Soundamus
This was more of a service than anything. It used to read the stats off your last.fm profile and tell you about new and upcoming albums by artists you listen to. This used to be the best way to find out that an artist I loved but hadn’t thought about in a while had something new on the horizon.
The Grey Lodge
Maybe around 2009 I was looking for a download of the film Wax, or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees and I accidentally came upon this tiny torrent tracker with a highly curated list of super interesting and esoteric files. I remember ebooks about the occult and weird science, I remember odd documentaries and experimental videos. Everything was poorly labeled with simply the filename (often quite evocative). I got an anthology of shorts about different psychedelics, a great short documentary called Out of Print about the days of hunting down physical media before the internet, a feature length documentary called Dirty Dali where a dude who had weird sex with Salvador Dali talks about the painter’s sex life, and a poorly shot video recording of a play called Wilhelm Reich in Hell. Never before or since have I seen such a collection of bizarre media presented in such a mysterious way.
TheStrange
Maybe this wasn’t even the actual name of this site, maybe I’m misremembering. It was a 90’s paranormal/supernatural site that I used to frequent when I was a kid. It was an encyclopedia of strange phenomena and their stories, with a particular focus on cryptozoology. The entry on the Mongolian Death Worm was my favorite – a giant worm that could electrocute people from a distance. There were a ton of websites like this on the 90’s internet. When I was young, I used to get a huge kick out of reading and half-believing their stories.
Once, when I was probably 7 or 8, I came upon a site that claimed to host real photos of alien autopsies. The first third of the page was filled with giant multicolored text warning that scrolling down and seeing the forbidden images would likely result in a visit from the FBI. I spent the next year or so convinced that an FBI agent was going to find me and I was going to get in serious trouble.
Thousands of Old Fansites
There were so many old one-off fansites on the old internet. I miss their quirky, highly divergent and often ugly layouts. I miss their idiosyncratic writing and ideas for pages. A good example of a site like this that is somehow still up is The NES Enshrined!
I just found this podcast episode about The Grey Lodge. It’s pretty interesting stuff! And I’m kind of digging the slightly paranoid but reasonable anti-copyright extremist vibe of this show, I might download more episodes.
Home of the Underdogs was a biggie for me in the time before my family got the internet. having so much freeware stuff all curated and written about was huge. i never really looked at the abandonware though
semi-related, it’s nice that autofish.net is still up
X-Entertainment
This became a blog and turned into Dinosaur Dracula, but he only partially archived the site, and doesn’t update this site nearly as frequently as the old one. Was just a nostalgia site for pretty much everything, including kids’ TV dinners, and Ninja Turtle Pudding Pies. Probably my absolute most favorite website; every article had a goofy, unique design incorporating whatever it was he was writing about. If I were a website, it would’ve been X-Entertainment.
Sumaru City/Amara Network
These were actually just forums and chat rooms from c. 2003/2004. I only fell into it because they wanted somebody to design their site; I’m probably the reason neither incarnation ever evolved past a forum and a splash screen. Basically, it was a place for people who didn’t get along too well with members of another, competing Megami Tensei forum. It turns out, we didn’t get along with them because a lot of us were just terrible assholes (granted, most of us were teenagers). Needless to say, people will only hang out with a bunch of assholes for so long before it gets tiring. A lot of good times were had, but it was pretty embarrassing and shameful in hindsight.
Also: Final Fantasy Classic (that blue site dedicated exclusively to FF1), The Ninja Gaiden Homepage, Gaming Force Audio, The GIA (edit: GIA doesn’t count, there’s still an archive, never mind)
It’s depressing that there are probably some sites I really enjoyed that have died that I don’t even recall.
Little Hits was a blogspot blog owned by a record shop owner. I discovered a lot of cool stuff like the Monochrome Set, the Wolfhounds, the Jigsaw Seen, We’ve Got a Fuzzbox (and We’re Gonna Use It), Girls At Our Best!, The Would-Be-Goods, et cetera from there. There was other stuff, but I mostly got into the C86 and other 80s English indie pop via that site. Unfortunately, he stopped in like, 2009? when somebody from a group he apparently posted got pissed (I believe, specifically, because people could make ringtones out of the MP3s).
My freshman year of college was punctuated with reading XE in the computer lab during the really long gaps between my classes.
Audiogalaxy was the hybrid web directory of bands/file sharing network that somehow decided our fake grind band was a top suggestion for fans of bathtub shitter and the avalanche. When the RIAA shut it down, we took it very personally.
abobo.com was a wonderful tribute site to the double dragon villain. The thing i miss the most is the era of these weird hyper focused sites. The blogging servicification of the Internet seems to have stamped out all the weird stuff. The dude who ran the site went on to be a successful comic artist, and I keep hoping he’ll do a local con and I can commission a sweet abobo sketch. The site had a message board where a riki kunio expert used to spout wisdom.
It was a dark day when the movie Superbad usurped the url of Superbad.com. That site felt like the http equivalent of playing LSD on the PS1. EDIT: oh shit, I guess it’s back!
click-stick.com (iirc the url…) was a shmup fansite that had some nice material up for various stgs, and was a go-to source for news surrounding the shoot’em up renaissance that took place inbetween the PS2/3/360 era… I fondly remember that time, and should see whether i still have an archive of some material that the admin shared with me (such a classy move before taking the site offline!)
there was a japanese fansite that me and a friend really like in like 2000-01, which had fanart of various sega characters (including sonic gijinkas) in a cool, semi-realistic style.
then one day the artist just deleted all the art. i did find the site on wayback machine, but without the images, which is kind of pointless.
i really miss the dissolve it was my favorite wide ranging movie site that didin’t feel too blockbuster focused or clickbaity and it really felt like it opened up my horizons
also just the era of mp3 blogs in general but especially beware of the blog
i miss comics alliance, especially the version of it at the height of it’s powers. so many comic book sites now literally talk more about the actors in the movies and tv shows more than even superhero comics let alone indie stuff
this is pointless because i don’t remember the name but there was an mp3 blog from which i discovered immense amounts of underground idm and tracker music, all of which is stuck on a dead hdd. the artist names are not available to my conscious memory, so they are kind of held hostage by failed hardware.
TheDissolve was so good it immediately attracted a commentariat which would generate hundreds of posts of deep-knowledge discussion under every topic. Now those writers are scattered to the winds and it’s such a pain to keep up on movies; standalone sites seem to subsist entirely on fandoms and otherwise these writers live in general-interest magazines.
become an emote :n64no:
