When was the last time you used a search engine to find anything worthwhile? Even on a conceptual level they are a bad way to navigate the web and virtually every result page these days is muddled by algorithims built around marketing and spam. Search engines remove the interactive and community based nature of the internet. Remember when the only way to find sites was through word of mouth or spending hours procrastinating clicking on link after link? Today the average search result brings up a bunch of shit op eds and news articles sponsered by a company or just recyled press releases and reddit posts and its all set to get worse AI bullshit.
I agree. I enjoy browsing the DQN board specifically for looking through the links and videos posted there.
Google Images is getting worse by the day.
yandex and yandex images were nice But I fear they're gonna go downhill because of the sanctions and Russia's very own retarded laws
I find what I need using search engines. Works for me. š
Google has been unusable for at least a solid 8 years now. You'd have better luck searching forums, webrings, and using much more obscure search engines.
Fuck search engines. Just use bookmarks and save links. Hereās a decent list of actually good sites. I say decent because 4-ch is not on here
https://rentry.org/good-sites
>>7
Ironically had that link already bookmarked. Also I agree with your methodology. Search engines makes internet users boring and laaaaazzzzzzyyyy; with never finding what they really want anyways.
You need to use +"" and -"" modifiers a lot these days to avoid noise from AI generated garbage sites. Also need to use the big three base engines (Google, Bing, Yandex) to get the best results. The non big three based engines aren't really worth using most of the time, but smaller curated ones like wiby and marginalia can give interesting results sometimes, but are generally not worth using for general searches. Chinese search engines I haven't found useful, even though they have large datasets for a non big three engine. Then there's all the specialized search engines for torrents, ftps, files, images etc.
The overall searching experience could be better if a lot AI generated garbage was filtered out, but alas. I also fucking hate discord because it doesn't get indexed by search engines and houses a lot of hidden data.
agreed. replace your search engine with bookmarks and a bunch of links. there will always be those idiots who says this is inconveniant. but it forces you to actually think and use your mind instead of asking sheikh google for the fucking answer all the time. sure it simplifies the mental process but thats exactly the problem! search engines are why gen z are so retarded. they dont think or process anything they just search for shit and swallow it down like a cum drinking jav idol.
Search engines are good for when you have a specific problem to solve, or specific book / show to find info on. For other things, tags and catalogues are preferable.
>>7,8
Did you know in the early days of the Word Wide Web, people actually maintained public directories of links. The Yahoo website was originally a public directory of links.
>>14
Yes. I remember them. There was plenty of geocities pages as well as dedicated forums that had link directories aka webrings.
Ah the good old days where you actually had to look for stuff or ask someone. It was always fun finding a bunch of links and randomly clicking away only to stumble on something random or totally fucked up.
>>16
People have also seemed to lose a major fraction of their thinking skills when it comes to being online. They want all of these stupid algorithms to think of their content for them. They can't even do basic thought processes and want to just chum through life with a mundane prescence that's stale as shit. I definitely miss the days of hanging out with a bunch of my friends all sitting on our desktops exploring the web and dragging around our heavy ass CRT monitors just so all of us can do our own thing then later on we'd have a LAN party. Same when we decided to take over our local internet cafe just for RuneScape trolling in the wildy in the mid 2000s. Calling WoW players, "fucking faggots" and to meet us in the wildy if they were real men. Oh, how I miss the days of ultimate cringe. Even the times we all got kicked out for jacking off to hentai and having contests to see who could cum first to fanart of Misty and May's tits first while battling each other on our FireRed and LeafGreen games.
I hate it. The entire human species - any one of them who uses an internet connection - has been transformed into this docile, brainless consoomer. People now rely on an algorithm to tell them what music to listen to, what YouTube or TikTok video to watch, what TV series to start streaming this week, what to buy for groceries (Did you like that salted caramel ice cream last week? Well try this flavour this week! Would you like me to place an order?), what books to read, what to buy on Amazon even though they don't really need anything and so on.
So few people take effort to seek out something new and unheard of to them and take the time to discover it, then maybe finding more stuff from that. Nobody loads up SoulSeek or some other mp3 sharing program and some Discogs browser tabs and seeking out new music, they just have Spotify or some trash shuffle stuff for them that is similar to the same garbage they've had on shuffle for the last 6 months.
In 50 years nobody will know the joys of digging for new music at a store, scouring the shelves at a bookshop, downloading random pirated games to play, discovering a niche online community for something totally random you love. We'll have an entire generation of idiots that are perpetually online under this new internet now controlled by massive corporations. The wild west days so many of us grew up on are over. I feel like things like IRC, textboards and even forums are one of the last things remaining of the internet of the past. In time, they'll vanish and all we'll be stuck with is what some company sells us.
>>18
Your post made me feel incredibly sad and at the same time realizing just how different I truly am from the average person. I have always lived online as I did in the past. I never stopped web exploring as a kid going on 30 years ago. I don't rely on any type of algorithm for anything. Unless you consider it problematic that I do check into things I read on forums and other boards such as these for new content once and a while.
I've curated well over 7000 websites so I never have to use a search engine ever again. I've managed to go without one since sometime in 2015. Not counting fun stuff like wiby and other similar websites. I've been thinking about making a few webrings that people may find useful. I haven't managed a personal page for a little while now. Which is something I believe everyone who uses the internet should do. At least learn how to make a personal page, no matter how simplistic it may turn out. I felt happier when I was managing the few that I had made. Neocities makes this easier than ever for the average person. I go on there once and a while to check out the newer generations creations, I usually end up cracking a smile leaving me happy that there's at least still some out there who understand the fundamentals.
As far as the consumerism approach. I've never used anything like that. I've always relied on web scraping, torrenting, and/or other means of actually having my content downloaded to use whenever I want regardless of being online or offline.
>In 50 years
It's already happening today. It's getting increasingly hard to find physical media even in the thrift shops in my area. It's sad when you have a company like goodwill who would rather post stuff that was donated to them online to attempt to maximize profits eliminating the sole purpose of charity for lower price to people who may need it. Greed as corrupted this world. I'm glad that I push to find physical books for my child instead of some tablet or phone. Which I never will do. I can't mentally comprehend the mindset in giving a young child such devices in the first place. I find myself feeling waves of depression knowing that my child isn't going to have the quality of life as I did growing up. All I can do is really just try my best, make moments that are important, and pass down my knowledge.
>IRC, textboards, and forums of the last things remaining of the internet of the past
That is the truth. I think that's why despite my age I still gravitate to places like these. It's really the only places one can remain free and independent online.
>I've been thinking about making a few webrings that people may find useful.
You should! Even if it's niche and few people will see it, put it out there. Mirror it on a few places, be it your own website, a pastebin that doesn't expire, on textboards. Mirror it to multiple sites so that even if you stop updating it and move on, it can still be out there. It is up to us to preserve things online. As users - every one of us online - is like a librarian or archivist of the past, existing in a new world where we have a technology that would have been unfathomable just a few decades ago.
Information should be free. It was the entire point in the internet. If you have things you enjoy and archive and if you want to share it, do your best to get it out there and ensure it lives as long as it can.
>It's sad when you have a company like goodwill who would rather post stuff that was donated to them online to attempt to maximize profits eliminating the sole purpose of charity for lower price to people who may need it.
It's funny you say that. I worked at Goodwill part time many years ago when I needed some extra money. It was unbelievable how much cool stuff came in. They had a policy that anything of potential value was to be put off to the side so that it could be sold either in the glass display cases at the checkout or on their online auction website.
You know what I did instead? I'd price stuff as cheap as possible and put it on the shelves. Digital cameras that could have sold for 600 dollars? I put a 10 dollar price sticker on it. Old video game consoles? I put a 15 dollar sticker on it. A cool old 486 computer (that may or may not have even worked)? A 5 dollar sticker. A sealed pack of old floppy's? I'd slap a 50 cent sticker on those. Anything cool or retro I said to myself: fuck their auction. I know people want this. Guys like Lazy Game Reviews who scour old thrift stores for neat stuff. Totally unknown dudes who just want to check out what is in the store that day...then happen to find a VIC-20 with an 8 dollar sticker on it. I made sure to give people good deals.
But on the other hand, we'd have a lot of staff that didn't know anything about old products. The way Goodwill and similar stores work is that stuff gets donated (or trucked in from other donation centres) and minimum wage staff look through it for anything of value. There were sooooo many nice electronic products that would just get thrown into the scrap bins that would have been worth a lot of money or more importantly give people some enjoyment. All because you've got some high school kid or a dude with downs syndrome - basically anyone clueless - looking through electronic donations on a certain day and deeming it to all be garbage. They'd think...oh okay a Bluray player, nice. A working lamp, nice. An old yellow'd Amiga 1000? Ah this is older than me, must be useless - then it gets literally thrown into a giant box that gets sent off to get sold for e-waste recycling.
I could write so much more about it, but that sums it up. They get a lot of great stuff often by people clearing out their grandparents basement or dead fathers storage locker, then dumping it all here, not realizing they have some great stuff. Anyway, I did my best to make sure normal shoppers had a chance to get something super retro and neat. Even if it was just a cool old midcentury calculator or lamp. I think they're a bit more strict these days, though, in how they vet donations so they can auction off anything of potential value.
[Had to split up the post as it was too long...]
If you or any other anon finds themselves working at a Goodwill or shop like that, be like me. Plug it in, if it turns on (or even if it doesn't), slap a sticker on there for a reasonable price and wheel it out to the shelves and I guarantee it'll be gone. Which reminds me heh...Goodwill had a policy where an item had to be on the store shelves for a certain amount of time (it could have been 15 minutes, maybe an hour) and then you were free to purchase it. I would find things I wanted, priced them and put them on a shelf and then hid them behind useless junk. And then on break I would go out and buy it right up. I managed to get so many cool things that way.
Just thought I'd share that.
>That is the truth. I think that's why despite my age I still gravitate to places like these. It's really the only places one can remain free and independent online.
Absolutely. And I think it's up to us to keep these kinda things alive. I mean you can still find BBS boards and old dial up services running by nerdy neckbeards because it is they (and potentially us) who get to hold the baton and try our best to make sure these things live on. The homogenized, corporate internet sucks so it's up to those of us who care for the yesteryears to try and preserve what we can. While I do have a Twitter and Instagram for stuff, I separate it from what a place like 4-ch is. Totally different vibes and I want to be able to appreciate both.
Search engines are literally becoming a mass information filtration system run by cooperations obsessed with lining their own pockets and serving ol' Uncle Sam. Imagine a library that contains all the printed knowledge in the universe, how do you impose order on this chaos? By being the one who organizes it and manages how it is presented to users. Knowledge is the key to power, not by hiding information from people but by shoving ''truth'' down their throats they become mindless drones with no independent though capacity and they then spread this ''truth'' and effectively indoctrinate each other. What does a child do today when confronted by a problem? Use his brain? Nope, they whip out the smartphone and google it. Well that's how people get all of their opinions today, outside of late night TV. Society is brainwashed and search engines, algorithms, and sooner or later AI is how they'll do it.
>confronted by a problem?
>Use his brain?
>Nope
>smartphone
>google it
People can't even retain information through memory anymore because of this. Digital dementia.
Saw your thread elsewhere and was surprised to see so many defend search engines in a community of alleged privacy aware tech savvies. Go figure.
A way for organizing bookmarks is needed. Hierarchically or better yet by tags. Maybe some shit like tiddly wiki, or org-mode for the emacsen.
I havs noticed that the best content I usually find in .edu sites belonging to university professors, which I have usually found through the G. If there happened to be an index of useful such sites findable by subject (math, biology,...) that would be super useful.
If you guys care about internet, consider donating to internet archive, catbox.moe, and maybe wikipedia.
>>25
you know, you can write :tag1:tag2:tag3: in the post, and then let people use ctrl-f for the tag that interests them. Ctrl-f is the best search engine.
>>consider donating to internet archive, catbox.moe, and maybe wikipedia.
I would have to be retarded to do this.
enjoy your corporate control then.
to be fair, corporate world wins even if you donate to them, because who do you think manages donation transactions and takes their cut off those.
>>26,28
Wikipedia has too much money and it's hurting the organization.
They get more money so they waste money on retarded administration shit they don't need that negatively affects them and then they justify the fact that they get several X more money than they use. If you want wikipedia to become better you should avoid donating so they stop wasting the money on trash.
IA, maybe. Kinda suspicious organization though. Triggers my government front instincts. Haven't looked into it, but I doubt they actually need normal people donations and do just fine with billionaire donations.
Catbox, sure why not if you use it a lot. Every now and then I see some catbox links with files I want to view. A lot less annoying than 99% of file sharing sites. Out of the 3, this is the only one where I think donating your own poor wallets cash to can make sense.
If you are not quite wealthy, never donate to an organization.
Yeah, remember that while you are swimming in dirt, some people are swimming in money. A lot depends simply on where you live. I never donated anything... maybe once somewhere.
The "cancer prevension" donations are the scam of the scam though, I've heard one guy gathering such donations, he sounded like a priest. I never heard such a shit eating voice before, my shitface bells just rung all the way. Never donate to those people, and never donate to any gamer shows, they waste it on stupidest shit life fryers and warming people to eat more fruits. Here is that shitfaced guy, I have no proof that he's full of shit, the only proof I have is interacting with people full of shit a whole lot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9yZSADLcxg&list=PLlc94szfcNDE6i2t-Nt4uDQy5AQGYLjEs&index=13
The problem with search engines is speed. They give us an instant hit of dopamine every time we think weāve found what weāre looking for, so we keep using them over and over to the point where we loose it when we donāt have access to stuff in seconds. So we want everything to be served on a plate to us instantly or weāll loose it like a chimp who canāt have his banana. We are literally being conditioned like pavlovās dogs, like a bunch of circus monkeys.
>>27
Never donate to Wikipedia ever! Theyāve got more funds than the treasury of a small African country and 90% of the articles on Wikipedia suck shit these days and is full of references to CNN articles or blog posts which we all know are completely factual and trust worthy. Internet archive I will consider.
Speaking of Wikipedia, I struggle to understand why they updated the look of the site recently. It looks like mobile garbage, but now on my desktop monitor as well. Bigass white borders on the side of every article and it seems somehow less readable. Just... how??? How do you fuck up web design for a static page with texts and links this badly???
>>32
One thing I hate about websites these day is this slick interface with smoothed curves and bland corporate art style that still manages to be completely dysfunctional. It feels like sites these days are designed for smartphone users only.
Search engines were always a problem. As American media platforms centralize the internet and use search engines, algorithims, and AI to feed people content, the entire planet will be culturally flattened. All cultural differences will be extinguished and we'll all be fed on a diet of American liberal values and Time Warner entertainment shovelled down our throats by Netflix. What made anime so great? It was different and unique, but Gen Z today loves sameness, the same bland content repeated over and over again. In the future, we'll all be consumed by nihilistic Western values. Search engines are just a giant geopolitical brainwashing machine.
I found Kagi fairly recently, and it's by far the best search engine you can use at the moment. Every query that I've given it so far gives results at least as good as Google or DuckDuckGo, and at best gives results way better. It also lets you weight/deweight sites, among other features that I haven't experimented with yet.
Only downside is that it's subscription based, but it has a free trial of 100 free searches if you want to see if it's worth it for your use. Plus I'd argue it's a more ethical business practice than Google's ads and data harvesting.
Oh, and if you want a search engine that just gives you classic websites, check out https://wiby.me/
>>38
wiby.me/surprise can be bookmarked, and if you have a way quickly to access your bookmarks, you can randomly surf classic websites rather quickly.
Try it!
On the subject, I swear I've mostly been using google as a combination dictionary/thesaurus for when I'm writing, but also sometimes for mild amusement. It works pretty well for that, if little else. The glowniggers watching me must get pretty fucking confused/disappointed whenever I look up the definitions of random words and phrases basically out of the blue.
>>40
Why not just download a dictionary/thesaurus? You can get them with most word processors these days anyway.
Yandex, Mojeek, Librex, and Whoogle and wiby.me are some of the best search engines.
I use 4plebs for a lot of searches as well since traditional search engines aren't as good as they used to be.
the future is everyone chopping their dicks off and pecking at small phone screens for dopamine hits. forget about saving the internet or human civilization. let it all burn.
>>43
A trans woman without her penis is like an angel without its wings. It's true!
>>44
A transgirl without her diaper is like an angel without its wings
>>45
I never understood the diaper meme. Too much butt sex? Is that it?
>>47
Wait, I'm the weirdo for not having or understanding the tranny diaper fetish? Sheeeeeeeit...
Best way to navigate the web is use a command line web browser like w3m and either memorize, write down or bookmark any links you use. Search engines are social control and the government is using them to engineer society and manipulate people. Even sites like Wikipedia are about as corrupt as the New York Times.
Good thing about command line web browsers is the lack of images mean your brain isnāt overloaded by algorithm fed ads on every fucking web page and some websites are too bloated and poorly designed to work on them. But to be fair, you probably wonāt miss those sites anyway.
>>52 Then you wouldn't see any pictures. Maybe you should get a better ad blocker because I don't see any on any website!
I've always loved surfing the internet and finding whatever I can without the use of search engines or at least not going through the top links which are served to you by either sponsors or some algorithm. I hate the new culture of zombiefied consumers who cannot do anything on their own, which is actually leading to younger generations being more tech-illiterate than you'd assume. I find new music by going through places like this or unironically digging through archive.org and other places like that. There's a local bookshop which has something like 60,000 books and it's a very tight and cosy place which I can spend hours in. Finding niche corners of the internet is always fun and I do not understand how other people cannot do it.
I was just talking about the idea of people not looking for things themselves in regards to "elitist" animes, where people simply just parrot what others say and like and never actually develop their own taste or opinions. Everyone seemingly is looking for some "ultra eccentric" thing to be apart of but are not willing to look for it or do anything so they latch on to whatever is served up to them, which may be by happenstance. The internet is filled with these stagnant and uncreative echo chambers and peoples' entire being is created through an algorithm. I've been told that I'm way to cynical about this but I think that creativity is lacking and nowadays and people would rather like what other's like to keep up with this person that they think they are. Nothing is new. The future seems to be made up of cheap subscriptions to some corporation that "has your best interests in mind." ready to serve you slop, and you'll love it. It reminds me something I saw in an MDE video which was a long rant titled "go antiquing! you never know what great things you are going to find if you'd only look!"
>>53
w3m supports images pretty well but struggles with thumbnails.
>>54
I love putting on some music and just websurfing. Finding links, following stuff by word of mouth, keying in queries to find something, just surfing through archive.org or even library of congress to find some weird occult manuscript from the 1500s or some dumb sci fi magazine. Trawling through anime sites to get my fix, just picking something at random for the adventure.
The internet is a powerful tool and most people have no idea. Their slaves to convenience. Apple and Microsoft offer them ease in padded cells and they just take it. Now AI slop will hollow them out further. People become slaves to things, they ignore real beauty in the world, they ignore the hellscape politicians and made around us, too busy scrolling, jerking off or shopping. They become Marcuseās one dimensional man.
The worst thing you can do is stick a smartphone in someoneās hand. People should learn to internet. The minimum basics of Linux or BSD, basics of Emacs, how to browse in net with CLI browser, how to use librewolf and Tor, and just let them loose on a directory of links or a web ring and let them surf. No gaming. No corporate social media algorithms. No bloated websites. Just good old fashioned exploration.
>The minimum basics of Linux or BSD
Linux, broken trash. BSD not needed for the average person.
>basics of Emacs
Another tool that most people will never have to touch.
>how to browse in net with CLI browser
Hardly difficult, but very pointless when many websites will not even load.
>librewolf and Tor
See? Why recommend people to browser through terminal just to use regular browser yourself? I2P is better too.
The problem I see over and over is that people are tired of these terrible websites and start creating their own shallow hollow websites and circle jerk each other in web rings.
Wow I am so impressed that you know Linux and recently converted everything to OpenBSD! This is totally not the 50th time i've seen this blog post already by now with typical wannabe 90s website design and cookie cutter w3c html verification and random ass web banners for other junk websites.
The creativity people had before is long gone and people who try to create something always do something unoriginal everytime.
Best way to use the internet is limit usage. Today people are always connected all the time. They browse social media when they wait in line. They listen to stuff on youtube or spotify while cooking or cleaning. Modern web platforms remove intentionality. Their convenient because they feed you a stream or content selected for you. So you donāt have to sit and make decisions about what tape or mp3 your going to download and listen to. People donāt have time away from the machine or quiet to let things stew. Our brains are full of noise and distractions. The internet is pre built. You donāt have to create something from scratch or make meaningful contributions, just consume. Everyoneās on autopilot. Modern search engines are bad. But people using them to automate their mental process is the problem.
>>55
What is it with retarded Linux elitists? All people need is basic computer literacy, how to protect their privacy online, which sites to avoid and the freedom to do anything they want. Thereās never been a right way to use the internet. Thatās big tech bullshit right there. Let people make their own decisions.
>>58
If you ever use proprietary software, you don't care about your privacy at all. Using proprietary software means you're perfectly happy to entrust the owner of the software to act on your best interest. protip: they won't actually act on your best interest.
>>59
I know. I use free software myself. What I donāt get is the whole āordinary people should learn Emacsā thing. Everyone should be encouraged to use a comfy free OS and limit proprietary garbage as much as possible and know how to protect their privacy online from data raping corporations and the NSA.
yeah, searching the web on my computer. CPU intensive, watch out! need a keyboard to type in all these website addresses. I know more URLs than a botnet has cyber-zombies. yeah, i do a little typing, i do a little Page Downing, but you wont catch me doing a little scrolling thats for sure. Oh sorry, did i just snowcrash ur whole datastruct? my bad, heh.
>everyone should use Linux
>correct wey to use Linux is no gui, terminal for everything, browse web, mail and fap to loli porn with command line
Never before have I seen people whose enthusiasm for their cause is matched only by their extreme elitism and gatekeeping. What do you Loonix morons want? Do you want Linux to be popular or do you want it to be something only basement dwelling neckbeards use? You canāt have it both ways.
Just use kde or xfce. Avoid gnome, it sucks.
Agreed. A computer desktop should not look like a smartphone. Gnome is vomit inducing.
You watched one Luke Smith video and think you know everything... Many such cases.
Why does anyone need a search engine? Corporate algorithms shove more content up peopleās anuses than torturers at Guantanamo. I bet with ChatGPT integration many people will stop using search engines altogether and spend their lives asking questions to chatbots or consume slop they see on Reddit/Twitter/Facebook and turn into mindless vegetables.
>>62
Whom are you quoting?
Anyway, I use GNOME, Wayland, IntelliJ, Steam, I'm feeling comfy for many years, and I don't give a fuck what Youtube clowns are thinking about that.
Modern web browsers are garbage too
another freefag delusion. this isn't how real life works. people use search engines because they work, otherwise they wouldn't be using it.
i use them but they are noticeably 10x worse than 10 years ago
we are the product now, its just all corporate ad listings.
I mostly use wiby.me these days... but then again, I don't really work or study (Ā“ļ½„Ļļ½„`)