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the main body of this post is stitched together from what was originally posted on lesbiaboard on july 31 2025. upon reading it again i figured i would make it into a blog post
congratulations, you've just set up a new system with windows 98 or XP or mac OS 9! it's a blank slate ready for all the cool retro shenanigans you could possibly want to partake in
... which is what, exactly?
i'm typing this on a pentium 4 laptop running windows XP and i'm realizing i have no idea what to do with the machines. i had an epiphany last night when trying to search for "junkbot": i can't find an easy way to play junkbot on the period correct hardware it used to run on anymore. (this is not the specific problem i'm trying to solve, just a symptom) all the current web returns now is either nostalgia wank posts or flashpoint, which is made to run on modern machines, not the ones the games were originally made for. i kinda get why it's not the norm but i'm not entirely sure i understand why there isn't even a single website dedicated to hosting flash and shockwave games without ruffle. i want to be able to play games from period-correct computers they were made for.
it used to be so cool to be on the computer because you could search for things to do and you could do them on that computer. and then you associate the memory of using windows xp with having fun on the computer because you did those things. but now it's harder to find things you can still do on those computers, because it's harder to find the software, or the services are gone. yes i've tried to use things like escargot (which mostly don't run on older platforms, by the way) but it's only as fun as actually having anybody to talk to there, and nobody else is there.
i'm having trouble articulating exactly the point i'm trying to make, but i really want to enjoy my time using old computers as a hobby and i'm trying to figure out what exactly is keeping me
on one paw maybe trying to recapture all my past experiences (especially the positive ones) with a computer to the point of using a pentium 4 laptop almost exclusively during the day is a flawed and harmfully nostalgic approach
on another paw i had a flashback to getting messaged at random, unprompted on MSN and it made my inner circuits yearn painfully
the problem is the internet isn't frozen in 2005. beyond just the problems with being able to load new pages due to the disease of HTTPS, javascript or even unsupported newer CSS rules, the old information (in the broad sense, including software) just isn't there anymore. and it's unreasonable to expect it to be, i know, but that's a main barrier i find. i used to go online and just search for things to do online, places to go, and now if i try to do those things on the same computer i used to do them in, that's the gate.
shareware discs are something that are frozen in time, but finding them and downloading them from the internet archive takes far too long (i'm currently waiting about 1h30m on a 600mb ISO download) and something about it just ends up feeling stifling.
maybe i wish we had more pages like these that collate software for these platforms? with older machines like 8bit micros it's so easy to get every single piece of software ever made for them to play with (like TOSEC, or for example apple II's total replay), and that doesn't scale to 2000s machines, but it feels like there's a huge gap that surely something could be done about?
maybe it's the lack of community. with everybody now only residing in social media and apps that are inaccessible to older computers, whenever i try to use one for fun i end up alienated and disconnected from everybody else and it's a miserable experience.
maybe i'm just fucking depressed and can't find anything to do because of that.
netizen club is our ongoing attempt to make a space in the web that is still fully accessible and embracing of older platforms. if you at all care about that endeavour, i welcome you to talk at us and help us build something cool