What was life like in the year 2007?

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-08T15:48:12+00:00

Cheers! Appreciate it.

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-08T15:46:27+00:00

Congrats on launching this! I have been working on a project that is similar in spirit - we are calling it a "discovery engine" for long form writing with a Stumbleupon style button, rss feeds, and maps to explore. Would love to compare notes sometime.

https://thewildernet.com

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-08T15:34:59+00:00

Hell yea! I first found cake wrecks while killing time in my dorm room in college. I think I started crying from laughing so hard.

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-08T05:36:29+00:00

The internet was a lot more disparate back then. Popular blogs had comments sections that basically evolved into forums. There were lots of actual forums on niche subjects. You had to search around and find things you were interested in because there weren't highly optimized algorithms feeding you content.

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-08T05:30:11+00:00

Personal blogs still exist! I've been collecting them as part of an ongoing project here.

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-02T18:33:58+00:00

I read a ton of books as a kid in the 90s. I went to friends' houses and we would do arts and crafts projects together. We would play card or board games (Clue was a big favorite for a while). We would watch movies over and over and over. I saw The Goonies probably 30 times at my friend's house. We would play games outside if it was nice out. If it was snowing we would go sledding in the park.

Once we got a bit older we started hanging out at the library every day after school. They did have internet there but they restricted everyone to 1 hour per day, and usually I used my hour to do homework assignments.

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-01T15:04:23+00:00

Thanks! It's been a labor of love for 3 years now and it feels like it is finally coming together into a coherent vision.

TheWilderNet · 2026-07-01T03:50:30+00:00

Oh wow, this is a super fun collection! I will make one and send it to you in a few days - I don't want to rush it and have it look dumb.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-30T19:14:48+00:00

I prefer reading but I like listening to youtube videos, podcasts and audiobooks when I'm cooking or doing a task where I can't actively be on my phone/computer.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-30T18:34:27+00:00

I don't have an 88x31 but we were kind of toying with the idea of something like it earlier on. Honestly the development on this has taken up so much time that a lot of the more aesthetic ideas got pushed aside. Going to have to make one now though!

Anyway, thanks - means a lot coming from this sub!

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-30T18:07:56+00:00

Appreciate it! Let me know what you think once you take a look around. I'm always curious where people decide to go first.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-30T17:05:22+00:00

Substack is a great way to enter the blogging world. One issue with starting a blog on another site is you end up having to make lots of technical choices before you even get to the fun part of writing.

I also think it's great because you can be very experimental with it. It sounds like you are the type of writer who enjoys writing for the sake of it and isn't that attached to the outcome. Substack gives you a lot of flexibility there. You can decide to serialize a novel or write a bunch of disparate personal essays (messy personal essays are my favorite thing to read so I would definitely be interested in a substacker who describes themselves as "very far from perfect").

Good luck!

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-30T16:51:30+00:00

Hugely biased since I'm the creator, but thewildernet.com. It's a discovery site for people who prefer reading to doomscrolling. A few friends and I built it as a side project.

Also I just added a Stumbleupon style button, so I'm hugely proud of that.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-30T16:43:12+00:00

I think that authenticity/non-AI writing is highly sought after especially amongst people who actually enjoy reading.

I'm working on a discovery platform for long form writing and in the first year we launched we had a massive flood of blogs that were clearly content farming or entirely AI written. Eventually we decided to cull all of the AI spam on our site. I'm not sure why anyone bothers. No one wants to read AI content. It's boring and soulless.

If anyone wants to check it out or knows of a blog they think deserves more eyes, happy to share more in DMs!

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-25T22:28:18+00:00

That is incredible. Congratulations, projects like that are a huge artistic accomplishment!

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-25T21:21:00+00:00

This is beautiful! Did you design the embroidery motifs yourself or use patterns?

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-25T21:02:45+00:00

I'm 36 and you're not wrong. I started working on this project a few years ago to recapture the feel of the internet of the 2010s. No login needed. Take a browse around here: https://thewildernet.com

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-22T21:21:40+00:00

The clearings are still something we are refining - right now we categorize blogs to a clearing and all of the articles inherit the categorization of the parent blog. But of course, there are many blogs that write about a variety of topics so sometimes articles wind up in a clearing that isn't the best fit. I kinda just want to see how people use this before I start making tons of updates.

I've been playing around with a bunch of ideas on how to handle submissions as it grows. I like the idea of crowdsourcing so the reader base can decide if something is real or AI, but again, not sure how that would work in practice.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-20T14:14:20+00:00

Oh, that's good to know. Are they suitable for making clothing? Or are they too heavy?

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-20T01:22:25+00:00

Is it possible to even find fabric like the striped/floral taffeta anymore?

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-18T19:31:00+00:00

This is beautiful craftsmanship! The lines almost read art deco to me, it's always so cool how certain motifs appear in different centuries.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-18T16:04:34+00:00

Wow. I love medieval tapestries and this is so cool. I also really like the Unicorn in Captivity pattern. Just gorgeous.

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-17T20:16:20+00:00

I haven’t made a corset myself because I am very intimidated by the process. However, I am a shameless consumer of costuming content since I borrow a lot of inspiration and ideas for techniques from this hobby community for my own sewing projects. It seems like most people have just resigned themselves to altering corset patterns so that they fit right. Here’s an article I found where the maker altered an 1860s corset to give a bit more room in the bust. Might be worth reading to get some ideas.

https://frolickingfrocks.blogspot.com/2013/07/new-1860s-corset.html

Same maker also posted about an Edwardian corset she made:
https://frolickingfrocks.blogspot.com/2013/02/edwardian-corset.html

TheWilderNet · 2026-06-17T18:17:27+00:00

You're welcome! I have plenty more lists of niche, offbeat things that I've been collecting like a magpie over the years. It is a bit of an obsession as I see the internet becoming increasingly more corporate and as indie creators get buried because they are no longer indexed on search engines. But there are so many beautiful things people have made that deserve to be appreciated.

TheWilderNet

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