
Beautiful Decay of AOL - Tideflat
http://invisibleup.neocities.org/articles/5/
======
JacobAldridge
I think this classic _Onion_ piece from 2000 is always worth referencing in
these situations - back then, using the internet for movie times and recipes
was the subject for humor [http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-consults-
internet-w...](http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-consults-internet-
whenever-possible-1515)

We've come a long way in a short time, but AOL (etc) deserve to be remembered
for inspiring what was possible, even if they ultimately failed in the
execution.

~~~
eterm
They They were mocking his behaviour, but all those things were possible when
that article was written, they were mocking him breaking conversation to look
to see things up.

Society has changed so that it is now acceptable, technology has improved so
it is quicker to look those things up but the article wasn't mocking the idea
that those things were online.

~~~
eecks
It's still not socially acceptable to break convo to do a quick search

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I so wish you weren't getting down voted.

~~~
hackmiester
I agree, since a downvote is inappropriate. But I must say that the post does
not reflect my experience at all.

------
dewitt
I don't know why the author's tone is so mean and snarky. Yes, the web won
(inevitable and thank goodness), but it's not like many 19-year-old web pages
are still around and serving working links either.

And for all its fundamental closed-ecosystem walled-garden flaws, AOL brought
the first taste of the Internet to millions. We should celebrate the
accomplishments and learn from the failings, not dance on the graves of the
vanquished.

~~~
zaroth
I didn't read it as 'mean and snarky'. Author sounds genuinely in awe and the
quantity of material on there. It's an archiver's dream I imagine.

------
cagenut
This is really old fuzzy memory, but at one point there was some kind of
administrative or staff plugin for AOL that would let you put in a sub-site-ID
and jump straight to some of these things. A bunch of people started using a
several-years-old superbowl message board to trade warez. It was like
operating out of an abandoned stadium... but over 28.8.

~~~
0942v8653
Reminds me of [http://www.xkcd.com/1305/](http://www.xkcd.com/1305/)

~~~
buro9
Sounds like Yik Yak

------
brooklyndude
Many, many, many years ago, I took over an office space from Matt Goldman, who
was one the founders of The Blue Man Group. His full time job, before starting
Blue Man, was duplicating AOL disks. Day after day. Just one of those tidbits
of AOL history.

------
godzillabrennus
For some strange reason this reminded me of DeadAIM by Jdennis. Man AOL really
handed the modern web to Facebook.

~~~
SwellJoe
What I keep wondering is why do we keep boxing ourselves into these little
walled gardens, when the world is so wide and the web so flexible?

~~~
Alex3917
It's cyclical. Having one protocol with multiple open clients prevents rapid
(if any) innovation, and creates an opportunity for walled gardens to steal
the market. And then once the walled garden converges on the local maximum, it
creates an opportunity to build a stable open protocol. Which then lasts until
someone comes up with the next big innovation that the open standard is too
ossified to support.

For all the shit that AOL gets, they basically got the entire country on the
Internet. Even the biggest unicorns today have nothing on AOL at its peak.

------
meeper16
AOL -> geocities -> friendster -> myspace -> facebook, the next AOL.

~~~
anonbanker
if, in 20 years, we view facebook the way everyone now views AOL, I will be a
much happier old man.

------
tyoma
AOL used to have an active hacking scene. Some of that is also still archived:

[http://mattmazur.com/projects/aol-files-
com/](http://mattmazur.com/projects/aol-files-com/)

------
TrevorJ
It's amazing how differently time move online vs meatspace. Take computing out
of the picture and 2007 isn't very long ago at all. Look at a few web pages
from then and it feels like 20 years ago.

------
nickbauman
The camo and leather fashion section is interesting as the second US Gulf War
was just getting underway. Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up in a
_Oceania is at war with Eastasia._ kind of way.

------
ZanyProgrammer
Fascinating how the comments here are uniformly praising AOL.

------
voltagex_
How do we archive this?

~~~
slipstream-
I was working on this at one time back in late 2014. A bunch of people used
scripts I made to start downloading all the file areas. Then... AOL removed
the files in January 2015. They also removed support for AOL 4.0 or 5.0 and
below last April, and that was the version that a very incomplete Python
client was claiming to be.

The research I did into archiving AOL helped me find this:
[http://lizardhq.org/2015/12/05/aol-
desktop.html](http://lizardhq.org/2015/12/05/aol-desktop.html)

Hopefully I'll do enough reversing to fix and finish the custom client one
day. Newer clients wrap the login and just the login in some form of SSL/TLS.
Which I still need to figure out.

Maybe people can help. There's a channel at efnet #aohell and plenty of
information on the archiveteam wiki.

