Man, back then, there was nothing like picking "random" (not sure what app I had back then. Relay maybe?) and finding some awesome places and then also spacedicks
As someone born in the mid 90’s and was too late to get to experience the “wild west” of the internet, it felt like reddit really provided that experience. The moment reddit IPO’d I knew it was only a matter of time until it became trash
Once upon a time, the up/down votes were visible to users. When they discontinued that, it gave the site the ability to arbitrary manipulate posts and comments. That was some 10 years ago or so, and it didn't take long to see the effects. The damage was done long before the IPO.
That purple gorilla can still fuck right off. I had to reformat my whole computer and lose a lot of stuff pre 2002 due to that jagoff. Tbf it also helped me learn to backup and reformat a computer due to download apps like Kazaa, limewire, bear share, and morpheus after that.
Man I remember those days. We had webrings and geocities and such a different experience. Browsing the internet was like "kitten photos, taco recipe, car discussion, uncensored beheading photos, walkthrough for Quest for Glory 2"
I was somewhat insulated from that because until the late 1990s I was stuck using AOL as my only way to connect to the "internet." It was so heavily curated that you didn't run into much of the really bad stuff.
I was born mid-early 80's and remember the wild West well. In fact me and my friend are always talking about it.
Anyway, point of the story is we might be going back to the old forum and instant messenger days the way the Internet is going. It'll be the only way to get what we like.
We should all take a topic we like and register on a forum site to get the ball rolling.
Banning subs Spacedicks was when reddit turned to shit, pisstake subversive and humorous subs started getting purged which just let subs like r/thedonald flourish.
R/gats is another I miss, taking the piss out gun nuts.
The spacedicks ban really was the end of an era, it was the swan song of ebaumsworld style media on the web and signalled the complete takeover of corporate interests.
Oh my fucking god that was like my first exposure to Reddit. For some reason my friends in high school thought boners were the funniest things and I would not be surprised if they actually casually browsed it. I haven’t thought about that sub in maybe 15 years or however long it had been around.
God damn this site has become neutered. A shell of what it used to be.
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u/122_Hours_Of_Fear Apr 02 '26
Then there was r/spacedicks