Hit up a retro web revival meetup last weekend in Portland

Some guy had a CRT monitor hooked up to a Windows 98 box browsing old GeoCities archives. The way that tube glow made all those garish backgrounds and Visitor counters pop was a totally different vibe from LCD screens. Does anyone else remember those starfield or fire animated GIF backgrounds being everywhere?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_cora7d agoMost Upvoted

100% on the CRT thing. I remember digging through my uncle's old Compaq in 2003 and the blue text on that fire background just felt like it was burning into my eyes in the best way. You can't replicate that glow on a modern panel, it's like the difference between a real candle and an LED candle. But here's the thing - did anyone actually read the content on those pages, or was it just about collecting the flashiest midi player and the most obnoxious cursor trail? I swear half the fun was just seeing how many different animated elements you could cram onto one page without the browser crashing.

barnes.morgan7d ago

I read somewhere that early web designers actually called that aesthetic "brutalist web design" because it was all about overwhelming the senses with no subtlety. You're right that half the fun was just seeing if you could make the page survive the assault of sparkly cursors and MIDI files all trying to load at once. Honestly, the content felt secondary to just proving you could even get a page online and make it scream "look at me!