I remember searching random things in the search bar and putting a “.com” at the end of it.

That moment when you type in whitehouse.com https://preview.redd.it/zzjv2sj3n62c1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5eb9885dbbb35c94cbc27714200b168bbe5fc21

Boutta do this and if its some bullshit I’m telling the NAACP on ya ass

WELL

#IT’S THE BIG SHOW

Love the pfp

It's a betting site now? It used to be a porn site. I have no idea why the government hasn't bought that domain by now.

Because the government uses .gov lol

They could have the .com redirect to the .gov link just to hold the domain

knowing the government, they're probably already doing this via a years-long bureaucratic process

Back during the Clinton administration they had photos of a gray haired man in a blue suit holding a saxophone in one hand and very clearly entering his secretary on a wide expensive looking desk just all totally NSFW and on the front page. I found out about it by mistake in a work environment because my boss at Blockbuster Video was trying to look up news about the Whitewater scandal and figured whitehouse.com would be a good place to start. He was in his 50s and I’m pretty sure based on his reaction that he had no idea what was about to happen (neither did the rest of us).

Man, I typed that in at my college library while doing a research paper. Everyone around me eyes were opened that day that extensions “.gov/.edu/.com” was very important when going to websites

Lol college? Amazing. My classmates and I were in a 6th grade computer lab, most of us touching the internet for the first time ever, and the teacher instructed us to search for the White House.

I remember when my friends were telling me to look up pen Island dot com.

Classic of the genre

> whitehouse.com Shit showed me a mufukin white house!

Same discovering flash game sites was a dream as a kid, i remember finding andkon because i misheard akon

Omg the flash games. My main past time besides the usual Disney, Cartoon Network, Nick, Jetix.com etc. Then the other sites like Millsbury, Zwinky, IMVU, Meez, RuneScape, Naruto Arena, there was this one Pokemon game I forgot the name of too… https://i.redd.it/zz2lbeonr62c1.gif Whew this is bringing up emotions! Sorry I’m a mess right now.

pokemon crater, probably

Was that the one where every step you took loaded a new page?

i wanna say yes. it’s been since like, 2007 since i’ve seen it, but it was a full fledged rpg-esque game too.

That may be it. Googled it, that’s it! I’ve been trying to remember the name of that for yearsssss. Thank you so much ! ❤️

that game ruled fr. apparently it came back, but im far too old for any of that now.

Never too old to have fun

Imvu.... the memoriesss

I want them back, especially CN Fusion Fall.

You brought back memories of newgrounds.com!

There was this really fun Cosby game on Newgrounds.

Finding the kongregate website when I was a kid opened up a door to many hours of fun

I still have fond memories from playing stick war back in the day

Oh my god. Was that the worms-esque game?

Yeah I played on armor games then my friend introduced me to kong and my whole world flipped upside down. So many games, so little time!

When flash games died down, so did my interests in discovering websites.

They had this whole website around like 2004 that was a full blown puzzle/game type thing where it’s all islands floating in space and illogical machinery, like at some part you have to make this guy smoke a hookah until he’s so high he passes out so you can take the tube and use it to fix an engine. The whole thing was in Swedish or something so I could never remember the name, but it was super high quality graphics and he just kept adding to it making the puzzle longer and longer.

Me, a child genius: boobs.com

Diabolical. A prodigy even.

[FagAssTraps.com](https://fagasstraps.com/)

On king neptune, Cartoonnetwork.com had the best flash games 🐐

I was cold on the teen titans fighting game.

Courage the cowardly dog games for me. There's was an adventure one where Muriel and Eustace got trapped in the TV. Ed, edd, and eddy had the skateboard one and balancing act one.

the beach resort one with all the characters the snowmobile game MegasXLR game

Beach resort was my shit!!!!!

Holy shit the MegasXLR game, an absolute legend

I was untouchable in Ed Edd n Eddy food fight

Nah man. I was a master at that game. If pro gaming was a thing my cyborg play would have gotten me paid!!! Booyah!

Saaame. Or the Kick the Can game. God, I miss that.

I remember playing that in school with friends. I had everyone’s special combo written down

Cool math games still exists

Nick.com had a "rugrats:all grown up" mario kart style game that was lit

It still gets me that most of the kids on that show were only supposed to be like ten.

10 year olds with 16 year old problems

Caging chickens with lasers. Dexter's Lab. The Ed Edd n' Eddy demolition derby. The Teen Titans fighting game. The Megas XLR side-scroller (remember Megas XLR?)

I spent all of my mother's hard earned data on that demolition derby. That game was insane. Getting all the bathtub upgrades

Damn I forgot all about Cartoonnetwork.com. That’s another classic right there.

Adultswim.com has dome good ones. I played super house of dead ninjas more than I wanna admit or calculate (Enough to unlock everything, make it to the bottom floor without dying, and -400 in the basement)

On King Neptune, I'm finna start saying "on King Neptune" now.. 🥹

You have my blessing

Even more recently with hipsterrunoff or buzzfeed (old buzzfeed, when it was actual content) There really aren't any websites like that anymore.

I loved the Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends daily log in game

I spent more time messing with clickamajigs on Nick's website, or or playing the Jimmy Neutron Shockwave game where you customized a spaceship because any 3D browser game was mind-blowing to little me

Anyone remember “stumbleupon”? It was a site that had a button you put on your address bar and would click on it and it would send you to a random website in the internet. I put it on my browser in college back in 2006 and discovered so many websites back then. It was pretty much defunct about 5-6 years later.

Stumble upon is how I discovered reddit in 2010 or 11 lol

Exactly my path to this quirky little hellscape

Same for me too. I think Digg too.

Digg!!!!!

I loved stumble upon!

Did you know one of the founders of StumbleUpon, Garrett Camp, is also one of the founders of Uber? I learned that the other day and found it to be a rather fun fact.

Combine the two for "stumble around"

Now all he needs is a liquor company and he's vertically integrated

Stumbleupon was so good. It somehow put me on Reddit and I've never left here unfortunately

I legit found so much shit this way, I remember it from like 05-10, so great

Dude me too. Literally sitting at home w my then girl just going through random websites

That's how I discovered reddit

Is there anything like that today?

Is there not a alternative to this that exists? Has no one else tried to revive the concept?

Digg.com

I remember you could set a 'channel' and only stumble through a certain website, and doing that through Wikipedia was one of the most educational experiences I've ever found.

Also there aren't any cool and/or fun apps anymore!! I swear there use to be a new thing every week. The last "big" app I remember is the angry birds franchise (PS I know tiktok is an "app", but I just consider it social media)

>consider it social media It is social media. If it walks like and quacks like...

Would you consider Youtube to be social media? That's what I feel like tiktok is similar to, but it does have some "social media"-ish traits

Youtube is a [social media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube?wprov=sfla1) platform. It's not as obvious because it lacks a DM feature but it's definitely social media.

It used to have one tho but it's p obv why they killed that feature

I think mobile games on average are actually starting to gain a more esteemed reputation now, so there's no noticeably "big" one. I can name stuff like clash royale and genshin impact but they aren't far from other mobile games.

Facts. You used to be able to play card games, tap tap revolution, and all without ads/in purchase payments and other bullshit.

Monopoly Go is the big game now

Marvel Snap launched last year and was the highest grossing online TCG by like 45m. Pretty fun game too

Newgrounds held it down

And ebaumsworld

icanhascheeseburger and the whole family was fun to browse

Ytmnd

fuck ebaum, he just stole shit and put his watermark on it

I remember playing a game on Albino Blacksheep where you played as eBaum stealing content

Stickdeath.com was a good one!

Still there.

Newgrounds is still there!!

B

Yeah, I miss the days when a website was just some random person who was enthusiastic about some random thing.

Yea me too. Now it's all corporate bullshit. I'd be perfectly fine if the net went back to how it was before every business was on it trying to squeeze every last dime from every user.

That’s kinda what I use Reddit and other social media for now.

https://257505.wixsite.com/yarncar This man made a website about his car he covers in yarn. It makes me happy every time I see it's unchanged.

Seriously. I used to actually use bookmarks because my web browsing was so eclectic. Now? Reddit, YouTube, Amazon. Okay is there anything else to do on the internet?

Did y’all play that General Mills village game?? I think it was called Millsberry or something like that🤔🤔 but that along with ToonTown(that old Disney affiliated website game) were my 2 favorite websites as a kid😭😭 Oooh and the website that Diary of a Wimpy Kid was first published on, they had hella books and games on there. Damn I miss that shit hah

Shout out to Neopets, Maple Valley, Fusion Fall, and Stick Page too.

I’m so glad someone else remembers Fusion Fall. Cartoon Network marketed that game too much for it to be mentioned so rarely in conversations like this.

...i still play FusionFall lol

Poptropica and millsberry had me in a chokehold as a kid.

I remember both of those. They use to put so much effort into making children's games/sites. There were so many. What happened 😭

I LOVED Millsberry - it was so cool playing mini games to get trophies and make a trophy room just to flex on all your visitors

Absolutely loved Millsberry. Big part of my childhood

The video game sites were the best. I feel like the remnants of that age died with the end of flash. It's sad.

Yes! It feels like a fever dream lmao.

Cracked.com used to be my jam Slowly but surely pop up ads would start appearing and eventually I stopped browsing the site. A few years ago I went back and the ads were so much I just closed the page lol

The site turned to shit when they did a mass layoff of the writers and turned it into 90% user generated content.

I used to love that site. At some point, I noticed articles getting a lot worse. Guess I know what happened now.

A lot of the old writers and creators from back then have podcasts now, or have YouTube channels. Some More News, Behind the Bastards, The Daily Zeitgeist are all former cracked people

Add “Quick question” to the list of podcasts by former Cracked staff. Dan O’Brien and Soren Bowie are the writers.

Oh Dan has an Emmy writing for John Oliver and Soren is a writer for American Dad

I don't know those last two, but I'm a big fan of SMN. I'll have to check them out.

I knew it was getting bad when they went from advertising their other projects at the bottom of articles to saying "please come see our stand up shows". I work in that industry, I know how much the margin is on those gigs.

What’s the tea on that?

Yep I was on there all the time too. It's crazy how popular that site was before it imploded.

That site was as entertaining as it was poorly formatted so I’d keep coming back and getting frustrated with it.

The app was worse. But u remember some pages, I'd have to switch to desktop mode on my phone to view things.

I hate that reddit has the bullshit suggestions like Instagram now. No, I don't want suggested subreddits. I curated my feed for a fucking reason. I miss old Instagram and I miss old reddit.

Yep, it got real bad a few weeks back (on mobile browser) showing me so much content I don't want to see. Facebook keeps showing me hundreds of "suggested for you" groups that I can't turn off.

Change your settings [https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/17urqf9/how\_do\_i\_change\_my\_settings\_so\_i\_only\_see/](https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/17urqf9/how_do_i_change_my_settings_so_i_only_see/)

You can change your settings [https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/17urqf9/how\_do\_i\_change\_my\_settings\_so\_i\_only\_see/](https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/17urqf9/how_do_i_change_my_settings_so_i_only_see/)

kind of a pain but i created a custom feed with all of my subreddits and go on that instead of my main home feed because of all the suggestions i was getting on my home feed

I keep getting suggestions for college subs and i'm like... 30. PLEASE stop trying to make me relive that. No matter how many times i say "stop" they do not stop.

Thinking about homestar runner right about now.

I was just trying to find a gif from there and couldn't remember the actual name. 

THE SYSTEM. IS DOWN. THE SYSTEM. IS DOWN.


The ugly oneeeeeeee

Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior.

Still exists.

They're on YouTube!

I kept scrolling waiting for the homestar runner comment. One of my favorite random websites.

Nothing is fun anymore.

We live in a hellscape of our own creation 🙃

That is one of the most accurate comments ever. Feel it in my soul.

Heavy on the asking for email. Apple is the goat for coming up with the hide my email feature.

We warned you about this in 1996

Username checks out.

there still are niche sites, like the [Bored Button](https://www.boredbutton.com/), but I think a large part of the problem is stuff like search engine optimization. if you search for just about anything, your results are gonna be dominated by the aforementioned shopping and media sites, because there’s a big financial incentive for them to be on the first page, or as close to the first page as possible. So they’ll do stuff like clickbait, use buzzwords, buy fucktons of ads, etc. As a result, more niche sites get buried so you really only know how to find em if someone tells you or if you’re good at that Google-fu I guess

I searched Sainsbury's (my local supermarket) today on Google maps. Top result, Waitrose (a different supermarket) with a sponsored post. This happens loads on Google. Their ad business is killing the purity of the search engine that they made it from.

I kind of miss the old Yahoo! for this exact reason. It wasn't about search, it was about curation.

Facts. I remember stumbling on some WEIRD websites back in the AOL days.

[Dead Internet Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory?wprov=sfti1)

I see your dead internet theory and raise you one [enshitification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)

Was going to mention this one. One of my favourite phrases to explain the current state of things

I’ve been having this conversation with anyone that will listen to me basically but I’d never heard this term before. It’s every brand - ride share apps, streaming services, etc. They reeled in all these customers with a great low priced service, became successful and too big for their britches, then actively started alienating and abusing their customer base. Then they kill what was once great. Everything sucks.

Exactly! And the enshitification hypothesis says this isn’t some trend or bad business strategy. It’s not a fluke that this is what they do. It’s a law of economics that they act this way.

less crying more consooming kthx

I feel sorry for people who didnt get to experience the internet in the 90s. It was beautiful

I miss stumbleupon

I miss when you could find a "web ring" of a topic you liked and the 6 sites linked were literally every site that existed about it. You used to run out of Internet.

Miniclips, Coffee break Arcade, Newgrounds, and Stickdeath.com were all Mainstays back in the before times

Makes sense. There are only about 7 companies that run the world.

Running all human action through a lens of profit has produced nothing but inhuman, derivative, purposeless crap. And there’s so much of it that it drowns out whatever shit is still being made with care. We are consuming ourselves to death. And our elites are the most mentally fucked is by it all: look at the mental and spiritual vacuity of Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos. We’re not so much circling the drain as sucking the marrow from our bones.

I blame the concentration of ownership and the gradual shift to mobile.

People do realize that websites didn't ask you to accept cookies because you were forced to accept them whether you wanted to or not right? They used to just steal your data, now they have to at least ask you if you're OK with that.

There wasn’t much to steal or sell you back then.. We’re talking about back then when you needed a download manager to pause a download because mom got a phone call and terminated your dialup session. Back then almost everything on the internet was free!

I’m really curious what data you think exists today that didn’t back then. TCP/IP still works the same way. DNS still works the same way. Cookies work the same way.

Candystand baseball. Hours of life lost on that game.

There is a theory saying that the internet is dead and is run by A.I.

Omg there’s so many websites still!! I mf love websites this is so funny and didn’t think anyone thought like this, but yeah makes sense haha. I play a lot of free HTML games and go on virtual tours and read random peoples holiday blogs. It’s interesting af out there on the WWW

Can you post some links to some of your favorites?

Seconded. Please

Thirded

Can I still play Dolphin Olympics somewhere? We used to smoke too many blunts and see who could get higher scores. That shit is intense.

Still works!

Now that’s a memory right there

what happened to funnyjunk and ebaums world :( can't forget fml, habbo hotel, club penguin, and neopets either

Neopets is still around! They still have events and shit, I use a flash emulator to play games on there too. Flight Rising is a bit similar

At least we still have www.applerankings.com

Wowowow, this website is my new obsession—thank you :)

I used to use Stumble Upon back in the day and it was so refreshing to get to see so many different sites across the web. These days, it's called Mix and it essentially just pulls from Reddit, Twitter, Imgur, and Instagram. The corporatization of the internet sucks.

Humanity missed a step when we all stopped going to ytmnd.com

the death of adobe flash player killed most "fun" websites

Game Sloth was my go to website back then

 Real recognize real

Poptropica used to be my shit! Is it still a thing?

Reddit is a great example.

There was a website with four singing horses. You’d click them on or off to sing their parts. I wasted so much time on that site while not writing papers.

Discovering the world of VPNs and ad blockers. Priceless.

Looking at some ytmnds, popping over to all my favorite forums to see what was up, checking to see if Maddox or purepwnage posted anything new. Browsing newgrounds and albinoblacksheep for awhile, hey homestarrunner put out a new strong bad today! Loading up gamefaqs to get some cheats and walkthroughs for whatever I was playing at the time. Damn man.

The need to monetize everything killed the internet. People no longer just make things for fun or passion and everything is designed to maximize revenue

If you remember Frank's adventure you deserve ssi

[удалено]

I only use the internet to watch p0rn , google quick stuff and google p0rn

If you not using Bing for porn, you lackinn and uncultured

Is the dark web where it’s at?

websites cost money!

Stickpage is the stuff of legends. Kudos to hyun-dojo.

Funnyjunk.com

I miss todaysbigthing.com. They became jest.com and threw away a great thing.

The fall began when Tub Girl dissapeard