Raison d'être

I think I remember talking about that, and that we concluded it was just a bunch of web crawlers.

On 6/21/2025 at 10:42 AM, A 1970 Corvette said:

honestly I was just thinking back to how many threads were made fairly early on in subSPUF history (like the one that was just ':(' and nothing else) and how getting to 5000 isn't really that much of a crazy milestone but more of just a passing coincidence that it was noticed at all. To be fair it is listed on the site's main page but who's reeeaaally scrolling all the way down to check?

This place was bumpin' back in the day. Remember the TF2 trolling video?

I think it's because a large part is that matchmaking nowadays is usually based on ELO, while back in the day this probably still happened but was more rudimentary and, importantly, unknown. Now here's the important thing - it was a lot harder to smurf back then since when those games were new and poppin', they cost $60, but a lot of competitive shooters these days are F2P. So nowadays we have 1) heightened importance of skill in the matchmaking process and 2) a very easy way to show to the matchmaking system that you're not a skilled player.

Some guy who just got the game for Father's Day and barely knows how to move his character is now in the lobby with SkullCrusherX's smurf and to the matchmaking system they are at the exact same level, when obviously they fucking aren't. It's easy to get frustrated at the system in that case, even if the true cause is deeper.

5 hours ago, Gyokuyoutama said:

Looks like Space Jam isn't the only webpage that hasn't been updated since 1996:

 

https://www.two4u.com/pizzacats/index.html

 

EDIT: Compare this to the Fandom Samurai Pizza Cats wiki and tell me that 90's web design was worse than what we have now.

Don't forget https://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm

I've been out of state a few times for business, and each time I'll usually switch on the TV because my laptop sucks and what else am I gonna do for the two hours I have before I have to sleep? There's not too much out there besides popular reruns and drama mills like Housewives of X. I did get to watch Die Hard 1, 2 and 4 (not 3) over two separate occasions, which I probably would never have seen otherwise, but those aren't exactly cult classics.

Reminds me of how sometimes my Win11 work laptop drains its battery overnight and sometimes it doesn't. I shut the clamshell the same each time, and every other laptop I've had would say "Alright, hibernate time" and have almost imperceptible battery loss overnight. And sometimes my work laptop does and the next morning it's at 95%... and sometimes it doesn't and I'm at about 30%.

Maybe it's some of the corporate crapware weighing it down. Or maybe it's just because it's busy season and the laptop turns off at 11 and goes on at 9 so the battery drain doesn't matter to me either way.

On 2/15/2025 at 12:13 PM, A 1970 Corvette said:

I wonder how fucked up the field of linguistics has become with the advent of the internet. Maybe it's gotten easier since the internet has collapsed into like five sites that anyone uses though

I remember reading this a little while back, might interest you. Basically, regional varieties of English are starting to lose their uniqueness as kids/young people learn language more from the innernet than from other people in their community.

On 1/22/2025 at 9:58 PM, Gyokuyoutama said:

The history of book covers, as told by the Hardy Boys:

 

 

Now I realize that this isn't entirely fair since they didn't update the cover art much after the 50's (I'm not sure exactly when the paperback edition art came into being; I'm guessing based on the style of the text.)  The last two are also not "official" editions but rather editions made after the book went public domain.

 

But honestly this tracks with what I've seen in book stores.  Various hand drawn art for most books through the 90's.  Ever more minimalistic, cell shaded style artwork when we get into the 00's.  This creeps into just having collages with stock art as we get into the 2010's.  Lazier than you thought possible by 2020.  And of course, AI generated art now.

I remember a lot of the 1980s style covers from my childhood (no, I'm not THAT old). Always gave me "stuff to check out from the school library" vibes.

Crazy video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YDvw4BKbA

Also, I have to link it like that because the emojis in the title give me an error and won't let me post it if it's embedded... seriously, try it yourself!

1 hour ago, Razputin said:

I went to Chicago for a conference a few months ago and it was my first time out of Europe (except the UK lol). I was incredibly stressed about it but ended up loving it, I'll bet you Japan will be similarly amazing

That's probably the nicest thing about Chicago somebody's said this millennium!

I visited in '08 or '09 as a kid and all I remember is the Bean, going to the top of Sears Tower, the L train, and buying a used copy of F.E.A.R. for the PS3 for around $30.

10 hours ago, A 1970 Corvette said:

I spent the last three weeks of 2024 sick as a dog so 2025 is at least looking up on that front!

 

I'm also going on a trip to Japan in a few days and I'm absolutely fucking terrified oh god why did I decide to do this I just want to crawl into my bed and miss my flight and just pretend I never organized it

I know a few people who've gone and they've all loved it and keep going back. The nice thing about it is it's got something for everyone! Even I'd like to go at some point.

Normies apparently caught on that Honey was a scam/unethical/whatever.

No shit? How the hell else is something like that going to make money? "Businesses paid us to help give you access to codes so that you can pay them the absolute least amount possible"?

Another thing that gets me is that the clock has only had ONE positive movement since 1990... and that was really only because Obama was elected, but then two years later they decided that was still too optimistic and they just rolled it back by saying "Well... nothing happened... and that's bad."

And they're so near midnight that genuinely exceptional things like a major land war in Europe only move the clock 1/6 of a minute (LMAO) because they shit away like 8 minutes in the 90s over Bad Vibes.

4 hours ago, A 1970 Corvette said:

Ah yes, that one

 

(doesn't get it at all)

It was based on the dancing cow... maybe you remember that one?

I remember wanting to go with my dad to the (horse) racetrack, because they had an "arcade" there. It was super small and just in a corner somewhere, and I don't remember what was there other than the Simpsons beat 'em up, but that's all I ever played anyway. I was really young so I never got past the first stage, sadly.

I also remember the local bowling alley in my hometown had a pretty decent arcade, including a light gun game with like robots and shit that I can't remember the name of and that had a lot of text in Japanese. Me and my friend back then would pretend that the enemies were teachers we didn't like. It's a bit fucked up now that I think about it, but kids are evil.

EDIT: And of course I almost forgot CarnEvil... holy crap that game looked amazing for 1998.

Civilization VII looks to be a disappointment. Swapping Civs is a weird idea they stole from Humankind, because even if it worked there (I never played it so I can't say) it can't really work in Civ.

"Can your civilization stand the test of time?" Answer: No, it cannot.

The other stupid thing is that your leader is completely divorced from your civilization. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this basically means your civilization is just another stat to minmax instead of a quasi-roleplaying experience. I know Civ 4 had that option, but that was just that: an option. I feel like basing the whole game around that is a bad idea, especially when Civ 6 had the (unironically) great idea to introduce optional game modes like monopolies or whatever the fuck those heroes and legends packs were. Why couldn't they just have done that?

A lot of the rest of the game seems "streamlined" by removing builders and roads and I've seen people (who are defending the changes) say that this is a good thing that will bring in console players... which doesn't give me hope.

On the bright side it graphically looks great, except for the UI. It just kinda looks like... a phone game or something. That might be early alpha stuff but who knows. I miss the art deco of 5. I also think the diplomatic screen being two freaks gesticulating at each other in a language neither can understand is stupid. If I wanted to see that I'd just go to the local 7/11.

I know it's kind of cliche to complain about youtube, but the difference between 2006 and 2024 is pretty striking.  Both are almost exactly as you imagine them, with 2006 being mostly just guys doing things or filming things with some other native web content (Mortal Peep Fight and Save the Internets).

Of course we all know what Youtube in 2024 will look like, but it's good to see what it would look like in this instance.

News content from the major broadcasters, no less than 4 (maybe 5) videos explicitly aimed at kids (and I mean TINY kids, not teens). Most of the rest of the videos are by huge creators or just ads and compilation videos.

The differences really highlight the shift in userbase as the internet in general went from somewhat out-of-the-way in the 2000s to the thing it is now. At least I found this cool vid. I imagine if it were posted today it would be 5 minutes long, titled something sensational, and have dramatic music playing along with a camera crew recording dozens of angles of him as he slid down while wearing like a Red Bull jacket or something.

Other than Youtube, can we appreciate how 2000s 2Advanced Studios looks?

And we have to bring up this SPUF mention from 2004:

We don't see the term "flame" anymore, do we? I guess we don't see forums anymore, either.

My apartment had a fire last week - a Volkswagen EV burst into flames in the parking garage. During the evacuation I was standing around the owner and apparently the car was off and wasn't even charging. The firefighter he was talking to was telling him it wasn't his fault and that "EVs are unpredictable."

As a bonus, the firefighters made us stand outside for about 2 and a half hours to make sure the lithium fumes didn't kill us. At least it showed the alarm system and sprinklers worked. Our electric future looks bright...

This isn't really a "fix", but can you use another email client like Thunderbird on the work computer?

Smoke alarms? Gaming? Oh boy, I get to share my favorite DSP video again!

Meme stock communities are interesting because it's a mixture of:

1. People that want to make money quickly with minimal effort
2. Self-righteous conspiracy theorists
3. Grifters
4. Gamblers
5. Actual morons who are the reason "sophisticated investor" rules are in place

And of course each person can belong to more than one category.

For example, 1 and 5:

And the real cherry on top is that each individual has a very powerful incentive to both:

1. Convince everyone that they are holding the stock and not selling, ever
2. Sell literally as soon as the stock begins to dip

So you have people who literally two months ago were making posts like "How do I buy Netflix stock" now saying that everyone that owns the meme stock they own is going to be super rich in a month because they've penciled out the analytics 4000 times and it's showing a 100% success rate.

You guys should check it out, I recommend looking at GME, FFIE, and the Superstonks subreddits.

3 hours ago, A 1970 Corvette said:

I wonder how someone can really stumble on a website like this anymore though. I mean someone who may have been on SPUF in the past who got sent a link to this place ages ago when bigSPUF died, maybe, but we all know how searches are nowadays. The likelihood of this coming up for anyone not looking for it has gotta be astronomical, right?

 

Unless one day we get some children's cartoon with the main character named Spuf or something and we get 12 million people trying to google it at once

It's unlikely, but it's also been 12 years and the internet's a big place. I've stumbled upon really weird stuff before - not "DARKWEB ASSASSIN SITE?? WTF"-tier stuff but just little places that were obviously being used for something and that I wasn't invited to. As Moby posted, there's been links to this place in weird places before.

I was wondering why no wayfarers would have ever created an account in that time but that's explained by our account creation system.

Seriously I would have no clue what it meant unless I did some digging, which most mildly curious lurkers probably wouldn't do.

3 hours ago, Gyokuyoutama said:

All you need is one person to stumble on it and post a link on reddit and then it's lazy youtube content city.

 

Said person could even be someone who knows about SPUF but wants to see what redditors would do with it.

 

He could even be you.  He could even be me!  Well, no not really because I'm not going to make a reddit account for any reason.

 

Anyway, while I'm not about to conduct the experiment in reality, I do wonder what such an investigation would result in.  If they had anyone with the minimal amount of competence, they would realize that you click on profile names.  Then you can look at public posts, which includes everything posted on public forums before they were locked in 2019 and every single status update even since then.  This is just the recent stuff at first, but you can get the full backlog with "see their activity."  Thus if any investigators were minimally competent they'd be able to quickly sus out that this was a bunch of morons posting about anime and vidya and ponies and whatnot.

 

But there is always the possibility that someone creates an off the wall conspiracy theory that reddit hiveminds onto.  In that case it doesn't matter how much actual good data people get afterwards, because the original theories are all anyone would read.  In that case likely someone would eventually realize that the posts end in 2019 and suspect that something sinister is going on behind the login wall.  Probably someone would claim that the status updates are being generated by LLM AI or something.

 

EDIT: Actually I can contribute to the mysteriousness.

In a way, they're kinda right... I don't think you can view the private subforums without an account. Which is a weird Catch-22, because if you're too dense to figure out how to browse the normal forums without an account, you'd think there's something there, while if you were smart enough to figure out the trick, you'd be satisfied by the appearance of a normal forum and thus wouldn't feel the need to create an account... keeping the private subforums hidden.

On the other hand, I can already see the Youtuber's avatar crossing his arms while saying "But really, who would still be posting on a forum for another dead forum for 10 years? There's gotta be something else here..."

I wonder how many people have stumbled across this website over the years and wondered what the hell it was, considering the front page is basically blank when you don't have an account.