Careful; the Dan walsh hyperlink goes straight to porn!

This is the link that I had in mind when I was writing my comment, thanks so much for posting it here!

Also makes me wonder if people talk to their cats...

I don't think he's said, but he has written some shockingly creepy stories himself, like the Halloween special which suggests Jon died or moved out ages ago and Garfield is just hallucinating due to starvation and despair. He claimed he wrote it after a market survey indicating that loneliness is what people fear the most (this is a pattern with Davis - he always cheerfully claims he's just in it for the money whenever someone suggests he has any kind of artistic vision).

Or the one in "Garfield: his 9 lives" where a different incarnation of Garfield goes suddenly feral and kills the elderly woman owning him. Jim Davis didn't draw it, but he did script it!

The conclusion doesn't follow the premise. In fact, precisely the opposite arises from it. People who make things for money tend to be controlling about their thing, as it's the thing that makes them money. Others controlling the thing is a potential threat against the money-making capability of the thing, so they usually try to quell it. To not just let a remix be, but actively endorse it, is a notable and unusual event.

He always cheerfully said this whenever someone suggests he had any kind of artistic vision.

I'd say there are things which suggest he's not entirely sincere about that.

Is "man works for money" something that should surprise anyone?

Newspaper comic artists aren't working for free. They all want money. That's why they work.

It's still notable that Jim Davis has that level of chill about it. Someone with a mercenary capitalist attitude toward their work can be just as much a control freak as Bill Watterson. (Not being judgmental; Watterson's position is completely valid too.)

Indeed.

We had "Altavista" and for a very short time it was OK, but then quickly decended into a ad-ridden "portal" This was 1997 or so.

The web was full of popups, and then popunders. It was not uncommon to close your browser in the computer-room, then have to close 20 popups that kept coming back. Some of which showing straight out porn. At least scams like viagra, "buy gold online" or "download more memory" malware.

Before Google, it was merely undoable to find anything useful between all the banners, gifs, "only readable in netscape" search-engines.

Before Mozilla/Firefox, popups made it almost impossible to browse the web for longer than half an hour before the browser crashed or the computer locked up.

Chat was insecure, scammers, groomers, malware injection, mitm was everywhere. There was no privacy.

Forums, BBSes and NNTP were full of "trolls" before this term was even known. Flamewars, flamebait, and again, scammers, groomers and malware everywhere.

I do have fond memories of this time. But also know these memories are distorted. It was a dark forest already.

The main difference, I believe, was that the majority of internet users back then were smart - mostly western - educated or young people. I.e. the "tech literate" folks. Those who know how to deal with malware, scams, groomers, privacy, hackers. Those who know how to navigate around popup-bombs, redirect-loops, illegal-content and criminals. But the bad stuff was there from the early days. Today, the "bad stuff" has shifted, from criminals into monopolized big-tech tapping our attention and data, but it has always been there, this dark side.

> It takes effort, just like it did back then.

I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.

we had facebook, but things weren't centralized to only 5 websites yet. You are right though, there's a lot about the old internet that was better, but there was also stuff that was worse. It was more untamed perhaps. I certainly don't miss rotten.com or goatse or the absolute cesspit reddit was at the time (as you mention). We tend to forget about this and just think about the good, like individual weird blogs hosted on their own quirky websites actually being able to find an audience (which still exist to some extent but not to the same degree at all). Still, I think "the internet was always shit" is too cynical of a take. Some parts of the internet were always shit. Some of it changed for the better, some for the worse.

What you described in your first paragraph is still the old internet and it was way better than the post-truth/bot/AI hellscape of today. I’ll take “creepy” stuff over a complete separation from reality any day.

Garfield Minus Garfield is an iteration of a trend on SA and FYAD of editing Garfield comics by re-ordering panels, removing panels, removing characters/dialogue/etc, and shuffling panels from other Garfield strips to make humorous and/or unsettling mashups.

That is to say the trend predates the 2008 launch of the site.

Ok, maybe a more accurate statement would be that the ratio of goofy shit to angst-generating bullshit was much higher in 2008. Maybe it was 70/30 in favor of goofy shit and now it's 1/99 in favor of bullshit. We had Facebook and Twitter back then, but neither had been weaponized against us yet. Both had a very different flavor than they have today.

I was there. Nope.

Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope.

Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.

Getting malware just for existing? Early software firewalls that burned CPU cycles/crashed your PC? That were the only option because hardware firewalls were stupid expensive and not at all practical for residential use? Nope.

Norton Antivirus? ABSOLUTELY NOPE.

Blue screens when you looked at IE or Navigator the wrong way? Nope.

Flash? Lol, nope.

WAP? The 2004 kind? Lol, hell nope.

"This page is best viewed on Internet Explorer", i.e. IE4/5/6 or it's basically unusable? Nope.

Having to actually go seven or eight o's into the Gooooooooooooooooooooooogle footer to find what you were looking for? Def nope.

Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform.

You have to work hard to get hit with a virus these days, especially on iOS/macOS or Linux, though it's much harder on Android these days too. Also, I loved wasting my life on /., but Reddit is so much better, even after the API-pocalyse.

I definitely miss open messaging platforms though. AIM for life.

And the people who were there before the old Internet missed that too. Something something eternal September.

Sounds like a cologne.

Angst, by Squarespace

Rotten rings a bell there.

I'm not the only one sometimes does this... Now where could my pipe be?

They posted the original series all at once 17 years ago, and the second series all at once 8 years ago. Maybe they're due to come back...

And then, The Charlie Rose Paradox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqW9sexNdZg

Paul Rudd Interviews Paul Rudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLcY0XeVY4

Now that sounds like the kind of show where both of them finally have something good to contribute!

Jamie would still pop in once in a while. I like Jamie.

Well that's easy since they talk to a lot of the same people.

Hot Ones Minus Sauce. Sean driving a guest to madness through sheer conversation.

Google Docs PDF mirrored at https://gwern.net/doc/anime/2020-hoover-theevolutionofjimdav...

You'll feel worse if you use tcsh

Try zsh instead!

One of my favorite additions by subtraction:

https://youtu.be/jKS3MGriZcs?si=RRlSVL0jwi5sDl3f

Removing the laugh track from the big bang theory

I don't think this came about by randomly deciding to take a character out of a strip. The creators of G-G recognized that Jon is a depressing character who has these one way discussions with Garfield. Garfield's inner monologue (that Jon is not aware of) provides all the humor, mostly at Jon's expense. Take the humor out of the comic, and you're left with the depression. It goes straight from a comedy to a tragedy.

This is what's interesting about G-G. The tragedy was always there. We kinda knew the tragedy was always there, but we'd rather laugh at Jon with Garfield than commiserate with Jon.

Taking superheroes out of a random movie would lead to silliness, yes, but nothing poignant.

I’m reminded of Star Wars minus Williams, which removes John Williams amazing soundtrack from an amazing movie! The absurdity is top notch!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9WVDvVd0E

Your example is great! Thanks for sharing.

I did! And it started to make me wonder whether the same shenanigans could be applied to make any interesting Calvin minus Hobbes strips ... but my guess is it wouldn't turn out quite so dark

https://screenrant.com/15-dark-garfield-minus-strips-jon-dep...

Eh, if you hadn't found Stumbleupon then you would have experienced the same effect from one of the zillion other competitors in the attention economy.

You're right that this kind of novelty-seeking content has a profound impact on the brain. It's really interesting to see finally see longitudinal research, plus research on screens/novelty on child development (search for $thing + "psychosocial development").

One of the most encouraging thing I've taken away is that neutral pathways are still quite plastic well into adulthood.

For example, here's an experiment to try if you wake up and scroll in bed. After you do your morning routine, jot down a mood score (-1 feeling crummy, 0 meh neutral, +1 feeling good). You can do this for a week or two if you want to collect control data. Then, force yourself to get out of bed without looking at your phone (buy an alarm if you have too). You should see changes in your mood log within a week. Sleep regulates/replenishes dopamine levels, and scrolling through a dopamine wonderland first thing in the AM can result in dopamine dysregulation for the rest of the day. Try it!

TikTok was mobile device centric, and the people that glommed onto it quickest were young mobile users. StumbleUpon was just a website that the "olds" used. Maybe I'm wrong, but did SU have a mobile app? If so, they did a very bad job of getting it into the hands of those that TikTok did.

You should check out Marginalia Search as well! https://marginalia-search.com/

Setting it to the new tab page is a neat idea, I will follow your lead

I love small web!

FWIW Digg is in the process of reinventing itself which ... is hopeful? We'll see!

https://reboot.digg.com/

It wasn't completely random or completely (in the current social media sense) algorithmic: There was a settings page where you could pick among dozens of broad topics you were actually interested in and it would only give you results people categorized under it.

That sounds like Realfield

https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/7zfbr3/realfield/

> I mean this one is just reality. I’m not sure Garfield is a figment of Jon’s imagination

It's not reality. Hobbes it's not unambiguously stated to be a figment of Calvin's imagination either.

That's a fine interpretation but it's not canonical. Watterson wanted the ambiguity, as Wikipedia mentions (sorry, I don't have the interview with the direct quote where Watterson states this):

> "[Watteron] gave an example of this in discussing his opposition to a Hobbes plush toy: that if the essence of Hobbes' nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic."

Garfield is certainly (meant to be) real, but I've never seen a strip that confirms that Jon can actually hear Garfield's thoughts. I think that's why Garfield minus Garfield works so well.

I feel like removing it removes some noise, but doesn't affect the tone. Story is, the MASH showrunners didn't want a laugh track, but the network insisted, so they used the lowest-fidelity one they could get away with.

Thankfully it was broadcast in the UK without the laugh track.

Obviously it still wasn't as darkly observant as the movie, but it did have a edge.

Alan Alda has mentioned in interviews that he prefers it that way.

To each their own! When I watch Ross ask how to beat up a woman in the street with eyes bugging out of his head there's a pretty big difference between a laugh track and no laugh track. Just like Garfield comics hit very different when you realize that John is actually talking to himself.

I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.