Well let’s see. Often I’d be given a URL in email, newsgroups, or IRC. There were also web rings of sites that were loosely related, so I could follow the ring. Sometimes I’d just randomly explore. AltaVista came in with a search engine. But soon there was an even better one called HotBot. It crawled the entire web every day, which was amazing at the time. To search these, I basically had to pretend that the site I wanted to find existed and type in the key words that existed on the theoretical site. Then if I was lucky, the site would magically appear as a result; almost like I’d conjured it. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. Hmm… kinda like Stable Diffusion?
Pink Bow, tell us how life was before the big evil google man came and ruined everything. Sits on floor with legs folded.
Well let’s see. Often I’d be given a URL in email, newsgroups, or IRC. There were also web rings of sites that were loosely related, so I could follow the ring. Sometimes I’d just randomly explore. AltaVista came in with a search engine. But soon there was an even better one called HotBot. It crawled the entire web every day, which was amazing at the time. To search these, I basically had to pretend that the site I wanted to find existed and type in the key words that existed on the theoretical site. Then if I was lucky, the site would magically appear as a result; almost like I’d conjured it. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. Hmm… kinda like Stable Diffusion?
Those sound like good times! Kinda jealous ngl.