Wanted to ask you about this article, how do you remember the early days of the internet (I was sadly too young at that time). Do you wish it back? And do you think it can ever be like that again? I would be very interested
I miss written tutorials. I hate how every tutorial is a YouTube now. I don’t want to watch 15 minutes and forget to pay attention for the second that has the detail that I am missing or it just doesn’t show. Even short tutorials are 3 minutes when it could have been a ten second read. I want to skim a page and go directly to the point. Has writing really become that hard to do?
Video title: “How to unlock the demon door on the fourth level of Demon Smasher Elite”
“Hello, video game fans! Don’t forget to like and subscribe! Last week I posted a video that isn’t relevant to this video, but I need to drag out the time on this one to game the algorithm, so I’m going to rehash and plug that video. I’m going to shout out to my Patreon subscribers with ridiculous usernames I won’t pronounce well. Now let’s get to the part you’ve waiting for: I’m going to play through the entire thirty minutes worth of level four before you get to the demon door and I will stop to make useless commentary on the bad guys you encounter. Okay, now you’ve skipped forward to what looks like the area before the demon door part of the stage, but I’m going to talk about some unrelated anecdote about this game or maybe the game devs, and then plug my Patreon account and mention a completely different game that I’ll be streaming next. Oh and here’s the five seconds of the video you wanted to see when I tell you to click the right mouse button on the hidden lever next to the demon door in order to open it, except you aren’t seeing it because you skipped forward too far and gave up. Don’t forget to like and subscribe! This video has been brought to you by Nord VPN.”
Now let’s get to the part you’ve waiting for: I’m going to play through the entire thirty minutes worth of level four before you get to the demon door and I will stop to make useless commentary on the bad guys you encounter.
About a month ago, I’d gotten back to replaying Suikoden Tactics, and there’s this whole quest-accepting mechanic that’s the easiest way to rack up skill points. But one of them is a series of “go get X out of the murder death ruins for me.”
That place is pure ass and permadeath is a thing, so I’m not just going to go jaunting down to the final floor because I’m bored. And for the life of me, I could not remember which floor whatever item was even on in order to know whether it was worth trying for right now.
This game is old enough that there are almost no discussions about it. I’m rooting through abandoned forums from 2005 looking for gems. God bless forums from 2005 btw.
Somehow, there is a single video on this subject. It is a series of videos as the youtuber fights through the entire dungeon in one go. There is commentary. There are no timestamps. He does not split the videos according to floor. The information I’m looking for is somewhere in here, but I have zero guarantee he’s even treasure hunting, so he may not mention it.
I could have cried.
1996 is on the latter end of what I consider the early internet, but I really miss the Video Game FAQ Archive (GameFAQs) which was murdered by a thousand cuts culminating in the death of the gamefaqs.com domain. FAQs used to be so good, these days the same information is dispersed over 50 pages of an HTML “guide” that is more ads than information, and often for less complete information, if it’s not just a YouTube video that’s even worse and shows you things but doesn’t explain them at all.
Drives me crazy when I see this kind of format for things like programming. Nothing like pausing the video and trying to see what their code says.
I was all set to start bitching about the obligatory 10-15 minutes of “older, medicated suburban housewife shows off her whole yarn closet, every needle, which needle she likes (it’s not better, it’s just pretty), her fingernails, pushes her state-mandated store, and then finishes off with an internet recipe story about how her gramgram was fleeing the war and had to knit jasmine stitch backwards to survive…before fucking up the stitch and never editing that part out. But it’s ok because her hands were in the way the whole time anyway.”
But I think you’ve found the only thing that has me beat.
I will at least use this time to implore any knitting/crochet peeps on the fediverse that if you or someone you love is uploading how-to videos anywhere on the web…SHOW ME THE DAMN STITCH SO I CAN LEAVE. I HAVE PROJECTS, I DO NOT CARE.
I’ll usually go with the length of the video in cases like this. Anything above 5 minutes is a red flag!
I still remember a video I found a year ago that was just barely over a whole minute. It was a guy doing one single really clear cable stitch in complete silence, and then the video cuts out.
I do not know who they are, but I will vouch for that man before god.
Doing a cursory search to see if I can find it again, the second video suggested to me is 26:44 long.
It probably disappeared into the ether because it was too short or lacked a backdrop of dried flowers and a cup of tea.
YT algorithm favors videos that are at least 10 minutes (they fit more ads in) so those get recommended more. As a result, runtimes get padded with fluff so you get recommended to more viewers.
You asked for doughy buns, you got doughy buns
@Nepenthe @Provider @bstix @Anders429 I need a tutorial to show me how you added bolded text to your post!
I assume it all works the same on mastodon, if it’s showing up ok, so:
• Bold is 2 asterisks on either side
like ** this **• Italics is either one asterisk on each side like * this * or underscores _ like this _ (does this show up italicized for you?)
• Strikethrough is ~~ two tildes ~~ and looks
like thisObviously just remove the spaces in between the symbols and letters, because I can’t figure out yet how to stop markdown from working on here any other way, in order to depict it precisely
@Nepenthe @Provider @bstix @allenstenhaus If you want a written tutorial for weird sewing things, I got you covered. I think I have two. One is for a tiny bag, the other is for fabric artist trading cards :D
Ok, explain. Link me. I’ve been turning this over in my head. I cannot fathom what “fabric artist trading card” could possibly be
@Anders429 @bstix lol actually i watch videos for programming sometimes - what is really bad is getting a good look at that one knitting stitch that has a six letter abbreviation and only the worst text explanations WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH TAKING A PICTURE OF THIS
@Anders429 @bstix and forget about copy and pasting code
Yeah, you could skim pages, or read thoroughly, search in the text, easily jump back to the previous paragraph to skim a bit again, google (or DDG) for terms you remember from an article to find it again, etc.
Not just tutorials, I enjoyed reading tech or product reviews, like the original Anandtech when Anand was there, that all seems to be going the way of obnoxious youtubers.
This is one oft the longest Threads I’ve eher Seen in lemmy.
Yes. Unfortunately many comments are the same, because the mastodon users can’t see each others replies. This comment somehow got trendy over there.
My inbox has about 200 replies telling me about video monetization and 100 just tagging my username.
@[email protected] @[email protected]
Written tutorials are not hard to do, but before I tell you what they are, just a reminder to like and subscribe to this post, it really helps me out.
Now let’s dive in!
Written tutorials are just not as easy to “monetize”
YES. And when you find a written version you have to scroll past a mile of backstory to get to the point.
@bstix The ones that annoy me are the youTube videos that are text on the video but just a music overlay… no verbal instructions at all and since Ic an’t see the video period it is useless to me.
@bstix A friend once said “videos are for marketing; text is for instruction” and it made it all make sense.
@bstix @Provider Same. I hate video tutorials. I play a lot of video games and sometimes I need to look something up, which sometimes means I get lucky and someone has written a decent walkthrough down, but often times means I have to start and stop a damn video over and over and over to get the information at the pace I need.
@bstix @TechEnthusiast 100% This is especially annoying when I’m trying to find out how to do something in Python or whatever programming language I happen to be playing with. I am blind and use a screen reader. If the text is written, I can review word by word, line by line, character by character, ETC. This is important when trying to learn programming.
Well, we write detail rich, history filled, alternative versions presented tutorials and how tos all the time on CoffeeGeek.
They can be found here:
@bstix @Provider I can’t see any of the responses (must be a mastodon thing) but I can tell you that this not the first time I’ve seen this complaint and it has had an impact: I had several tutorials to produce this summer and planned on doing them as videos. As the summer approached I saw comments like this and switched to blog posts instead. So, I just wanted to let you know you’re not shouting into the void.
I can’t see any of the responses (must be a mastodon thing)
This explains a lot. Most of the replies to this comment here on Lemmy are from Mastodon users stating the same thing about video monetization.
There’s a few good comments from people who actually do need video tutorials for crafting, sports and DIY, or from being dyslexic, but most don’t like the YouTube format.
One big hurdle for written blogs is to attract readers when Googles search engine has a preference for videos that makes them more money.
@bstix
And wondering why you need X or Y that doesnt relate to what youre doing only to find out it was a commercial 🙃
@Provider @rhinocratic@bstix @Provider Trying to copy snippets of code to try / adapt out of the video sucks as well. I often don’t need/want to download an entire sample project from a link in the description.
Plus, given time constraints, I occasionally try to grab a few moments for tutorials while hanging out with family, sitting at a restaurant, or whatever else, so I’d have to watch videos muted as well.
Definitely always look for written form.@bstix best example ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ZTGpRMU04
The worst are the videos that are little more than a Windows desktop and a syntesized voice of a tutorial that could be written. Additional negative points for instructions writen on Notepad on the screen on that video.
You also can’t “copy and paste” code from their video screen.
@bstix couldn’t agree more!
Most of my students preferred video, even if with very few exceptions slides + text was better for them (for the stuff we did).
Also *good* video takes forever to make, good text+image tutorials slightly less forever but the search is much easier!
@bstix @Provider @gvwilson writing is as hard as it ever was, but monetization of ad-hoc tutorial content is far easier and more lucrative on youtube. People are literally being paid to pollute your search results with video.
I’m actually optimistic; I think eventually youtube will face too much flak for this kind of garbage, it’ll start affecting viewership, they’ll tweak the algorithm or the partner program to punish bad tutorials and there’ll be a renaissance of the written stuff.
YES, this is such a peeve for me!!! I’ve developed an aversion to viewing video content unless it’s for something I truly need to see done. And even then, I’m more likely to check wikihow and endure their gifs than I am to watch someone’s video. It’s just so overdone.
Oh gosh, this! I am way better at picking up what is relevant to me in a text article while scanning a text than waiting for thing to happen in a video. It’s so infuriating sometimes. Also, video streaming is using so much data that I would rather not do it when I am using mobile internet… So yeah, bring back text based tutorials…
@bstix @Provider From a creator’s perspective that sounds rather ungrateful. Why not be happy that people take the time to create free tutorials at all – in the way they see fit? We look for tutorials because they shorten the time we would otherwise need to figure things out. So it’s weird to say “you helped me save 2 hours of trial-and-error, but it took 3 minutes instead of 1, so damn you!”.
I get what you’re saying; but it often feels like a “bears favour”. The content creator wants to help and promises to help, but end up just wasting my time and not helping at all. It’s a lot easier to glance a document or webpage to see if it contains the thing you’re interested in, whereas in a video you’ll have to sit through it all before you can tell if it even contains the information.
Fun fact: You can recreate a lot of this by starting your own website. Remember all the quirky, niche stuff you could stumble over? Large corporate sites forced all of that onto their server and baited people with millions of views and money. Everything not viral was punished and hidden away. But we can still jsut put stuff on the web for free or for a couple of bucks with a webhoster somewhere. It’s work, it serves small audiences and it might be totally overlooked. But it will be YOURS.
In that sense, promote your blog or website here: https://feddit.de/c/blogging
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Good bot
(…do we say this here?)
I want to be on record as being kind to our robot overlords, so I’d say “good bot” for good measure.
Good bot
Good bot.
I miss usenet and webchats, mostly, and the fact that communities were smaller and you could feel you could actually contribute. Now it feels like you can already find what you wanted to say. And the opposite of it.
What I Definitely don’t miss is: popup with ads, the <blink> HTML Tag, the “under construction” images on websites that would never be updated ever again, and images that would take minutes to download.
What I know I will miss from 2020 in 10 years: contents written by actual humans instead of AI.
I think it would be the separation between “real life” and “online life”.
Getting hacked used to mean either restoring a page from a backup, asking your friends to help you get some gear back, or deleting posts on a forum.
Today, getting hacked leads to empty bank accounts, identity theft, and real life fallout.
I miss the anonymity that was the “default”, when the logged in user was the data product, not the person behind that user.
Most of all, I miss the community that used to exist with their odd etiquettes and diverse ideals. It was a delight to stumble across new forums, now it always just seems to be more of the same.
Totaly agree with you. Used to say ‘online money for online things, offline money for offline things’
oh i miss the separation of internet/real life
call me crazy, but I miss chat rooms and “A/S/L?”
'course I was a teen at the time, so maybe that’s why.
19/ f /cali
I miss the wild west feel and community. And that it wasn’t always online. I also hate that everything is in a web app,etc. I miss exploring random websites. I feel like the internet is just a series of walled gardens these days.
Maybe not the early internet, but I do remember 2004-2009 internet when message boards were king, communities were smaller, and everything just felt so much more exciting. I miss those days of having one community with 100-200 or so users who posted everything from “What song are you listening to now?” to a fanfic some guy wrote about Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends.
The dial up modem sounds. I don’t know why, but I genuinely miss them
I also miss the reduced footprint of mega companies with their “we are the internet” monopolistic tendencies. They still wanted to be the entire internet, but they weren’t.
I miss when Google’s motto was “Do no evil”.
I miss when Usenet was for something more than downloading porn and pirated content
I miss Geocities and everyone having their own shitty webpage
I don’t miss IRC and netsplits, or images that would load line by line and rearrange your page as they did. I don’t miss JavaScript popup ads or websites that played looping wav files with no easy option to stop them.
I can still tell you how fast a modem is connecting by the sound. Though I was less accurate by the time it got to k56flex and v.90 56k speeds.
That’s an impressive skill :)
I also miss the reduced footprint of mega companies with their “we are the internet” monopolistic tendencies. They still wanted to be the entire internet, but they weren’t.
Especially this. The web was just different without all the bloated pages with dozens of trackers.
I remember just the sheer wonder and awe. The raw thrill of exploration… It hadnt been corprotized yet, So there wasnt any real ads or anything. Just a vast existence that felt like raw, unexplored territory, every keystroke unveiling a new and wonderous world hidden just behind the next hill.
Websites had visitor counters, which further enforced the thrill of exploration when you stumbled upon a website that had a visitor counter in the single or double digits. Discovering the bleeding edges of human civilization, where a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent had dared to tread.
The raw exhilaration of it all causing time to seemingly stop for you, until you realize 36 hours has past in the blink of an eye, and suddenly crash for 12+ hours of sleep.
There is no magic to the web anymore. Its just…a utility. Boring, and sterile. Dangers more from the corporatization and ads thananything else. Changing constantly only in the pursuit of shifting trends expressly and only for the purpose of improving metrics… because getting 30,000 hits that’ll never come back looks better than 5,000 people that regularly engage.
God fucking hell I’m depressed as fuck now.
The thing I remember is the thrill of realizing how.much.stuff. was out there (even though by current standards it was tiny). There was a repository hosted by WUSTL.EDU that had a ton of software source code, binaries and other stuff; you could submit requests to it by e-mail and back would come your files uuencoded, split across multiple e-mail messages. You had to cobble the pieces back together before you could decode it.
I had completely forgotten about that particular method of file delivery. I wonder how many other things I don’t remember as well?
Visit counters! That was such a big thing for a while.
And does anyone remember web rings?
Webrings were so great. Never knew where it was gonna take you next.
A great way to discover new websites before search engines were a real thing.
God I wish I could go back 30+ years and experience the fresh and innocent internet again.
but at least my depressions increased, so I got that going for me.
I miss flash games.
Ah, the early days of the internet where every click on a link felt like you discovered something new and exciting. I remember making my own ‘homepage’ (with stats counter, most of the visits were my own), the dial-up modem’s noises, browsing open ftp servers to find interesting warez and generally not worrying about viruses.
Now everything is stuck in corporate silos and largely out of reach.
I miss the somewhat more decentralized and anonymous nature of the early Internet and the Web. People were more likely to have their own Web site with their own shitty personal flare. Services were more infrastructure than ways to monetize the masses. Everyone was busy learning and trying out new things instead of just mindless content consumption or broadcasting their basic-assed opinion.
Things seemed more substantial. But also anonymity granted people the ability to not be judged by their failures. So trying things was less personally risky and easier to fade away in time.
Maybe I just got old. I would love to get back there, though.
You were excited to get email because it was almost always from a human being who put meaning and intent into their message. It was like getting a handwritten letter compared to all the random terms of service update emails from a service you haven’t used in four years and emails from a service you didn’t sign up for because someone else thinks your email address is their email address and the outright spam in the filter.
Lmao me too, a stats counter with like 13 visits
15 of those were me
And then my co-student refreshed the page a 1000 times for laughs and the counter went up, because I didn’t install a cookie with an IP check.
People talk about the early days of the Internet, then only go back as far as the world wide web.
There was Internet before Web servers.
When I think of the early Internet, I’m usually thinking of USENET. Posting a question about a Linux device driver not working, getting an answer back from the guy who wrote it, and then him fixing it to work with your hardware.
If I think of the early web, it was very exciting. Mosaic was the browser, and HTML was clean. Briefly, it was almost pure information and untainted by profit motive.
Anyone with a server on the Internet (an extremely exclusive group) could install a web server and start their own site. It was very populist among the privileged few who could participate.
There were assholes. There are always assholes. But there were very few stupid assholes. The nature of the early Internet meant there was a certain threshold you had to cross before you had access. Then, AOL came, and stupid assholes arrived.
It’s been downhill ever since.
Now GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
Edit: typo
@Provider
I’m sad to see how many websites are padded with words for SEO.
You can often skip the first few paragraphs in which they just announce what they are going to discuss later on in the article.
Just get to the point.It’s gotten so bad that I think we are inevitably heading to a future where we don’t even visit websites, we just have ‘AI’ digest the site (or sites) and give us a summary of the information. This sort of thing will probably have even more negative effects on web browsing because it will create new perverse incentives for content designed to be ingested by LLM’s instead of humans. Let alone the disruption on advertising revenue that drives a lot of the free web.
I miss text centric internet. I was interested in Linux from like age 12. But I only had one computer and was scared to install it. Well I got tricked on irc to fuck up my windows install. Left with some Linux install CDs and little other options, I went for it. My modem wasn’t supported, but luckily I had a little bit of money stashed and went to office Depot to grab an external modem I knew worked.
And after struggling to get windows to work well on that old hand me down computer I was blown away. Especially when I found lynx. It opened webpages so fast. Got AIM working, got irc going, and had everything I needed. Started to learn more about the system and the internet was a wonderful place. Loads of information, but you had to seek out the things that interested you.
I made some really good friends that I would chat with for hours on end. Really helped me through an otherwise pretty not good childhood. Helped me learn a lot of stuff. And it wasn’t ad filled, hyper tracking oriented, walled garden garbage.
Also, goatse.
There was this one program I used a lot back in the day; I’m pretty sure it was called Virtual Places.
Basically it was a browser that turned any web page into a chat room, and you could chat with anybody browsing the same page. Everybody would have these little square avatars; mine was an eyeball. And you could get a bunch of people on this little “bus” that somebody could “drive” and all move to a different web site together.
Oh. My god. Why did I never know about that. That would have been incredible. I feel honestly robbed now T_T
That shouldn’t be too hard to recreate. Maybe somebody already made it
It’s one of those things that makes me wish I knew more than ‘hello world’ level coding; I would love to resurrect this.
that sounds like a lot of fun, reminds me a bit of the online world in the Megaman Battle Network series. always loved the idea of a virtual “3rd place” if you will.
That’s really what it was like.
Nowadays it would be overrun with bots, though, I bet.
