Yesterweb Discord set to close to refocus "effort into different projects"

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SomaSpice

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Incredible how a forum that's "Uhhh we like vaporwave I guess idk have fun" and the admin goes to sleep for months at a time has more staying power and community cohesion than these tryhards
 
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Without details because it doesn't matter and I want some minor separations of online identities, I am referenced negatively in this summary. What is immensely annoying is that they deleted the Discord so all evidence of their extremely exaggerated take is lost to the sands of time. Fortunately however this essay speaks for itself and you all have already saw through it for what it is.

I'm just glad this trainwreck is over so that I can stop being captivated by it. The YW mods are as exhausted as I am.
 
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they deleted the Discord so all evidence of their extremely exaggerated take is lost to the sands of time
Lamenting the loss of data to the sands of time and attempting to prevent it is a huge pillar of the "old web"/archival ethos. Glad they're following praxis.
 
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LostintheCycle

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The following summary has been posted by Yesterweb leadership with the intent to clarify things.
The forum will be set to read-only shortly.
I was gonna go through and give thoughts on dumb quotes, but I had a page after going through a chapter. I'm sure anyone here can see what's wrong for themselves.
Here's the real summary without a table of contents: Yesterweb moderators are coping with the fact that their darling of the old web revival has turned out to be an embarrassment and an utter failure. They espoused being countercultural but they just aren't, they are indeed more 'subcultural' than they think by their own words, even if they desparately insist they are not.
I'd like to ask as well if someone could clarify what they meant by qualitative progressive cultural transformation? I have no clue wtf that means.
 
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Incredible how a forum that's "Uhhh we like vaporwave I guess idk have fun" and the admin goes to sleep for months at a time has more staying power and community cohesion than these tryhards
That's because we follow the Bruce lee's philosophy of "not think, feel"

We don't even know what are we doing, but we are having fun with it, truly the key to success. (I could also add that is because due to the amount of members, no one is actually ignored unlike the yesterweb, in which these people act like you don't exists or something and the new theory and praxies dies quickly)
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Vaporweeb

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I'd like to ask as well if someone could clarify what they meant by qualitative progressive cultural transformation? I have no clue wtf that means.
I get the impression they didn't even know.
 
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SomaSpice

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I'd like to ask as well if someone could clarify what they meant by qualitative progressive cultural transformation? I have no clue wtf that means.
Its like when anime characters shout the name of their attacks, but for chronically online lefties.
 
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I think this experiment was bizarre more than anything, I guess they just didn't understand the work they needed to do. I read some of the closing thread, and it seems like the former admins have no interest in ever having a forum again. One admin, madness went as far as to say they are leaving the internet entirely to "build community" offline instead. To me this is extremely strange considering they made the forum and discord because they want a similar experience to the old web. Was that it? are they all giving up completely? that's the vibe I got. No new projects, no promises that they will try something out in the future, just an extremely verbose and pedantic explanation that boils down to like a single point: The forum sucked, and you guys suck, and we don't want anything to do with you anymore. We tried to save you, but you ungrateful animals didn't want saving, so we are destroying everything.

From one of the moderators: "folks dont care about the yesterweb movement, is exactly the reason we're giving up on the forum."
I honestly don't understand what they are talking about. I have the feeling that the "movement" was more important to then then the actual content they were exchanging. The whole forum seemed to just be about building websites, and it might just be me, but people have to make websites for a reason other than their love for the internet. People who make websites have a purpose, intrinsically they post things that they care about more than the "yesterweb movement"

Part of a bizarre post from madness again:" Afterward, the more serious problem that emerged came from PMCs. For those who don't know, PMC stands for "Professional and Managerial Class". These would be your tech bros, highly-educated tech workers, yuppies, bosses, elitists, and rich techie children with middle-class mentalities. While NOT ALL PMCs are a problem and some of them are very sympathetic to what we do, I'd say about half of them really do not have our interests in mind. And this is particularly challenging because this sector of people definitely has the time and money to completely derail the movement and solidify its status as a sub-culture, killing its counter-culture potential."

?????? WHAT? What the hell are they talking about? are rich techbros "sabotaging" the movement? what??

It is very clear that something else was going on. These people don't really care about "Yesterweb" or old style forums, they want to build a real political movement based off of bizarre niche marxism for the goal of ________? (which was NOT expressed to the actual users as was revealed in the closing thread) The forum was a way for them to try to build that. But, when they saw the people who were actually interested. (obviously politically diverse internet weirdos) they were disgusted by the non monolithic opinions of those interested and gave up. They want an echo chamber, FULL STOP. They do NOT want anyone that does not follow their manifesto exactly. Madness actually says that the yesterweb name was a curse because it attracted people looking for the old web instead of _______? .... No shit. this whole thread is ridiculous.

Isn't diverse discussion between very different people a basic trait of the old web?, aren't the echo chambers of today engineered by big tech to placate people, with the side affect of increasing division? Isn't the strength of forums being able to share longform content with nuance effectively, thus allowing for REAL discussion???

In the end, it boiled down to the staff getting burnt out spending too much time on the forums.... doing something, idk. Couldn't they just take a more lax moderating style, or pause work on the forum? Micromanagement to ensure complete adherence to a "movement" and their manifesto IS OBVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE, so why were they so obsessed with doing that? Sadness explicitly expressed it wasn't a monetary issue. It makes no sense. I don't think that anyone could make sense of it, because all the reasonings given are stupid. The moderator, madness devolves into an insane and delusional tirade about the failure of the "movement" because nobody cares and how they couldn't tell anyone about what the forum stood for because "you cant lead a horse to water etc". They literally didn't tell anyone their manifesto and were angry that no on followed it, for fucks sake. I just have to say that madness is fucking insufferable with a massive saviour complex, and I hope for the decentralized web's sake that they never get involved in a project again.

this was their "secret" gameplan for their users:

"1. Find the Yesterweb via discontent with the current state of the Web
2. Learn WHY the web is the way it is now (by using the nostalgic lens to see the historical alternative)
3. Collectivize with all of us in raising our consciousness of the oppressive nature of the current Web (capitalist exploitation via data harvesting, commercialism, etc)
4. Develop real solutions to further raise consciousness of people outside of the Yesterweb

All of this took massive amounts of energy and time and without more help- it fizzled out. We all became so burnt out with trying to help people understand that we gave up in a lot of ways."

I have to say, I and most niche web people would agree with most of this statement, and I would gladly join a community that expressed this goal clearly, but this wasn't the real reason. They wanted something else, a perfect movement that would meet all of their ideals and align perfectly with their ideology. But that is not possible. I'm tired of reading this garbage.
 
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ZinRicky

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Incredible how a forum that's "Uhhh we like vaporwave I guess idk have fun" and the admin goes to sleep for months at a time has more staying power and community cohesion than these tryhards
The premise is 100× more achievable, if I can express my humble opinion
 
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brentw

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Part of a bizarre post from madness again:" Afterward, the more serious problem that emerged came from PMCs. For those who don't know, PMC stands for "Professional and Managerial Class". These would be your tech bros, highly-educated tech workers, yuppies, bosses, elitists, and rich techie children with middle-class mentalities. While NOT ALL PMCs are a problem and some of them are very sympathetic to what we do, I'd say about half of them really do not have our interests in mind. And this is particularly challenging because this sector of people definitely has the time and money to completely derail the movement and solidify its status as a sub-culture, killing its counter-culture potential."

?????? WHAT? What the hell are they talking about? are rich techbros "sabotaging" the movement? what??

Reading between the lines I interpret that as him being mad that people who have more technical skill than him aren't making exactly what he wants, exactly the way he wants it.
 
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Orlando Smooth

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2. Learn WHY the web is the way it is now (by using the nostalgic lens to see the historical alternative)
I think this piece is what ultimately gave away the game. They (supposedly) wanted to re-create the old web in the modern world, but were only familiar with the old web through aesthetics and modern retellings of what old websites were like. This allowed them to construct some mental framework of the pre-facebook internet as some sort of "___-ist" utopia which it never really was. I never interacted with these people because I refuse to use discord for anything other than vocal chat services with irl friends while gaming, but to those who did interact with them: how old do you think these people were, on average? How many were old enough to actually experience these old websites they idolize? How many were old enough to not just be aware of them but actually use the websites? I'm guessing it was a near-zero number of people. So without an actual understanding of the ethos of the old web, and a strong selection bias of only absorbing components of it that fit their contemporary politics and beliefs, they were doomed to fail.

The 60's always seemed so cool to me; hippies, fantastic music, introduction of acid to the masses, Woodstock, et cetera. But the people I know who were actually alive at that time say that the race riots, Vietnam, rising crime, Cuban missile crisis, political scandals, etc., made it a pretty rough time to live through. The thing that this YW crowd doesn't seem to understand is that growth and decay go hand in hand. While there are myriad of problems with the modern web that didn't exist in the past, we haven't exclusively gone downhill over the past 30 years.
 
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I think this piece is what ultimately gave away the game. They (supposedly) wanted to re-create the old web in the modern world, but were only familiar with the old web through aesthetics and modern retellings of what old websites were like. This allowed them to construct some mental framework of the pre-facebook internet as some sort of "___-ist" utopia which it never really was. I never interacted with these people because I refuse to use discord for anything other than vocal chat services with irl friends while gaming, but to those who did interact with them: how old do you think these people were, on average? How many were old enough to actually experience these old websites they idolize? How many were old enough to not just be aware of them but actually use the websites? I'm guessing it was a near-zero number of people. So without an actual understanding of the ethos of the old web, and a strong selection bias of only absorbing components of it that fit their contemporary politics and beliefs, they were doomed to fail.

The 60's always seemed so cool to me; hippies, fantastic music, introduction of acid to the masses, Woodstock, et cetera. But the people I know who were actually alive at that time say that the race riots, Vietnam, rising crime, Cuban missile crisis, political scandals, etc., made it a pretty rough time to live through. The thing that this YW crowd doesn't seem to understand is that growth and decay go hand in hand. While there are myriad of problems with the modern web that didn't exist in the past, we haven't exclusively gone downhill over the past 30 years.
The staff themselves claim that their intention was never to foster a community inspired the material reality of the past as their main goal. They directly claim that it was just a front to gather members for the next two steps. Why they chose to do this, and why they thought this was in any way viable is beyond me. The shutting down thread makes very clear that the organisers had no intention of creating a website for real actual people, their intention and (secret) goal was to create a radical organization, form a counter culture, and essentially wage war against web2. How exactly, I have no idea. They do admit their goals were too lofty, but I think delusional fits the bill better.
 
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The staff themselves claim that their intention was never to foster a community inspired the material reality of the past as their main goal. They directly claim that it was just a front to gather members for the next two steps.
I hope this isn't too damaging to the neocities/personal web revival. I'm not gonna lie I'm a bit pissed at how this whole thing went down. There's a lot of people on the YW forum who are probably going to go back to their discord servers after this and never use another forum again. I like to think I'm fairly literate but I just can not get through their bloviating. It's like reading a >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk mod's ban message but 100x longer.
How many were old enough to actually experience these old websites they idolize? How many were old enough to not just be aware of them but actually use the websites? I'm guessing it was a near-zero number of people. So without an actual understanding of the ethos of the old web, and a strong selection bias of only absorbing components of it that fit their contemporary politics and beliefs, they were doomed to fail.
I think a lot of zillenials/zoomers are attracted to the y2k aesthetic because by its very nature nostalgia is a gloss on history where you take the good and leave the bad, and we are living in increasingly bad times. It's a form of escapism but imo it's healthier than doomscrolling on twitter. The contemporary politics point is also well taken; I saw some things on that forum (want to avoid politics so I won't go into specifics) that were so alien to what life was like prior to, say, 2013 that it broke the illusion in a really bad way. They definitely nailed the "douchebag powertripping janny" part of the old web though so I'll give them that.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Wow you guys weren't kidding about the length of this thing :spaceGhost:

but people have to make websites for a reason other than their love for the internet
Not an impossible task tho, lolwut showed it could be done (granted he has a diverse amount of material on there.) And mine was made out of a love/hate relationship towards the current state of the net tbh.
One can make a site dedicated to internet culture (or really anything) so long as they find some way to fill it with content.
And my biggest complaint with a lot of these yesterweb sites is that they were just glorified link trees, just linking to various twitters and instas with a little extra visual flair rather than going all in on a personal site.

how old do you think these people were, on average? How many were old enough to actually experience these old websites they idolize? How many were old enough to not just be aware of them but actually use the websites?
To be fair, same could be said about a fair amount of users here.

I hope this isn't too damaging to the neocities/personal web revival.
Hardly, Neocities was going strong without them and so was self hosting. Still is the case.
sadgrl may be the most followed site on neocities, but it isn't the most "impactful" profile on there. It's one of those instances where one may have a sizable, even vocal crowd, but it is not indicative of the core community base.
 
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Orlando Smooth

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To be fair, same could be said about a fair amount of users here.
Sure, but the difference is that people here embrace the fact that it's aesthetic and no one claims that this is a true-to-form re-creation of the old web. Generally speaking, people here openly embrace the parts of the modern web that are genuine improvements since the original forum era while attempting to re-create only those aspects that were both better about the past and feasible in the present.
 
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handoferis

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the only good thing about bringing back the old web is teaching people to make dumb sites so they can post about themselves and things they care about in a way they own and curate, which inherently stops them interacting with Big Bad sites as much.

is this so wild to understand? like lol the hobbyist way of looking at it is the most effective if you wanna take potshots at big tech.

honestly just reads like a bunch of people that ended up reading commie shit, whenever you see people talk about how they were 'radicalized' in these contexts usually just means they've gone communist/anarchist/etc
 
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