How do you find the weird parts of the web?
I used to have an easier time finding truly weird material to read on the web. Things like:
subgenius.com
timecube.2enp.com
Things on the fringes of sanity, or sometimes far over the line.
Any resources for finding material that is way out there, but manages to steer clear of hateful/racist/bigoted patterns of thought?
Few ways, in no particular order:
- are.na seems to attract people who have odd interests and it’s full of quirky websites
- webrings are still a thing and there’s a bunch out there worth checking out
- directories like https://512kb.club/ are usually full of interesting sites
- by following links on blogs and sites you find interesting
- some cool forums are still out there (https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php)
Shameless plug but I am currently curating https://theforest.link precisely because of the issue you’re describing.
Search for strange and controversial topics on http://yandex.com . The results are totally different from the mainstream search engines which try hard to prevent fun "misinformation" by always sending you to the sites that never say anything strange.
For example, try "solar warden" (not the video game or the novel which is what the mainstream sites want to tell you about) on Yandex if you want to go down a fun rabbit hole.
Turn on posts from banned users on this site. I’ve seen some genuinely deranged stuff on here. One time a poster got into a really heated debate about censorship and ended up posting links to a detailed guide on how to commit suicide for some reason!
It wasn’t particularly fun but it was genuinely an odd thing to come across on today’s internet.
> steer clear of hateful/racist/bigoted patterns of thought
If you want to widen the spectrum of humanity that you're exposed to, you're inevitably going to come across these people. Personally I thought it was well worth it. Plenty of good and bad to be found.
Random thought: if the commercial web has all but devoured the original web, leaving only a fraction of the interesting parts behind and which are no longer really growing in number, isn't this counter to the reason why we decided we needed search engines altogether? Wouldn't it be nice if someone made a modern Yahoo! Directory equivalent for those random olde worlde curios we all pine for? Something like a modern decentralized Geocities
All you had to do was ask.
Here’s one I found recently: http://www.betainfoguide.net/
The social tech of 2007 in the web tech of 1997 for the tape tech of 1977. I swear if browsers still supported the blink and marquee tags there would be some of that on display here.
You have to join the hidden un-Googleable communities where the people who create such things gather.
Not to diminish the quality of the content in the answers of other respondents, but don't link directories and self hosted HTML blogs filter for a certain potentially unwanted writer bias? i.e. 30-something, male, agorist, nostalgic for the old internet, oddly niche hobbies, English as first or second language, ...
I continue to like the chans for this. They have a bad reputation for bigotry but many chan users are just as hostile toward this as anyone else, and treat cesspools like /pol/ as containment boards whose malign attitudes need to be kept out of other boards. This is true even on 4chan itself, and there are many more obscure examples.
For that matter, even superficially toxic online spaces are often highly contested and exhibit recognizable dynamic patterns, notwithstanding the anonymity of the participants.
Alternatively, anything is possible at zombo.com.
One way is to have a 'weird interest' and go on the in-depth research needed to back up a hunch of yours.
The interest does not have to be that weird. Along the way you might contact someone that has the same interest as yourself, for example to ask if they have an image in a different format or at a higher resolution. With a bit of rapport and infectious enthusiasm for their subject, I am sure you can get more into it with sources for the original content shared.
History is a good way to get on this journey. I am fascinated by what people ate in times past, and on a quest to find an answer to whom man's best friend really was. The sheep is the front runner on that, not the dog. There is no absolute answer, nobody has put me on a deadline to come up with a definitive answer, it is just pure, self-directed study for the joy of learning.
I like things that are outside of Google search results. I also view Google search results as a facsimile for a full web search. With your phone there is that feature to identify songs with Google Assistant. Even if you are not online it will get results for most songs. It has a cache of what it thinks is enough for most people. I think Google search results as a whole are like that.
I am on a pair of discord servers that have a bunch of weirdos. I know better than to advertise a small community though.
Use your imagination. Think up keywords for weird stuff, type them in on search engines, eBay, Etsy, everywhere and see what turns up. Be somewhat vague, like "wireless LED". Also try searches on things you already know of and see what is related. Try "Webb Wilder" and "Subgenius" and see what sites are returned and don't look at those pages but at the sites themselves. Be persistent, you may have to wade through a lot of non-weirdness.
http://www.theoddityarchive.com/
"psychotronic"
http://sainteuphoria.com/
You're on the right site for it.
There are many great sites out there. People may think they are dead or lost because they don't attract millions of view per day, but "back when the web was good" there were just less people on the internet. And a lot of the bulk of the people online padding out the numbers these days are never going to be interested in these sorts of things anyway.
To find new sites it can be fun following a topic down a wikipedia rabbit hole looking for external links etc. for example start with discord on wikipedia and eventually end up with something like http://www.principiadiscordia.com fnord
Well it's def not the best way.. but I find mostly a subredit for any weird of wonderful interests I might have at that time, sorting the post by top-x (week, month,all time) can give you some quick domain-knowledge or important urls.
YMMV(Greatly)
xmofi 0qe 01110100010 100110:00 mj tev qeb crqrob albpkq kbba rp qeu abjbqof fc orav n xka x tfqe jxoh zixdub
Various other lists on wikipedia. (I think there is a "list of lists" with thousands of lists).
Sites that show lists of subreddits.
There are things like "first world problems", "secod world problems" - and much much stranger stuff the higher you go ("I wanted to bake a cake from scratch, but in order to do that, I had to create a new universe").
I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
While I think the other suggestions here are more what you're looking for, https://neocities.org have managed to grow a community of sorts with a 90s/early 2000s "home page" feel to them.
Personally, I found out about the church from the radio not the internet. Though the website is fun.
Reddit has a lot of such rabbit holes, but one needs to wade through a lot before finding it.
I think these things have always spread by message boards. Today that probably means Reddit.
Mostly my social bubble and of course reddit!
I even read hackernews through reddit, thanks to the sub forum.
Otherwise there is the good old google bang for site:reddit.com for anything of interest =)
I can safely reccomend the appollo app for your phone.
Try to go to i2p darkweb: https://geti2p.net. "Eepsites" like planet.i2p collect stuff from various corners of it.
You read what other weird people write and follow your nose.
oh this posting is not good for my productivity...
How did you find the timecube site?
I like looking at neocities. You can find some weird shit in links on message boards.
Always read the comments on HN.
This is the way.
You're familiar with the (now sadly degraded) deoxy.org?
wiby.me takes you to older websites. Some of them can be weird.
start with the best search engine.
searx.org