The old school Gawker sites like io9, Deadspin and Jalopnik.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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The ones without paywalls and ads.
MySpace and Facebook from before 2010. There's not really any social media that's designed to show me posts from my friends and nothing else. Now whenever I open up Facebook I am just shown shit from people and pages I never subscribed to and ads.
Agree. If only I could convince more of my friends to drop siloed socials and get fediverse accounts, I'd have a solution for that, but that's not happening.
Joe Cartoon
what.cd
Oh man the day what shut down was a goddamn international tragedy
timecube.com
Television Without Pity
jumptheshark.com
(wow I'm showing off my freakish memory here, I'm still an active Metafilter participant)
MUDs, MOOs, MUCKs and MUSHes.
Usenet in general
sodaconstructor.com
memepool
ectoplasmosis
Boing Boing when it was great
An early virtual world called WorldsAway, technically still exists at VZones but I don't think it's possible to make an account now
Hotwired
Suck.com and early discussion side adjunct Plastic.com
TimmyBigHands, short-lived humor magazine from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 people shortly after the show folded the second time.
The Sci-Fi Channel's website and MTV.com, both started with the hopes of becoming a substantial part of the World Wide Web by getting in early, then shuttered when owners lost interest or believed the lies that social media was where the only thing that mattered any more. Also Cartoon Network's website, which was once a joy. Adult Swim's website hangs on, but is a shadow of its former self, and doesn't host forums any longer.
The Usenet MSTing archives at pinky.wtower.com
MUDs, MOOs, MUCKs and MUSHes.
I mean, they're still out there. Not all of them, and the player populations aren't as large as in their heyday.
I know, but it's not nearly the same kind of thing as back when they were big, sadly.
Was just playing a mud earlier today!
One thing that still exists is WWWF Grudge Match, a likely inspiration for MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch, a crowdsourced humor site where they put different pop culture figures against each other in textual battles and people contributed their takes and votes on who would win. It hasn't updated in over two decades though. It even spawned a book!
(I am slightly responsible for its continued existence. I noticed that it had gone offline a while back. I happened to have Chris, one of its founders, in my contacts list, so I sent him a message about it. Turns out to have been an expired credit card, a quick change of backing funds and GRUDGE MATCH LIVES AGAIN!)
Also, The Conservatron, another crowdsource humor site, home of the Evil Black Marble from Marble Madness.
It seems like the Internet Oracle has finally, at last, succumbed to linkrot.
Two sites that still exist are Everything, H2G2 and the homepage of venerable roguelike game Nethack!
Unpopular opinion: Google?
Back before it sucked.
A bit of the Google that was like that persists as the 'web' subsearch. The site at https://udm14.com/ exists purely as a frontend to that search. It's not exactly like the old Google, it's still too ready to throw Youtube videos at the top of the results, but it's still much easier to find interesting websites that way than Google's default search.
Honestly, yeah, my first thought is that I miss the Google and YouTube from 15 years ago
bash.org
I don't think that new items can be submitted, but the old stuff is available here.
Brunching Shuttlecocks. Fucking hilarious comedy site with daily posts. Can't find any remnants of it out there.
YES! I happen to know a bit about that!
Half of it, Lore Sjöberg, is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/loresjoberg.bsky.social I'm sure he'd be delighted to hear from someone else who remembers Brunching!
He has a website where he's posted some of his work since, called Bad Gods: https://badgods.com/
And there's a Discord where old Brunching fans hang out, Brunchma Expats, I can't send an invite at the moment but I'll try to remember to do it when I get back to the house!
Oh man, thanks! I just spent an hour reading his bluesky. Still funny as shit.
He is!
Original Neopets.
Stumbleupon.
Early Reddit.
Killfrog.com
I definitely miss Stumbleupon. Closest I can find to fill that void is jumpstick.app, which is also good.
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homestarrunner.com
Luckily they're still active on YouTube!
AND at their website, which now uses Ruffle as its Flash player!
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gamehippo.com, dohgames.com, 1up.com and zone.msn.com which technically is still around I just miss the Age of Empires game rooms and chat.
Yes! I know Jeremy Parish of 1up and Retronauts, he rues 1up's passing as well.
Also good was Joystiq, which was one of the best game news and culture sites. And recently I was reminded of Happy Puppy, the first really big gaming trailer and demo site, now dead for many years and barely remembered.
Cracked in it's prime was fucking amazing.
Like, it's the type of "just stay here" website everyone keeps trying to make.
On any random day they'd post like an article every 15 minutes. No matter when you needed to kill 15-30 there was something funny and usually informative.
There was probably 5 years straight I didn't poop without reading an article on Cracked.
There's no other quality stream of content like that since.
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kongregate. place is practically dead now
Yeah, Newgrounds keeps chugging along though.
ytmnd. Technically it still exists but the magic is gone
Slashdot (still with us, but not the same)
Digg (back with us, but not the same)
Freshmeat
Kuro5hin
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