Yah - there was a "collective social moment" that was how people came together around exciting new (at the times) forms. That's a kind of irreplaceable moment that is always happening for some community somewhere, but it never lasts forever and it always moves around with the times.
I know what you mean and I am also nostalgic about it - but my life has also changed and I suspect that my nostalgia for times gone by involves nostolgia for that moment in my life. Even if there was the same energy around the places I hung out in the late-90s and early-2000s, I would not be there as much or with the same aims.
> you link to Fandom/Wikia as a community hub.
Oh man, I was not intending to link to them as a community hub. It was the first source I found that indexed some current Hotline trackers and clients. But I think the Fandom treatment of communities is informative of how the times have changed.
I think, 20 years ago, this information would have been stored on a server maintained with the sweat and love of a single individual. Sometimes real collectives existed, but I found them to be rare. Often, if that person got distracted, or found new interests, we could lose a useful source (and for people in the community enough - a friend). Now there are commercial entities that will "preserve" that information while cutting the community out entirely. Like you I am not sure that is "better" - but it did allow me to find a list of Hotline clients in ~10 minutes of searching, and I suspect the "real" Hotline community is still on hotline as it was before.
So...I do think it depends on where you see the old internet. People do different things as passion projects now. I have found that I can go back and find many of the things I see other people mourn as lost, and I am sorry to hear that you have not had the same experience.
Writing my first post made me go find this - it's a web player that collects thousands of keygen MIDIs: https://keygenmusic.tk/# (using the hard work of the good people at http://www.keygenmusic.net/?lang=en - donate if you like the music!)
I know what you mean and I am also nostalgic about it - but my life has also changed and I suspect that my nostalgia for times gone by involves nostolgia for that moment in my life. Even if there was the same energy around the places I hung out in the late-90s and early-2000s, I would not be there as much or with the same aims.
> you link to Fandom/Wikia as a community hub.
Oh man, I was not intending to link to them as a community hub. It was the first source I found that indexed some current Hotline trackers and clients. But I think the Fandom treatment of communities is informative of how the times have changed.
I think, 20 years ago, this information would have been stored on a server maintained with the sweat and love of a single individual. Sometimes real collectives existed, but I found them to be rare. Often, if that person got distracted, or found new interests, we could lose a useful source (and for people in the community enough - a friend). Now there are commercial entities that will "preserve" that information while cutting the community out entirely. Like you I am not sure that is "better" - but it did allow me to find a list of Hotline clients in ~10 minutes of searching, and I suspect the "real" Hotline community is still on hotline as it was before.
So...I do think it depends on where you see the old internet. People do different things as passion projects now. I have found that I can go back and find many of the things I see other people mourn as lost, and I am sorry to hear that you have not had the same experience.
Writing my first post made me go find this - it's a web player that collects thousands of keygen MIDIs: https://keygenmusic.tk/# (using the hard work of the good people at http://www.keygenmusic.net/?lang=en - donate if you like the music!)