Internet Anthropology and Archaeology (Adventures In Atariland)

Ixion_SEROV

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For the last 20 years, I've always had a fascination with niche online communities and groups that always existed on the periphery. While MySpace and Facebook eventually sealed the fates of many of the diverse discussion boards, forums, and hobby chat sites of yesteryear, I still like to go on dedicated treks through the road-less-traveled and examine many of these sites at they exist today. While the title 'internet anthropology and archaeology' seems fitting, it's too much of an academic label for the energy I'm trying to describe in my posts. I want to call this little project of mine something that's closer to the heart and soul of my love for abandonware, ancient internet content, and all the digital homes we've lost over the years;

Adventures In Atariland.

I want to start with a majestic work of passion that I believe will have you absolutely hooked. Imagine a near-endless page of nothing but Geocities links that take you to countless old personal pages and shrine sites buried beneath the dust of time. It's a site that I always have a tab open on with my smartphone and will sometimes spend hours just pouring over. That site is none other than Cameronsworld.net.

I could dedicate an entire essay analysis to breaking down the build and how the site is super stylized, but that just wouldn't be enough. It's simply a treasure trove of an era of internet creativity that I sometimes lament. Every image on the site is a link to its source page- be that some random accountant's passion project or a dated university resource bulletin board. One could spend a near lifetime here and never see everything. I'll simply post a few screenshots of some of the image spreads that can be found here.

I intend to save as many unique gifs and images as I can find since I consider these to be borderline curios at this point. And since so much of what I'm finding matches the aesthetics of Agoraroad, I can see a lot of this being put to good use.

Join me next time for more Adventures In Atariland!
 

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naa

This is a really nice thread, thanks for sharing. Cameron's World is such a nice website. I love stuff like this and I'm looking forward to your next adventure.
 

IlluminatiPirate

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Ah I've ventured into Cameron's world when I was researching the awards for this site. What surprises me is that the website is relatively fast with all the moving gifs! :ConfusedKaguya: I wonder how long did it take him to compile all of it or if he used a bot monkahhm
 
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Ixion_SEROV

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Ah I've ventured into Cameron's world when I was researching the awards for this site. What surprises me is that the website is relatively fast with all the moving gifs! :ConfusedKaguya: I wonder how long did it take him to compile all of it or if he used a bot monkahhm
I've been wondering that myself for quite some time, but the labor of love shows either way. I sincerely wish more people would do stuff like this and work to preserve the art that is raw internet-based creativity.
 
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IlluminatiPirate

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I've been wondering that myself for quite some time, but the labor of love shows either way. I sincerely wish more people would do stuff like this and work to preserve the art that is raw internet-based creativity.
Yea do a little preservation here will old E-Zines under the "E-Zine" category. Keeping everything original and readable from those text files haha, and some greentexts
 
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Tapeworm

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These are absolutely wonderful, I've actually never heard of Camerons World so I feel like my eyes just got opened to a whole new part of the internet of yore! I'm really tempted to color pick screenshot 3 to use as a pallet for some digital art in the future!

I think preserving of internet content like this is gonna be really really important historically speaking one day... I would love to find some old geocities/camerons world sites with gaudy formatted articles about monica lewinski, bush vs gore, 9/11, etc., if you know where I could possibly find stuff like that! I really admire your archivist spirit and how it ties into your interest for vaporwave. I'm so hype for more!!!!
 
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E R I L A Z

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Cameron's World is actually what really got me interested in the old internet! Along with watching X-files, hah. I'll try and post whatever I find in my travels in this thread for your compilation! If you haven't noticed, neocities is up, and has lots of connected sites in the old geocities style: https://loa2k.neocities.org/
 
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wwwdotcom

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Cameron's World is actually what really got me interested in the old internet! Along with watching X-files, hah. I'll try and post whatever I find in my travels in this thread for your compilation! If you haven't noticed, neocities is up, and has lots of connected sites in the old geocities style: https://loa2k.neocities.org/
Yes, Neocities is a nice Geocities alternative. Free to use if anyone's looking for something similar to Geocities to code and host their own personal website!
 
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