Amen! The only things that made the early web bad by comparison were popup ads and the lack of tabbed browsing. Popup windows that didn't rely on user interaction were always a bad idea and should never have existed. But besides that, yeah, I miss those days. I miss the days when I was a kid and I could stick some HTML on a server and people would actually find it. No SEO, ads, or shameless self promotion required.

Seriously. EVERY game style that is now on the app store with ads between levels was completely free and hosted on sites like kongregate, ebaumsworld, or other flash game sites. Incremental games specifically were available in droves. It was a pretty cool time.

Let's go back to a websiiiiite!

https://homestarrunner.com/toons/backtoawebsite

With LLM's, I wonder how far away we are from "a cooking ground for people to experiment with ideas"

> Now the internet is a complete different beast. There are 10 main websites that everyone sees only, and everyone wants to monetize. All content is full of "antipatterns" to maximize monetization. It's very very sad.

This was going to happen regardless of if we had Flash or not

You can sort of get that old-internet vibe today from the I2P network.

> Younger people would never understand how amazing the internet was back in the 90s. Particularly before ads and SEO became an industry.

I don’t even think they’d value it to be honest. The culture of putting stuff out online now is to view everything as a potential revenue stream. If you can’t monetize it, why do it?