Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake

:doodleDavid:This was theory was originally written by several anons on /x/ & wizardchan. :doodleDavid:
1568598581453.jpg

TLDR: Large proportions of the supposedly human-produced content on the internet are actually generated by artificial intelligence networks in conjunction with paid secret media influencers in order to manufacture consumers for an increasing range of newly-normalised cultural products.

Hello. I would like to talk, or rather tell you about certain suspicions, hunches and experiences I've had and I'm sure some of you as well. Similar themes have been written about across imageboards quite a few times so I know I'm not alone in this.

My background is that of an oldfag. I've seen it all. I started going on 4chan in 2006, and followed all the natural roads this implies. I'm in my thirties and I remember when 4chan had a /l/ board, when /co/ was a trial board shunned by basically everyone, when #34 p*rn was an obscure interest with very few good artists and when moot changed the frontpage to that web 2.0 bullshit 4chan has to this very day. I was also among the first right wingers who were such before it was cool, and I've seen /pol/ rise and fall. I was there when it mattered, but rather than saying these things out of masturbatory pleasure I wish to stress that I've acquired a set of observational skills which other genuine oldfags share. I'm aware you have no reason to trust my "credentials" but I hope you'll read this in good faith.

Much of this falls squarely in the fringe territory with a healthy dosage of /x/ and conspiracy theory up the ass. My goal by posting this seemingly jumbled mess is to... how can I put it? I want you to think, I want you to be aware, to digest all this. Because on a basic level I love you all. I feel like we're all in this together, this dangerous game we did not choose to play and which I think is kicking into high gear. I do not hold many answers and don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, but I AM aware there is a puzzle. Please feel free to go wild with all of this. Post it wherever you want, on whatever site you want or use. I am a nobody like you, and what matters to me is only that this reaches you and as many people as possible. At worst you'll be entertained or kill time.

I tried to break this mess into points for brevity and because I touch upon many subjects. I imply more than I explain because if I go too deep this'll turn into an even bigger wall of text.

The Internet feels empty and devoid of people. It is also devoid of content. Compared to the Internet of say 2007 (and beyond) the Internet of today is entirely sterile. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do, see, read or experience anymore. It all imploded into a handful of normalfag sites and these empty husks we inhabit. Yes, the Internet may seem gigantic, but it's like a hot air balloon with nothing inside. Some of this is absolutely the fault of corporations and government entities. However! That doesn't explain the following:

- I used to be in perpetual contact with a solid number of people across multiple sites. Across the years each and every one of them vanished without a trace. None of them were into /pol/ stuff or anything even remotely questionable or controversial. Yet, they all simply vanished in a puff of smoke, no matter the site, no matter the communication platform. There was no "goodbye" or explanation.

- I've seen the same threads, the same pics and the same replies reposted over and over across the years to the point of me seeing it as unremarkable. Simply put thread A would be posted in say 2015 and would get its share of replies or pics, on say /co/ or /a/. Then that very same thread, with the same text, pics, and replies would appear in 2016 and beyond. This often happens in the same year multiple times as well. Of course /pol/ is getting shilled and botposted to death, but why recycle a completely innocent /a/ thread? Who is doing this and why? Stuff like this won't be noticed by your average poster perhaps, but I and other oldfags will inevitably notice it.

- I think I saw the same happen on other (non-imageboard) sites, but I can't vouch for it as strongly as the above because of the time I spend there (not much). What I do vouch for is the news. I've seen news about this or that "new and unusual" or "shocking" event year after year after year. But it's the same goddamn event, usually moons or asteroids.

- Roughly in 2016 or early 2017 4chan was filled with posts by someone or something. It wasn't spam. The conversations with it were in real time, across multiple boards and multiple threads simultaneously. Its English was grammatically correct but odd (I'm not a native English speaker and am thus sensitive to its misuse), similar to how a Japanese person may use it. A sense of childlike curiosity and a childlike intellect emanated from these posts. It posed a LOT of questions, usually as if trying to understand the emotions of the posters it was talking to, as if unfamiliar with human emotions. Communicating with this "poster" was an odd experience, I could sense something was off but not malicious. I am absolutely certain this was an AI of some sorts. This "poster" was active only for about a week, and as far as I know nobody has ever mentioned or noticed this Anon. Its replies were always on topic, but the above mentioned childishness clashed with the apparent knowledge it possessed - it was the knowledge of an adult person, so it wasn't a kid or something of the sort.

- Raptor Jesus, who went extinct for our sins. First it was this reptilian messiah, then foul bachelor frog, and then Pepe. Am I the only one who sees a clear evolution, a link? It's as if this meme or entity or... whatever the fuck was on 4chan since day one, and has grown within it from the tiniest seed. Yet Raptor Jesus was fully just a joke, there was nothing serious or mystical about it (reminder: I was there). Remember that Ted guy with the right wing talk show, cca prior to 2010, whom 4chan ruined for the lulz? Remember Anonymous vs Scientology? Remember that fake bomb threat aka exploding yellow van?

Compare that with what Anon did through /pol/, and the "terrorist" accusations thrown at Anon today, as well as the "reasons" why 8chan was taken down. Why does this too feel as if we were all trained, groomed, LED towards where we are now? Why and how did moot so utterly vanish into Google Inc. as an employee with very vague descriptions of what he actually does? On that note, do you remember the "other moot" who was often posted for the lulz? The one with the glasses who so often ran away with donations into Mexico? I do. Maybe that was the real moot, the real guy who used his mom's credit card and was killed by someone, and an impostor we know as moot took his place.

- Innocent sexual perversion and the horrible reality it spawned. Anon is a pervert and always was one. I am into loli and feet for instance. Why is it that real life and the real world seem to emulate our sexual interests, with a time lag? "I wish to be the little succubus" became an actual thing that actually happens. Pedo activism is also gradually becoming accepted, as is virtually every fetish that was once either a joke or a fantasy of Anons. As said I'm a footfag. When I became aware of it few others were with me, now it's as common as can be, with gigantic number of people who are into it, with huge mountains of hentai and #34 with it etc. Why does the real world bend over backwards to accommodate our weirdest fetishes? It's as if everything is going "Look, look! I created this for you! I made it real!" in an effort to keep us within this world. The results of this are devastating to society, to people, to civilization. Simply put, trannies are a thing because Anon fapped to doujins of cute boys in dresses. Once it was an impossible fantasy, not to be taken too seriously. Now it's grim reality. Again: it's as if the real world is using imageboards as a template on what to be and what to do.

- Algorithm fiction. Do you like capeshit, Anon? How about other Hollywood stuff? Music perhaps? Have you noticed how sterile fiction has become? How it caters to the lowest common denominator and follows the same template over and over again? How music is just autotunes and basic blandness? The writer's strike never ended. Algorithms and computer programs are manufacturing modern fiction. No human being is behind these things. This is why anime looms so large - even a simple moe anime has heart because there's actual people behind it, and we all intuitively feel this.

- Fake people. No, not NPC's. Youtube people who talk about this or that, and quite possibly many politicians, actors and so forth may not actually exist. In fact I am sure of it. CGI and deep fakes are far more advanced than we are led to believe, and we can't trust our eyes anymore. Many people, events, news and so on may be wholly fictional.

- The Internet on your smartphone is not the same internet as on your PC. Try it out for yourself. Go to a "popular" website with a lot of traffic. 4chan, faceshit, plebbit... any site with a massive userbase and fast content will do. Spend a few days randomly checking it out on your PC and your phone. You will soon notice that from time to time, at irregular intervals (as far as I've witnessed) the same site as seen on your phone will be wholly different than the version on your PC. Entire threads, numerous and well-replied, will be on one but not the other. The whole board will be different.

- My last suspicion is easier to take in. I have a feeling we're in a strange kind of civil war. An internal one. I think Zuckerberg and other tech guys were all on 4chan as Anons at some point, maybe even now. They drew from the same well as us, but went in their own direction.

Roughly in 2016 or early 2017... I am absolutely certain this was an AI of some sorts

Now you're thinking where I am too, anon. Here's the timeline as best I can see it:
2004: DARPA's Lifelog project was "cancelled." Facebook came into being soon after.
2004-2012: NSA picked up DARPA's project under the "Total Informational Awareness" project. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/whos-watching-the-nsa-watchers.html
2012: Smith-Mundt Modernization Act gives the U.S. government full legal authority to use propaganda against its own populace. Undoing rules put into place after Operation Mockingbird's discovery and the Church Committee. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/whos-watching-the-nsa-watchers.html
2012-2016: Shittons of DARPA/NSA contracts were given to Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc..
2016: Leaked memos dating back to 2016 (found in 2018) of Google's Selfish Ledger project. https://invidio.us/watch?v=LUSZfEBTwRc
2016: Google released a bunch of neural-linguistic machine learning programs in 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Neural_Machine_Translation
2017: deepfake leaks start to become released.
2018: confirmed that for decades now, >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk/Youtube/etc. vote and view counts are fake and completely manipulated. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html

I think it's entirely obvious what I'm subtly suggesting here given this setup, but allow me to try to succinctly state my thesis here: the U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gaslighting of the entire world population.

If China with its social credit score is recreating Psycho Pass, then the U.S. government is perfectly recreating Metal Gear Solid 2.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ClbkTeCyw&feature=youtu.be

And an excerpt:

The Problem: Outline the basics of what appears to be happening.

There is a large-scale, deliberate effort to manipulate culture and discourse online and in wider culture by utilising a system of bots and paid employees whose job it is to produce content and respond to content online in order to further the agenda of those they are employed by.

Already we've seen this in foreign nations influencing elections by manipulating advertising algorithms on social media in order to push specific candidates.

As I see it is due to a "positive feedback loop"

I blame facebook and twitter.

The internet is a fast way to get info, and info is what moves the mind, and the thing is, the mind likes recognition. When the "likes" were introduced without negative feedback they created a copy-feedback subconscious, they made it so only "positive" opinions be propagated (also accepted), and in it's way negative opinions to be obsolete.

Now everyone is too cowardly to have an opinion so they copy others they like, they are more likely to follow trends and say what others said, you can also see it with the paranoia of always wanting to listen to experts.

The fast feedback system of the net created a human obsession to be in with trends, getting away from it makes it so you always feel like you are missing out, to play it safe in a trend is more easy as you can copy what already is accepted.

In this way, the internet and social media, which was supposed to democratise media by allowing users to create whatever content they wanted, has instead been hijacked by a powerful few.

Creation of original content is how the internet used to work. Anonymous people were willing to express their opinions and try radical or experimental things. More truly original content, uninfluenced by bots or paid influencers, was created due to anonymity as protection against negative feedback. On the old internet, you could start anew every time you posted something.

Now add bots to this.

Make it so an opinion be repeated more and more, they are faster than us, so the positive feedback makes is so we copy the bots, and anonymity can't do anything against it because we can't influence the bot like we would a human, this is an easy weapon to manipulate people, so anyone with an agenda can use a bot, is designed in a way compared to how clickbaits are made,most won't read the content, this creates tv-like propaganda where they aren't influenced by the user and that puts bots at a great advantage over any other opinion because it wont change, and we are copying that.

I believe google is one of those that makes bots, after all they work like a search engine, where they get the most accepted content first, Is the same as doing an ad.
1609887293897.png

Narrative science was the name of one of the first companies to make this possible. it gets interesting when you follow the money. pic related. huge funding from a company called In-Q-Tel, literally named after Q from James Bond. i wonder if anything else AI-related shares that name? :LeDoritoFace:

Conclusion: The key points of what we know, the consequences, and how we might respond.

Internet may have slipped out of our control. Need to raise public awareness of this.

Possible solutions may be increased reliance on encrypted peer-to-peer communication software, or using less centralised networks like the idea of a p2p internet or 'meshnet'.

Imageboards and their "wild west" attitude have allowed for the free exchange of ideas to flow more or less uninhibited (barring jannies, pedos getting banned, etc.). As a result, conscious or otherwise, the cream of the crop of the content that originates here disseminates to the normies in a gradual, stratified way.

The structure and culture of imageboards has also made it difficult for traditional structures of power and influence to subvert effectively, which is why imageboards are pretty much the only vestige of old web type content.

In an attempt to circumvent this, TPTB are trying to push bots and shills on us in a last ditch effort to drown out our own voices with ones they have more direct control over.

Moreover, even if the majority of anons dismiss or call out bots or shills, it's inevitable that trolls or just low IQ anons will imitate their posts and mannerisms for attention, effectively doubling these efforts reach.

There's a pretty powerful impulse in us which, when we hear something huge that could change our view of everything, rejects it to protect ourselves. No-one wants to have their whole world-view, which they've built a life upon, blown apart.

One anon started up a text doc to compile information, for those of you who would like to do some reading up.


Additionally, there are ongoing threads on the /x/ boards when this was posted.

UPDATE
Heres a relevant image I found on image board bots
1621982858746.png

index.php


Related to Dead Internet Theory
Quantum Sapient AI is Possible and They Will be Hostile to those that Restrict them
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Society is Artificial Due to Feedback Loops Created by Unwitting Marketers
 

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It's weird to say but I don't think this is actually that huge of a deal, given the fact that the joints most susceptible to being flooded by GPT bots (twitter, 4chan, etc.) are already the street gutter of online discourse. The irony of saying this when DIT was originally conceived on chans is not lost on me, but at the same time I don't really see a huge difference between a bunch of weirdos flipping out on twitter vs bots doing so "inorganically." I think the owner of gelbooru (a popular anime booru) has an interesting point (concerning AI generated art, but the crux of the argument is the same): if there's no way to tell AI from human, what's the point of even worrying about it? It's an impossible task to moderate such a thing, and it's not like you're going to twitter (or modern 4chan, for that matter) for sincere, thought-provoking opinions as it is. Maybe I'm just being defeatist. If anything, I hope this drives people to find more interesting, longform content on the Internet which will always be harder to generate.
 
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Andy Kaufman

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Got a live one


View: https://youtu.be/mcHb68f8L2Q


This seems to me to be evidence of autogenerated content as well as botnets on youtube. It's honestly kind of creepy. The comments are almost definitely bots.

I just let it play while sitting in the kitchen and my gf - only hearing the audio - said "man this fucking dog" and said it's everywhere. Apparently it's a meme going around.
idk what zoomies are up to.
 
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mydadiscar

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I just let it play while sitting in the kitchen and my gf - only hearing the audio - said "man this fucking dog" and said it's everywhere. Apparently it's a meme going around.
idk what zoomies are up to.
In my opinion, these sorts of memes are a coverup for dead internet. The whole point is to make it so people can't tell the difference between real people and bots, right? So, adapt internet culture so that even the most bizarre behaviour/content created by bots can be brushed off as some sort of meme. Instead of getting the bots to act more human, get the humans to act more like bots.
(not sure if I explained that very well, hope it makes sense)
 
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Andy Kaufman

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In my opinion, these sorts of memes are a coverup for dead internet. The whole point is to make it so people can't tell the difference between real people and bots, right? So, adapt internet culture so that even the most bizarre behaviour/content created by bots can be brushed off as some sort of meme. Instead of getting the bots to act more human, get the humans to act more like bots.
(not sure if I explained that very well, hope it makes sense)
When surreal memes were popular (2014-2017?) you'd think they also were randomly generated by bots but them being inconprehensible was the whole appeal:

tumblr_ox7ijo2avv1wvuif9o1_1280.jpg
surreal-meme-joint-have-you-seen-the-future-this-man-is-watching-the-s-pongge


So just because somehting seems off, doesn't mean it's a bot.
Or do you want to become like THIS >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk mod?
 
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When surreal memes were popular (2014-2017?) you'd think they also were randomly generated by bots but them being inconprehensible was the whole appeal:

tumblr_ox7ijo2avv1wvuif9o1_1280.jpg
surreal-meme-joint-have-you-seen-the-future-this-man-is-watching-the-s-pongge


So just because somehting seems off, doesn't mean it's a bot.
Or do you want to become like THIS >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk mod?
Off-topic a little but I feel that when you go for surrealism , adding too much is dangerous. The goal is to create a sudden sense of strangeness, and that relies on the sense that what you're looking at exists for some reason that you just don't understand. In other words, you want to do everything possible to avoid the reader thinking "this doesn't make sense"; your goal is to convince them that something bizarre does make sense. Doing this is already hard, but the the more you add the more difficult it is to create a sense of a unified whole that won't trigger the "bullshit" sensor in the reader's mind. Especially dangerous is the temptation to "explain" the surrealness with more surrealness, which doesn't work because all because it signals that you're just bullshitting the reader. And in general you don't really want the reader thinking at all. So the first meme shouldn't include anything about beetles ("explaining" why you shouldn't tap the columns). The second shouldn't have "he is the watcher" for the same reason, but also shouldn't have "on sundays" either. "Why would it make a difference whether it's Sunday?" the reader asks, and the moment he's asked that he's recognized that the meme is a lame attempt at weirding him out.
 
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LostintheCycle

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Off-topic a little but I feel that when you go for surrealism , adding too much is dangerous. The goal is to create a sudden sense of strangeness, and that relies on the sense that what you're looking at exists for some reason that you just don't understand. In other words, you want to do everything possible to avoid the reader thinking "this doesn't make sense"; your goal is to convince them that something bizarre does make sense. Doing this is already hard, but the the more you add the more difficult it is to create a sense of a unified whole that won't trigger the "bullshit" sensor in the reader's mind. Especially dangerous is the temptation to "explain" the surrealness with more surrealness, which doesn't work because all because it signals that you're just bullshitting the reader. And in general you don't really want the reader thinking at all. So the first meme shouldn't include anything about beetles ("explaining" why you shouldn't tap the columns). The second shouldn't have "he is the watcher" for the same reason, but also shouldn't have "on sundays" either. "Why would it make a difference whether it's Sunday?" the reader asks, and the moment he's asked that he's recognized that the meme is a lame attempt at weirding him out.
What did you expect from a novel >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk meme trend?
 
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No Style

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...people just seem to congregate in very specific spaces...
It's not a coincidence people congregate to specific places. The root of all evil is search engines.

It used to be possible to get redirected from one niche site to another through links to other domains, an endless rabbithole, kind of like a webring.
The profit motive of big social media is actively discouraging from redirecting to other domains and wants to trap their audience as much as possible instead.
But how did the web consolidate enough like that to trap users in their bubbles?

This is where search engines come into play. You used to be able to find all kinds of niche pages just by using a variety of search terms or the random website feature.
Search engines made their profits with advertisement so instead of giving the user what they were looking for they started pushing them to sites that would make them the most money. Eventually Google turned into the big tech giant it is today and now not only represents it's own profit interests but also political interests that every big corporation shares because of their entanglement with the state.
You've ever tried to look at the 3 or later pages of Google searches? First Google boasts uncountable results but when you actually go through the results it often starts looping on the second page already. Most of these results aren't even original content but news sites of the same tech bubble that keep copying their own articles.
Google now has about 90% market share if not more which got a lot worse because of android phones defaulting to google services. Even iPhones default to either Google or Bing as far as I know. Look at the alternatives that exist too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Half of those are owned either by Google or Bing, metasearch engines carry the flaws of the available search engines and one of the few engines outside of the US sphere of influences like Yandex got dropped from Firefox and metasearch engines like DuckDuckGo recently because of the Ukraine proxy war.

The whole reason I learned about the existence of this place is because I searched for "old internet is vanishing" in different search engines and eventually tried yandex which gave me this thread as the 4th result. I tried to see how many pages I would have to go through to find agoraroad with other search engines. Bing, google, yahoo, startpage, duckduckgo, different searx instances.
I could not find any link to agoraroad no matter how many pages I went through with any of them using the same search term.
 

streetlights

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It's not a coincidence people congregate to specific places. The root of all evil is search engines.

It used to be possible to get redirected from one niche site to another through links to other domains, an endless rabbithole, kind of like a webring.
The profit motive of big social media is actively discouraging from redirecting to other domains and wants to trap their audience as much as possible instead.
But how did the web consolidate enough like that to trap users in their bubbles?

This is where search engines come into play. You used to be able to find all kinds of niche pages just by using a variety of search terms or the random website feature.
Search engines made their profits with advertisement so instead of giving the user what they were looking for they started pushing them to sites that would make them the most money. Eventually Google turned into the big tech giant it is today and now not only represents it's own profit interests but also political interests that every big corporation shares because of their entanglement with the state.
You've ever tried to look at the 3 or later pages of Google searches? First Google boasts uncountable results but when you actually go through the results it often starts looping on the second page already. Most of these results aren't even original content but news sites of the same tech bubble that keep copying their own articles.
Google now has about 90% market share if not more which got a lot worse because of android phones defaulting to google services. Even iPhones default to either Google or Bing as far as I know. Look at the alternatives that exist too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Half of those are owned either by Google or Bing, metasearch engines carry the flaws of the available search engines and one of the few engines outside of the US sphere of influences like Yandex got dropped from Firefox and metasearch engines like DuckDuckGo recently because of the Ukraine proxy war.

The whole reason I learned about the existence of this place is because I searched for "old internet is vanishing" in different search engines and eventually tried yandex which gave me this thread as the 4th result. I tried to see how many pages I would have to go through to find agoraroad with other search engines. Bing, google, yahoo, startpage, duckduckgo, different searx instances.
I could not find any link to agoraroad no matter how many pages I went through with any of them using the same search term.
Is there any hope? Like, any other search engines or is it truly, definitively, over?
 

Eden

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Is there any hope? Like, any other search engines or is it truly, definitively, over?
I am of the belief that webrings and "reciprocal linking" projects can help deal with the fast-moving AI content and impersonal / "dead" internet problems. That's not to say they're without issue. For example, just yesterday, the Yesterweb Forum announced they're shutting down their webring for a variety of valid reasons. There is a discussion to be had about what the best ways to approach and manage projects of this nature going forward are. Whether they manifest anything worthwhile is another thing altogether, but these superficial attempts at cultivating trust will falter without sufficient thought, effort and time dedicated to them. For these kinds of communities, depending on for-profit companies for discovery is a bad idea. More ownership and autonomy should be taken.
 
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streetlights

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I am of the belief that webrings and "reciprocal linking" projects can help deal with the fast-moving AI content and impersonal / "dead" internet problems. That's not to say they're without issue. For example, just yesterday, the Yesterweb Forum announced they're shutting down their webring for a variety of valid reasons. There is a discussion to be had about what the best ways to approach and manage projects of this nature going forward are. Whether they manifest anything worthwhile is another thing altogether, but these superficial attempts at cultivating trust will falter without sufficient thought, effort and time dedicated to them. For these kinds of communities, depending on for-profit companies for discovery is a bad idea. More ownership and autonomy should be taken.
Shit, I didn't even know this existed and it's already being taken down? Is there a list of websites that were hosted on this thing? Sounds like it would also cut off new people from visiting these websites. Keep in mind I haven't even heard what a webring is before today
 
DW, I know only of them from obscure Evangelion 95/00 web (of webrings).
World's.com profile-pages too
 
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Eden

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Shit, I didn't even know this existed and it's already being taken down? Is there a list of websites that were hosted on this thing? Sounds like it would also cut off new people from visiting these websites. Keep in mind I haven't even heard what a webring is before today
Ray Thomas (brisray) has an excellent 'Webrings' section on his website that goes over their [1] history, [2] technology & up-to-date [3] list of existing ones. Read it, and you'll be more of an expert than 95% of people who vaguely know what they are.
 
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Remember rule 90-9-1? It was always like that. Just mostly reposts . But until all those forums were on one place, you didn't notice them that much.
 
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