---

  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.



  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.

---

  I recently witnessed this cognitive dissonance firsthand. A group of students were panicking 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 hour. 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.

---

  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.



  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 cabal of 4-8 big corpos (FANG or >>>FAGMAN)
• 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 contradiction becomes absurd when you realize these same "old internet" enthusiasts are buying the latest iPhone every year, throwing away perfectly functional devices for slightly different colors. They'll post their retro aesthetic moodboards from a $1,200 surveillance rectangle while claiming to appreciate "simpler times."

  They're trust fund babies or financially irresponsible people cosplaying as minimalists. They have no idea how to navigate today's society, let alone recreate yesterday's internet culture.

---

  Here's what really gets me: these zoomers don't even realize that half their culture and memes came downstream from 4chan and similar communities, while YouTube, Reddit, and other platforms simply inherited them. Very rarely would you see these ones actually create something of your own, and it's why 4chan in particular was depicted as the "final boss of the internet", the "le heckin haxx0r".

  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 tools to recreate the actual old internet still exist. XMPP has been around since 1999 and runs on every platform. It's decentralized, private, and gives you complete control over your communications. IRC still works perfectly. Self-hosting is easier than ever.

  But suggesting these solutions gets you labeled as suspicious or difficult. 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 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.

---

  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'll die sooner than us anyway - too busy inhaling glittery vape clouds while scrolling through their surveillance devices to build anything lasting.

---

  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

  None of these require retro fonts or neon colors. All of them require understanding systems instead of just consuming aesthetics.

---

  Want to honor the old internet? Stop making glittery websites and start learning XMPP. Stop posting on Reddit about decentralization and actually host your own services. Stop buying new phones every year and use your current device until it breaks.

  The tools exist. The protocols work. The only thing missing is the will to actually use them instead of just aestheticizing them.

  The old internet is dead, and zoomers killed it by turning it into a fashion trend. 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?

---

TLDR:

Real internet culture was never about the aesthetics. It was about the independence. Learn the difference.

Thanks for sharing.

I have also noticed this en masse fetishization of "history" if you can call it that, and it especially bothers me when these people wander into real places that actually attempt to be what they are bastardizing - not because they don't belong here (it is a great learning opportunity and that's how I grew up) but because they never have the patience to stick around and mostly just pollute the members list. Case in point: WorlioWorlds, we have hundreds of registered accounts but barely any actual users, LibreWorlds is much the same story. Actually a large number of Worlds "regulars" really are not even regulars, and the Discord-centric communities that formed from them are full of people who have never even spoken except to chime in with irrelevant outside politics or something.

I played along with the "oldnet aesthetic" once as a joke, basically just wanted to gauge reactions to it, about five or so years ago. I had teenagers a whole four or more years my junior unironically try to preach to me about "the 80s web" (what the fuck???). These same people were all glued exclusively to social media for purely thoughtless reasons, had no real sustained interests I could identify and of course one of them later tried to "expose" me for being politically incorrect. Freedom? They could not tell you what a NeXTCube, Indigo or an Amiga were (except maybe something about SGI and Nintendo/Pixar, but that's it), why AOL saw mass adoption, where to find programming documentation, about Microsoft's hostile business history, or anything else remotely computing history related that someone actually into the subject would at least have a basic summary of. They'll subscribe to advertising network-owned VPNs and use them religiously but have never touched Tor/I2P. They couldn't sit down and finish games on a real 486, and wouldn't dare daily drive an old computer even for funsies unless it's running some rose-tinted version of Windows. They're the same as anybody else! Appearances mean nothing, let us enjoy our hobbies authentically and leave the clout chasing out of it.

These kinds of posers are not exclusive to retro computing but they can infact be found prettymuch anywhere that ranks high in social media algorithms. Furry fandom probably has it the worst due to their low barrier of entry to begin with. And I must bring up Worlds again, if you're familiar with the cult rumors then it is a perfect example of how people misrepresent what we are because they lack the interest but desperately need to fit in somewhere anyways.

I could go on of course, about how this also affects the future of software engineering jobs, and all the mess that's been made in FOSS too, and how even for basic end-user stuff nobody seems to practice simple etiquette anymore and needs their hand held, etc etc but I am getting ahead of myself.

I should state for the record, since a large part of this is about corporate control, that I do have a Discord and a Twitter account that I use casually simply because other people refuse to use anything else - I still guide people to my Jabber ID (see my forum sig) and my ActivityPub, and of course Worlio runs its own public Prosody server available to all forum members. I hold great disdain for projects and the like that centralize around Discord, particularly when valuable information is locked behind a membership to Discord or when there is no good reason to be there because a reasonably more accessible form of communication already exists on the project itself or on its website. Eyeballing Protoweb and Libreworlds here, luckily the latter seems to be moving away from Discord but only time will tell.

As rms puts it, writing for the Free Software Foundation:
Friends don't make friends use Discord!

I would just like to post an opinion about your opinion. I was born in 1964, and, at a certain time, I also set up my own web server. I frequently tend to agree that the younger generation today, maybe, hasn't learned everything yet, which I've learned. Having said that, the younger generation also includes bright people who should be able to figure things out. And I agree that 'evil forces' exist who don't want the public to think scientifically, in general.

But there is one characterization of our devolution which I think the O.P. misunderstood. There did exist computers before the PC that were not organized into folders and files. Actually, those computers, like the 'HP 2000', had folders of sorts. They just didn't happen to have subfolders. Each account on such a timesharing system had one folder, and the filenames in its folder consisted of a maximum of 6 alphanumeric characters, plus a dot, plus three more alphanumeric characters.

In general, before disk storage units were organized into subfolders with files, mainframe computers tended to organize non-volatile data into 1-dimensional tables, which had a variable number of records, which, in turn, had a fixed arrangement of fields (for any one file).

So you see, what preceded the docuverse wasn't N-dimensional. It seemed to have fewer dimensions than the docuverse does.

But then, when PCs were invented, this may well have coincided with the fear of companies - who were making a risky investment at the time - that regular users might not know what to do with 1-dimensional storage units, and so this system of subdirectories replaced that.

Even on most of today's PCs, the disk storage unit is really a 1-dimensional array of blocks, and it's the responsibility of the file system to 'reorganize' that, so to speak (using a lot of metadata), into subfolders with files. An NVMe is also similar. And the files can be organized in any way the programmer likes. Modern file systems are block-oriented and allow random access to any byte within the length of a file. Those file systems have grown quite complex to make sure that things like power outages have a low probability of permanently corrupting them.

But to get back to your point, modern PCs can store the entire database in RAM that used to require storage on disks, and high-level programming languages can use tools such as "dictionaries" to retrieve an object from a hash table according to a random key. So, from the programmer's perspective, his or her program can be made as N-dimensional as the situation requires.

Maybe this situation isn't proved when all the users want to do is store emails.

Maybe the companies that are hiring the programmers aren't putting tasks to them that are N-dimensional enough?

I'm into Linux, by the way, where corporate bigshots have less sway, and where I'd estimate there has been less enshittification.

Also, I never believed in Discord. It taught its users a false idea of what a server is. According to Discord, if you created a chat room, you've created a server. I know that's false.

Now, I don't really know what type of N-dimensional problem you'd specifically want solved. But just to make a point, I'd like to include a screenshot of an application called "Freeplane", which organizes Humanly-important information in creative ways...



This is something I can just install for free under Linux, without having to worry much that I'd be installing some sort of malware. And BTW, the screenshot is of a tutorial mind-map, and isn't a map of something I personally want to understand. It's just meant to teach people like me how to use 'Freeplane'.

If there is a category of problems which used to be solvable, but which are no longer, due to enshittification, then maybe you could point those out in a more direct way?


Dirk

Edit:

I think that I may simultaneously be trying to answer a contribution in an earlier thread from 2 years ago. That thread is here. Only, if I were to post a reply directly to a 2-year-old thread, I'd be necrobumping.

Also, if Windows users are trying to find a compatible version of Freeplane specifically, then they will run into the trap that they're not installing it from a trusted repository. Windows users generally download software 'from anywhere on the web', and since this is how Windows works, the question is equally valid of whether the user trusts me to point out a trustworthy source of the actual software. If the reader does, then the most conservative choice I can make is to lead to the project's home page, and let the reader work things out from there. But then again, I'm not suggesting that the reader absolutely needs Freeplane. I think it's another trap of paid-for software, that each software company will try to furnish the most important software on your whole computer. Which all that software just can't be...

https://docs.freeplane.org/getting-started/getting-started.html

Further Edit:

It's only after making this post that I seem to realize that, unlike the other thread, this one is focused on a problem that exists with modern software: It looks like it's doing more but really isn't. I fully acknowledge that this problem exists. But in my opinion, this problem seems tied to commercial software development in a world where the user only wants some fixed function performed, such as 'To send a message', or, 'To send a message with secure end-to-end encryption'. The software company will want indefinite financial growth despite only fulfilling this finite purpose.

At times, this can result in circus-colored UIs.

And a capitalist world only works as well as the customer is informed. Thus, it actually 'makes sense' for some companies to 'dumb down the customer.'

I'm not 100% against capitalism. I just think that in today's reality, its amount of raw power has become abusive.

My own usage pattern is to obtain my software via open-source channels - thus, the Linux computer. But in general, I'm willing to pay for networking resources that the provider needed to pay for. Hence, Worlio is being more generous than they really need to be, according to my philosophy.

One problem with trying to sell software is really that there is an initial, very costly phase in its development, after which the provider incurs virtually no further costs in distributing it. This differs from the sale of, say, 'bicycles', where the cost to the manufacturer increases, the more bicycles they try to sell.

I think that there is a starting subject to the thread, which I never gave much thought to, which would be that some companies are creating "an oldnet aesthetic", which isn't authentically oldnet, and that in doing so, they insult people who believe in the older values on which the Internet was created.

Companies or individuals can create a mockery of older computing styles when they want, and my only response would be not to install it on any of my computers. A problem of sorts which I need to contend with is that 'older GUI libraries' exist, such as Gtk2, which are being phased out. And I think that one of the main reasons why, under Linux, Gtk2 is being phased out is the fact that it never made the transition from the X-server to the Wayland compositor properly. Also, the codebase of Gtk2 hasn't been receiving any recent work. So, what the maintainers of Linux distros will do is to regard such software as 'abandonware' and gradually deprecate it.

I have never believed that the choice of GUI library makes any functional statement about what the software is capable of.

If using an old UI style is supposed to define what's "oldnet", I'm afraid I don't fall for that. I also tend to see that 'the older days of computing' represented some level of resourcefulness from its users, while a larger problem in computing today has been a takeover by consumerism, i.e., by users who never claimed to be computing experts.

A part of me wonders whether the people who created the 'frutiger' brandname were merely trying to bait an older school of computing enthusiasts or experts. I never heard of this brandname before I read this post.

And I also wonder whether it was fair of the establishment of computing experts actually to require that the whole world population use computers, even though most of the population never wanted to become experts in the field.

When it comes to the subject of proprietary platforms such as 'Zoom' and 'YouTube', I'd say they actually deliver a capability that didn't exist before them, which is for users to communicate via video feeds. And a big problem with wanting to host video feeds on one's own server is that those tend to require huge bandwidth, which small-time operators often can't afford. And then I suppose I have a certain lack of respect for users who use those video feeds just to disseminate nonsense. However, I also suspect that some of the trolling comes from people who think they're just replying to nonsense with nonsense.

And I think the problem could be very real that what an honest user is posting may not be nonsense, but that to some troll it just is. So, according to some troll, when a person like me is writing about 'deprecated GUI libraries', I could just be writing about 'frutiger software'.

Dirk

rave, I would say I owe you an apology. When I first joined the Worlio website, I had the false impression that it was a site for discussion as well as an XMPP server, but I somehow overlooked that one of the site's most important features is Worlio Worlds.

Also, I probably skimmed over the Worlio Player application, since I'm used to not being able to run many of the offered applications on Linux.

But I think that the most important point to your posting, which you had not stated explicitly, was, that Worlio Worlds is a very good example of an oldnet idea, which is 'more N-dimensional' than what most people use their computers for, and which represents the 'independent hosting of content, which isn't even dominated by any desire for profit taking'.

Dirk

my response to OP's article is that

i used to be a tumblr teen in my late teens and met a lot of my internet friends through there
i was originally into denmark and sweden because i liked countries with free healthcare, eventually i found japan and learned all about harajuku street fashion, horror manga, japanese new-wave, japanese language in general, and became an otaku what else can i say...
the theme of my tumblr became to emulate the aesthetics of (what i would later find out to be `gravure idol`-style) japanese microblogs, i pretended to know little english and try to blend in into the aesthetics of funny memes from japan basically
i abandoned tumblr around 2016 but started posting again around 2024 to get some eyeballs on my twitch

recently someone from gen Z discovered my blog,
until i read this article i was not critical of them and was super impressed that they seemed to really dug through and captured the essence of what i was going for, they were picking up in-jokes made 15 years ago and continuing the conversation like it was going on today...
it is kind of amazing because they came to me obsessed with '2011 tumblr'
now people are uncovering what we did, or what's left of it, and calling it 'internetcore'
for those who were there, it was... stupid bs.. aesthetics... it was going at the speed of our lives, seapunk came in and out of style..

back in the day when we were all teenagers we had one guy who was 31 when we were 16,17,18 who was part of our friend group, called 'the janitor'
there was nothing particularly special about him, he was just a middle-aged adult guy with a wife and kids. his big claim to fame was that he smoked w**d with the butthole surfers in the '90's. but he made the same evangelion jokes as us and we could ask him things about manga. a few of us met him at a con i think and still keep up with him.

i never imagined myself in the position of the janitor...


its amazing because this person who discovered my blog has their own interpretation of it, they made their own homage and tribute to ideas and threads of bygone days... was it ever intended for them? they don't always get it right, as growing up now they don't know about internet pre-DSL, the frustration of unbearable lag on a pentium box, etc. so there is some cargo cult reconstructive element, but since it is somebody having their own creative twist to their personal growth in the area of aesthetic curation i wouldn't label it as something inherently negative or hollow

but for them it's like... it'd be the equivalent of if i had a near-perfect record of 'the 90's' and could go back and talk to the creator of saturday morning cartoons or like interacting with a vhs tape, because all the 'content' we created back in the day, people born around that time are now coming of age enough to appreciate posts online in an aesthetic sense...

and to Mr. Dirk

the forums here are about archival for the most part, so you can reply to a 2 year old thread and it wouldn't be considered necro-posting if you have new info to add. that'd be preferred to making off-topic replies to a different thread.

(first and foremost, i would like to say im sorry if this is hard to read. English is not my first language and i mostly learned it trough school and talking online.)
now i know that this post is already a few months old, but i think it would be worth it to throw my 2 cents into this as said teenager this post is targetting.
I do agree with a lot of the statements said, ive always imagined the internet as a big bustling city, each district having its services to provide trough stores, services, just things in general
my real life isnt exactly the best thing ever and i was raied on the internet, most of whats claimed on this post ive seen rise in around i'd say.. 2020-ish?
i remember seeing old forums and posts and being amazed that people could have a platform like this. I found the websites beatifull looking and right up my alley
hell the microsoft "aero" look being glossy and clean but still having a lot of personality to it.
i dont think people are exactly fetishizing it, but more so repurposing it. other teenagers looked at the past and though "hey this is cool i wanna do something like that too!" which is why theres so many platforms
and websites existing out there currently.


one thing i learned the hard way early on is that you may be part of a comunity but shady people will be at every corner, biggest example being skeuoss. (now a infamous figure in the comunity)
though i agree on the whole "not being able to move on from bigger and shittier platforms" like discord, honestly ive always hated discord.
i can understand some features being locked behind nitro but, the program being so unoptimized it makes my entire laptop freeze for a few seconds? ok buddy.

i was unaware of so many things before research, i started looking, getting myself deeper.
until i got here, the internet is so interesting you know? i saw a lot of cool stuff trough my little escapades.

whats important is: just try to teach these people trough about it! theres a lot of clueless people like me who didnt even knew what a "XMPP" was before reading this thread and theres
people willing to experiment and try out new things too right? in a era of ai and doomscrolling and desperately clinging to likes and reposts its the best people can do to guide the younguer generation around
hell i personally want to try some of this stuff, i read a little about XMPP and it sounds interesting i will check it out, and i wouldve never found if, if it wasnt for this post!