Stil *ZOT*ting
April 25, 2023 7:19 PM Subscribe
Remember the Internet Oracle, the distributed source of all knowledge (read: wit)? It's still going - yes, since 1989. Read past questions and answers, ask your own, and become an incarnation of the ever-clever Oracle and answer someone else's. Writing and interface tips after the jump.
ON WRITING
The best way to learn the Oracle's tone is to simply read the Digests - and yes, they're still happening - and the Bestofs that result from voting (see next section). The official help file has some writing tips, as well as some history. More info can be found via the (likely-Wayback-requiring) links here - including info on that beloved simpering recurring minion, Zadoc the Priest (whose exploits are not as finished as that site suggests - he's mentioned in six of the last ten Digests). And if you receive a question that you can't give a good answer, just ignore it - it'll go back in the queue after a day or two for someone else to try to answer.
ON VOTING
The most recent five Digests are able to have their ten questions-and-answers (Oracularities) voted on, on a one-to-five quality scale; this decides which are included in the Bestofs. The Digests have information on how to do it by email (via a given email address or just by replaying to the emailed Digest if you're subscribed to the newsletter), and the ones that can be voted on also have their pages double as voting forms. This latter method uses a login system that's slightly idiosyncratic, though - the registration form for this method says 'don't use a username and password that would give access to your account', which actually refers to your email account, because it's freaking old. Also, the site doesn't remember your login, so each time you vote, you'll need to type your username and password into the fields provided at the bottom of the page.
ON WRITING
The best way to learn the Oracle's tone is to simply read the Digests - and yes, they're still happening - and the Bestofs that result from voting (see next section). The official help file has some writing tips, as well as some history. More info can be found via the (likely-Wayback-requiring) links here - including info on that beloved simpering recurring minion, Zadoc the Priest (whose exploits are not as finished as that site suggests - he's mentioned in six of the last ten Digests). And if you receive a question that you can't give a good answer, just ignore it - it'll go back in the queue after a day or two for someone else to try to answer.
ON VOTING
The most recent five Digests are able to have their ten questions-and-answers (Oracularities) voted on, on a one-to-five quality scale; this decides which are included in the Bestofs. The Digests have information on how to do it by email (via a given email address or just by replaying to the emailed Digest if you're subscribed to the newsletter), and the ones that can be voted on also have their pages double as voting forms. This latter method uses a login system that's slightly idiosyncratic, though - the registration form for this method says 'don't use a username and password that would give access to your account', which actually refers to your email account, because it's freaking old. Also, the site doesn't remember your login, so each time you vote, you'll need to type your username and password into the fields provided at the bottom of the page.
One of the things that terrifies me about the year 2023 is that we actually could feed the latest and greatest language model like ChatGPT a training set built on old Forum 2000 and Forum 3000 posts and maybe some sample texts from the various SOMAD sources and I have a pretty good feeling that we could make Forum 2k for really real
That said, as an alum of the Indiana University computer science department, I hold some pride that the Internet Oracle lives on whereas those Carnegie Mellon nerds' forum has long since passed on
posted by Skwirl at 8:58 PM on April 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
That said, as an alum of the Indiana University computer science department, I hold some pride that the Internet Oracle lives on whereas those Carnegie Mellon nerds' forum has long since passed on
posted by Skwirl at 8:58 PM on April 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I am still proud of my own brief incarnation as the Oracle in 1996, #842-06 .
posted by aubilenon at 9:22 PM on April 25, 2023 [23 favorites]
The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
> Oh luminous Oracle, whose doormat I am unworthy of chewing:
>
> I've noticed that whenever I eat Cheetos, I get orange crud all over my
> fingers. Can't they do something to fix that?
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} Foolish, foolish supplicant. The "orange crud" IS the Cheetos
} product. What you have been eating is the styrofoam packaging it is
} shipped in.
}
} You owe the Oracle a pancake recipe that requires 2 cups of Cheetos.
I was thinking the same about limited-corpus LLMs and how they could generate a really meaty argument between Ayn Rand and Space Ghost.
posted by rhizome at 9:51 PM on April 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 9:51 PM on April 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
you owe me a godamned night of sleep
posted by not_on_display at 11:03 PM on April 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by not_on_display at 11:03 PM on April 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
The Internet Oracle is a window to a different time on the internet. I won't say it's all better, but it felt healthier in some ways. The fact that the Oracle is still online is a miracle itself; that it's still updated is another miracle stacked atop the first. The classic roguelike game Nethack contains a couple of long-standing references to the Internet Oracle.
Sadly, as we can see by the number of comments here, these early examples of internet culture don't hold a lot of appeal to your average netizen now. Part of this I think is because social media greatly expanded the type of person who was online and what they expected, for it's not all geeks and early adopters anymore. This has also much reduced the currency of classic forms of nerd humor: it used to be you could expect nearly anyone you met online would know Monty Python, would get a Star Wars reference, and had heard of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But it has also made the web a lot less of a boy's club, and web culture has matured a bit, perhaps due to people realizing what direction it was leading.
I've been working on a collection of classic web links (some still extant, some found on the Wayback Machine) for some purpose eventually. It might be a megapost, but it'd be nice if it could be a book. Books seems to survive a bit longer than websites, by some measures at least. It's the kind of project that takes a lot of time and focus to complete though, not to mention the emotional toll of seeing so many once-popular sites that exist now only in its preserved-in-amber Internet Archive form. It's shocking how quickly Google erases all references to, say, The Conservatron.
(If you know of an old website that people knew about generally that can still be seen, either still up or on the internet Archive, please MeMail me with the info.)
posted by JHarris at 3:52 AM on April 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
Sadly, as we can see by the number of comments here, these early examples of internet culture don't hold a lot of appeal to your average netizen now. Part of this I think is because social media greatly expanded the type of person who was online and what they expected, for it's not all geeks and early adopters anymore. This has also much reduced the currency of classic forms of nerd humor: it used to be you could expect nearly anyone you met online would know Monty Python, would get a Star Wars reference, and had heard of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But it has also made the web a lot less of a boy's club, and web culture has matured a bit, perhaps due to people realizing what direction it was leading.
I've been working on a collection of classic web links (some still extant, some found on the Wayback Machine) for some purpose eventually. It might be a megapost, but it'd be nice if it could be a book. Books seems to survive a bit longer than websites, by some measures at least. It's the kind of project that takes a lot of time and focus to complete though, not to mention the emotional toll of seeing so many once-popular sites that exist now only in its preserved-in-amber Internet Archive form. It's shocking how quickly Google erases all references to, say, The Conservatron.
(If you know of an old website that people knew about generally that can still be seen, either still up or on the internet Archive, please MeMail me with the info.)
posted by JHarris at 3:52 AM on April 26, 2023 [11 favorites]
forum 3000 or gtfo
Where have you gone, True Meaning of Life
A nation turns its lonely eyes to bots
posted by penduluum at 6:11 AM on April 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Where have you gone, True Meaning of Life
A nation turns its lonely eyes to bots
posted by penduluum at 6:11 AM on April 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
It might be a megapost, but it'd be nice if it could be a book.
Are there any good, broad histories of the web pre-'03ish? The light sides and the dark sides? Like from the Jargon File days to the launch of Friendster? I would read the shit out of this book. I would do book clubs about this book.
I really wish I had known, back in the mid-late '90s, how few people were e.g. MSTing posts on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc. I wish I had known as a 15 year old how easy it would have been to make friends with those people, how straightforward it would have been to adapt my natural curiosity and enthusiasm to an actual career. I wish I could tell that kid what direction the future was pointing in.
posted by penduluum at 6:22 AM on April 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Are there any good, broad histories of the web pre-'03ish? The light sides and the dark sides? Like from the Jargon File days to the launch of Friendster? I would read the shit out of this book. I would do book clubs about this book.
I really wish I had known, back in the mid-late '90s, how few people were e.g. MSTing posts on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc. I wish I had known as a 15 year old how easy it would have been to make friends with those people, how straightforward it would have been to adapt my natural curiosity and enthusiasm to an actual career. I wish I could tell that kid what direction the future was pointing in.
posted by penduluum at 6:22 AM on April 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I really wish I had known, back in the mid-late '90s, how few people were e.g. MSTing posts on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc.
Oh, man, I did a lot of that.
--Jasoooon! (That's one "o")
posted by Gadarene at 6:25 AM on April 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh, man, I did a lot of that.
--Jasoooon! (That's one "o")
posted by Gadarene at 6:25 AM on April 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
A site I went to a lot in those days was the MSTing archive at pinky.wtower.com (NARF)! There was a particular MSTing there, of Paramount's press release for the introduction of Seven of Nine into Star Trek Voyager, that was snarktastic. wtower went down ages ago, but I managed to dig it up out of the Wayback archive of the site once. Maybe I can find it again.
It was written by someone who was the ex of an online friend of mine in an early virtual world called WorldsAway. That friend's avatar name was Ivanova (after the Babylon 5 character). I've tried tracking her down lately to try to catch up (even trying to reach her through her ex, who it turns out had a Twitter account), but sadly we lost contact long, long ago. It's likely she wouldn't even remember me, really. There's a number of people I knew back then in WA who I wish I could talk to again. Time is cruel.
posted by JHarris at 7:22 AM on April 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
It was written by someone who was the ex of an online friend of mine in an early virtual world called WorldsAway. That friend's avatar name was Ivanova (after the Babylon 5 character). I've tried tracking her down lately to try to catch up (even trying to reach her through her ex, who it turns out had a Twitter account), but sadly we lost contact long, long ago. It's likely she wouldn't even remember me, really. There's a number of people I knew back then in WA who I wish I could talk to again. Time is cruel.
posted by JHarris at 7:22 AM on April 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh, brings back the memories, it does....
Trawling Usenet for ascii pictures and porn gifs...
Playing Doom in the school's GIS lab...
Invoking GOPHER...
and answering stupid questions for the Oracle
posted by Oh_Bobloblaw at 8:08 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Trawling Usenet for ascii pictures and porn gifs...
Playing Doom in the school's GIS lab...
Invoking GOPHER...
and answering stupid questions for the Oracle
posted by Oh_Bobloblaw at 8:08 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's not a site that a lot of people went to, but it is a site that's still around from the 1990s: saint.org--a website about the Simon (The Saint) Templar character created by Leslie Charteris. If you go back to the news/rumours section, you'll see the archive reaches into 1995. Ian, the site's founder, has usage stats going back to October 18, 1995. I'm not sure exactly when I came across it, but it was likely very early on in the site's lifetime. The odds are pretty good I found it through rec.arts.fan.the-saint (or whatever the actual name of the newsgroup was) and/or The Epistle, which was a listserv mailing list (both of rich were run by Ian).
posted by sardonyx at 8:10 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by sardonyx at 8:10 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I blame video. Easy access to the moving pictures made people less likely to interact. Videos take more time to consume and it's a one way media. Internet videos either become memes or isolate us
posted by Jacen at 9:17 AM on April 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 9:17 AM on April 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I know I've seen lots of instructional videos on Youtube that would be better served as text, but Google will always send you a video in preference to an HTML page. Don't exempt Google of responsibility for the shittification of the web.
posted by JHarris at 10:36 AM on April 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 10:36 AM on April 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Re: old sites that are still up: this has been riding on my mind for a while now.
This is Lemmy's Land, a Super Mario Bros. fansite.
This is Something Awful's Awful Link of the Day article about it, by Daryl "Fucking" Hall (no relation); below is the first paragraph.
When I get a link to an especially badly designed site, the kind that looks like it hasn't been edited since people used Yahoo!, I wonder if the person who owns the site just keeps paying that hosting bill without even noticing. In the case of Lemmy's Land, my best guess is that this was a project some 12-year-old kid got really excited about, and in an effort to connect more closely with their progeny, his parents agreed to buy him a domain name and shell out some money for hosting. Eventually, the kid forgot about the site, went to college, and got really into some sort of bizarre pornography, but the bills kept coming. By that point, though, it had just become a part of the parents' monthly routine, fitting in just fine amongst the electric bill and the mortgage. One day, when the parents switch to social security, they'll reassess their bills, and they'll find this page, and lemmykoopa.com will become vacant once again, possibly forever. Unless Nintendo starts getting really desperate.
The article is from 2011; the Wayback Machine has copies of it dating back to 2002.
There is a part of me that wants to say mean things about the article's author here. That part of me is a piece of shit. I hope he grew up, and didn't end up like Lowtax.
(Another part of me just noted that the way America is right now, the kid's parents continuing to work rather than switching to social security is upsettingly plausible.)
posted by BiggerJ at 12:10 AM on April 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is Lemmy's Land, a Super Mario Bros. fansite.
This is Something Awful's Awful Link of the Day article about it, by Daryl "Fucking" Hall (no relation); below is the first paragraph.
When I get a link to an especially badly designed site, the kind that looks like it hasn't been edited since people used Yahoo!, I wonder if the person who owns the site just keeps paying that hosting bill without even noticing. In the case of Lemmy's Land, my best guess is that this was a project some 12-year-old kid got really excited about, and in an effort to connect more closely with their progeny, his parents agreed to buy him a domain name and shell out some money for hosting. Eventually, the kid forgot about the site, went to college, and got really into some sort of bizarre pornography, but the bills kept coming. By that point, though, it had just become a part of the parents' monthly routine, fitting in just fine amongst the electric bill and the mortgage. One day, when the parents switch to social security, they'll reassess their bills, and they'll find this page, and lemmykoopa.com will become vacant once again, possibly forever. Unless Nintendo starts getting really desperate.
The article is from 2011; the Wayback Machine has copies of it dating back to 2002.
There is a part of me that wants to say mean things about the article's author here. That part of me is a piece of shit. I hope he grew up, and didn't end up like Lowtax.
(Another part of me just noted that the way America is right now, the kid's parents continuing to work rather than switching to social security is upsettingly plausible.)
posted by BiggerJ at 12:10 AM on April 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
*the Waybe Machine has copies of the site dating back to 2002
posted by BiggerJ at 1:50 AM on April 27, 2023
posted by BiggerJ at 1:50 AM on April 27, 2023
Leisure Town is still up! Those panels were the funniest things I had ever seen at the time.
One thing from the 90s I can't find was some short videos about a new sport of "Looming." Someone would walk up behind someone at their desk and stand over them menacingly, with sport commentary and, I believe, points given. It was a British thing.
posted by rhizome at 10:45 PM on April 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
One thing from the 90s I can't find was some short videos about a new sport of "Looming." Someone would walk up behind someone at their desk and stand over them menacingly, with sport commentary and, I believe, points given. It was a British thing.
posted by rhizome at 10:45 PM on April 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Lemmy's Land is still online. The Something Awful page mocking it went up in 2011. To make fun of Lemmy's Land now feels like cruelty, especially since we've seen the internet that Something Awful helped give rise to.
It is a miracle that, still, anyone willing to pay for a very cheap domain name and hosting can put up their own website. And I note that, while all the people who made Geocities sites lost theirs, there's still Angelfire
As the netizens of the early web continue to age, in some way it's a kindness that, when they pass away, their sites go down, instead of offering their well-wishes and requests for feedback forever to the internet after. But it's also sad. At least there's the Wayback Machine, for as long as that lasts.
posted by JHarris at 8:31 AM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
It is a miracle that, still, anyone willing to pay for a very cheap domain name and hosting can put up their own website. And I note that, while all the people who made Geocities sites lost theirs, there's still Angelfire
As the netizens of the early web continue to age, in some way it's a kindness that, when they pass away, their sites go down, instead of offering their well-wishes and requests for feedback forever to the internet after. But it's also sad. At least there's the Wayback Machine, for as long as that lasts.
posted by JHarris at 8:31 AM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
And now: Something Awful's front page hasn't updated since 2020, before Lowtax committed suicide, and the front page doesn't bear any recognition of that fact. It's possible at this point that it's going to become just as locked and unchanging as Lemmy's Land is, although I hear the forums are still active.
posted by JHarris at 8:34 AM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 8:34 AM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
JHarris: The current owner of the site has declared an intent to revitalize the front page, and has sought out new writers, although there's been no sign of him actually going ahead with it. I think he may have gotten caught between a rock and a hard place re: the site's uncaring style of humor.
posted by BiggerJ at 9:01 PM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by BiggerJ at 9:01 PM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:07 PM on April 25, 2023 [3 favorites]