The recent spike in traffic to this site (because of DM of the Rings) reminded me of this:
On May 19 2003, both FARK and Slashdot linked to my humorous “History of the Internet” bit. The original site is long gone and replaced by a spam portal, but I do have the thing archived here. Now that was a day of heavy traffic. I give full credit to Hosting Matters, though. Despite the simultaneous FARKing and Slashdotting, the site never went down.
The History of the Internet hasn’t aged well, humor-wise. The jokes about X10 and Instapundit don’t really work. When I wrote it, Instapundit was still a huge monolith of the blogging world (not that the site has gotten smaller, it’s just that everything else has gotten bigger) and X10 is no longer an instantly recognizable name. I bet there are a lot of people reading this who’ve forgotten all about their sleazy, ubiquitous ads.
Still, that was a fun couple of minutes of fame. Everyone gets their 15 minutes I suppose, but I seem to be getting mine in lots of little 2-minute allotments.
Wolfenstein II
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
Object-Oriented Debate
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
The X10! That brings back memories. I remember joking that the camera could ONLY take pictures of houses and half naked women.
I still remember the days when floppies were still used and I got an AOL floppy in the mail every other day. They definitely saved me from ever having to buy a single floppy disk.
I don’t know, I thought it worked fine. I may barely remember X10, and not remember Instapundit at all, but the jokes are general enough that they still amuse.
Plus, the dig at Bill Gates was brilliant.
That was you? I’ve ben laughing at that for YEARS. Don’t worry, it has aged QUITE well, actually (I STILL GET AOL CDS – DIEDIEDIEDIE!!!!).
And yes, the Gates comment was probably the single best part, which is saying quite a lot.
Sure, the Instapundit thing aged poorly, but the rest is pure comedy gold. Well done!
I think the humor has aged just fine! Thanks for the Zombo.com link, BTW — that was cute enough, and I liked the voice enough, that I sat through till it looped. :-)
I think the humor holds up just fine for about 90% of the entries. Also, according to your timeline, I started blogging about 1 year before it was invented. I must be pretty innovative:P
I love it! I remember fondly (or not so fondly) nearly every milestone on there. And bonus points for identifying the only successful dotcom in history.
So are you gonna update it for the developments of the past few years?
stephen: If I think of anything funny. :)
I remember a game where one had to write new fortune-cookie fortunes, and someone suggested
X10 – Tiny Wireless Digital Camera!
Sir, if you would just tell me where you bought that sense of humor, I’d like to get one for Xmas. The best I can do are lame otakusphere jokes.
I think your whole lemon portal is down! :( How am I going to look at this history of the internet?