
The Death of the Cyberflâneur - ernestosoo
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-cyberflaneur.html?_r=0
======
kazinator
> _While not deliberately concealing his identity, the flâneur preferred to
> stroll incognito._

...

> _However, anyone entertaining such dreams of the Internet as a refuge for
> the bohemian, the hedonistic and the idiosyncratic probably didn’t know the
> reasons behind the disappearance of the original flâneur._

If the flâneur is operating _incognito_ ... how the hell can you be sure he is
actually gone? Maybe he just upped his flâneurism game and dropped off your
flâneuradar.

People do still just surf the web instead of trying to only get stuff done---
that's how we get interesting submissions on HN and why we are here to rummage
through them.

Twenty years ago I might have surfed the web for fun, but picked up the phone
to get stuff done; now I can just use the Internet for most of that latter
thing too.

~~~
ernestosoo
You are missing the main point, man. I am sure you never experience the
internet in the 1990's or early 2000's. You must live in a very parochial
place! You don't know anything about arts, films, music.

This website is one example. I like this website because there is something
that is "HIS". He owns his individuality.

[http://www.novaexpresscafe.com/main.html](http://www.novaexpresscafe.com/main.html)

It is not just about information. It is about aesthetics! The fun of
flaneuring! Surfing the internet for spontaneity!

~~~
kazinator
> _I am sure you never experience the internet in the 1990 's_

That sort of guessing tends not to pan out very well around here. I used
Mosaic under XWindow in 1993.

~~~
ernestosoo
That is pretty cool. Do you have any websites that make you feel nostalgic for
the past? Any interesting websites in 1990's and early 2000's as well?

~~~
kazinator
I'm user #1483 on Slashdot. That still exists, and I hardly ever go there
though. Before the Slashdot era, I don't remember having visited some
particular site regularly to see updating content.

But, oh, I got one: [http://suck.com](http://suck.com). That stopped making
new content in 2001, but existed for another 14 years. Now the domain seems to
have been taken over.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com)

------
alva
The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers.
Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger
generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would
traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the
internet.

~~~
monknomo
I'm a fan of finding odd corners on the 'net, what's your technique?

~~~
alva
I mostly find the odd places when searching on and for discussions of old
stomping grounds. That usually leads me down a long path of links. Sometimes I
discover by joining oddly named and sparsely visited IRC rooms. Occasionally
great sites are posted to 4chan.

A recent discovery was made when looking for recent references to Temple Of
The Screaming Electron. This search led me to two weird corners (potentially
NSFW).

1\.
[http://www.popeye-x.com/title123.htm](http://www.popeye-x.com/title123.htm)
As far as I can tell originally set up by a group of programmers (and I think
phreakers, digging through the archives ), based in Texas with a common
connection to a niche Austin based radio station. Highly original, deeply
buried links, multiple hidden forums.

2\. [http://nobodytm.com](http://nobodytm.com) Not even sure how to explain
this one! Has a chat room that the owner sometimes frequents with cryptic
messages that appear to mean something to other participants.

~~~
monknomo
Deep forum links on weird topics is my goto, but IRC may be something I should
get back into.

I kinda miss the web being made of forums, I feel like that's a tradition
that's less healthy than it was. Facebook groups or slack channel or Stack
Exchange just don't do it for me the same way

~~~
pyre
> Deep forum links on weird topics is my goto

What about this?

[http://miketysontattoos.blogspot.ca/2011/06/quotient-rule-
di...](http://miketysontattoos.blogspot.ca/2011/06/quotient-rule-
differentiation.html)

Not quite a forum link, but I really couldn't figure out what the purpose of
that site was. Some sort of spam/seo seeding operation? Where does the source
material come from.

~~~
monknomo
That is crazy stuff. Weird as a numbers station

------
GuiA
Link to the article mentioned in the opening:
[http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/050498.htm](http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/050498.htm)

------
vonnik
Cyberconnecting cyber-readers with the cybernews:
[https://twitter.com/CyberEveryword](https://twitter.com/CyberEveryword)

------
jack_rabbit
The article is totally wrong. The internet is now more than ever a good place
for this kind of thing.

> Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore.

Doesn't the whole click-bait "industry" specifically because people _are_
surfing?

What's more, even on social media, things like "Weird Facebook" come into
existence. Huge groups form with no clear purpose other than seemingly to be
exactly the kind of internet "arcades" that the article is describing.

~~~
busterarm
I'm not sure I agree. I think the whole idea of a flâneur or "surfing" the web
is that you choose where you go. There's an illusion of control.

The whole click-bait industry depends on you browsing within walled gardens
(facebook, reddit) and being on the conveyor belt of places your attention has
to go.

A flâneur or surfer can just go somewhere else. There's only so much physical
real estate you can own. There isn't exactly another facebook or reddit to go
to...and if there is, BuzzFeed is all over that shit too.

Basically, the internet has driven the minimum cost of advertising/branding
down to bit-transmission prices. Anybody basically can afford to throw shit
everywhere and see what sticks.

It's messy out there...

~~~
pavel_lishin
What about things like reddit, especially - as mentioned before, things like
Weird Facebook?

Sure, it's curated, but so were the arcades of the original flaneurs. And you
can always follow links.

(I do think that webrings were really well suited for this, though, and that's
something reddit, etc. can't quite replicate.)

------
panglott
I thought this is what they did on Geocities. But don't people still do that
on Tumblr?

~~~
rocky1138
Yes and no. Tumblr is a lot more curated. The hashtag and featured list makes
aimlessly strolling obsolete.

~~~
niftich
Depends on your circles. Tumblr, like Twitter, is really defined by who you
follow. If you follow 'professional', curated blogs where the author is
promoting their own content, they will care about SEO and discoverability and
they will tag their own posts with topical hashtags.

But most personal blogs don't care about that, they tag their posts with
custom, made-up categories or use the tag field as additional meta-commentary.
There's a much-reblogged Tumblr post chain [1] that talks about this;
ironically the only way I was able to find the post again is because one of
the commenters tagged it with topical tags.

So Tumblr is an amalgam of discoverable posts, long chains, and many posts
that are completely untagged. If the blog's author has disabled the built-in
integration Tumblr has with making search engines aware of posts, a lot of
this content can only be found by going directly to the source through a
friend-of-a-friend.

[1] (shortened due to NSFW words in url, in deference to those at work)
[http://bit.ly/2cuwzE0](http://bit.ly/2cuwzE0)

------
v64
You can get a similar experience browsing directories of Tor hidden services
(I'm sure there are other darknet equivalents). There's a little bit of
everything in those lists, including the illicit, inexplicable, and of course,
illegal.

------
philippoi
The point Morozov didn't make explicit that would have helped his argument:
the internet is turning into a perfect Panopticon, a total environment of
confinement for control and subjectification as highlighted by Foucault. I
first read that for architectural theory in college, and now it only seems to
get increasingly vital to understanding everyday culture and identity. When
the idea of the web as a terrain for the flâneur to be the main focus, the
rival and dominating idea of the web as a terrain of control via total
surveillance clarifies which direction the mainstream skews. Sure there are
outliers, but emphasizing that to dismiss the wave in the direction of the
Digital Panopticon is to miss Morozov's point.

------
ernestosoo
The Facebook technically kills the whole internet.
([http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/facebo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/facebook-
is-eating-the-internet/391766/)). It tries to copy other startups, so people
can stay on its platform and watch more "ads". Instead of surfing
idiosyncratic webpages, flaneur now surfs facebook. It is like going to Paris
and one only sees McDonald and Starbucks.
([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-
death-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-
cyberflaneur.html))

In addition, nowadays, people do not create webpage for fun. They want to
commercialize their online presence. Everything, including oneself, is a brand
now ([http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/50-tips-to-brand-
yoursel...](http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/50-tips-to-brand-yourself-
online/)). This leads to the totalitarianism of minimalism
([https://www.sitepoint.com/less-minimalist-websites-still-
rul...](https://www.sitepoint.com/less-minimalist-websites-still-rule/)) where
they want to people to "see" their webpages "efficiently". People are wearing
a mask in and out. There is no authenticity and honesty.

The internet was the place for playfulness and wonder. DeviantArts, Rate Your
Music, Geocities were really fun.

Now, the internet is full of BS. Startups are full of BS ("This is a site that
spits out whole websites of fake bullshit web companies. Hit "get started" to
refresh.
[http://tiffzhang.com/startup/?s=243648772317](http://tiffzhang.com/startup/?s=243648772317)).
Reddit is a rare phenomenon because it was founded by Aaron Schwartz and he
never got any credit. And I am pretty sure Aaron Schwartz would never go to
“Hackathon”, “Entrepreneurial leadership at Stanford”. They are full of BS. No
one has a deep passion for truly improving people’s lives. Everything is for
efficiency.

Palo Alto becomes a dead place now. There is only one bookstore in Palo Alto
area and no students ever visit. Stanford students do not love to learn at
all. They are “excellent sheep”.

The dark net is okay and it becomes boring after a while.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
To be fair to the "hackathon," it was a concept started by the devs at
OpenBSD.[0] Not exactly a bunch of poseurs, that group.

[0]
[https://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html](https://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html)

------
networked
As a companion article to this one, read "The Net Is a Waste of Time" written
by William Gibson in 1996 ([http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/14/magazine/the-
net-is-a-wast...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/14/magazine/the-net-is-a-
waste-of-time.html)). It celebrates what Gibson thinks is the moment of peak
"cyberflânerie".

------
gumby
But isn't that what FB browsing is? Internet "surfing"? Getting stuck in a
Wikipedia rabbit hole?

~~~
Juz16
There's no anonymity there, and everything is rationed and fed to you by their
algorithm for a reason.

------
GabeN
I enjoy trawling through old Google Groups, some of them contain BBS messages
dating back to the '80s

------
nosuchthing
Take a break from surfing, and start diving. See how far the rabbit hole
goes....

[http://i.imgur.com/BLJl7f0g.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/BLJl7f0g.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/pdJsQDh.png](http://i.imgur.com/pdJsQDh.png)

[http://i.imgur.com/UaWoV.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/UaWoV.jpg)

~~~
ernestosoo
This is so funny! You must know the internet!!! Do you know any of these?

Obscure Music Blogspots, IRC chats, usenet, ASCII art, Slsk, DC++, penpals in
Finland, Botwana, Iceland, and Uruguay, grainy and idiosyncratic university-
websites, Tunak Tunak Tun, Albino Black Sheep, Zombo.com

