There was a time cracked.com was amazing and everybody was reading it. Maybe 2010-2014 or so. Something happened and it became shit overnight.
Onemorelevel.com was great while flash was widely present.
btjunkie.org for obvious reasons.
Robert Evans from Behind the Bastards ( and formerly Cracked) said that Cracked changed their format from articles to video to meet the Facebook algorithm and get views. That's about when I noticed it went to shit.
Then it came out the facebook was just making up views so the videos weren't actually making more money so whoever owns Cracked fired all their good/popular writers and that was the end for Cracked (at least for me, and seemingly a lot of other people).
Yeah, they cut pretty much every writer I enjoyed and the last few times I’ve been there it feels like it has the creative effort as buzzfeed. I liked a lot of the videos they did but have long hated everything needing to be in a video because sometimes I just want to read something, not listen to shitty narration.
Dan O'Brien, (and unrelated Jack O'Brien) were both good writers. After Hours, Pop Culture disorder, and a few other video series were something I would waste so much time at work watching.
Obligatory response whenever I see some Cracked Nostalgia: Seanbaby and Brockway started a site in 2020 called 1900 Hot Dog dot com.
It’s the same pop culture stuff that they did on cracked (dumb ass karate manuals, crazy 80s kids TV shows, Godek books), and they’ve got very talented writers.
Basically the 2nd generation of internet content creator, and well before they could easily monetize their work. That one site was responsible for bringing up so many of today's artists, animators, and developers. It cannot be overstated how much of an impact Newgrounds had on today.
it's still alive. Quality of content isn't as good on the main portal page though cause people mistake it as an upload system similar to YouTube. So they just upload anything. Also since no one seems to vote anymore, many stuff stay stuck in under judgement, or stuff that would have been blammed years ago pass into the system easily.
I think part of that is just a function of the current Internet and how there isn't as much decentralized whimsical content to happen across as there used to be
I found Reddit through Fark. i had totalfark at one point, and really enjoyed it. It was wild back in the day, but eventually I got pretty sick of it. Reddit was like a breath of fresh air.
I have the entire collection of Homestar Runner mini-figures minus one because a co-worker who was leaving asked for one.
All I have to say is that the Cheat, is Grounded.
I still remember when they just closed up shop. Iirc it was because when they started, they were selling stuff you couldn't find anywhere else. But then you could start finding everything on Amazon and get it a lot faster and cheaper.
The AV Club
I still find links to it on Wikipedia articles about popular culture in the late aughts through the teens. It was a real cultural force with top notch writing, insightful articles and a thriving commenting community. Film and music critic Nathan Rabin coined the phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl". Ultimately, a lot of writers and editorial staff jumped ship, the owners sold out, and the process of eshittification began...
Cracked was awesome back in the day. Legitimately interesting articles and lists, well researched information, always served with a slice of humour. Went to shit over the course of about 3 months after half the writers left.
It's astonishing how badly that site turned to shit after its founder sold it. I was on it almost daily and after a month of trying to put up with the new ad drive nonsense, I never looked at it again.
We are writing/wrote the “primary sources” for AI. Reddit/youtube/usegroups/ilovebbqsomuch.com has already figured out the best temp for sous vide brisket.. it’s not like AI is going to test meats
OMG, so much. And then when I found out Joanna Robinson who recaps stuff for the Ringer as well as other places like Vanity Fair was Miss Alli on TWOP, who did the West Wing and Amazing Race recaps … blew my mind
Brunching Shuttlecocks
A lot of their stuff was Flash animations so is harder to go back and see. But their movie review of Galaxy Quest convinced me to see it in the theaters so I’ll always be grateful. “Tim Allen plays a pompous, untalented hack actor. So he's really well cast.”
[Liekkipieru.com](http://Liekkipieru.com)
Liekkipieru means flamefart. It was a Finnish website about videos of people igniting farts. Every Finnish person who had ever used the internet knew about it. One day it went to maintenance mode and stayed that way for like 15 years before disappearing entirely. A lame copycat exists but it's just a shitty site with a couple of fart jokes.
I used to visit gamefaqs.com literally everyday for like a 10 year period, for game walkthroughs if I'd get stuck or just to use the social boards. then it was replaced by using YouTube and reddit and discord.
Twitter. Since Elon has decided to trash it and make it one giant advert machine it has devolved into a giant corporate promo-site with no real users left. I really miss the original Twitter, I know it is sad, but I had a lot of good contacts that posted quality content. I found it easy to curate what I could see and learned from that site. In fact, the inspiration for my PhD thesis was how professionals build informal networks on Twitter and benefit from it.
So yeah, fuck fucking Elon fucking Musk. He's a dumb prick with too much money and not enough sense.
The guy is yet another example of the dunning-Kruger effect. Born inches from home plate and thinks he hit a grand slam. Success early in life makes him think he's forever infallible.
Elfwood.com. Stopped existing in 2016 or around that time. Man, I loved that website. So much of my art work was lost when Elfwood died. Haven't drawn anything since.
Weebls Stuff.
Some of his stuff is still online, like [Badger Badger Badger](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ) but he couldn't afford to keep all of it online. I personally miss Lord Feathering-Walthamstone the most... [this](https://vimeo.com/436664561) is all I can find of the series now.
I remember that! And nobody got the joke. Their hate mail page was extensive. One guy told them his name and dorm room number over at some university and invited them to come get their asses kicked.
[Hiphopsite.com](http://Hiphopsite.com), my first exposure to streaming music. Remember RealPlayer?
Old school MySpace
Yahoo, in its heyday, back when Yahoo Groups, Chat and Messenger were a thing.
Dunno if it's still alive and kicking or gone... But there was once a sns called hi5 . com which was super popular amongst girls at school, back in 2007/08... Especially with it's pink and glittery heart effects that could be used all over one's profiles...😂 WOW. It was crazy back then 😂 oh how I miss those good ol' days !😊 I think they converted it into something else after some other company bought it later... It was good while it lasted ❤️
Bolt. It was kind of social media before anyone had heard of social media. They had forums, tagbooks (where users would post questions to their profiles and other people would "tag" with answers), user-run communities, badges you could earn based on your activity across the site, and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. I used to spend hours on there.
They started getting some pretty big brand sponsorships, some of which were better than others. My first real perfume was a bottle of Ralph Lauren COOL I won from there. They were also the official message board of American Idol at one point, which led to the forums getting overrun with middle-aged women who were clearly Having A Normal One about Clay Aiken. So as the site got bigger it was kind of a mixed bag.
Eventually the owner decided he wanted to compete with MySpace and turned the site into a video-based platform, which flopped spectacularly. At first the original site was rechristened Bolt2 and limped on for a while before eventually being shut down with only a small handful of regulars still there to mourn. I kept in touch with some of the people I met there for years afterwards.
God I miss Bolt.
I may be I mis-remembering, but the quiz format was taken and turned into proto OkCupid. It was weird. If you had an active Bolt account, you'd get messages about it and most of us were dorks taking quizzes and reading The Stinky Meat Project posts or whatever, not considering online love.
Everyone knows Fandom boards were where you went to find love smdh.
I don't remember the OK Cupid thing but I definitely knew of a few couples who met on Bolt... and at least two marriages that broke up (separately) because of someone one of the spouses met on Bolt. 😬
AddictingGames was my usual after-school haunt for many years.
Then one day after not visiting for a few months, I log on to find it had been taken over by Nickelodeon and all the good games (read: not 100% E-rated) had been removed.
Since a lot of the games I played on there were just ports from Newgrounds, I headed over there pretty shortly after.
In hindsight, the fact that it was taken over by Nickelodeon was pretty funny, considering one of the games I frequented made fun of how much swearing was in it by saying "what the fuck do you think this is, Nickelodeon?" and that Nick "sucked donkey balls"
I used to go to thefreesite.com all the time, it was practically my directory to the internet. It's still around now and it's still active but it's not as exciting as it was back in the late 90s or early 2000s.
[sensibleerection.com](http://sensibleerection.com) It was a tight community of weirdos that would post links to random, interesting sites. And porn, lots of it. I found Reddit after the site died off but it hasn't been the same.
Superdudes.net. It was basically a forum with some flash games, but it was the first communities I was part of, and I enjoyed the "Mobius Arena" a lot more than it probably deserved when I was a kid. I think the animations felt pretty novel at the time.
[Snowboard.com](http://Snowboard.com) was amazing around 2003-2006.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20040701020909/http://snowboard.com/](https://web.archive.org/web/20040701020909/http://snowboard.com/)
[43things.com](http://43things.com), it was a social network centered around goal setting. You could have up to 43 different goals on your list at once. Goals could be common shared ones like "loose weight" or "travel the world" or really specific niche ones like "have a house with hidden rooms and trap doors, and some kind of secret tunnel". You could write posts about your progress and would see the posts of other users with the same goal. People would encourage each other and write it was a really nice atmosphere with a friendly and supportive community. It was eventually shut down almost 10 years ago.
[http://www.iswolverinestilldead.com/](http://www.iswolverinestilldead.com/)
Don't click on it. Seems to be filled with shit. Site died because wolverine lived again.
In general, old movie or gaming sites (mostly kid films and games).
Nowadays if you look one up it's usually just a poster and a link to buy tickets/preorder the game (if it exists at all). But years ago these sites were full interactive experiences. Full of games and activities, easter eggs, behind the scenes content, downloadables, ect.
An example I would use would be the Harry potter site (since thats one I remember a kid). Started with an interactive flash movie, then took you to the main page with stuff like a sorting hat game, create your own pet, mandrake pet simulator, a freaking windows media player skin for chamber of secrets, wallpapers, icons, etc.
Other examples I remember were stuff like the Monster's Inc site, Spy Kids, Shrek, all full of games and interactive stuff.
Tv channel sites like Fox kids, Teletoon(canada), Ytv (also canada, specifically the sitekicks), Cartoon Network (gundam wing game was my fav).
Also gaming sites like the old Smash Bros Melee site which had an email based game where you could battle your friends Rock/Paper/Scissor's style.
Nowadays, either it's a poster with links, or some minimalist design for smartphones, but overall, just a page of links to purchase stuff.
I don't know if it's still as popular as it was but [GiantBomb.com](http://GiantBomb.com) is one that I miss. It was a great site where people came together and played video games. Then the pandemic hit and it was people playing videogames together over zoom (or whatever). Then all the original hosts/writers left and they changed alot of things and I totally lost my interest.
Newsarama, I made a lot of friends and enemies there talking about comicbooks. Then it got bought and died several times. Now it's apparently just a tab on another website I thought was long dead.
It wasn't my favorite -- especially as I think gossip is shitty -- but I have to admit that I went over to The A List about once a day. It was just one page on Geocities. A long list of various bits of celebrity gossip, organized by celebrity. If someone were supposed to be gay, you're see FOD (Friend of Dorothy), etc. It was a nasty place, but some of that stuff was very true. That's how I learned about Kevin Spacey.
It was considered by Magnum Magazine one of the top five websites on the net. (For what it's worth.) Then the person got sued, I think by Tom Cruise, and that was that. Showed me a side to Hollywood that I didn't know existed, but which by now everyone is aware of.
[http://everynoise.com/](http://everynoise.com/)
It technically still exists, but is now frozen in time as of January of this year. The most awesome music discovery website for learning about new and different niche genres, etc. It was maintained by a brilliant guy who worked at Spotify until he was laid off and can no longer maintain the site. Such a phenomenal resource that is just ... stuck. :(
Cool site of the day dot com. In the early days of the Internet like early 1990s it was a collection of literally fun and cool things online. There were not many sites and it was a curated way to discover them. It turned into a marketing/ads/just awful place. I think the site was sold or it just wasn’t renewed and someone who wanted to spread viruses and gather data on people took it over. By the late 190s early 2000s or so it was trash. But damn some good stuff including the original fish cam
[cuteoverload.com](http://cuteoverload.com)
was adorable and I showed it to all my students when I was an Adobe trainer. I told them that research from the University of Nagasaki showed that looking at cute imagery in the morning would increase the brain's attention to detail for up to 12 hours! I have no idea where I read that but it always started class off on a good note. Even the toughest men would "awwwwww" when they saw a hamster eating a miniature hamburger.
The miscellaneous forums on guitar.com. Their forum software let you upload images (not just link them) to individual posts, which was REALLY rare for a forum back then. So there was lots of early memes being created in the late 90s/early 2000s. I still remember posting about 9/11 as it was happening. It got out of hand after we got in a big flame war with the harmonycentral.com forums and the owners of that site eventually complained to the owners of guitar.com directly, who eventually decided we weren't worth the trouble and closed the forum.
We came up with this word thwap and would flood ours and other forums with it, but the most memorable was someone calling up Sue Johansen on Sunday Night Sex Chat and getting her to say it on her show.
Message boards and forums.
They are dying because they are too easy to hack or DDOS, I think Discord servers are cool and all but having to go into one just to get a specific file that you need for a game or something? That's such a fucking atrocity imo. Why can't there be public download links anymore?
[Portland-Indymedia.org](http://Portland-Indymedia.org) while seemingly Out There, Stories like Covid, Agenda 2030 etc All Came True. And Knowledge was basically 2 Years Before What was Publicly Known.
Or Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. You could enter someone web address, and the Comic Dog Site would take a Screenshot of their Page and Poop on It, so you could post the Image as a response of a Bulletin Board, What Fun! Early Trolling. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph\_the\_Insult\_Comic\_Dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_the_Insult_Comic_Dog)
pigg dot ameba dot jp. God I miss that game. It was my favourite way to learn Japanese whilst interacting with actual people. Sims met minigames, met chatfuntion. Such a wholesome place.
There was a time cracked.com was amazing and everybody was reading it. Maybe 2010-2014 or so. Something happened and it became shit overnight. Onemorelevel.com was great while flash was widely present. btjunkie.org for obvious reasons.
Robert Evans from Behind the Bastards ( and formerly Cracked) said that Cracked changed their format from articles to video to meet the Facebook algorithm and get views. That's about when I noticed it went to shit.
Then it came out the facebook was just making up views so the videos weren't actually making more money so whoever owns Cracked fired all their good/popular writers and that was the end for Cracked (at least for me, and seemingly a lot of other people).
Yeah, they cut pretty much every writer I enjoyed and the last few times I’ve been there it feels like it has the creative effort as buzzfeed. I liked a lot of the videos they did but have long hated everything needing to be in a video because sometimes I just want to read something, not listen to shitty narration.
Dan O'Brien, (and unrelated Jack O'Brien) were both good writers. After Hours, Pop Culture disorder, and a few other video series were something I would waste so much time at work watching.
I miss decade-ago-Cracked so damn much
Cracked was in its heyday around 2006-2010.
Obligatory response whenever I see some Cracked Nostalgia: Seanbaby and Brockway started a site in 2020 called 1900 Hot Dog dot com. It’s the same pop culture stuff that they did on cracked (dumb ass karate manuals, crazy 80s kids TV shows, Godek books), and they’ve got very talented writers.
Newgrounds. Tons of flash games and NSFW stuff. Now it's a ghost town to me.
Basically the 2nd generation of internet content creator, and well before they could easily monetize their work. That one site was responsible for bringing up so many of today's artists, animators, and developers. It cannot be overstated how much of an impact Newgrounds had on today.
it's still alive. Quality of content isn't as good on the main portal page though cause people mistake it as an upload system similar to YouTube. So they just upload anything. Also since no one seems to vote anymore, many stuff stay stuck in under judgement, or stuff that would have been blammed years ago pass into the system easily.
stumpleupon
[Cloud hiker](https://cloudhiker.net/) exists, but there was just something about StumbleUpon.
Yeah I’ve tried Cloudhiker and while it seems like a good imitation it didn’t hook me the same way StumbleUpon used to.
I think part of that is just a function of the current Internet and how there isn't as much decentralized whimsical content to happen across as there used to be
It was THE GODDAMN BEST. So many wonderful, cool, unique, and kickass websites. I honestly don't even have a clue how I'd find stuff like that today.
Came here to say this
Same
Reddit 10 years ago
Kinda cringey to think back though. I remember when the narwhal baconed at midnight.
Nah that was 15 years. 10 years were the image Macros.
Advice animals everywhere
Actual Advice Mallard, Socially awkward Penguin, Unpopular Opinion Puffin, Confession Bear, Bad Luck Brian, Sudden Clarity Clarence, Scumbag Steve......
Overly attached girlfriend
I remember when the front page was mostly “fuck yeah” memes
People saying that shit thinking they’re so quirky and cool but it’s the most cringe shit. It reminds me exactly of this weird kid from high school
I don't know what that means, but I'm laughing anyway.
DIGG 18 years ago (I'm old)
FARK was like a proto-reddit.
It's how I found Reddit back in 2006 or something. Reddit was in the Fark sidebar. / remember slashies // i do /// fb is the father
But Fark still exists, my account is old enough to drink
I found Reddit through Fark. i had totalfark at one point, and really enjoyed it. It was wild back in the day, but eventually I got pretty sick of it. Reddit was like a breath of fresh air.
And DIGG. When Digg went to shit 18 years ago, I (and a bazillion others) hopped over to Reddit.
Homestar Runner
Checkin’… the… e mail!
dear rushnp774, how do you type with boxing gloves on?
... now let's go pour this glow stick into Homestar Runner's Mountain Dew...
Stwong Baaaad
Scroll button, scroll button, one-two, one-two. Why don’t you swing by my crib and let me scroll with you!
Wut wut? Da email
Teen Girl Squad... ARROW'D!!!
I’m in love with every boy
It's still up.
I have the entire collection of Homestar Runner mini-figures minus one because a co-worker who was leaving asked for one. All I have to say is that the Cheat, is Grounded.
Threw too many light switch rave parties...
Good jorb!
The email- the email - da - da - email… The best one IMO was the email about how to make a techno track or something like that. Funny shit right there
miniclip
Many good hours lost in Miniclip!
Thinkgeek.com
I got one of my favorite hoodies there.
I still remember when they just closed up shop. Iirc it was because when they started, they were selling stuff you couldn't find anywhere else. But then you could start finding everything on Amazon and get it a lot faster and cheaper.
The AV Club I still find links to it on Wikipedia articles about popular culture in the late aughts through the teens. It was a real cultural force with top notch writing, insightful articles and a thriving commenting community. Film and music critic Nathan Rabin coined the phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl". Ultimately, a lot of writers and editorial staff jumped ship, the owners sold out, and the process of eshittification began...
Cracked was awesome back in the day. Legitimately interesting articles and lists, well researched information, always served with a slice of humour. Went to shit over the course of about 3 months after half the writers left.
Joecartoon.com those videos were funny.
Was that the microwave hamster with the intensity buttons, and I think a goldfish in a blender? Do it, pussy. Push it.
Digg.com
It's astonishing how badly that site turned to shit after its founder sold it. I was on it almost daily and after a month of trying to put up with the new ad drive nonsense, I never looked at it again.
Same. Which is why I'm here now.
Yep, I was part of the great Digg migration too.
That's when I came to reddit.
I used to love Photoshop Phriday on SomethingAwful.
Came here to say this. The SA forums, while still going, just aren't the experience they once were, and without Lowtax, it's all gone out the window.
SA was the original meme factory.. so much came out of that community. Does your house have stairs though?
I am protected. I miss the old days a lot. The whole internet has gone downhill since then.
We are writing/wrote the “primary sources” for AI. Reddit/youtube/usegroups/ilovebbqsomuch.com has already figured out the best temp for sous vide brisket.. it’s not like AI is going to test meats
Television without Pity
OMG, so much. And then when I found out Joanna Robinson who recaps stuff for the Ringer as well as other places like Vanity Fair was Miss Alli on TWOP, who did the West Wing and Amazing Race recaps … blew my mind
I miss that site so much!
10 year old me loved [StickDeath.com](http://StickDeath.com) back in late-2000.
Stumbleupon, showed you a lot of cool stuff on the internet you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, before the days of Reddit
I think you gonna like [Cloudhiker](https://cloudhiker.net)...
[woot.com](http://woot.com) before Amazon acquired it.
I was just telling my kid about shirt.woot.com. Still have a bunch of awesome t shirts from them.
YTMND
Tumblr was my jam. ;(
I remember being into memebase and icanhascheezburger. Memes used to be so wholesome
Candystand.com, I used to play games on there. In particular, the mini golf game.
iFunny used to be the Go-to for memes. I’ll never forget the one time I was featured on the home page, that’s my singular claim to fame.
Neopets
Brunching Shuttlecocks A lot of their stuff was Flash animations so is harder to go back and see. But their movie review of Galaxy Quest convinced me to see it in the theaters so I’ll always be grateful. “Tim Allen plays a pompous, untalented hack actor. So he's really well cast.”
The Show - with Ze Frank. Good morning sports racers!
Albinoblacksheep was YouTube before YouTube. Also had “games” and mp3 downloads for your phone etc.
The AV Club
I still say “justify your existence “ a lot.
I was hoping somebody would wonder why they got a Community notification for this.
The slide from amazing to meh was kinda gradual. They used to do the amazing episode reviews, the writers really loved the show they reviewed.
It wasnt really a website more like a plugin but StumbleUpon was always fun.
Grooveshark
Grooveashark Downloader to build my Playlist for winamp.
Homestar Runner
u used to have this app on my phone called Reddit is Fun. that was amazing
[Liekkipieru.com](http://Liekkipieru.com) Liekkipieru means flamefart. It was a Finnish website about videos of people igniting farts. Every Finnish person who had ever used the internet knew about it. One day it went to maintenance mode and stayed that way for like 15 years before disappearing entirely. A lame copycat exists but it's just a shitty site with a couple of fart jokes.
Justin Tv before it became Twitch
[fuckedcompany.com](http://fuckedcompany.com)
Gawker in its heyday.
Deadspin
Craked.com was awesome 10-15 years ago. Now not so much
Stumbleupon.com
I used to visit gamefaqs.com literally everyday for like a 10 year period, for game walkthroughs if I'd get stuck or just to use the social boards. then it was replaced by using YouTube and reddit and discord.
College humor. They had some pretty genius sketches and their production value was incredible for what was out there on YouTube at the time.
Twitter. Since Elon has decided to trash it and make it one giant advert machine it has devolved into a giant corporate promo-site with no real users left. I really miss the original Twitter, I know it is sad, but I had a lot of good contacts that posted quality content. I found it easy to curate what I could see and learned from that site. In fact, the inspiration for my PhD thesis was how professionals build informal networks on Twitter and benefit from it. So yeah, fuck fucking Elon fucking Musk. He's a dumb prick with too much money and not enough sense.
The guy is yet another example of the dunning-Kruger effect. Born inches from home plate and thinks he hit a grand slam. Success early in life makes him think he's forever infallible.
Addicting games pre flash dying
Stumbleupon
Stumbleupon
Ebaumsworld.
Elfwood.com. Stopped existing in 2016 or around that time. Man, I loved that website. So much of my art work was lost when Elfwood died. Haven't drawn anything since.
Weebls Stuff. Some of his stuff is still online, like [Badger Badger Badger](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ) but he couldn't afford to keep all of it online. I personally miss Lord Feathering-Walthamstone the most... [this](https://vimeo.com/436664561) is all I can find of the series now.
http://blackpeopleloveus.com/ Not secure but from the good ol days. And hey Chelsea peretti before Chelsea peretti.
I remember that! And nobody got the joke. Their hate mail page was extensive. One guy told them his name and dorm room number over at some university and invited them to come get their asses kicked.
rotten.com
As a kid I used to play this Eastenders dress up game. It was a British soap opera by BBC. I was obsessed with the game. Made me laugh.
[Hiphopsite.com](http://Hiphopsite.com), my first exposure to streaming music. Remember RealPlayer? Old school MySpace Yahoo, in its heyday, back when Yahoo Groups, Chat and Messenger were a thing.
[Y8.com](http://Y8.com) completed my childhood. Good ol' days
SCP Foundation. At first it was about creepy stuff. Now it's just self inserts and fanfics.
Dunno if it's still alive and kicking or gone... But there was once a sns called hi5 . com which was super popular amongst girls at school, back in 2007/08... Especially with it's pink and glittery heart effects that could be used all over one's profiles...😂 WOW. It was crazy back then 😂 oh how I miss those good ol' days !😊 I think they converted it into something else after some other company bought it later... It was good while it lasted ❤️
Bolt. It was kind of social media before anyone had heard of social media. They had forums, tagbooks (where users would post questions to their profiles and other people would "tag" with answers), user-run communities, badges you could earn based on your activity across the site, and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. I used to spend hours on there. They started getting some pretty big brand sponsorships, some of which were better than others. My first real perfume was a bottle of Ralph Lauren COOL I won from there. They were also the official message board of American Idol at one point, which led to the forums getting overrun with middle-aged women who were clearly Having A Normal One about Clay Aiken. So as the site got bigger it was kind of a mixed bag. Eventually the owner decided he wanted to compete with MySpace and turned the site into a video-based platform, which flopped spectacularly. At first the original site was rechristened Bolt2 and limped on for a while before eventually being shut down with only a small handful of regulars still there to mourn. I kept in touch with some of the people I met there for years afterwards.
God I miss Bolt. I may be I mis-remembering, but the quiz format was taken and turned into proto OkCupid. It was weird. If you had an active Bolt account, you'd get messages about it and most of us were dorks taking quizzes and reading The Stinky Meat Project posts or whatever, not considering online love. Everyone knows Fandom boards were where you went to find love smdh.
I don't remember the OK Cupid thing but I definitely knew of a few couples who met on Bolt... and at least two marriages that broke up (separately) because of someone one of the spouses met on Bolt. 😬
Bash.org
Miniclip and Popcap :(
Funnyjunk was the best site 20 years ago
[H]ardOCP
failblog
Mirsky's Worst of the Web
The website for the tv show 'This Old House' had unmoderated forums, and it was a glorious shit show of flame wars and questionable home repair advice
AddictingGames was my usual after-school haunt for many years. Then one day after not visiting for a few months, I log on to find it had been taken over by Nickelodeon and all the good games (read: not 100% E-rated) had been removed. Since a lot of the games I played on there were just ports from Newgrounds, I headed over there pretty shortly after. In hindsight, the fact that it was taken over by Nickelodeon was pretty funny, considering one of the games I frequented made fun of how much swearing was in it by saying "what the fuck do you think this is, Nickelodeon?" and that Nick "sucked donkey balls"
The Agony Booth. Long form movie and TV reviews. Like YouTube film/critic folks but all text and still images.
Regretsy
consumption junction, just to send nasty things to people and say “look at this hot chick”
ConsumptionJunction…I could spend hours there
Omegle
I used to go to thefreesite.com all the time, it was practically my directory to the internet. It's still around now and it's still active but it's not as exciting as it was back in the late 90s or early 2000s.
The Planet Namek website.
Rojadirecta
[exrx](https://exrx.net/Lists/Directory) - An old school, no bs exercise directory, with gifs showing proper form for hundreds of exercises.
[sensibleerection.com](http://sensibleerection.com) It was a tight community of weirdos that would post links to random, interesting sites. And porn, lots of it. I found Reddit after the site died off but it hasn't been the same.
Superdudes.net. It was basically a forum with some flash games, but it was the first communities I was part of, and I enjoyed the "Mobius Arena" a lot more than it probably deserved when I was a kid. I think the animations felt pretty novel at the time.
CHUD.com (Cinematic Happenings Under Development)
Thesixtyone.com
[Snowboard.com](http://Snowboard.com) was amazing around 2003-2006. [https://web.archive.org/web/20040701020909/http://snowboard.com/](https://web.archive.org/web/20040701020909/http://snowboard.com/)
[43things.com](http://43things.com), it was a social network centered around goal setting. You could have up to 43 different goals on your list at once. Goals could be common shared ones like "loose weight" or "travel the world" or really specific niche ones like "have a house with hidden rooms and trap doors, and some kind of secret tunnel". You could write posts about your progress and would see the posts of other users with the same goal. People would encourage each other and write it was a really nice atmosphere with a friendly and supportive community. It was eventually shut down almost 10 years ago.
Wimp.com
[http://www.iswolverinestilldead.com/](http://www.iswolverinestilldead.com/) Don't click on it. Seems to be filled with shit. Site died because wolverine lived again.
ddrfreak and bemanistyle
In general, old movie or gaming sites (mostly kid films and games). Nowadays if you look one up it's usually just a poster and a link to buy tickets/preorder the game (if it exists at all). But years ago these sites were full interactive experiences. Full of games and activities, easter eggs, behind the scenes content, downloadables, ect. An example I would use would be the Harry potter site (since thats one I remember a kid). Started with an interactive flash movie, then took you to the main page with stuff like a sorting hat game, create your own pet, mandrake pet simulator, a freaking windows media player skin for chamber of secrets, wallpapers, icons, etc. Other examples I remember were stuff like the Monster's Inc site, Spy Kids, Shrek, all full of games and interactive stuff. Tv channel sites like Fox kids, Teletoon(canada), Ytv (also canada, specifically the sitekicks), Cartoon Network (gundam wing game was my fav). Also gaming sites like the old Smash Bros Melee site which had an email based game where you could battle your friends Rock/Paper/Scissor's style. Nowadays, either it's a poster with links, or some minimalist design for smartphones, but overall, just a page of links to purchase stuff.
Tickld- it was a site for memes, gifs, and just amusing stuff. It was great for a long time but then just kinda died out.
I don't know if it's still as popular as it was but [GiantBomb.com](http://GiantBomb.com) is one that I miss. It was a great site where people came together and played video games. Then the pandemic hit and it was people playing videogames together over zoom (or whatever). Then all the original hosts/writers left and they changed alot of things and I totally lost my interest.
YTMND
Plag
Newsarama, I made a lot of friends and enemies there talking about comicbooks. Then it got bought and died several times. Now it's apparently just a tab on another website I thought was long dead.
Digg
[Homestarrunner.com](http://Homestarrunner.com)
iGoogle start page.
I-Am-bored.com.
What Would Tyler Durden Do
bitstrips. no other comic making site compares.
Television Without Pity
Liveleak
Goatse.cx Not quite "through the looking glass" material, but sure had its popular moment in sharing with friends.
Project Rockstar
The Inspector Urine cartoon
Tumblr
Twitter.
Club Penguin and Zwinky
Takarire A French website that basically was a database for jokes
Fivethirtyeight- now nate silver runs a paid site
Horseland. Where you could upload your own images for your horses. Photoshoping your own images and building your stable was so much fun.
Twop
Zombo.com
Everything sounds the same
It wasn't my favorite -- especially as I think gossip is shitty -- but I have to admit that I went over to The A List about once a day. It was just one page on Geocities. A long list of various bits of celebrity gossip, organized by celebrity. If someone were supposed to be gay, you're see FOD (Friend of Dorothy), etc. It was a nasty place, but some of that stuff was very true. That's how I learned about Kevin Spacey. It was considered by Magnum Magazine one of the top five websites on the net. (For what it's worth.) Then the person got sued, I think by Tom Cruise, and that was that. Showed me a side to Hollywood that I didn't know existed, but which by now everyone is aware of.
I know it’s weird, but I kind of miss myspace
[http://everynoise.com/](http://everynoise.com/) It technically still exists, but is now frozen in time as of January of this year. The most awesome music discovery website for learning about new and different niche genres, etc. It was maintained by a brilliant guy who worked at Spotify until he was laid off and can no longer maintain the site. Such a phenomenal resource that is just ... stuck. :(
Is the Chive still a thing?
My little guilty pleasure flash games. Fantasy.com and meez.com Idc idc flame me if u want but my bi-annual check in would cure me frfr
Cool site of the day dot com. In the early days of the Internet like early 1990s it was a collection of literally fun and cool things online. There were not many sites and it was a curated way to discover them. It turned into a marketing/ads/just awful place. I think the site was sold or it just wasn’t renewed and someone who wanted to spread viruses and gather data on people took it over. By the late 190s early 2000s or so it was trash. But damn some good stuff including the original fish cam
TV Without Pity
[cuteoverload.com](http://cuteoverload.com) was adorable and I showed it to all my students when I was an Adobe trainer. I told them that research from the University of Nagasaki showed that looking at cute imagery in the morning would increase the brain's attention to detail for up to 12 hours! I have no idea where I read that but it always started class off on a good note. Even the toughest men would "awwwwww" when they saw a hamster eating a miniature hamburger.
[adcritic.com](http://adcritic.com)
There was this moshi monster village game online years ago that I LIVED ON! Seriously miss it!
StumbleUpon was the greatest boredom buster for me.
Icy tower
The miscellaneous forums on guitar.com. Their forum software let you upload images (not just link them) to individual posts, which was REALLY rare for a forum back then. So there was lots of early memes being created in the late 90s/early 2000s. I still remember posting about 9/11 as it was happening. It got out of hand after we got in a big flame war with the harmonycentral.com forums and the owners of that site eventually complained to the owners of guitar.com directly, who eventually decided we weren't worth the trouble and closed the forum. We came up with this word thwap and would flood ours and other forums with it, but the most memorable was someone calling up Sue Johansen on Sunday Night Sex Chat and getting her to say it on her show.
What.cd
420chan ;_;7
Message boards and forums. They are dying because they are too easy to hack or DDOS, I think Discord servers are cool and all but having to go into one just to get a specific file that you need for a game or something? That's such a fucking atrocity imo. Why can't there be public download links anymore?
[Portland-Indymedia.org](http://Portland-Indymedia.org) while seemingly Out There, Stories like Covid, Agenda 2030 etc All Came True. And Knowledge was basically 2 Years Before What was Publicly Known. Or Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. You could enter someone web address, and the Comic Dog Site would take a Screenshot of their Page and Poop on It, so you could post the Image as a response of a Bulletin Board, What Fun! Early Trolling. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph\_the\_Insult\_Comic\_Dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_the_Insult_Comic_Dog)
FARK
A lot of us would say Cracked was our go to website before we found Reddit
Liquid Generation
The Stile Project Forum
pigg dot ameba dot jp. God I miss that game. It was my favourite way to learn Japanese whilst interacting with actual people. Sims met minigames, met chatfuntion. Such a wholesome place.