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Internet Nostalgia

I used to love all the little games on lego.com and I especially they had this monkey thing like club penguin which had a TMNT crossover and I genuinely don’t remember much about it
EDIT: I FOUND IT OT WAS CALLED MONKEY QUEST
EDIT 2: I also remember this lego Chima MMORPG that LEGO made at one point
 
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Does anyone else remember Millsberry.com? I never see anyone else talking about it.

It was an advergame ran by General Mills in the mid-2000s that I played nearly every day back in like 4th and 5th grade. What I mostly remember from the game is that my baby trans egg self would often dress my character, who I made as a boy because I was an egg back then, in girl's clothes.

Wow what a surprise I ended up trans.
 
Princess Viola said:
Does anyone else remember Millsberry.com? I never see anyone else talking about it.
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Yes! I remember this game! A lot of kids in my class played it for a bit. I ended up quitting playing it because my account was bugged and I couldn’t get more money LOL. For an advergame, I remember it being quite impressive! I was obsessed with playing it as a glorified dress up game.

I don’t really remember much else about it beyond browsing people’s houses though.
 
Millsberry? Only vaguely. Like, I know I interacted with it, but specifics are lost to the recesses of my brain.

Now, Neopets was my jam. I could go over a few tales from it, but my go to was that I had a Red Petri that I wanted to paint Starry or Eventide and make a mage in some manner. I really wanted to get a Petri Egg Wand because it's a weapon specific to Petris that fits the theme perfectly. This is the part where people start laughing, because if you check the stats of the Egg Wand on Jellyneo's In Depth Battlepedia, you'll find it's a classic example of overly rare overpriced garbage. But kids don't care about stats! (And I don't think Neopets communicated weapon quality very well.)

I also insisted on giving all of my Neopets first and last names (separated by the "space" at home, the underscore), except for a Green Ixi I adopted. No clue why.

Also, I played alot of Flash games. It's nice to see Nitrome is still around even after Flash went out, though I haven't checked in with their more recent output. (I think I only found my way there because I misspelt "Nintendo" but I can't be certain.) I have fond memories of all the multiplayer ones, and even the tricky single player ones.
 
I played Neopets, like nearly every kid did, but I never really got super into it. I'd log in and do whatever it was you did on that site with your Neopets but when I lost interest in it, well that was that.

Pretty sure they purged old unused accounts ages ago, so there's no way I could even get access to my old Neopets as an adult.
 
I was already way too skilled with the family Windows 2000 as a 6-year old. Oh well, there were Hamtaro-themed Geocities and dress up games to stare at for hours. There were these Finnish forums later that were obsessed with Fullmetal Alchemist and Silver Fang. Sadly I never could figure out how Neopets worked so I went to Habbo Hotel instead. This was a terrible choice in my life.
 
I'm pretty young compared to most of you guys but I do remember the internet back to when I was about 10 or 11 (I'm 21 now) and I remember being a part of various forums and it's crazy to see how different I was at the time. The old me would probably appreciate the new me because I've grown a lot since then and have gained a nice amount of confidence. c: I also remember using a silly chat program called Skype to talk to my friends and tbh I miss those days. I also remember youtube looking much different back then and having waaaay fewer ads!
 
This is more of a general Internet nostalgia thing rather than nostalgia over any specific websites, but I just miss the old Internet in general.

I miss the days before everything online became so goddamn sanitized, corporatized, and homogenized into just a handful of big sites for the vast majority of people.

I know there are exceptions to this (this place being an example of one), but I think of the days when forums were the dominant form of fandom discussion online. You would get a real sense of community and culture that you just don't get nowadays where most fandom interactions are just on social media like Twitter or Tumblr (or even Reddit and Discord and do NOT get me started on websites shutting down their forums in replacement for Discord servers. DISCORD. IS. NOT. A. REPLACEMENT. FOR. A. FORUM.) Like I'm active on a few subreddits for things I'm a fan of and I'll participate in discussions, but there's just no real community, y'know? Like I don't actually know any of the other users there.

Compare that to a forum like this one where that community does exist because while this is a forum for Pokémon fans, you have all these subforums for talking about stuff other than Pokémon so we actually get to know each other more than if all we could do was talk about Pokémon.

I just miss the days when the Internet was actually fun and not shit like it has been for years, y'know?
 
Princess Viola said:
This is more of a general Internet nostalgia thing rather than nostalgia over any specific websites, but I just miss the old Internet in general.

I miss the days before everything online became so goddamn sanitized, corporatized, and homogenized into just a handful of big sites for the vast majority of people.

I know there are exceptions to this (this place being an example of one), but I think of the days when forums were the dominant form of fandom discussion online. You would get a real sense of community and culture that you just don't get nowadays where most fandom interactions are just on social media like Twitter or Tumblr (or even Reddit and Discord and do NOT get me started on websites shutting down their forums in replacement for Discord servers. DISCORD. IS. NOT. A. REPLACEMENT. FOR. A. FORUM.) Like I'm active on a few subreddits for things I'm a fan of and I'll participate in discussions, but there's just no real community, y'know? Like I don't actually know any of the other users there.

Compare that to a forum like this one where that community does exist because while this is a forum for Pokémon fans, you have all these subforums for talking about stuff other than Pokémon so we actually get to know each other more than if all we could do was talk about Pokémon.

I just miss the days when the Internet was actually fun and not shit like it has been for years, y'know?
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I know I vented about this in the venting thread but my gripe is pretty much similar. The internet has been transformed. Every website asking for a phone number to authenticate accounts is ridiculous. It's nothing less than an invasion of privacy because authenticator apps exist yet these big tech platforms insist on users providing phone numbers.

I have quit social media since last year yet my coworker asked for help with Facebook. No problem right? Except Facebook makes phone numbers the default for making accounts instead of emails. I recently learned that Discord does the same thing now.

The fact they try to paint it as a way to combat fake news or for user safety is disingenuous. Will giving corporations phone numbers stop cyber bullying? This forum does more to stop abuse in its tracks than big tech. I reiterate my earlier point: this is because there are alternatives to authenticate without phone numbers. The internet feels restricted now. Organic communities no longer form. It is very disheartening.

I once ran a fairly large facebook page and Meta kept harassing me for my phone number because apparently authenticator apps stopped being enough sometime in 2022. The fact that they were so hell bent of uncovering my identity contributed to me deciding to fold that page.
 
Princess Viola said:
This is more of a general Internet nostalgia thing rather than nostalgia over any specific websites, but I just miss the old Internet in general.

I miss the days before everything online became so goddamn sanitized, corporatized, and homogenized into just a handful of big sites for the vast majority of people.
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I really miss the time when youtube didn't shadowban comments.
 
c la fet said:
I really miss the time when youtube didn't shadowban comments.
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This is actually the first I’m hearing of this :o Could you give me the rundown on why this is happening to certain comments?

Princess Viola said:
I miss the days before everything online became so goddamn sanitized, corporatized, and homogenized into just a handful of big sites for the vast majority of people.
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Yeah, I equally kinda loathe ‘Internet Pangea’ for lack of better word (you know what I mean though). On one hand it has made it easier to meet likeminded individuals and friends, but part of me just doesn’t like how ‘connected’ we’ve all become, I’m a private person and so it feels a little spooky knowing my digital footprint is so easily accessible in today’s age, just feels invasive. (Serial Experiments Lain feelings, anyone?)

That said, I know the age before the internet was homogenized was not a peaceful one either, as smaller and more secluded spaces allowed more bad actors, but, pros ‘n cons to everything really.
 
Blanc said:
This is actually the first I’m hearing of this :eek: Could you give me the rundown on why this is happening to certain comments?
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It's a mystery honestly.
There are two types of shadowban :
The first one is when someone posts a comment and can see it but nobody else can.
And the second one, that I discovered yesterday, is when someone posts a comment/a comment reply and it won't appear unless you sort the comments from newest to oldest.

If certain words are used in a comment (e.g. "dumbass" or "censorship"), there's a high chance it might get shadowbanned. If the user tries to modify the comment, they might receive a message (a warning) saying the comment is inappropriate and telling them to change it. That's really the only way to know about the issue but the thing is that it doesn't even work.
After getting modified, the comment can stay hidden.
Some comments can get hidden even when they don't include any "sensitive" words and don't cause their poster to receive a warning, so I'm starting to think Youtube is targetting certain channels more than others.
Another thing I noticed is that the shadowban affects older comments. Happened to me. My comment received likes which meant some people had seen it, but now it's completely invisible.

Hateful comments are everywhere on this platform and yet completely normal comments get deleted because of this automatic censorship. What a drag.

Here's a video I found about the problem
 
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Imagine if this was happening on something that wasn't already a complete waste of time like YouTube comments though.

(I have an extension that hides YouTube comments lol)
 
I'm not even that old (24) but I also feel a lot of Internet nostalgia moments these days. One of the reasons I came back to Bulbagarden Forums is because I missed how often I used Internet forums when I was younger. Even if I didn't know everyone personally, I still felt like I was part of a community and it was just nice seeing familiar names just having fun together.

The Internet changed for the worse when corporations started taking over and people realized anyone can make money from doing anything on the Internet. Now it's filled with ads, promotions, Twitter blue checkmark people posting rage bait just so they can get money from the engagement... it's a mess. Not to mention, incredibly oversaturated and way too populated. The Internet no longer feels like a safe space I can come home to after a stressful day at school/work. It just feels like an extension of the real world rather than a "third space".

I miss when the Internet was mostly just "weird" people just being themselves. Kids and young adults just expressing themselves freely and finding their niche communities. Companies not caring so much about monetizing off of our Internet activity and data. Most "normies" not even knowing what YouTube is or what it means to be a "YouTuber". So much has changed so quickly.
 
I grew up in a pretty helicopter parent household, so my history with the Internet til the mid 2010s was limited

Webkinz I spent a lot of time on. The amount of individual plushies I had was for sure I'm the 20+ range.

Disney.com my family frequented a lot. Lots of flash games there and used to have a create section where you could make drawings and comics and stuff.

Due to potential concerns from my parents, I never really frequented YouTube (didn't start going there on my own til like 2015) or social media. For example, Nintendo.com. Bulbapedia (my connection runs deep) Smashwiki and the Smash website during the SSB4 days, was like the only I areas I frequented to get the latest news of games and stuff. I'll never forget the day they announced Pac-Man for smash 4 and I only found out due to leaving the site on overnight a d refreshing the page to see Pac-Man added lol.
 
most of my early web mems r from the early 2010s buuut still wanting 2 ramble anywayz ><
i used 2 spend SO much time on deviantart playing flash games from liek 2012-15... mostly mlp ones but some pokemon and sonic stuff too >< the dressup ones r the most prominent but there were also a bunch of other ones liek platformers... also used 2 spend a bunch of time on friv that place had liek a ton of flash games. i think i heard abt it from my cousins? but idk 4 sure. i spent SO much time playing ultimate flash sonic i was OBSESSED with that game.
when it comes 2 youtube i used 2 watch liek stupid amvs... like those dumb videos people would make in windows movie maker lol. ALSO ALSO those liek anime and cartoon eps that were split into tons and tons of pieces...also vocaloid. a lot of vocaloid. those eevee story of evil vids shaped me as a person i think .OH AND NIGHTCORE i luv nightcore still...<33 i spent some time on newgrounds too mostly 4 flash games liek i mentioned with deviantart be4.
 
I browsed quite a bit of fansites when I was a kid, though back then I didn't know much of internet etiquette and terminology. I was active on a forum based on the show Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go, though it closed down some time ago since Invisionfree shutdown. I was also fairly active on Gaia Online, though not as much anymore.
 
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