Net.Weirdness: Online life and Pictures

How do you navigate the 'net? How was life on the web in 1995? Back then, you could actually claim to offer a guide to the internet and be fairly inclusive of everything out there.

Business class 'web surfing

Voices from the Net
E-mail
"Both a Net guide and a helpful commentary. Voices from the Net speaks to just about everyone who wants to learn more about Net life and culture."
Still online? No, but it's archived, thanks to one of the co-collaborators. And if you want a collection of stories from philosophers and rebels, historymakers and historians, Clay Shirky published such a book in 1995, celebrating cyberspace thinkers and writers.

Net Happenings
Mailing List
"Like one of those free papers that lists all the new events in your community. A good way to keep your head above water and get the current Net news.
Still online? No, but it's remembered in an archive of The Network Observer.

BBS List
FTP
"All the BBS lists in the world. Well, almost."
Still online? No, but it's mentioned in a list of 600+ BBS names and numbers that was posted to alt.bbs.lists in 1994.

Internet Info
FTP
"Virtual guides to Net life and living. From the more mainstream to the fringe, this site has just about all of 'em."
Still online? No, but the web version from 1998 has been captured by Archive.org! I'm particularly fond of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet, apparently from Sept. 1989!

Cool Stuff on the Internet
Web
"Links to the good stuff. Since it's on the World Wide Web, these links go to other links, which go to other links, and so on and so on ..."
Still online? No, and not archived, either, and I'm not even seeing it referenced in old pages or forum posts that are still indexed.

Nexus List
Mailing List and Web
"Nexus is a project to build local virtual communities around the globe linked via cyberspace. A great goal and a great bunch of people."
Still online? No, but mentioned briefly in a copy of Cyberpoet's Guide to Virtual Culture, between The Little Garden and WiReD. The last link in that list is UnderWorld Industry's website, which wasn't archived at its original location, but it's new home was captured by the Internet Archive, providing a snapshot of "The Web's Edge" in 1996.

Pictures

Pictures
FTP
"Loads of digitized pictures just sitting around waiting for you to snag 'em. Most of them are good old-fashioned copyright violations, so you should be careful about using them in your next big ad campaign."
Still online? YES! ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/pics is still online, and it has pics! There are a lot of directories, but some are pretty dull. For example, "music" only contains another folder, "organs," which includes four pictures of the Wicks pipe organ.

OTIS Art Gallery
Gopher, FTP and Web
"OTIS is the premier Internet art gallery. Thoughtful without being elitist and snotty, the OTIS archives hold some of the niftiest rasterbation (heavily tweaked digital art) you'll find in c-space."
Still online? No, but it's mentioned in a message exchanged about the Handshake project of 1993-1994.

Net.Weirdness: Nice List and Weird Religions

 Let's get nice and weird! (Or at least, let's branch out and learn about something new.)

Nice Mailing List
Frendli-l
Mailing List
"Shiny happy people who don't know the meaning of the word 'flame.' A nice respite from the usual harsh stuff."
Still online? No, and it looks like it's a list that's down the electronic memoryhole, as I can't find any record of it now.

Weirdo Religions

Cousins (Wiccan Stuff)
FTP
"Keep up on the latest in Wicca. The Goddess orders you to subscribe!"
Still online? No, but 9 of (at least) 13 issues are archived here. (I'm miffed because while etext.org moved from an FTP to a website, it looks like the zine collection wasn't as complete as what was on the older FTP).

GASSHO: International Buddhist Electronic Journal
FTP
"Okay, a religion practiced by millions of people all over the world doesn't really qualify as 'weirdo,' but to most Westerners it's still a mystery. Learn something—read this journal."
Still online? Not via FTP, but DharmaNet is archived, which in turn archived four issues of Gassho, which was mentioned in a charmingly dated World-Wide Virtual Library page for Buddhist studies.
Still remembered? Yes, that, too, at the end of a really interesting article from Wired, published in 1994 and now online. The links are dead ends, and I doubt the old BBS numbers are still viable. But in more recent news, the world's largest collection of Tibetan Buddhist literature is available on the Internet Archive.

The Electric Mystic's Guide to the Internet
FTP
"The guide to religion on the Net."
Still online? No, but still remembered in this 1993 article on internet resources for religious studies, and in this digitized copy of Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists, which notes that the site was home to Bulletin of the General Theological Library. I don't find anything contemporary for that Bulletin, but I found Theology on the Web's archive of theological journals (though they're all about Christian studies, so it seems).

URANTIAL: The Urantia Book
Mailing List
"This religion revolves around bare-chested men wearing Egyptian headgear, a perpetually smiling blond matron prophet, aliens, and channeling dead spirits. Sure to teeter your world view just a little."
Still online? No longer limited to a mailing list, there's a website for the Urantia Book, which is online in full.

Pagans
Mailing list and FTP
"Pat Robertson's worst nightmare. The latest news and info from the Neo-Pagan community."
Still online? Not via that list and FTP, but possibly the origins of that community are discussed in this article on how paganism found a home on the net, and there's Green Egg Magazine, the online presence of the journal of the Church of All Worlds that started in the 1960s. Bonus: another interesting article from 1995, titled "Queer Spaces, Modem Boys, and Pagan Statues: Gay/Lesbian Identity and the Construction of Cyberspace."

Crowley
FTP
"Aleister Crowley—that nasty devil-worshippin' dandy—sure cranked out the text."
Still online? No, but the words of "the Beast" have found many homes online, including the Hermetic Library, and the Internet Archive.

The Necronomicon
FTP
"Isn't this the thing that caused Bruce Campbell so much grief in that cheesy horror flick Army of Darkness? Well, whatever you do, don't read this ancient evil text out loud after you've downloaded it, or else you'll summon monsters that'll destroy the universe."
Still online? Yes! Well, something is available there, but it doesn't look like it'll bring forth deadites. (And Ash was just one of the more recent to refer to H. P. Lovecraft's fictional book.)

Net.Weirdness: Music to my gears, er pipes ..?

We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of the dreams.

IUMA, 1996

Chaos Control: Electronic Music E-zine
"Really cool e-zine about the latest in electronic music (industrial, techno, ambient). Runs the gamut."
FTP
Still online? No longer a Well-hosted FTP resource, the Chaos Control Digizine lives on!

Delta Snake Blues News
"Down and dirty, lost and lonely. Blue news you can use."
Still online? No, but here's an archive from two decades ago.
Still remembered? Yes, helpfully included in this [dated] list of Blues Links.

Girl Band Guide
E-mail
"Grrrrrllll bands galore. The latest scoop on your fave female bands."
Still online? No, the email address is lost to time, beyond the handbook. Fortunately, the internet is a pretty big place. And depending on what type or style of girl/ grrl band you want to know about, there's probably a website or forum for them. Wikipedia has a few starting points, on girl groups and riot grrls, for starters. And another snapshot in time, Billboard's 20 All-Female Bands You Need To Know from 2015.

HardC.O.R.E. Rap/Hip-Hop List
Mailing List
"Down with dwarner at the HardC.O.R.E hip hop list. Send a message and ask to subscribe."
Still online? No, but ...
Still remembered? Yes, in A blast from the past: HardC.O.R.E. 1994, a Google Groups mirror or archive of a lengthy post in 1998.

Punk-rock!
Mailing List
"Arrghhhhh! Punk's Not Dead! (it's only an animated corpse). Anyway, angst and anger are still spoken here and you can be sure that this list isn't gonna be coopted by the media, you arsehole!"
Still online? No.
Still remembered? Yes, briefly on this messy GEN Wiki page, which notes that there were "crosspostings from there on anarchy-list." It's also mentioned a few times in Maximum Rocknroll No. 140 from 1995. Update: MRR ceased its print publications in 2019, but lives on as a web-only publication, now explicitly fighting white supremacy in punk, because it's 2020 and this is the present fight we face.

Internet Underground Music Archive
Web
"A new darling of the media and a really cool way to wow your unwired friends, the Internet Underground Music Archive features audio clips bios, and pictures from about a zillion underground bands. Keep close to the edge."
Still online? Not the way it used to be, but thanks to a few partnered archiving efforts, IUMA is back online.

Net.Weirdness: MOOs and MUDs and MUSH, oh my!

"MOOs and MUDs bill themselves as 'text based virtual realities.' Whatever they are, they're great places to kill time."

Cleaned up cover of the book by Andrew Busey

First, some definitions: MUD: Multi-User Dungeon; MOO: MUD, object-oriented; MUSH: Muti-User Shared Hallucination, though the H is also spelled out as Hack, Habitat, and Holodeck. They started as text-based only, then things advanced and it got graphical.

LambdaMoo
Still online? No, this former Xerox-hosted service isn't still available to telnet into.
Still remembered? Yes, in the Virtual Community Center!

MediaMoo
Still online? No, don't try telnetting into MIT's service.
Still remembered? Yes! MIT still hosts this article from 1995!

TrippyMUSH
Still online? No, another dead end.
Still remembered? Yes, we're 3 for 3! High Weirdness by E-Mail circa 1995 is archived, with a couple other links

MUD/MOO/MUSH lists and links
Still online? It's dead and gone.
Still remembered? Maybe? This list of links, last updated May 1, 1998, includes an even then-dead Actlab UTexas link. But good news! 9 of the 11 links STILL WORK! MUD isn't dead!

Net.Weirdness: IRC, Life Assistance, and Mind Expansion

Log on, check in, and drop out. In other words, it's Internet Relay Chat, a question-and-answer email service, and mind-bending ... stuff!

Source: WikiHow -- How to Chat Online

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

"You wanna chat: you yearn to chat. If strangers keep turning down your talk requests, maybe what you need is a ride on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat). But what if your stiff-o weenie systems
administrator doesn't have an IRC client installed? Bummer. Here's some public clients you can telnet to..."
Telnet
Those servers may not still be online, but there are some browser-based IRC clients (Duck Duck Go search), if you want to see what's the fuss. Also, there are thousands of users on hundreds of servers to this day. IRC ain't dead!


Life Assistance

The Oracle
E-mail
"All of your questions answered—for a price. In return for your problems being solved, you must answer someone else's question in return. If you don't return the favor, you'll still probably get your answer, but you'll be plagued by horrible facial boils and hourly hard drive crashes until you submit."
Still online? YES! YES IT IS! Well, you can't email that old address, but The (Internet, or Usenet) Oracle lives on! If you aren't sure about groveling before The Oracle in hopes of an answer to your question, you can browse past digests.


Mind Expansion

Psychology software
FTP
"Mucho software written by real doctors with real scientific applications. A good place to start looking for software to mess with your wetware."
Still online? Nope.
Still remembered? Yes, and then some! Check out this list of 68 [dated] resources and [dead] links to Psychology Software Sites! I'll dig into those links later, and see if I can actually dig up some retro psych software.

MindVirus
Email and FTP
"An INCREDIBLE multimedia extravaganza. Part toy, part interactive movie, part game, part digital brain wrecker. MindVirus is well worth the time to track down and download."
Still online? No, and it looks like it's faded from the internet! It might have become Mindflux, "Australia's premiere virtual-reality distributor," or maybe something by the same folks. Or maybe there's just some key word overlap.

FNORD-L
Mailing list
"They might not tell you what fnord means, but if you have to ask, you don't belong here. Warped discussions by equally warped minds."
Still online? No.
Still remembered? Somewhat, in this summary of the listserv. It's a pretty short summary, though.

Homebrewing List
Mailing list and FTP
"Sometimes mind expansion and smart drugs need to be tempered by some good or fashioned dumb drugs, like beer. Do it yourself!"
Still online? No, but yes. The FTP is no more, but the Home Brew Digest lives on as a website, which has an extensive archive, and you can still sign up for daily emails.

Weirdness
FTP
"Strange and wonderful stuff on everything from the Net to DMT elves, Extropians to quantum physics."
Still online? No.
Still remembered? Sort of, in this [old] list of FTPs, and here in an archive of The High Weirdness.

Net.Weirdness: Groovy Graphics, Hacking and Phreaking

This really is a smorgasbord of weird links. This time, we'll check out groovy graphics, and more hacking and phreaking-focused links.

Groovy Graphics, Man

AcidWarp Trippy Screen Display
FTP: ftp.rahul.net (still online and open to the public!)
Directory: (Not there, sorry)
"Whoaaaaahhhhhhh Dude! It's like being blotto on blotter without the two-day hangover. Played on thousands of screens in thousands of dorm rooms while thousands of minds turn to Jell-O™."
Archived? Better than that, upgraded! As captured and documented by Eyecandy Archive (tagline: "Turn your computer into an expensive lava lamp"), which also links to a half-hour HD (1920x1080) YouTube video:

Fractal Picture Archive
FTP
"Mandelbrot masturbation. Pretty pictures already rendered for the computationally-challenged."
Still online? No, this archive of alt.fractals.pictures is not still online, but Flickr (founded in 2004) has a decent collection with the fractals tag, and Deviantart (launched in 2000) has a collection in the fractals topic.


Hacking/Phreaking

H/P WWW Site
WWW
"A glimpse of the dark side of the Web. FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! (yeah, right)."
Still online? No, and not archived, or even remembered!
Anything like it? So much. So very much. But let's continue.

Cult of the Dead Cow
FTPs
"These dOOdZ are dangerous! Hundreds of incredibly witty, well-written files covering everything from simple social engineering to truly wizardlike techno spoofing."
Still online? The FTP is offline, but cDc lives on with what is currently a super low bandwith landing page (ASCii!)

Phrack
E-mail and FTPs
"Phrack—what Net. Spider can be without a passing knowledge of Phrack"? The grand pappy of hacker/cracker/phreaker pubs."
Still online? The FTP links are dead, but Phrack lives on! With more ASCii, too. And the archives are basic directories of text files and tgz archives.

Surfpunk Technical Journal
Mailing List
"The 'dangerous multi-national hacker zine' is a great resource (and it's not afraid to laugh at itself). Fun and informative."
Still remembered? Yes, in an archive of WIRED from 1994, when it was much closer to the bleeding edge.

Net.Weirdness: Games/Hints/Cheats/Cracks and Generally Weird Stuff

Time for some wicked thrills! That's right, it's 1995 and you can read about video games online! Even get hints and cheats for free! But beware, they'll probably turn you into a cold-blooded killer.

Games/Hints/Cheats/Cracks

FTP sites
"Why beat your head against the screen in your quest to find out how to get past that next level? The answers are here, homey! Hints, cheats, cracks, you name it."
Still online? Ho-leey shee-it, YES! ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/doc/games/solutions/ is STILL THERE! BUT ... the directories and files won't open there. OK, looks like a dead end. But, wait ...
Still remembered? YES! That site might be a no-go, but the University of Wisconsin Parkside FTP is offline, but the MSDOS/PC Games directory is archived!
Still needed? Depends on what you want. Cracking games isn't like it used to be, where you could do a little hexediting and break the copy protections, but Game FAQs is keeping up and current, saving you from having to call up 1-900-HOT-HINTS. My favorite part is that the ASCII art and layouts live on in 2020.

Apogee Game Site
FTP
"Shareware PC game extravaganza."
Still online? Nope.
Still remembered? Yes, fondly. Well, the games are. The old FTP? Not so much.


Generally Weird Stuff

The Site Which Must Not Be Named
FTP
"Underworld Industries FTP site o' weirdness. Too strange to even get a domain name, this site is only spoken of by its cryptic IP number. Check it out."
Still online? No. I think someone else had the IP in 1996, when I checked it out. Definitely not weirdness, either.
Still remembered? Yes, seen here in High Weirdness by Email from 1992 (?!) and it seems that Underworld Industries expanded into separate "nodes" (archived) in later years.

High Weirdness by E-mail List
FTP
"One of the masterpieces of Net publishing. If you like the list you're reading now, you'll love High Weirdness by E-mail."
Still online? No, sadly.
Still remembered? Yes! I previously linked version 1.1, and here's a copy of version 2.1, 38 pages of oddities that isn't dated. Well, the links are dated, but there's no date. You dig it, right? Anyway, this grew from High Weirdness by Mail, and later evolved into Hyper-Weirdness by Web, but that faded away before being archived. Luckily, the makers of Hyper-Weirdness re-posted some of that weirdness. Also, Rev. Stang shared more/ different/ other High Weirdness by Web.

More Weirdness 
FTP
"Truly demented. From Kibo to the Carbonist Manifesto, this is the site for some of the most mind-warping stuff you'll ever open up in your text editor."
Still online? No.
Still remembered? Somewhat. Here's the story behind Spies.com, "one of the first vanity domains in the world" (archived). If this seems familiar, it's because covered some of this before, under Alternative Media.