9 ms·
Mischa's Cursed Webring
- DiggyJohnson 6y agoThis is extremely well done. Academically, I look forward to any attempt at criticizing this project. It's a tricky thought experiment.
- prox 6y agoWhat is it exactly? There is no editorial to go with this. I love the time machine feel though. Hello tables!
- bwooster 6y agoI've been trying to make a list of "cursed" websites - some of them are really deep and vast and demonstrate some sort of twisted brain that was behind each site. Some are just bizarre. Most have cursed vibes. You can spend hours on a lot of them just digging up fucked up shit.
- prox 6y agoCool, going to check it out later!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- joemi 6y agoIf 'cursed' is derogatory, then it seems unfair/mean to call sites cursed just for not keeping up with current web design trends. Shouldn't we be better than that?
- andrewflnr 6y agoNot exactly. "Cursed" in modern slang is more like something weird and unsettling in a way that's probably funny and may or may not actually be bad.
- joemi 6y agoYour description sure sounds derogatory.
- junon 6y ago"Cursed" comes from meme culture. It's not derogatory.
- muybasado 6y agoInteresting project, however it seems it has a certain bias against a peculiar demographic, unfortunately this isn't surprising at all. Culture war permeates everything.
- bwooster 6y agoSubmissions welcome!
- muybasado 6y agoPetty.
- dookahku 6y agoWhy are you salty?
- bartread 6y agoSuspect they think it's edgy to waste everybody's time by making oblique reference to some perceived slight. I can't work out what the problem is either. muybasado: Please, either speak plainly and explicitly or, if you're unwilling to do so, remain quiet.
- antihero 6y agoIt is in the nature of the right wing crank to portray themselves as the victim despite usually being the perpetrator.
- Veen 6y agoBut there are several right-wing cranks in that webring. e.g. https://cursed.llolo.lol/thelightofgodministry.org/ https://cursed.llolo.lol/thelightofgodministry.org/ https://cursed.llolo.lol/anti666.com https://cursed.llolo.lol/anti666.com I don't think that can be the demographic group the absence of which they're complaining about.
- CDSlice 6y agoI'm not really sure what's so "cursed" about this website? http://www.hytechshotz.com/default.asp http://www.hytechshotz.com/default.asp The website design is pretty bad but based off of the OP saying "most of them are really deep and demonstrate some sort of twisted brain that was behind each site" I'm not really sure why this one is on the list.
- dookahku 6y agoMaybe like finding a Prada store in the middle of nowhere near marfra Texas... Either it's a cover or an artwork, or possibly someone That twisted at Prada headquarters decide that it was a good location
- guerrilla 6y agoApparently that's just an art installation https://inspiredimperfection.com/adventures/prada-marfa/ https://inspiredimperfection.com/adventures/prada-marfa/
- mattnewton 6y agoSome of these sites are just dope, like this 3d graphing software site https://cursed.llolo.lol/dpgraph.com/ https://cursed.llolo.lol/dpgraph.com/ But have hideous design :D
- tonyarkles 6y agoAs it turns out, these are real sites that got scraped. http://www.dpgraph.com/index.html http://www.dpgraph.com/index.html works, and it looks like the software is free to download now. I’m too much of a chicken to try though...
- bwooster 6y agoA lot of these sites don't support HTTPS, so they can't be iframed without being mirrored
- 6y ago
- fortran77 6y agoThere's something very charming about these 90's style web-pages, content aside.
- tomcooks 6y agoThat charm was lost with all the UI/UX studies and frameworks and major platforms with a standardized corporate look.
- sidpatil 6y agoAlso of interest: https://www.cameronsworld.net/ https://www.cameronsworld.net/ https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/
- eat_veggies 6y agoon the topic of web rings, check out this little webring I built for github profile readmes a few months back: https://octo-ring.com/ https://octo-ring.com/ Here's what the widget looks like on your profile -- there are some wild markdown table hacks to make the buttons individually clickable: https://github.com/veggiedefender/ https://github.com/veggiedefender/
- bwooster 6y agoSource: https://github.com/revmischa/cursed-webring https://github.com/revmischa/cursed-webring
- beaconstudios 6y agoHad to throw http://durgasoft.com/ http://durgasoft.com/ 's hat into the ring too for the garish web design subset.
- emayljames 6y agoBleach my eyes
- sidpatil 6y agoIt's like the Ling's Cars [1] of Java and Python software development. [1] https://www.lingscars.com/ https://www.lingscars.com/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aasasd 6y agoI actually still occasionally see ads or videos for Indian programming courses, that look close to that. Considering that visual austerity is a distinct feature of Western visual design and seems foreign to Chinese/Indian/Middle-Eastern tradition—I sometimes wonder what Eastern people consider as examples of stupid tasteless Western design.
- pdx6 6y agoCursed indeed. I am enjoying the web 1.0 insanity of the Atari parts maker for 8-bit machines. Somewhere there is a person still making a bit of cash from 1985 tech. https://cursed.llolo.lol/best-electronics-ca.com/ https://cursed.llolo.lol/best-electronics-ca.com/
- unwiredben 6y agoBest Electronics is a pretty amazing place. Here's an interview with the guy who runs it: https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-5-the-atari-8-bit-podcast-brad-koda-of-best-electronics https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-5-the-atari-...
- analyte123 6y agoDoing crazy things with CSS, including animations, has never been easier or more consistent between browsers, and yet creativity in web design has gone down practically to zero these days. I blame mobile, where nobody can seem to escape from the "responsive column of blandly styled content" paradigm.
- johnfn 6y agoMy theory for why this is is that in the past when the web was arcane and challenging to learn to develop, this actually acted as a filter for people who had a special sort of intellectual curiosity and passion to really push through and make what they wanted to make. It’s great now that the web is so broadly accessible, but now no such filter exists, so truly creative sites are fewer and further between.
- rlt 6y agoSo, where are 2021's version of 1990's web?
- percentcer 6y agoindie games
- johnfn 6y agoI mean, by the time we find it it won’t be niche and arcane any more :-) Maybe roblox?
- throwaway316943 6y agoCrappy remixes on TikTok and Instagram that can’t hold a candle to the hay day of YTMND? The other poster is probably right, the indie game scene is pretty prolific with jams and remixes and has more collaboration than most early web phenomena.
- johnfn 6y ago
- emayljames 6y agoAll behold the latest in web design: https://www.cameronsworld.net/ https://www.cameronsworld.net/
- antihero 6y agoThis is actually a thing of beauty.
- Hammershaft 6y agoI came back tr gonna post that! Amazing site, if you like it you should try hypnospace outlaw.
- punkspider 6y agoThis soothes my soul.
- imgabe 6y agoI'm completely in awe of this, it's amazing.
- Groxx 6y agoMarvelous. Peak GeoCities has been achieved.
- jamiek88 6y agoWhat a rabbit hole I went down. Ending at warrens world with the most delightfully poignant tribute to coco his little dog that passed away. Teared up reading it. So much love and work went into these homepages.
- geocrasher 6y agoWorking in web hosting, I've hosted many sites like this and had to deal with some of the people who've made them. And I have to say that while it's fun to point and laugh at the websites, there are a few of these in the ring that are borderline troubling. It is clear that their authors are suffering from some serious mental illnesses and at the very least some major delusions. I recall a case years ago where I hosted a site for someone who appeared to be a paranoid schizophrenic. They called in one day complaining that we'd moved one of their HTML tables to the left by a few pixels. Another one was a website by somebody who was "exposing" their local municipality for doing things like charging for water and "illegally incarcerating" the website owner, who viewed their stints in a mental hospital as an attack to their freedom. On the other hand, Lings Cars made it on this webring, and it's well deserved. That site is awesome and horrible at the same time, and it's designed to make us gawk at it for fun.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoAt what point does appreciating content produced by the mental ill become exploitation of them? Gene Ray was clearly mentally ill, but few had any qualms about enjoying the WTF quality of the Time Cube website. Some of the classic twentieth-century art by outsider artists like Adolf Wölfli was in large part the consequence of their illness, and yet it is appreciated nevertheless, so couldn’t the same persist today for the mentally ill’s analogous creations on the internet?
- geocrasher 6y agoI think the main difference is whether what they are putting out is something beautiful and artistic, or... not. You do make an interesting point that I had not considered however. At what point does it stop becoming the ramblings of a mental patient and start becoming art? I don't know. But I do know that the sampling of what I saw on is web ring wasn't art ;) Edit: It becomes art when the person creating it declares it as art. Otherwise it's just sad. Thank you @mulmen for brining this point out.
- mulmen 6y agoSurely intent matters? If a person claims to be an artist then we can appreciate their art. If a percon claims to be an investigative journalist but actually doesn't understand the concept public utilities then I'm not sure we should treat that as entertainment.
- tempodox 6y agoWow, the greatest website of the ’90s that never was, it even has a Catsape browser embedded somewhere. Found that by coincidence — clicking around in this thing can have surprising results. It is also the first site that managed to get me this warning from Safari: “This webpage is using significant energy. Closing it may improve the responsiveness of your Mac”. I recommend the site for its entertainment value but make sure your battery is charged!
- RGamma 6y agoLove this, there's so much personality in these. No JS cruft, no cosmetics, no filler, just cool (and in this case very weird) vibes. How far the web strayed from this, it's a shame really. The soul has left :/
- nexthash 6y agoI would disagree - the Web hasn't strayed, it's just gotten bigger. A lot more people on for a variety of reasons. If you look closely, you can still find creativity. For example, search up "digital gardens"
- RGamma 6y agoMhh I suppose you're right, I should go on the hunt for this sort of stuff again. Not the small, homely thing of the 90s anymore.
- SeeManDo 6y agolet's not forget about https://ytmnd.com/ https://ytmnd.com/
- regus 6y agoIf you decide to go to https://www.lingscars.com/ https://www.lingscars.com/ do yourself a favor and right click the site and select "View Source".