What's the most unexpected thing you've stumbled upon on the internet?
Mine is a Facebook group called ALDI Aisle of Shame. I don't know if it's okay to link to it, so I'll just let you all google it if you want to check it out!
Not too long ago on /r/femalefashionadvice, someone mentioned a product in a comment section and I went to look for it online. This lead me to said group and the place was so unexpectedly incredibly wholesome..! It is the silliest thing. There are more than one and a half million members all praising the quality of ALDI products, and posting pictures of their hauls.
Recently, a trend was to post pictures of your dog and even a pony in hats gotten from ALDI and it is just so much fun! Even women doing the Spiderman meme in real life as they spot each other with the same outfit from ALDI.
PS: I am aware Tildes is text-focused so please let me know if this many images in a post is against the spirit of Tildes! Wasn't sure if it's ok to include images in a text post like this.
Goatse. Before Rickrolling, there were worse things that you might be linked to.
Man... those were wild times.
The "I'm feeling lucky" button on Google search used to hit different, still remember the day when my friend told me to search for lemon party haha
Friend of mine sent me "poop on a stick" way back in the day and it's never left me
Early internet was wild. Can you imagine rotten.com existing on the clear web these days?
I was talking to a ~15 year old about the old internet. One thing that came to mind was that there were websites with video game cheat codes and like.. 90% of them were just lies. Obviously, people still lie online, but back then with the cheat codes it was just accepted that more likely than not, the code you're trying will not work. I don't know, the whole internet just had a different feel.
Also, a lot of video games had a big head mode for.. some reason? He was having a blast asking us questions about that.
I think that the internet then was bullshit, rather than lies. None of it mattered, so it was all pranks and wild fabrications, like a group of friends who knew nothing was really real. Now the internet is "srs bsns", but actually serious. That makes the same sort of behaviors way less funny.
cgsccc? I'd spend hours putting those values into my Action Replay. While I do remember a lot of the in-game key combo cheats were BS, I recall having a lot more luck with AR/Gameshark codes.
I'm with you on the big head thing... what a weird phenomenon lol.
My cousin had a special cable for the PSX that hooked up to his computer that let him change memory addresses, live. At least that's what I remember it doing. I wasn't quite as capable in those days. What a great time though, the mod chips of the era definitely introduced me to soldering and programming as an eager to learn kid.
In the mid-late 90s, when I was a little kid in elementary school, I remember my teacher taking the class to the library so we could learn how to use the internet. We each got our own computer to practice on, and she instructed us on how to open a browser, type in a URL, and press the return key so that it would go to the website.
The URL she told us to type: www.whitehouse.com
Some kids took longer than others to access the site. I was, to my supreme embarrassment, one of the first because I already had a lot of web browsing experience at home. Almost as soon as the site loaded, I heard the ruckus begin around the room as every kid, one by one, saw pornography appear on their screen. Kids started shrieking and going wild.
The teacher ushered us out of the library as quickly as she could and never said another word about it to us. We never got to use the computers in the library again.
My experience is almost like a sequel to yours: in the early-mid 00s, in my elementary computer class, the teacher explicitly name-drops whitehouse.com as an example of a malicious or misleading site. This was a Christian school, too, so learning in hindsight that it was a porn site is absolutely hilarious.
Haha, I wonder if your teacher was speaking from experience...
Haha oh man what a memory bringing up that URL on accident with my dad while working on a school thing. We still laugh about that.
The crazy thing is I read this question and while I'm aware of all that weird shit I didn't even consider that it would fall into the category of "unexpected thing on the internet" because of how ubiquitous it was.
Ah yeah, telling people that it's weird that you cannot find a picture of a blue waffle if you turn safesearch off but it works if it's on to make them try it out. Fun times.
We had to kick a mod on reddit one time because they kept pestering people for invites to mod other subs and spamming an ASCII version of goatse when they didn’t get their way.
I miss bonsaikitten.
Having been on the web since it was static HTML pages and being able to add a background colour was “new and exciting”… these days I’m obsessed with finding old personal blogs and sites still running. I’ve built a little bookmark collection I call “Old Web” which are those old school sites that people still update, probably getting single digit views per week and yet plugging away because they love their little corner of the web.
I despise how all the megacorps drowned out all those little personal sites, so it makes me so happy to see some people persisting.
I'm not sure if linking to Lemmy is allowed, but I recently found a community for this called.... OldWeb here.
Yeah “Old Web” has been the name for these sites since before any decentralised sites came along. There’s a few webrings etc I still follow to find new sites too. It’s some fun nostalgia to a different time while also being some really interesting content from people who aren’t focussed on clicks or subs or follows, and just write/post for the simple enjoyment.
I think neocities does a great job of keeping that feeling alive
Links?
People who collect weird stuff; the two that have stuck with me were people who were VERY into white plastic lawn chairs (he even knew all the model names and such) and another was street lamp collectors.
How do you even get into that? :P
Time Cube has always held a special place in my heart.
I... I don't know what to say... it's fascinating!
Nathan Fillion meme.
I wish I could say I read the whole thing, but my brain was starting to implode. It’s like a Dr. Bronner’s bottle, but in total disagreement as Dr. Bronner was All One!
Way back when, before creepypastas and suchlike I stumbled randomly on 'Ted the Caver'. It was an angelfire site formatted as a series of entries in the diary of a guy who was into caving. Started out as engaging but mundane and very swiftly got weird. He investigates a spooky cave, strange things start to happen and the entries end abruptly. Perfectly constructed and just spooky enough to be properly creepy.
There was another similar one about a couple who bought a pub near Loch Ness and began having trouble with what appeared to be massive eels but unfortunately I never found that one again.
I read through this about 6 months ago, it's fantastic read if you have the time. I'll leave the link here to make it easier to get to.
It was the first time I had encountered anything like it (when I was around 20 in late '01/early '02, if I'm not mistaken). It was probably one of the seminal influences on my interest in Weird fiction.
I was browsing r/opendirectories and found a this collection of (kind of NSFWish - no pr0n just really weird imagery and the occasional recolored swastika) websites all in the same lore.
http://www.universegenerator.com/
http://www.omniscientcomputers.org/
http://www.illuminatisgreatestsecret.com/
All I can say is.... yeah. It's a trip and a half throughout the entire website and the creator made other websites too that are linked on it. If you have an hour or two to just be immersed in insaneo schizoposting, yeah.
Insane Schizoposting might be my favorite genre of website. It's honestly really interesting to get such a personal and specific look at the worldview of someone who has lost touch with reality. Feels like the closest you could get to peering into another person's mind as well, because of the complete lack of filter.
I agree. If it weren't for the sites above having really trippy / brain hurty effects, I'd go deeper down the rabbit hole.
I love schizoposting websites and memes in general. Subreddits like r/omegachan crack me up.
These sites mimic the exact websites we created in my middle school computer science classes lol, it’s actually a bit nostalgic (not the content, just the design)
In the early days I remember finding https://www.realultimatepower.net/ (which is surprisingly still up, albiet not in its full original form). I couldn't believe something so hilarious and stupid could exist.
That is glorious! Thanks for sharing! I can't believe the T-Shirts link actually leads to a real and still running web store where you can still buy a ninja shirt.
The fact that this page isn't absolutely lousy with ads is so refreshing
This reminded me of the "Ask a Ninja" guy on Youtube. Which just reminds me of Strong Bad.
I'm also into finding those kinds of delightful niche communities and spying a bit! The more "old internet" they are the better - phpBB forums, geocities-style web design, love it. The ones I can think of offhand are:
This is one of those things that make you question why and how it became a thing. Mainly because it's on a beekeeping forum. Like, did they have dozens of users report they'd been abducted or met ghosts? Did they get flooded with posts about experiences and felt a need to isolate them? Did it start as an April Fools joke that people took too seriously??
r/9mother9horse9eyes9
It is an experience unto itself. It's horror, it's art, it's deeply unsettling.
You have to go to the sidebar and start the story there. The current posts are just things that people find which remind them of the tale.
Yeah.
No.
I’m not clicking on that link.
It's not porn. But, it is unexpected. :)
Is it private because of some spooky reason or because of the blackout?
If it's the latter, that's kinda hilarious
Right? some bonkers conspiracy text going dark in solidarity!
Their wiki with the ebook is still up. From what I can tell, the most recent posts were just people discussing it. The original 9M9H9E9 posts were done in 2016.
I remember coming across this ages ago. There used to be an export of the whole thing, so you didn't have to go through the posts on Reddit. I had downloaded it but never got around to reading it. I wonder if I still have it somewhere.
Edit: Here it is. Much less spooky when it's called The Interface series.
It's a pretty good read! I love intriguing sci-fi-y stuff like this. I'd recommend it, wish there was more. qntm is another author that does stuff a bit similar to this that is great (there is no antimemetics division).
Thank you so much! I had no idea that existed.
Oh man, I remember following this as it was being posted, I didn't realise people were still interacting with it. It was a really cool community at the time, with people stitching together the posts, making audiobooks and so on. I was living in a different country at the time and pretty unhappy and I used to go for long walks in this nearby park and listen to the audio version. I'm someone who generally likes my fiction more reality-based but something about the story really spoke to me.
Right! The posts/comments and how the story was told were unique. I've never seen anyone pull off telling a story that way. It was a different time.
it says it's private, can't access it from wayback machine either
As mentioned, all the shock stuff from back in the day kind of trumps anything since. Tub girl, goatse, lemon party, meat spin, etc.
The one that always made me laugh though was Bonsai Kitten. Total joke site but was done well enough that you weren’t 100% sure it wasn’t real.
I remember looking for the 2011 French movie Tomboy during my obligatory French movie phase in college. My search came up with a blogspot link; it was one of those links that had entire movies split up into 7 rapidshare download links.
The weird thing about this blog was that it was ALL movies that focused specifically on young children. There was a somewhat active comment section on the individual posts. The comments were clean comments: requests for other similar movies, saying how good-looking the children were, etc. There was nothing that was obviously pedo about the site but it just FELT really off, creepy, pedo.
I did not download Tomboy and I still haven't watched it.
Truly unexpected? In high school, I came across an acquaintance while surfing for porn. He attended a neighboring high school and dated one of my childhood best friends on and off. I was 16 or 17 at the time so this was wild to me.
It ended up being more fascinating than anything. I was obviously well aware of “gay for pay” and that a majority of the *ahem* content I consumed as a teenager featured mostly heterosexual men, but here’s a straight man who I knew, from a conservative area, getting pounded on camera. Definitely boggled my gay brain for weeks.
What’s funny about that is just how not interesting that ended up being. Afterward, I learned that same year of another high school acquaintance who went into porn, two guys I knew in college after that, and a coworker after that. And these folks were with studios before OnlyFans democratized porn and lowered the barrier of entry into sex work. Following that whole inflection point, I know of so many folks from my past and present who openly monetize homemade porn on those platforms. It’s about as common as posting a link to your Etsy store now, lol.
That's how I found out I did NOT want to have sex with my brother's coworker.
She was nice, good looking, huge breasts (which - surprisingly is NOT my type) ... and was in a porno once.
Of course we unearthed and watched it.
She was as exciting as house dust.
Although that verly likely has more life in it.
I doubt it's really the MOST unexpected thing, but I saw an open Steam group of people who would do Touhou ERP for TF2 hats eons ago and I've rotated that in my head space like once a month for the last ten years.
A subreddit with the purpose of making fun of religious influencers/bloggers ended up finding an extremely obscure blog, written by a woman who is having what appears to be active episodes of paranoid schizophrenia or erotomania.
For years this woman ran an old school mommy blog where she posted about how to make money by creating low quality printable calendars and such. Sort of a pre-MLM "get rich quick" blog, they were everywhere back in the day. In 2021 she started making blog posts about an issue she was having at her church - she had determined that a teenage boy, who also attended the church, was her soulmate and God wanted them to marry. The boy, his family, and the church all encouraged her to get help and had to force her out of the church when she could not stop her obsession with the boy.
Since then it has descended swiftly into madness. She currently believes that the boy (now a young man with a life of his own) still communicates to her through her TV and computer. When one of his friends supposedly passed away, she posted a blog saying that it was the will of God, and the woman had died because she was interrupting God's plan for the blogger and man to be together. With each post about the situation, she incorporates more direct threats to the lives of strangers, often mentioning that God will "punish" those who do not follow his will.
The entire site is designed with bright rainbow colors and generally looks like a kindergarten classroom. It has been utterly haunting to witness these blog posts over the past few years.
This one was cool: looks like it's not quite as active as it used to be, but it's a whole community about making modded/custom keyboard caps: https://geekhack.org/
A good movie to watch: https://agoodmovietowatch.com/all/
Weird words: https://phrontistery.info/i.html
http://lofi.limo/ and other lo-fi stuff on YouTube
Probably that one video of the horse fucking that guy to death... Shudders.
Shout out to all the people who kept that graphic game of pay it forward going... Yeesh
God damn I haven't thought about that video in like a decade! D: Early internet was WILD!
Mr Hands? I don't think that was the occasion which killed him.
I wouldn't think his last dying action would be to upload the video.
"Zoo"
Filmmaker Robinson Devor examines the taboo subject of bestiality. He centers the film around the case of a Seattle aircraft engineer, who died in 2005 after performing a sexual act with a stallion. The filmmaker interviews a number of zoophiles and uses dramatic re-enactments to illustrate their anonymous comments.
When I was young I had a website with a guestbook. We're talking 25 years ago.
I found a copy on the web archive that had a working guestbook page, and when I went through the comments I was perplexed by what some people wrote.
One of the entries was of a girl basically saying that she wants to be with me... and I never made that connection back then. It did explain her negative attitude towards me the years after because she must have felt rejected?
Another one was of a good online friend that I lost contact with after some years, and I met him in real life a few years ago, but did not make the connection until I saw his guestbook post. He was as surprised as me when I told him. We did not become friends again though, we are totally different people now.
Finding out about the so-called Tartarian Empire was a pretty wild experience. I'm fairly well read on ancient history, but that popped up on the radar on BadHistory at some point, and it was all new. Brilliantly convoluted, and for some reason I keep running into it a lot more since (luckily since I love these whacky theories); interesting architecture? Tartarian! Unknown grave? Tartarian noble of course! Etc.
Lake City Quiet Pills was pretty interesting to stumble across!
There's a podcast called Thinking Sideways that did an episode on this if you never heard it
I haven't seen that, I'll have to check it out!
There was a website called cakefarts.com and it was literally just some chick farting into a cake
There was a written guide on how to have sex with dolphins. A friend of mine sent me the link, so I didn't exactly stumble upon it, but it was unexpected.
I once found a personal site that discussed poisonous plants in scary and convincing detail. The author linked to text documents that (I think) were pretty much encyclopaedic. I'd love to find it again but I have no reference points and it might have vanished 20 years ago.
The tower 7 videos, that are not really available on YouTube for some reason
I mean as a kid in the middle of a computer lab in school probably whitehouse.com (and not what is up there now, it was porn at the time).