fashion - something to be worn briefly, photographed for social media, then thrown away when the next trend arrives.
## What We Actually Lost
The old internet wasn't about how websites looked. It was about:
- **Independence**: You could build something without asking permission - **Durability**: Sites lasted because people cared enough to maintain them - **Community**: Shared interests mattered more than demographic targeting - **Learning**: Users became more technically competent by participating - **Privacy**: Your data was yours because you controlled the servers - **Resistance**: The infrastructure itself was designed to route around corporate control
None of these require retro fonts or neon colors. All of them require understanding systems instead of just consuming aesthetics.
## Breaking the Cycle
Want to honor the old internet? Stop making glittery websites that link to your Discord server. Start learning XMPP. Stop posting on Reddit about decentralization and actually host your own services. Stop buying new devices every year and use your current hardware until it breaks.
The tools exist. The protocols work. The knowledge is freely available. The only thing missing is the will to actually use them instead of just aestheticizing them.
## Conclusion
The old internet is dead, and zoomers killed it by turning it into a fashion trend. They've created a cargo cult that worships the appearance while rejecting the substance, demanding the aesthetic of rebellion while embracing the corporate systems that killed what they claim to love.
But the principles that made it great are still available to anyone willing to put in the work. The question is: do you want to build something real, or just play dress-up with its corpse?
The choice is yours - but choose quickly, because the window for genuine alternatives is closing as fast as the corporate noose is tightening.
---
**TLDR**: Real internet culture was never about the aesthetics. It was about the independence. Learn the difference, or stay trapped in the digital plantation while wearing vintage chains.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-28 17:48 [#215][report] Jesus Christ, man, you are joyless. Not only that but you are immature.
ou didn’t even bother listening to my further reasoning which is: - I am expressing myself however I want, you’re basically telling me to quit having fun. You are judging me purely by the basis of my username, which mind you existed since mid-2010s, prior to that I had no username at all yet I was present on the internet, be it using my real name or staying a silent observer, lurking through old DeviantArt (I even have an old USB with proof that I did have a lot of things downloaded from DeviantArt, mostly those related to Windows ricing because I used to be passionate about it) and whatnot. - The fact that I’m not in 4chan because of bygone trends but more so because the Discord circlejerk got boring (I’ve been on Discord since 2019). I literally told you this on AngelBruni’s server (from which you got kicked from) yesterday yet you ignored my point so I have to repeat myself here.
I wouldn’t have written this if you didn’t decide to make it personal, and yet you did. I was right about you being a nuisance just from judging you by your grammar.
- M
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-28 18:01 [#216][report] On top of that, after further reading your article I can’t help but ask one question. What is your opinion on LGBT? I’m not even a member but one particular part stuck out to me because I feel like you have ulterior motives with that bit. It’s a question regarding basic human decency, not politics, which I agree with the other article, have become increasingly polarized.
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 18:57 [#217][report] >The Nomad of The Interwebz you are a minor
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-28 19:22 [#218][report] >you are a minor With that dismissive (ironic since you call others dismissive) remark you’re only proving my point of you being massively immature. It’s clear you are unwilling to discuss this matter in a civil manner (even if yesterday wasn’t as civil either, both of us being to blame because I did start it by calling you pedantic (you were) and you swivelling to judge me on the basis on how I express myself for no reason other than to boost your ego about your point on retroslop).
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-28 19:33 [#219][report] Also, I’ll be frequently screenshotting this discussion in case you and the admins are directly involved in your circlejerk. In the event you attempt to further defame me by doctoring my own messages or removing proof of their existence, I’ll be prepared.
meatwheels · 2025-08-28 19:56 [#220][report] who let this colossal faggot out of his cage?
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:00 [#221][report] >I’ve been on Discord since 2019 That was when I left discord lmao. You must really be underage if you think 2019 was a long time ago.
It was fine back in 2015 when it was an "alternative to ts3 and skype" as they marketed it towards gamers and people used it as a free voip alternative to ts3, but as it grew it became more like social media, all communities I had been a part of eventually died or changed completely in spirit.
It not only killed the ts3 servers I used, it killed internet forum culture completely. It's sad to see the extent of damage it did to online communities. I watched the history as it was happening, and unfortunately I was part of the problem.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-28 20:08 [#222][report] > That was when I left discord lmao. You must really be underage if you think 2019 was a long time ago.
I don’t think it’s a long time ago, I wasn’t insinuating that, the point I wanted to make is being there (or matter of fact any corner of the internet) for more than half a decade grew old, I was striving for new experiences and the only corner I was in at the time was really Discord, you strive for variety, and that was my sole motivation.
Also, dude who impersonated me, please get a life.
meatwheels · 2025-08-28 20:13 [#223][report] >filler text filler text filler text
>prior to that I had no username at all yet I was present on the internet, be it using my real name or staying a silent observer
>using your real name >on the internet
stupid retard you are obviously a young child who is desperately trying to pretend that they are indeed a full grown adult whose only experience on the internet was discord
Sir Captor · 2025-08-28 20:16 [#224][report] This article only consists of the wails of a dent-headed grumpy retard that hasnt gotten its candy yet. Nothing else. No substance, just >WOGH EDGY GREENTEXTZ!!1!1! and paragraph slop about LE DECENTRALIZACIONE!!1!1 You only label other people's actions as predictable just to make people think that you're smart and your moaning and whining was acktzch💦ually all part of your 'master plan'. With all due respect, Suck a meter's worth of dick.
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:16 [#225][report] >I was striving for new experiences and the only corner I was in at the time was really Discord and where were you before discord? why did it take so long for you to discover it, if you were online and "striving for new experiences"?
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:18 [#226][report] >sir captor is typing in the same exact manner as the underage faggot >ad hominem ad hominem why are your actions actually very predictable?
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:21 [#227][report] > you are obviously a young child who is desperately trying to pretend that they are indeed a full grown adult whose only experience on the internet was discord I’m glad to be 17 and still have my life and development ahead of me, meanwhile (I assume) you are adults with fully developed brains bearing such profound mental retardation it’s beyond me. As for internet experience, I am being serious about being present on the internet beyond Discord, on top of that, you seem to be the type of dude who was busy spending life away writing greentexts sulking about your chud life or whatever.
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:23 [#228][report] >weeps about ad hominems >ad hominems in the middle of weeping about ad hominems >proves the point of what sir captor said about calling people predictable lul. fucking lul
meatwheels · 2025-08-28 20:25 [#229][report] >wall of nothing >now is desperately trying to pretend to be other people >obvious samefag is obvious >I am being serious about being present on the internet beyond Discord,
give us examples saar
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:26 [#230][report] what the fuck is this autism
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:27 [#231][report] >What is your opinion on LGBT? >It’s a question regarding basic human decency, not politics, Yes it is a question regarding politics. No one even talked about "LGBT" before ~2016. And why do you care about what OP thinks about your friends?
Why does everyone needs to have an opinion on everything nowadays? You are not allowed to simply abstain from having an "opinion" on anything you don't care, because then people claim you don't have "basic human decency". This is another problem with the modern internet that OP should've written about.
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:29 [#232][report] >and where were you before discord? why did it take so long for you to discover it, if you were online and "striving for new experiences"? YouTube and a bit of DeviantArt if you wish to delve into my roots which go all the way to early mid 2010s. If you want to talk modern, there was Twitter (it was ass), Mastodon (I did jackshit, ass), still DeviantArt (ass, have an account to bypass a login wall, but use it to post some of my shit too because why not) and Bluesky (to bypass a login wall, also ass). Every website is ass really but what can I do about it? Go to places literally no one wants to follow me along? Please, I’ve tried that, you guys better snap back to reality and op, there goes gravity.
Sir Captor · 2025-08-28 20:29 [#233][report] Isn't invalidating an argument voer a fallacy, a fallacy in-and-of itself?
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-28 20:31 [#234][report] > Why does everyone needs to have an opinion on everything nowadays? Just say neutral and call it a day, I’ll leave you alone on that.
meatwheels · 2025-08-28 20:37 [#235][report] >I am being serious about being present on the internet beyond Discord,
where are my examples saar where were you on the internet asides from discord saaaar
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:38 [#236][report] >Just say neutral and call it a day, I’ll leave you alone on that. I'm not OP, but if you care about the opinion of a random anon who came from the /g/ thread: I'm a misanthrope. I hate the entire human species equally. That includes you and your faggot friends for being underage, OP (who is also a faggot) for posting his blogposts on /g/, and even myself for wasting my time in this garbage thread.
l-i · 2025-08-28 20:53 [#237][report] >I’m glad to be 17
This thread is for discussing the article's points about internet culture and community decay. If you want to share your internet biography or ask unrelated political questions, start your own thread.
Keep responses focused on the actual arguments presented.
Anonymous · 2025-08-28 20:55 [#238][report] >>>>>>>reposted from /g/
zoomers' entire identity is about being "internet natives" so yeah they get intensely triggered when informed that They Weren't There
Tech Stuff · 2025-08-29 03:09 [#240][report] > The Windows 7 logo looked like this and was also gay-themed in 2009. Don't question it! I need to stay immersed!
It's obviously not the Windows 7 logo. In fact, it's the Windows 95 logo, but with the colors tweaked a bit. It's not supposed to match anything, it's supposed to represent the server.
> The old internet communities they're trying to emulate were built by people who ran their own servers, wrote their own code, understood networking protocols, valued anonymity and pseudonymity, rejected corporate gatekeeping
I do all of those things, and I'm pretty certain a lot of other people in the community also do. Some examples: I run https://teknixstuff.com/ and https://chat.teknixstuff.com/, both of which were written by hand by me (no crappy frameworks or drag-and-drop site builders here). I very much understand networking protocols (how else am I going to manage to come up with a websockets-like protocol which works on IE 5.0?). I do value anonymity and pseudonymity, and I definitely have made efforts to reject corporate gatekeeping (what's ChatDot for? ah yes, it's an alternative to a corporate platform, discord!)
> Yes, actually, it does. You cannot be nostalgic for something you never experienced.
If it's better, you certainly can agree that it's a lot better than the modern stuff. Nostalgia might be the wrong term, but there's definitely a similar thing even if you never experienced it originally.
> The "Y2K" look they worship was mostly corporate branding and early social media platforms. The real independent web looked nothing like their glittery recreations.
Have you actually looked at any of it? Sure, not all of it did (plenty of it was just unstyled html), but a significant portion *did* look a lot like that.
> The tools to recreate the actual old internet still exist and work perfectly: > XMPP has been around since 1999 and runs on every platform > IRC still provides real-time chat without corporate oversight > Self-hosting is easier than ever with modern tools > RSS still delivers content without algorithmic manipulation
indeed, they do, but the convenience is often lost there, and many platforms depend on having a lot of users to make sense. XMPP I've barely heard of anybody using, IRC is missing numerous features that are rather important these days (eg: file uploads and being able to read previous messages). Self-hosting definitely does exist and work, thought depending on what you mean by modern tools, it doesn't always make it easier. RSS is useful and still commonplace on websites, even if not commonly used by users, but it doesn't require the same popularity that a chat platform does.
Anonymous · 2025-08-29 04:29 [#241][report] Why have the trolls not been banned?
Anonymous · 2025-08-29 05:52 [#242][report] you're arguing with underage tourists who will forget about your thread in 2 days tops, you will never change those animals' minds because there are no minds. also don't use tldr because it incentivizes those same subhumans to engage without reading anything
Anonymous · 2025-08-29 06:06 [#243][report] these replies are a mess
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-29 07:27 [#244][report] > where are my examples saar where were you on the internet asides from discord saaaar I accidentally anon’d my examples list, all it takes is to find a very poorly formatted forum post mentioning websites like Twitter, DeviantArt and Bluesky being ass. Other than those I already listed, I just remembered I had a Reddit account at some point, I deleted it because Reddit was ass too. I was on Instagram too after refusing to join it for a while and my account got nuked on the second day of my presence.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-29 07:29 [#245][report] Also, I like how you think captor and I are the same people. The 4chan format truly is wondrous.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-29 07:41 [#246][report] > you're arguing with underage tourists who will forget about your thread in 2 days tops, you will never change those animals' minds because there are no minds. Clearly the dude who mentioned me in the article *by name* is mindless, I wouldn’t have started this kerfuffle here had he not done so. I think it’s more brainless given the fact that he decided to target my Steam usernames just because I judged him on the basis of the grammar without looking to the further argument unfolding at AngelBruni’s. Dude made it personal for no other reason other than to fuel this article, which I find as a rant of a man who went mad from the internet, plunging into attempting to rewind the internet without realizing that it is damn near impossible for others to follow along (I know from experience, I tried to get others to more open platforms only to be faced with failure). It’s not as simple as making a switch in terms of *your* software like switching to Linux. The only option here is to accept the harsh reality of the corporates winning the internet and every way to overturn this reality will result in failure.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-29 07:52 [#247][report] It’s not even about tech literacy, it’s about convenience, and they have grown far too accustomed to corporate slop and no one can convince them to move away because everyone else is using it. The big issue is market share, if the thing has a microscopic market share, there is barely any incentive to invest in it.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-29 07:55 [#248][report] At the very least it doesn’t seem that open *modern* platforms are dying anytime soon. As much as I do not like Mastodon’s user base it truly is a promising platform given its background. Lemmy is also rather emerging.
The Nomad of The Interwebz · 2025-08-29 10:25 [#251][report] Not my problem if some here, ironically, have just as short of an attention span as a median Skibidi Toilet viewer.
l-i · 2025-08-29 11:01 [#252][report] >Why have the trolls not been banned?
They have been banned. *Really* hesitating on deleting the posts themselves though since they have all done nothing but indirectly prove the article's points.
This 'Nomad' pissed his pants over being called out on the Internet. Is this really the level of maturity we should expect out of these people?
Anonymous · 2025-08-29 13:45 [#254][report] > The Windows 7 logo looked like this and was also gay-themed in 2009. Don't question it! I need to stay immersed!
What fucking argument is that? It's obviously not the Windows 7 logo. If anyone there actually thinks that is the Windows 7 logo I will ban their retarded ass. They can go infest WWF and LSC Discords. ~~It was only meant to be the pride month logo and I have been way too busy to care about changing it either to the orb or weebshit again~~
> Making Windows 10 skinwalk an older version of Windows? Having an entire website, but forcing people to join your Discord server instead of having an IRC channel or a forum?
Yes, I agree, but after taking a cheap shot at the logo, they completely fail to mention Eclipse Community. Eclipse Community is supposed to be a public information repository of the stuff on the server. You don't need to join it to get Windows 7 Updated v5, r3dfox, Lun3r, etc. The forum is meant to make that public.
I pretty much only "run" the server so the LSC and WWF don't control all Windows related development on Discord. W7LS server has to exist so they don't get a supermajority and turn it all into shitty slop or fleece their users.
The original idea was to keep the community parts away from Discord, there was no link to W7LS on Eclipse. Maybe you could find one buried in a forum post in the past, but nowadays it's two clicks from eclipse.cx to get to <https://eclipse.cx/servers> for an invite to W7LS. r3dfox also originally didn't have an invite to the Discord anywhere, it was only until later when I recognized the importance of this fight that I added it. Like I didn't want to support the server at the expense of the forum or the projects, but it's basically mandatory now.
Anonymous · 2025-08-29 13:46 [#255][report] > posting retro aesthetic moodboards from $1,200 surveillance devices while claiming to appreciate "simpler times."
I will have you know that I use a 10+ year old laptop, a Dell M4800 running hardened Windows 7 with a custom firewall, as my main workstation now. (I only use 5950X to compile shit nowadays) I also use an 8 year old phone, a Xperia XZ1 Compact running Android 8 (my own compile of LineageOS 15.1 + MicroG), as my main phone, and I have been using it pretty consistently as my main phone since 2020.
> Zoomers have inherited the outputs without understanding the inputs. They use the language and references while completely missing the underlying ethos that created them.
Eclipse main website, no JavaScript, no cookies, loads instantly on even mediocre connections. Scales pretty well on older devices. While also looking better than any modern fuckoff xyz website. and before you say "Skeuomorphic design existed because early computer users needed familiar metaphors." it looks better than modern slop, fuck off. It's not an opinion, it's a fact, and I will die on this hill.
Eclipse forum, it does use JavaScript and cookies, but that's on phpBB and it works well enough with them blocked. (Unless someone wants to resurrect eBoard2 and make it a competent replacement.) Legacy theme can get the forum working well in even IE6.
Also bro glazes IRC, bitch that shit is ass. Close IRC, boom your chat history is gone, and if there's a conversation while your client is closed, you never get to know it happened. Yes I know you can just leave your PC on 24/7 or run a bouncer, but that shit is not feasible for most people. I used to have a bouncer for one fuckoff IRC channel until they banned me for bullshit, exactly like how it goes on pisscord. That bouncer was a bitch to configure and nowadays it's long gone and I sure as shit am not going to configure another. I'd rather move to Matrix but the clients are all ass. Discord seems to be the only viable chat platform for now until they fuck it up badly enough that I make a good enough Matrix client or if ChatDot comes to exist before then then I will just use it instead.
Steven · 2025-08-29 14:38 [#256][report] Nah zoomers aren't the problem, normies are. Zoomer normies are just the worst of the worst because they're both children (or young adults) and normies. I'm a zoomer and I use XMPP and host webservers but I'm not a normie by any means.
Normies are raised from birth to believe that their government (usually some form of "democracy") offers them freedom when in reality it only provides a pale imitation. So it really isn't a giant leap for them to accept a watered-down, corporate imitation of the "old internet". It's just in their nature to follow and not question things.
Anonymous · 2025-08-29 14:41 [#257][report] >I pretty much only "run" the server so the LSC and WWF don't control all Windows related development on Discord. W7LS server has to exist so they don't get a supermajority and turn it all into shitty slop or fleece their users.
aren't you a pedophile?
barisberat · 2025-08-29 17:46 [#258][report] this argument... it's an ad-hoc
lute · 2025-08-29 21:18 [#260][report] the actual true internet nomads are soyjak.party users (and their splinters) but y'all oldcacas are too obsessed with dead 4cuck oldcaca tranime kultur to admit that zoomerBVLLS are capable of using actual old internet shit and bringing the torch forward. any time a zoomerDEITY makes a site, you clittycels are the first to screech about how "DA HEGGIN ZOOMIES" are "ROONIN MUH OLDCVCK KULTUR".
That said, trvthnvke of an article. Attached is a relevant XKCD comic about this exact subject.
lute · 2025-08-29 21:21 [#261][report] coal forum that doesn't put posting instructions on the reply award.
>YOU WILL JOIN MY TRANS-PRIDE CENTRIC FRUITEGER AERO DISCORD LINKED ON MY HEGGIN NEOCITIES PAGE [image]attachment:1[/image]
lute · 2025-08-29 21:31 [#262][report] [image]https://files.catbox.moe/8i0a87.png[/image] [image]https://files.catbox.moe/fennxc.png[/image] >OH MY FRIGGIN YAAAAS MUH FROOTIGER AERO RETROSLOP CENTRIC NEOCITIES DISCORD IS TOTALLY TAKING OFF
[image]https://files.catbox.moe/kkl0xf.png[/image] >YOU WILL RESPECT MY OLDCVCK KUTLUR ZOOMER HATE >YOU WILL USE MY DOGSHIT ATTACHMENTS SYSTEM >YOU WILL REINVENT THE WHEEL WITH SHITTY PROPRIETARY NIGGERWARE FORUMS THAT MOOTXICO LARPERS USE >YOU WILL HAVE TO REPOST YOUR POST 8 TIMES BECAUSE OF MY DOGSHIT FORAMTTING SYSTEM THAT'S TOTALLY HEGGIN OLD INTERENT >YOU WILL NOT GET A DELETE POST BUTTON BASED COOKIES BECAUSE IM A SELFISH LITTLE NIGGERFUCK WHO REFUSES TO MAKE A FUNCTIONAL BACKEND
lai · 2025-08-29 21:38 [#263][report] works on my machine
Foxdie · 2025-09-01 05:10 [#297][report] I remember when shitposting was reserved for idiots. I remember when being anonymous didn’t mean you could just go around offending and disrespecting everyone. You could usually tell who was a kid or just plain dumb by the way they engaged with others online.
The 2000s boom brought a lot of Millennial kids into IRC, XMPP, MSN, forums… slowly learning about the internet from their Windows or MacOS computers. But it also brought a lot of trolling. Unsupervised and unleashed, Gen X and Millennials built the internet as we know it today. No single generation is ultimately to blame for the state of things — we all either accept or reject ideas as they come.
In the end, it’s obvious that new generations want to experience times gone by. That’s natural curiosity (“Wow! Things were so different back then? I wish I’d been there to see it myself”). I wish I could have lived through different ages of human civilization too, but the closest I can get is going to a reenactment: medieval fairs, Egyptian-themed parties, Victorian high-society events, and so on. What we have left are the aesthetics — we can’t actually live those times.
I think OP is pointing at something deeper than they realized. We humans are extremely visual. We’re drawn to videos, images, decorations, ornaments, artifacts… so it’s no wonder newer generations try to relive the past. And that’s OK! Who cares if it’s not perfectly accurate? It doesn’t matter. Those who actually lived through those times can remember, reminisce, or write about them for the future.
The toxicity between generations, I think, comes from how people deal with change. Some are born into it, others adapt, and others reject it outright.
OP — opinions are just that: opinions. The way you see the world is yours. The way we all see the world is ours.
Big love to everyone here.
Anonymous · 2025-09-01 19:00 [#301][report] The thing i hate the most about Zoomer "retro" websites is how they don't really have any content in them. I could wager that like 70% of Neocities pages basically contain
>the main homepage full of the same kawaii gifs and wacky artsy 88x31 buttonz!!!1! >an about me page >an art gallery that eventually gets dropped and just redirects to the artist's xitter >a blog about videogames or complaining about your job or the school system, that gets abandoned after two months max (and with no RSS feed) >a list of links (mostly just their friends' sites, other pretty popular neocities pages or pretty surface websites) >a contact page (social media shilling, maybe a personal e-mail they never read if you're lucky)
I get that decades of social media has molded most of the internet into consumers who don't remember a lot of what went into creating websites worth a damn. But man, most of them either end up as glorified carrd/strawpages from the start or end up feeling like even more of abandoned voids than actual abandoned Geocities pages from 2006.
Anonymous · 2025-09-01 23:58 [#302][report] Good article, liked how you talked about how people don't really understand why older stuff was "better" but partially falls flat where you seethe about how it's le zoomers fault that internet culture died (but I will say that discord chat screenshot is genuinely pathetic so I can't blame you here). Shit like XMPP stayed obscure because they got rugpulled by their own major backers and no one wanted to pick up the pieces until Discord ate everyone's lunch and lured zoomers into their walled garden. But back to internet culture dying (more like going into hibernation really, this site is proof that it isn't fully dead), it's a travesty, and a lot of people are trying to live in both worlds without realizing that the corporate web and internet culture are mutually exclusive.
Anonymous · 2025-09-02 04:36 [#304][report] how cute. retarded zoomer larping as a "le ebin oldefag millenial" who thinks that """"self-hosting"" is the norm back in the day.
umm no, sweaty...self-hosting wasn't even the norm back in the day, either. only the most geeky of nerds would self-host, or at least had their own Geocities page (thats not a typo, btw. not to be confused with Neocities, btw). most normies back then are just like most normies today, they wouldn't give a shit.
but we get it, you're SOO tech literate and you're not like other teens your age, you self-host your shit, and you're so damn proud of it. as if its the peak achievement of your lifetime. you're also probably brainwashed by old cyberpunk media and literature, you think that the 90's were full off edgy hackers in trenchcoats, and all the teens had their own servers in their bedroom. it makes you think that you were born in the wrong era. but sorry sweaty...the 90's were sure cool, but not THAT cool.
Anonymous · 2025-09-02 05:16 [#305][report] "The thing i hate the most about Zoomer "retro" websites is how they don't really have any content in them."
Agreed. They're all style and no substance.
Anonymous · 2025-09-02 10:50 [#306][report] >umm no, sweaty... Yet another underage faggot who wants to either derail the thread or yank someone's chain.
We can spot you people from miles away.
Anonymous · 2025-09-02 22:59 [#309][report] >NOOOOO I AM LE COOL HACKER YOU'RE UNDERAGE KYS
mill · 2025-09-03 00:02 [#310][report] can the next article be about how "millennials" or whatever they are, can't behave themselves on more lenient and niche websites like this and can't help themselves from exporting their needlessly obnoxious, argumentative and edgy culture wherever they go, without even having the decency to provide lulz, based on these previous posts?
centralization mayhaps?
Anonymous · 2025-09-03 07:25 [#319][report] ITT retards cockfighting about who's le most retro
Anonymous · 2025-09-03 07:25 [#320][report] >1% were actually there
Anonymous · 2025-09-03 07:36 [#321][report] Who the hell brought all these butthurt 4chan zoomers here at the comments?
Anonymous · 2025-09-04 11:24 [#346][report] Nice article dude The issue with your complaints is that realistically reconstructing what used to be is basically impossible because of the convenience that the walled garden provides.
Yes, people did know how to use IRC, they were on average a bit more tech literate if they actually used the computer often, but that shit went away because easier alternatives were presented.
Archeological digs are fun, I agree. Reading into penis pump (irc trolls) made me realise just how much lost civilisation shit there was on the Internet. The reality is though, most of these people were products of circumstance. Just like the nigger porn raids of Zoom in 2020 during covid, this shit is not coming back because of the following reasons:
>the platforms are dead even if you get a bunch of your buddies to talk on irc, you won't use it for anything else. it is also much less convenient for the average niggercattle to install or use than goycord, which is THE IM of today forums died because of goycord. noone wants to spend 20 minutes registering on a forum for a ban appeal or whatever. noone wants to have to log into all accounts they have on individual forums and navigate them. goycord was a forum-like IM and everyone immediately troonsitioned to it BECAUSE it was convenient, because you had one account for everything.
>the culture is dead Noone is going to call you a cock smoking nigger outside of niche cliques like the soyim, KF and the remnants of 4chan. Edge nowadays also attracts faggots who post child porn and gore, because go hard or go home is their mentality. The people are fundamentally different and it is not coming back. If you want to talk about the self host, privacy oriented mentality, this was never a mainstay of the internet. Self hosting was not that prevalent, dont kid yourself, and it was mostly something out of necessity which no longer applies for most people, hence it was unlearned by many and is now more niche than ever. Most people also dont give a shit that the ZOGman has their data, no matter how much they espouse these principles when convenience allows them, a-la the EU's pretty interesting privacy laws. (big gubmint will change shit for me, the corpo will have to comply, my convenience remains)
>convenience always wins why do you think things got centralised? aside from requiring some accounts for basic communication and/or work (snowball effect) it was easier for the niggercattle to use these websites over twenty million various forums and et cetera. You can even see how facebook, which is less convenient and more cluttered got ditched for instagram, tiktok and whatnot. It is easier to lap up slop from one trough than to spend hours on end searching for it in the shithole of the Internet.
>windows is kang The reason why so many people stick to windows is that it just works, and it is nigger proof. Windows is written by thousands of paid pajeets to have negromancer level ECC and self repair to manage survival on even the most abused and neglected drives. It has safety rails to prevent niggers from fucking up their system. It is deliberately made to be as simple and dumb as possible so that anyone can use it. If your random normgroid installs linux, which is made by corporations that do not give a shit about desktop on one side and by unpaid trannies that do it for free (with quality matching that) on the other. Windows is compatible with video gaymes, which people want to play, with old shitty software that often comes up and has to be installed for one specific reason or another, its rot is relatively graceful and slow as compared to linux's. There is literally no alternative to windows unless you want to spend time learning linux, which is outside the reach of a normalnigger.
>noone cares about privacy Yes, the ZOGnigger has your data. Congratulations, he knows what you jerk off to. At the end of the day, principles are often discarded for convenience and this is no surprise. The realistic reply to that concern about college spying at the beginning is to suggest telegram or another more niche IM, not self hosting XMPP.
>its a cargo cult No shit, but what would you have these kids do? There is not enough of them motivated enough to actually recreate the ecosystem that made this culture possible. No, two irc cliques of 20 trannies each that die in a month do not an old internet make. None of their buddies will go on irc anymore. The knowledge of using these services and systems is gone from the minds of the normgroids, and asking them to relearn it is a tall ask.
Yes, call these kids out all you want. But the reality is, playing in the rotting entrails of the old internet is quite literally the only thing they can realistically do.
Anonymous · 2025-09-04 18:54 [#352][report] >>convenience always wins This, came here to write this. OP does not understand software marketing. Even if this forum and the other means cited were shilled everywhere and captured every dissatisfied living soul alive today, it wouldn't ammount to 5% of internet users and social media would still be king. Most of the people who use the internet today don't make their life spin around it like most here, me included. They have jobs and family and they want to post about it, they'll use whatever service that lets they do it with the least amount of knowledge required. They don't want to learn or simply don't care. In fact, most internet users today don't know what a computer is. Look up device trends. Jews won because they were destined to, we cannot do anything but look for our own arses when the government starts tightening the chains.
Anonymous · 2025-09-09 01:10 [#389][report] This is ultimately what happens when Eternal September takes its course and every single fucking child and every single fucking third worlder is given cheap internet access without anything stopping them from shitting up the places where the first world adults reside
Anonymous · 2025-09-12 18:23 [#452][report] Being mad at zoomers is lame and nostalgia is sense of loss placated by materialism
not even mad at OP
I'm nostalgic for having relationships that felt real, with (You) anon *can not look away at phone because businessmen/employees were the only ones who could afford/see the point in one*
Anonymous · 2025-09-22 13:52 [#529][report] We just need to educate them on right from wrong.
Anonymous · 2025-09-29 23:35 [#661][report] i don't think you need to have experienced the old world to yearn for it's promises, which are spouted by yourself i do think it's good that kids are realizing something is wrong - but don't expect the kids to do the thinking
Anonymous · 2025-10-04 19:15 [#687][report] I don't use Reddit and Discord (why do you, OP?) so I didn't know about this stuff. I did know about HeySpace and Neocities which basically have this problem. Yeah, those people are irritating. I don't like personal sites designed to be visually cluttered, hard to read, and typically just a list of someones favourite anime/music/movies as if anybody cares. The HeySpace roleplaying in the text is even worse as well. But are they harmful? It's quite easy to ignore after all. >The old internet is dead, and zoomers killed it by turning it into a fashion trend. This implies that zoomers playing dress-up are the reason the Internet is centralized, which is silly. It was already dead. This isn't anything more than the cycle described by McLuhan, that new technology creates the nostalgia for the old. Industrialisation created the conditions for romanticism and appreciation of nature that didn't exist before. To a less profound extent, this is what happens here: a nostalgia for the recent past of media has been caused by our radically different current media, all part of an inevitable process. We can continue to focus on our own business, doing as we do and encouraging others to actively participate too. I don't appreciate any of these doomsayer posts. Why should we care if this is a small scene? Why do we want a large audience? We can work for the few who care, and be satisfied with that. And so what if some people act superficially? That will always happen. If you get mad every time it happens, you will always see red. Best to get over the fact that people are superficial, as well as stupid, insincere, antisocial, acting in bad faith, lazy, etc. etc. and get on with doing what you want to actually do.
LMAO zoomzoom went boomboom in his diapies over this! 😝
Anonymous · 2025-10-11 19:57 [#805][report] >>51142 You will never be a RealPlayer, kid.
Anonymous · 2025-10-13 13:55 [#865][report] I find the claim that "zoomers" killed the internet somewhat bizarre. Which generation were the primary users of the internet while it was dying? What generation do the tech CEOs that were in charge of the stultification of the web hail from? You're claiming that the first generation raised on a dead web were somehow retroactively responsible for the aforementioned death. Beyond this, you're engaging in a very similar routine as the zoomers you hate, being that you've created shibboleths out of "self-hosting", and "decentralization". How do these things lead to a superior web? You've taken some aspects of a version of the internet that was superior, and then claimed that they were the aspects that lead to it's superiority without any backing to this claim. The "old internet" had way more illegal content than the modern internet does. Do we know that this wasn't the reason for it's superiority?
Anonymous · 2025-10-25 20:11 [#995][report] I get being pissed. I hate clicking through endless [i]"sign in with google"[/i] or [i]"create an account to see anything"[/b] that the internet has become.
How could zoomers do that? Looking at any half-decent neocities page, their [i]"personal site on the interwebz"[/i] is all just filler with no actual content. They gained sentience [b]after[/b] the internet had already lost both engines.
Zoomers are just the scapegoat, the last kid with their hands in the cookie jar of corporate convenience.
Anonymous · 2025-10-27 15:54 [#1009][report] >"sign in with google" or "create an account to see anything"[/b] that the internet has become. [You do not have permission to view this attachment. Please register with MyCarPhpBB.com and wait for a boomer to approve your request before proceeding]
Anonymous · 2025-11-01 12:07 [#1038][report] PHPBB forums are faggot shit. If you aren't cooking up your own forum software you are not a real webmaster
Aw man, I can't believe I, a zoomer, ruined old internet nostalgia. Apologies for my entire age group's digital hallucinations and please continue to practice your ageism unto us. Always here's my *old internet* *frutiger aero* styled gif that is actually an outdated and terrible standard that people should've moved on from.
Revird · 2025-11-09 14:08 [#1099][report] Have ya ever stopped to consider that maybe this "resurgence" is only happening to distract from - your points - the fact that the early internet was cool because of decentralization.
This zoomer "resurgence" itself is a fucking manufatured trend, all there to dazzle this next generation into thinking independent internet was clitter gifs.
You're punching down and blaming the kids who were just duped by the **real people you need to be pissed at**.
Anonymous · 2025-11-09 15:01 [#1102][report] >>#52683 Informing them of the problem is the first step to solving it. If all fruitnigger zoomers realized the flaws in their philosophy, they would fix it right up and encourage others to do the same.
Anonymous · 2025-11-29 13:09 [#1175][report] This thread an the posters within who concur with are the precise kind of grognards are who are completely and totally useless to any discussion.
Anonymous · 2025-11-29 13:10 [#1176][report] and the* concur with OP*
Anonymous · 2025-12-20 21:24 [#1277][report] I generally agree with OP, and really these types of faux old-internet zoomers are incredibly obnoxious, but what do any of us earnestly expect to happen wrt the 'old internet' being brought back? Sure, the majority of the internet has been cordoned off to 5 website-apps for retarded normalfags to drool over day-in-day-out, but what do you want? Really. Do you want those people posting on sites like this? It's a good thing that people are directed way from them-- as if they'd even have any interest in using them anyways.
The way I see it is so: yes, the effects of the internet being centralized are bad (people become stupider, less digitally able, etc), but there will always be ways for the elusive mysterious hackermaster le internet self-hosting millennial web1.0/web2.0 whatever types such as ourselves to find one another (we're all just white people with IQs at least above 105, really).
FOR EXAMPLE: I'm a zoomer. There, I admitted it. I'm sure a good chunk of you are too, especially the faggots glomming on and protecting the Interwebz Nomad retard. Despite this crippling disability, I found this site by CLICKING LINKS ON OTHER TEXT BASED IMAGEBOARD/FORUM SITES until I eventually reached this one. This method of finding new things on the internet STILL EXISTS. YOU CAN STILL DO IT. Just because most people don't use or create sites like this doesn't mean that there won't exist an infrastructure of people who do. What do you think normalniggers were doing before the advent of iPhones, instagram reels, and 4 hour youtube video essays? They were shitting up the real world being retarded niggers in 3D space instead. You know what people like us were doing before then? The same thing we're doing right now. Posting on gay hacker websites like this.
I don't really mind if normies enslave and castrate themselves. Honestly, it's pretty entertaining.
admin · 2025-12-22 17:57 [#1290][report] There's something fundamental that half of the people in this thread fail to grasp: Zoomers themselves aren't bad. [b]It's what they do that's bad.[/b]
Anonymous · 2025-12-22 20:56 [#1304][report] The specific design language of "Aero" as used by Microsoft by the time is neat. And of course, so was the sleek, chrome, futuristic look found in certain games and anime from earlier in the early and mid 2000s. But zoomers ruined both. There was no "Frutiger" or any of that shit.
Anonymous · 2025-12-26 11:04 [#1401][report] They act like this because they know they're posers.
Anonymous · 2025-12-26 12:36 [#1402][report] >>2474 what *some* do. many zoomers are affected by technologies developed for them specifically by boomers and millennials, so they have to suffer the consequences (social media as a prime example). gen z has coped decently with it and i think will rise to overcome these problems. i think gen z may also be the most aware generation when it comes to stuff like government corruption, etc
skibidifreak67 · 2025-12-27 23:10 [#1438][report] As an 18 year old zoomer, I would like to share my thoughts on this article. Yeah, it's true. A really bad example I can think of is Neocities LARPing as Geocities when they don't actually have the same beliefs or culture of Geocities, instead cargo culting the aesthetics and mannerisms of Geocities. I hear about people on Roblox dressing their avatar as a 2010 Roblox noob and doing the whole Retro Roblox aesthetic while still playing modern Roblox brainrot games. The Discord thing is also annoying, I don't want to download the groomer app just to get updates for a game mod or something.
Anonymous · 2026-01-01 02:54 [#1462][report] Yes IRC still exists, but it's filled to the brim with freaks that will ban you if they don't like something you say.
Anonymous · 2026-01-01 03:23 [#1464][report] >>3666 Whats the difference between that and the average discord clique?
Anonymous · 2026-01-01 07:07 [#1466][report] There are zoomers that are capable of rebuilding things, when they do though they bring the same desire for sanitization with them from the corporate internet. Frankly any real decentralization is going to be impossible without a broader cultural shift as the desire to censor and control language that zoomers have is dependent upon platforms that monitor everything. They cannot stand the idea of people using private chatrooms that might be using "edgy" language away from their ability to moderate, or maintaining personal sites where they can say whatever they want.
>retro 'resurgence' is performative, copying form over substance waow just like every retro trend in anything ever.
For how much you're shitting on zoomers, the oldest are what, 27-28 now? 30+ and crying about yunguns, jeez revive le old internet yourselves or move on
Anonymous · 2026-01-01 20:35 [#1471][report] >The Internet's Biggest Frutiger Aero Influencer is a Total Fraud (Skeuoss.net) >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvJcs2ZXvEo this is the most autistic bullshit i've ever seen in my life. petty internet zoomie slapfighting where everyone involved was born after the 2008 financial crisis
mlerp · 2026-01-01 21:59 [#1472][report] >>3668 difference is that with IRC you can pull out your dads old optiplex, and invest a weekend to set up your own whole server, in which you dont have to follow discords term of service, nor code of conduct, and you can get your nan onto it because she doesnt need to figure out 2fa and register her e-mail: just a nick will do fine.
Anonymous · 2026-01-02 16:10 [#1479][report] >Never put identifying information online. Weird people will do weird things with it. zoomers: >HERES A LINK TO MY PROFILE ON EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE I HAVE EVER USED ONLINE x3
Anonymous · 2026-01-02 18:13 [#1483][report] Good read. I think discord did offer better features then irc and irc wasn't decentralized but it offered the ability to do so. so that should be mentioned. I used irc for a long time and I had most of the features discord had but required setting up. Embeded thumbnails required plugins, private server or a service for hosting, and using mumble. I loved using mumble for VC you can even upload images in the chat. It really does suck ass that matrix and the discord alternatives are such shit but they really shouldn't be. Also the ironic thing is setting up a fucking matrix instance is harder then setting up ircd server.
GlooBloo · 2026-01-04 08:37 [#1504][report] tl;dr: my culture is NOT your costume
Tautological Speaker · 2026-01-04 10:21 [#1506][report] I've tried to get younger people join my IRC room and it's impossible. We spoonfeed them everything and even in the few cases they manage to get in, they leave after 5 minutes and never come back because it lacks all the bells and whistles of Discord. So it's only my group of older pals and me.
I don't get why zoomers think doxxing yourself to chat (phone number, emails, face scan/ID in certain countries, no VPN) on discord is less inconvenient than registering a username on IRC.
Anonymous · 2026-01-04 10:26 [#1507][report] Something I'm somewhat disappointed wasn't mentioned is Usenet. While it was mostly ran by ISPs and businesses for a price back in the day, the core of Usenet (NNTP) has always been decentralized. Actually, the reason why it started sucking was because there was an attempt to centralize it thanks to Google Groups, which ended up de-peering a few years ago making UseNet a much more pleasant experience.
While the paid services are still useful for binaries, the article aspect is available with a number of free services, and it's not too hard to start your own. These servers peering with each other basically encourage anti-censorship and privacy. It's like a decent decentralized forum.
>>495 > how cute. retarded zoomer larping as a "le ebin oldefag millenial" who thinks that """"self-hosting"" is the norm back in the day. > > umm no, sweaty...self-hosting wasn't even the norm back in the day It actually was. If you did any research, you'd know the majority of individually ran websites and their services were ran on their own hardware or hardware leased to them by their college with full access opened up from their ISP because everyone had a static IP at the time. Self-hosting wasn't just the norm, it existed for almost everyone. It wasn't until a bit later where ISPs stopped offering this and services like Geocities popped up. The exceptions were established businesses who had their own hardware to handle their service.
Anonymous · 2026-01-04 20:51 [#1510][report] the part about early internet experience they forget to mention is the part where you go outside and not use a computer for most of the day
Anonymous · 2026-01-09 19:50 [#1785][report] Your first mistake is assuming these people are stupid. They know exactly what they're doing and are deliberately insidious.
Just like all those pooners claiming 4cuck oldtroon culture, these trannies are retconning the cool-but-problematic past as part of the Eternal Present, and vilify all evidence to the contrary, including living people like you guys. But remember, the truth is on your side; much like with everything else, bringing it up makes their fiction collapse and causes meltdowns. If anyone wants to drop that fake shit and actually RETVRN, so to say, they will seek out spaces like this and their knowledge on their own.
frutiger aero · 2026-01-09 21:47 [#1787][report] i am the frutiger aero. that means zoomer are obsessed of me.
NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER
now they are racists
no man · 2026-01-10 13:18 [#1825][report] educate people instead of making fun of them and youll achieve what you seek. you are all assholes
Anonymous · 2026-01-10 14:51 [#1827][report] sometimes education requires being a little harsh to get the message across. maybe if you had a growth mindset you could be freed from your shackles rather than having artificial rookie arrogance that will get you nowhere in life
Anonymous · 2026-01-13 22:23 [#1924][report] this would hit harder if it were written by a human instead of AI
rave ## MOD · 2026-01-13 22:24 [#1925][report] >>4175 Should I take this as a compliment or an insult? >_>
* * * $3,222 payment available! Confirm your operation here: htt · 2026-01-13 23:28 [#1929][report] baby ducks don't like to discuss how the webification of windows began with the integration of internet explorer in 1998 http://toastytech.com/guis/win98.html >When Windows 98 starts, it launches the "enhanced" Windows Explorer, which is integrated with Microsoft's Internet Explorer product. This is done for the "benefit of the consumer". What it really does is add unnecessary clutter to the display and slows down the system. It also provides an excuse for Microsoft to continue bundling IE with Windows. http://toastytech.com/guis/wxp.html >The main control panel has been changed to a web page although most of the control panel applets are still tabbed dialog boxes. Some of the applets such as the user management control panel have been changed to a webby interface. http://toastytech.com/guis/win72.html >Like XP and Vista, the control panel is still a mess of web pages. my lxqt desktop feels like windows 2000 without internet explorer
SAD · 2026-01-13 23:55 [#1930][report] You know what's funny about this? That if you didn't have aspergers you would be able to persuade your schoolmates into using another chatroom app just fine
You think you have some noble cause because freedom but you're just a clueless dork that has no idea how the world works, assuming you're not a teenager
You should unironically touch grass and get pussy you massive fucking loser
Anonymous · 2026-01-14 11:29 [#1944][report] >>4175 HAHAHAHHAA NO WAY YOU THINK THIS IS AI LMAOO
Anonymous · 2026-01-14 23:56 [#1952][report] OP's thesis is basically flawed. geocities is a good example of why. the center of old-web nostalgia, it runs contrary to all four principles. >Decentralization: The old internet was made of countless independent sites, not a handful of corporate platforms geocities was a centralized web-host, which is why they were able to kill it. the pages were "decentralized" compared to twitter, sure, but it was just a better breed of corporate platform. >Technical competence: Users actually understood their tools instead of being passive consumers the technical side of a geocities page is a big step up from current social media, but usually it's badly hand-written HTML or some frontpage abomination. there's a confabulation here between technical competence, which was lacking, and not being a passive consumer - one can be an active creator who is technically incompetent. >Privacy by default: You controlled your data because you hosted it yourself half granted because tracking technology wasn't there yet, but "you hosted it yourself" is mostly wrong: geocities hosted it for you and it was out of your control in that respect. >Resistance to corporate control: The whole point was avoiding centralized authority repeating #1: geocities was corporate controlled and the corporation pulled the plug when they decided they weren't making enough money.
the big problem with web nostalgia is that it appeals to nerds who go looking for big technical or weakly-political explanations (it was all good before normies/zoomers/indians showed up!) for something much muddier. a normie throwing together some HTML on Yahoo! GeoCities™ did something that the modern web lacked, but any real explanation of what that was will fail to satisfy because it won't provide an easy person to blame for why we ended up where we are today.
lil zoom · 2026-01-15 00:58 [#1954][report] Nostalgia is masturbation. Nostalgiac rhetoric is essentially identical to masturbator rhetoric. Muh faps arent hurting anybody!! Dont you want to know about my faps??? What if everything was about faps?? We should all fap together bros!! Mind poison concentrated deliberately through generations of intense psychoscientific rigor to creaTe the perfect breed of consumer retard insects.
Anonymous · 2026-01-15 13:22 [#1961][report] I mostly agree with your points, however holy shit do zoomers live in your head rent free. >t. zoomer who absolutely despises the "frutiger aero" shit, Fluent Design is just better in every way.
Anonymous · 2026-01-16 14:49 [#1982][report] >there are aesthetics trends among youngsters wow great observations being made
Anonymous · 2026-01-20 03:46 [#2079][report] zoomers won skbibidi toilet won ohio won labubu won yt shorts won millenials LSOT oldfags LOST
Anonymous · 2026-01-20 15:20 [#2110][report] this thread is the funniest shit i've seen all day. OP definitely has a point though. i've been thinking about this stuff on and off pretty regularly for a couple years now, and decided that this year will be the year i take meaningful effort to get off of the web. it's not like you had to be some sort of 31337 haxx0rz to get online 20 years ago, but you had to put a modicum of effort in to learn the basics, you know? low-effort people were filtered as a result, keeping quality of discussion and such on the net at a reasonable level. and re; decentralisation, i would posit that - when combined with an appropriate (read: non-malicious) search engine - it makes indexing sites with specialised knowledge much easier.
for example, if you wanted to learn about, i dunno, albanian basket weaving or some shit, right, you'd punch that in and get some shit from basketweaver's forums and a few autists whose special interest was basketweaving, and you'd be set. nowadays you just get funneled into fucking reddit or some other shithole. and when you go out of your way to find """""alternative""""" sites, it's, yeah, just a bunch of late zoomies early alphas fucking around larping with the most surface-level aesthetics of a given timeframe, without any deeper appreciation of the condition that led to those aesthetics, as well as others, emerging. everything is condensed into some homogenised blob. so instead of getting your basketweaving sites you get a bunch of normies bitching on reddit or, god forbid, bluesky or spacehey or shit like that, going in circles about the same surface-level shit ad infinitum, all while posturing to each other, and it's just... it's just annoying, man.
anyway, tl;dr, start using gopher and usenet again and find a BBS or two that aren't moderated by losers. much more enjoyable experience.
newfag here · 2026-01-22 13:47 [#2190][report] >>4049 >educate me! No, lurk more. Seriously, just join the cy-x xmpp chat or lurk on some boomer IRC channels. You might learn a thing or two. >you are all assholes NIGGER!
Anonymous · 2026-01-23 04:36 [#2216][report] >>4486 Woah you said the N-word? That's really crazy and edgy man I don't think that's even allowed. You millenials go to places that zoomers would never hehehe!
sizeofcat · 2026-01-23 05:01 [#2218][report] >>492 Top notch observation. A huge link dump of such zoomer retro homepages can be found on https://cy-x.net/links >Lain pictures >art gallery >a blog nobody cares about >Lain pictures >Lain Lain Lain Lain >favourite anime list, favourite movies list, favourite cyberpunk books list >Lain >links (88x31 buttons) to more Lain-themed homepages
Anonymous · 2026-01-23 05:26 [#2219][report] >>4513 because of all the extra crack and aids in their system, if you care about the environment, please be sure to put the niggers you kill in the designated dead nigger storage
It's not a generational issue, it's an IQ and culture issue. Zoomers are gay and retarded, but boomers are just as bad. 60 year old boomers are equally as addicted to their iPhone screens as the most beaten down and sublimated zoomer. What actually made older internet communities thrive is that they were naturally exclusionary. You both had to find out where these communities existed, and learn how to use the tech required to join it. Any attempt at a "revival" misses the fundamental idea of why these communities were special. They were able to effectively distill the 1% of the 1% of the world's population that you actually wanted to talk to.
clone · 2026-02-09 19:42 [#2342][report] yeah its pretty bad, but in a way i guess it shows that people are more than willing to go back to more pre web 3.0 ways of expression and algorithms that created those cultures and aesthetics, you would not belive how many people love watching little 2chan inspired OCs dance around to edm music, its really charming, i think its best to take advantage of this and try to recruit more from comment sections on obscure youtube videos that require a level of internet literacy to understand, do your part.
Anonymous · 2026-02-11 05:00 [#2367][report] Now Discord requires a face photo and/or ID. Good luck trying to educate these posers in actual computing freedom. Frutiger Aero? I was using XFCE or Fluxbox with AMSN on every OS, you nuts. If any, we didn't had an actual theme, it was pretty eclectic. KDE3 might have been on par, but Gnome 1.4 and later 2 wasn't really glass shaped, there were corporate themes like Industrial and the like and less serious ones such as Gorilla. And KDE3 itself apart from Everaldo icons came with tons of icon sets and themes, from retro to futurist to WTF I'm using. Oh, Fluxbox, Blackbox... had zillions of styles and no FVWM theme was like any other.
Anonymous · 2026-02-15 15:53 [#2425][report] The problem isn't hosting something, the problem is attracting and keeping people you'd want around. I've been hosting all kinds of stuff since the 2000s. Been founder, admin or mod for countless communities. Started a successful hosting company, sold it in the mid 2010s, used "spare" money to keep a few communities I had grown particularly fond of running post sale. Most communities died out over the years as people vanished into the Discord black hole. Nowadays the only community I actively participate in is the one I am running which has turned into an extended friend group of a dozen people active daily and ~50 that have access and come around whenever they feel like it. I still run the same game servers, voice servers, messaging, image hosting, email, DNS, so on and so forth. Everything running on my at home server rack (I am blessed with living in a country with good infrastructure so upload speed isn't an issue) or on colocated servers for stuff that benefits from 10G+ networking which is surprisingly little. It's funny because every time "the internet" goes down because some CDN or hyperscaler shat themselves again I only hear about it after the fact when catching up on news and happenings. We've tried actively recruiting in the last 10 years, we really did. Excluding the core and absolute longest lasting people, since we've all originally gotten to know each other online, we've recruited a grand total of zero (0) people through the internet since the mid 2010s. I wish I was exaggerating. Everyone else that's come along with us for the ride are people an already existing member invited after they had gotten to know them [b]in real life[/b] through a job, internship, friends, university, an amateur cave painting club, sheer happenstance, whatever. It's not like I use the internet any less than I did ten, twenty, or more (fuck me) years ago, but as far as anyone that isn't a three letter agency is concerned I have gone from a public leader of multiple communities to quite literally less than a ghost. No public profiles, no internet presence, my old usernames haven't been mentioned in forever, started to vanish from Google's search results even if anyone remembered them. Not like I don't use stuff like youtube/peertube/etc or the occasional imageboard but I have zero presence, interact with no one outside of 4chan and that has also dropped to near zero over the years because quality hasn't so much nosedived but is more approaching the speed of light as it eternally accelerating downwards into a bottomless pit. I still consider it exceptional that we've managed to build up a group as large as it has turned out to become. From engineers to nurses, ex addicts, even a cop, it's an all around exceptional community but what is even more exceptional and horrifying is even in this at the same time incredibly skewed and yet diverse sample of people we all exhibit this behavior by now. And it just wasn't like this for any of us in the 90s, 2000s or even a part of the 2010s. Now if every single person in this group, seeing the decline of public spaces, gave up their online presence over the years why would anyone that would likely fit within our community not have come to the same conclusion by themselves? The only reason I've even initially come here is because someone posted this thread on /g/ a while ago and the high effort OP captured me, less so most of the replies. I didn't expect to post anything here, much less something as relatively long as this ended up being, but the thread has been gnawing at me because I really thought about it all again. Yet every time I come to the same solemn conclusion that the internet has become such complete and utter poison that most of the people you'd want to have around you will never see on "the internet" again. They've either given up on internet communities outright or retreated into their own gate-kept communities like the one I am running.
The few of us that actually lived through the internet of the 90s, 2000s, and very early 2010s had the chance to experience the absolute peak and sudden end of an unprecedented and probably never to return technological and social golden age that due to its very nature wasn't documented and will fall victim to the passage of time as we few die off and later arrivals completely rewrite our history in their own image. Finally since I couldn't decide on one over the other I'll leave you with Shakespeare and Tennyson. >He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again. >Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. [...] Tho' much is taken, much abides, and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Anonymous · 2026-02-15 16:23 [#2429][report] They're children. Of course they're going to have trouble articulating ground truths about a mechanism with a million moving parts that they were only just barely even born into. Of course they're going to misattribute the most immediately noticeable outward-facing qualities of a thing they like as the qualities that made it liked in the first place. Of course they're going to judge the book by its cover. Humans are sensory creatures, of course memories of something that made a lasting impact on our lives is going to manifest in such things as "the way it looked", "the way it smelled", "the way it sounded". That's the thing people do, generally.
You all get irrationally angry at the pattern-noticing-and-seeking animal for noticing patterns and seeking them. How haven't you made peace with this yet, at your age? How haven't you moved on yet?
God, what an embarrassment. I have to share a planet with you people.
Anonymous · 2026-02-16 11:33 [#2443][report] >>4213 I mostly agree with you there, but I want to add that the old web had an X factor with its userbase.
The modem internet has such a diverse population that any sufficiently large platform basically requires a personalized discovery feed that takes things like your location into account.
We do have a few centralized landlords, but they have countless silos in themselves that try to separate Brazilian motorcycle enthusiasts from Australian woodworkers.
The closest I've seen to a new paradigm is mastadon and it seems okay, but not "this is the next step".
Anonymous · 2026-02-16 15:33 [#2449][report] I agree with the discord hate but man you sound like such a bitter cunt.
Anonymous · 2026-02-18 19:32 [#2494][report] As an older zoomer, all of my other zoomer friends definitely care more about the ethos of the old internet than the aesthetic of it. My best friend just started self-hosting a media server, and she's the most obsessed with the aesthetics of the old internet out of everyone I know. I think you just got unlucky interacting with younger folk.
Given the recent news about Discord requiring age-verification soon I hope other zoomers -- like the ones that you met -- finally move onto something better. I think XMPP is great, and I use it for communication with loved ones, but VoIP fucking sucks on it. VoIP also sucks on Matrix too. Discord's advantage is that it provides great service for chatting and voice calls in one platform. As much as it would be nice for younger people to use XMPP for chat and Mumble for VoIP separately, I don't think people are willing to go back to having separate applications for chat and voice.
Anonymous · 2026-02-20 09:23 [#2523][report] Haahaha, hilarious man good post OP
Anonymous · 2026-02-20 09:51 [#2525][report] The problem with this article is that its blaming the victim.
Anonymous · 2026-02-21 07:23 [#2543][report] >>10201 the problem with any Discord alternative is going to be it needs to support six platforms out of the box (windows, linux, mac, browser, ios, android) or no one will even test it out. we've seen that time and time again I mean did you know that there is an open source 1:1 reverse engineered version of Discord already and has existed for years? Wanna know why neither you nor anyone else knows about it? >no mobile clients and no planned mobile clients people can complain all they want but even muh privacy focused people will just not use your shit if it doesn't come with mobile apps day one and that is the big issue. the tech stack for a server with voice support, video, persistent chat, some file sharing and inline images is so simple a competent 10 year old with access to any 100B+ LLM model could do it. the problem is having feature parity, especially when it comes to audio processing, across desktop/web (which is the easy part) and ios and android. mobile devices are such a shitshow that you either have to give up on mobile support or accept that development is going to be exponentially more complex just by the fact that you want to support mobile devices and that complexity rises exponentially yet again when you want consistent audio processing regardless of device. I built just that within a few days, gave up when I realized that I, despite my best efforts, just do not hate smartphones enough. >you have unlimited funds and can hire at least two dedicated full time devs one each for ios and android >if you use QT you either have to suck up the $4000/dev licensing fee or can't publish on ios due to licensing cuckery, people will throw shitfits because muh QT, you'll still need to implement your own custom audio stack for both ios and android >if you use flutter for cross platform UI you accept development time becoming infinite for a single dev as you'd have to maintain at least five additional code bases on top of the server/desktop code base (iOS swift app + iOS audio stack implementation, android kotlin app + android audio stack implementation, flutter UI) >buy a premade audio stack for both mobile systems, have to suck down even higher licensing costs than QT by itself, the audio stacks suck gigantic donkey dick when it comes to features any voip client will need like AEC, NSP, etc so you will still need to modify the licensed audio stack anyway which once again means different implementations for ios and android.... >rely on pwa which means audio on desktop and browsers used on a desktop will sound great, mobile will be unusable for voice chat >go mobile first, doesn't reduce development effort for mobile but ensures desktop clients will be third rate dogshit because you will be limited by your mobile first codebase needing to work around ios and android OS audio stack limitations or you just do what I did and give up on trying to build a discord competitor because no one will use it and sorry to say but I will not waste my time and much less my money on mobile development
crispycat · 2026-02-22 09:59 [#2563][report] I agree with a lot here, especially about decentralization. Web 2.0 really fucked up everything. Thinking XMPP is malware is just insane; Discord has a literal process logger among other things in its proprietary binary!
Anonymous · 2026-02-22 22:57 [#2569][report] A while back I had a zoomer friend talk about wanting to get away from discord so I told him about irc and he accused me of trying to scam him. Apparently he looked up irc on the Microsoft store and found hexchat for $10 and asked if that was what I was talking about. So I was like wtf you can just download it for free and sent the link to their site and he thought it was super suspicious and basically decided to stick with discord after all. Anecdote aside a lot of these alternatives look uh, sussy/hacky to people that aren't super technically literate so it's an understandable response I guess. Frutiger aero and retro stylings in general are a lot more appealing though because they're seen as comfy and disarming while still being somewhat familiar.
Anonymous · 2026-02-24 04:14 [#2603][report] These modern attempts at bringing the old web back are basically proving Mark Fisher's point about us being unable to imagine futures anymore. He applied this reasoning to music because of how futuristic Jungle and other new genres sounded in 90s but we don't have anything equivalent of that now. He basically blames neoliberalism and its effects on culture but I think he's wrong, it was directly caused by technological advancement, new synthesizers and software became easily available which created sounds you couldn't hear before. Therefore, we get new genres very easily, but after that we've not had any huge paradigm changes in audio software, it's the same with computer graphics, it can only get so realistic before we hit a wall. However, you can actually apply his point to the web revival communities, we actually have more capable technology now than during the "old web", we have more capabilities, yet the best we can do is just dress up as this weird abomination of how the old web looked, which was the way it was because of technological limitations and the specific place in time, we shouldn't be recreating it.
Anonymous · 2026-02-26 14:47 [#2632][report] >>10320 I agree that we shouldn't be recreating the tech from those times. We have open source readily available libraries now that I couldn't even begin to dream of 30 years ago and it's been never been easier, more convenient or even anonymous if you want to get domains, servers even hardware. But if you don't think that it was the death of culture that caused all of this but technology progressing I really have to ask for the reasoning behind that because I just don't see it and I can't understand how you'd get to that conclusion.
P8xm · 2026-02-26 22:09 [#2637][report] > When confronted with actual alternative ideas and beliefs, the response is always the same dismissive pattern: > > Stage 1: "Why do you talk like that?" (attacking communication style instead of addressing substance) Stage 2: "Go outside and tell someone on the street" (appeal to normalcy fallacy) Stage 3: "You have a superiority complex" (projection and ad hominem) Stage 4: Mob harassment and eventual banning > > Notice the pattern: no engagement with the technical alternatives offered, just personal attacks and deflection. They're defending their corporate platforms the same way addicts defend their dealers.
Maybe if *everyone* is attacking you and deflecting the issue isn't everybody else, but your mindset and communication style.
Leave blank for default · 2026-03-06 19:34 [#2772][report] Hey, "zoomer" here. Jesus fucking Christ, is THIS what happened to *fun* on the *internet*? Out of curiosity, which generation (as if "generations" matter) do you think started Google, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), or just "Web 2.0" in general? What "generation" started this mess, to us who had been "boiled like frogs"? I'm actually not sure why Gen-Z is getting flack here for something that started well before most of us were even sapient, and was already well-done by time the oldest of us were in middle school.
As fucking if this was an entirely self created problem and us Gen-Z chuds have been, as a hivemind, entirely abandoning FOSS (that's what it's called now, by the way). Here's the secret: YOU CAN STILL DO FOSS, contrary to the belief of whoever the hell wrote this. You can even install Gentoo or something. Gen-Z is currently one of the LARGEST forces pushing a FOSS web. I'm not sure what makes OP think that everything free and good went away, other than OP apparently leaving. See: the entire internet at large. Mastodon, Bluesky, and Signal are great examples. We are currently the backbone supporting *these* ideals exactly.
So, why doesn't everyone get on IRC and XMPP right now? For the same reason OP probably used Windows back then: because there is shit that is expected to work. Despite the autistic screaming of people who hated Windows, nobody wanted to do the shit that used to be required for anything else. It's not that it was too *hard* to have figured out, just that nobody wanted it. That's why modern shit LIKE BLUESKY is so much more widely adopted than IRC, because back when IRC was kicking, everybody already had to know what the fuck was going on or your shit didn't work.
I also didn't realize that shit like geocities, myspace, or AO-fucking-L never existed and, in reality, as according to the *apparent* experience present in this article, every laughing asshole on the planet was self-hosting HTTP from the family PC. I know it's worse now, but to act as if there was NO centralized corporate internet back then is bordering on delusion. Hey actually, want something decentralized? Want to self-host? Well good, you're doing it, I know because I'm on this site. Hell, *I* self-host.
Now, let me tell you a story: I know this guy, let's call him bob, who once hosted the shittiest, least secure IM platform, probably in existence. This was 2023-2025, using PHP. The chat service had less features than early AIM and every feature it *did* have was entirely bolted on, as well as probably costing a few brain cells to use. This was the entirely legitimate way logins were stored: C:\logins\username.txt: - password (Plaintext, obviously) - sign up date (MM/DD/YYYY) - banned ([A]ccess/[R]estricted/[B]anned) - this.stored.their.ip (IPv4 only) The skids hadn't noticed the platform existed for three years, where the site ammassed about 4k users. It was reportedly nuked within about five minutes of trying. Fucking Hellen Keller could have seen that coming. Sysadmins from 1997 the world over are WEEPING, and many already knew better by then. Now, why would anyone be surprised that I don't want an account in every "decentralized" site? *This* is the actual state of the internet, no more secure or privacy-conscious than ever. And no, people don't use real password managers, and nobody will ever convince them to. Not in the 1990s and not now.
Look, I know, I get it, the centralized internet sucks monolithic donkey nuts, and you really want people to use free (as in libre) shit, I do too, and so do many of us. I actually agree with OP surrounding the amount of bullshit which occurs on the "centralized" internet, and that people SHOULD use alternatives. However, this strange generational tirade about "zoomers" (Oldest Gen-Z is about thirty years old btw, not exactly children, so assuming OP meant "actual minors") having fun with older UI styles... well I think it's horseshit. It's finger-pointing at best. Redirect all this anger into something more productive, and just let us have the shiny buttons, they're cool looking. It's not mutually exclusive to like shiny buttons -AND- like the decentralized web (you also can't stop me, even for all your wailing about ye olden days).
TL;DR: The strange feverdream OP posted here never existed. We still do free (as in Libre) open-source sites (BSky, Mastodon, Signal). We're also allowed to do whatever, you aren't our collective, massive, mom.
PS: dumbasses who have skimmed the top-level history of a subject and think they were *basically* there have always existed; it's not our problem that the people here particularly offended at this flavor of dumbass. There is also always someone willing to capitalize on any 'trend', as shown in some of (but not all of) OPs screenshots; this also isn't Gen-Z in particular's issue. It's particularly telling that OP fell for it *instead* of seeing it as the advertising it is.
PPS: Oh my god! The generation after Millennials is ALSO unwilling to learn, stupid, immature, disrespectful, impatient, AND stubborn? Jesus Christ, that's ONLY been true about the next generation since the dawn of writing!
Anonymous · 2026-03-06 20:40 [#2774][report] >>10624 Hey! How many teachers do you have in your classroom? :3
46&2 · 2026-03-07 03:13 [#2784][report] I feel sorry for the 90% Of Retards responding to this article. This Article is truly accurate of the old internet culture that is going on with people that cannot feel nostalgic for something that never experienced. Simply celebrating the intricacies of the old internet and slapping it around on places where it's so far and from. Instead there are the oldinternetwannaberetards responding or people who simply have no idea what they're talking about in terms of discord etc. It's not hard to understand XMPP IS ABLE To run on all sorts of devices. Discord has become a easy convenience because people aren't able to set up anything themselves.
exostd · 2026-03-07 06:40 [#2786][report] >>10126 man I can't be bothered to read all 7 pages of this thread, but I encourage you, mister 10126, if you ever read this, to write an article or something and put it up somewhere, or idk print a little book. As you say, there is no archaeological record of this history you're talking about so it's good to preserve even one man's biased memoir into the future.
Anonymous · 2026-03-07 06:48 [#2788][report] >>10638 I couldn't agree with you more. That was by far the most interesting reply to this thread. If only it wasn't done on simply an anonymous account or left some sort of link or contact. I guess that's the heart and soul of imageboards. People posting gems with the same cloak as everyone else yet only to vanish into the wire.
Gh0st · 2026-03-07 15:58 [#2799][report] >>390 >The response? I was muted for an entire day, but then banned shortly after. Two users were "bawling their eyes out at the keyboard" claiming it was a scam and something malicious.
This is less about them being zoomers and more about them being normies/noobs, I get the same reaction from people older than me (and I'm in my mid 30s) when proposing using anything FOSS. The average user is lazy, the average user wants convenience. The average user wasn't online 26 years ago not because of price (PC prices where crashing back then) but because it was "too hard" to setup even the most basic phone connection, and "too boring" because there was barely any video or music and few pictures. I see boomers scrolling endlessly thru short videos just like zoomers do and I can't get them to watch a 10min mini doc without them getting distracted, its insane. Recently a famous actor said directors now force him to repeat the plot of the movie every 5 minutes because viewers are not paying attention.
>Zoomers are doing the same thing with internet culture. They see the surface aesthetics of old websites - the bright colors, the GIF animations, the "quirky" layouts - and think recreating these visual elements will somehow recapture what made that era special.
Well yeah that was always a thing, like before my time there was a revival of the 50's back in the 80's when boomers who were barely in diapers back in that era then would dress in rockabilly (or whatever is called) style and play Elvis music and stuff. There was another mini revival of that in the late 00's when hipsters who were the kids of said boomers did it too, tho at that point it was really deformed and historically inaccurate almost on purpose to make it more fashionable or whatever.
>Instead of building their own photo sharing solution or joining existing decentralized alternatives, they're asking for "an app like Instagram" - meaning they want someone else to build them a centralized platform that feels like the old centralized platform.
Again they are lazy and want the ease of use of modern apps, we're talking about people who say they are scared of fax machines because those are "hard" to use.
Consider this: there are now two generations of people who have been raised with touch devices, not computers, *devices* like smartphones and tablets. They never had to use a keyboard to type, never had to actually install an app just go into an app store and select an app. Most zoomers don't have any idea of what a filesystem is, command line is esoteric alien knowledge to them.
>The macOS tweet is the cherry on top - they're worried about animation smoothness on premium Apple hardware while supposedly advocating for returning to simpler, independent web solutions.
To be fair a lot of people went nuts with OSX animations back in the day, Linux's compiz cube too felt like sci-fi stuff in those days.
>When pressed, they fall back to: "the entire point for those people IS the design language... they were never interested in anything else." This misses the point entirely. Design languages emerge from underlying technical and cultural constraints.
Just wanted to add lowpoly and PSX graphics. None of those games would be playable on the original PSX, many are too complex for even the Dreamcast or a PS2, and the controls are straight out of modern games too because zoomers would freak out if they had to play with strafe or tank controls.
Point is they want the looks not the original experience.
Anonymous · 2026-04-02 07:33 [#3249][report] >>10636 We're still doing the song and dance of pretending people mean a messenger when they say discord replacement?
Anonymous · 2026-04-02 18:59 [#3252][report] >>12311 You mean voice chat?
It isn't like you can't do peer-2-peer calls too...
mnep5 · 2026-04-17 12:31 [#3400][report] true that discord is shit and whatnot but we zoomers won
Anonymous · 2026-04-18 18:15 [#3418][report] All of it just makes me feel bad, with age verification looming on the horizon all I can think about is how it used to be an escape from reality. You would log on, say hi to your friends, none of your parents or real life acquaintances knew or had to know about what you were doing there. It wasn't their business, neither was their business online any of yours.
The most cringe thing I remember of my early teens was a friend trying to me his Deviantart account where he drew Goku and Luffy fights. I told him "Keep that shit to yourself, you wouldn't just go online, and post your real name, would you?" Even back then, he thought of this comment and said "Yeah, probably not."
Anyway, get ready for every computer to broadcast your name, face, location, age, and SSN.