Remember when the internet felt like a giant treasure hunt instead of just… cycling through the same five apps? Yeah, me too. That’s why I started COI (Corners of Internet)—a place where I dig up weird, fun, and happy corners of the web so you don’t have to.
No algorithms. No doomscrolling. Just pure internet exploration.
If it’s cool, underrated, or a little unhinged, it goes on COI.
Check it out: www.cornersofinternet.com
Also, if you’ve got a favorite weird site, drop it below! I’m always looking for new rabbit holes to fall into.
The internet used to feel like a treasure hunt because it wasn’t indexed well, and a large part of the surface content were pages made by oddball people letting their weirdness run wild without social limitations.
Sure, algorithms keep most normies in a social media ecosystem, but it’s also not exactly easy for me to make a truly anonymous website about the awesome predictions I’ve made from looking at the patterns in my breakfast cereal every morning - AND just let it be. There’s pressure to promote it, crosspost it, etc. Even the fun of thought experiments posted to a GeoCities page come with risks now.
Maybe I’m jaded and lack the youthful energy to stay up until 4:30am slapping im14amdthisisdeep stuff somewhere. Maybe everyone else that’s just slightly weird still expects to get paid for that with ads when it all used to be free and fun.
I’ve made websites about my little hobby projects. Rent a VPS for $1/month, get a privacy, no-name domain for $5/year, and just put stuff up. Mostly for my own reference or documentation; I don’t care if anyone else ever sees it, but it does get hits (mostly from the openai bot). Shouting into the void like it’s 1995.
I do miss when people would post links to actual interesting original sites, as opposed to just screenshots of other social media posts. Give me a link to https://tvtropes.org/ not a jpeg of the KnowNothingKnowItAll next to a picture of Elon Musk. That’s resulted in the internet going from 99% crap to 99.99% crap.
That’s what I missed most. Links to other sites.
I used to run a page for Robert E Howard, Conan author, way back in the day. I got to know others that shared an interest…we were our own small community. It was fun. I would link to stuff that was related, including music that I liked when reading. I would have these bands email me back about how they appreciated the link. It was great.
Then Google and Facebook started the end to all that