Rediscovering Y2K Era Internet Magic

It’s 9:55AM. I’ve got piping hot coffee in my Mama Bear mug and I’ve taken a tumble this morning — a stumble, more appropriately — that has me writing about an early 2000’s gem.

Does anyone remember the website, StumbleUpon?

For those who need an introduction — the idea of the site is that you’d click a button that would send you to a completely random homepage somewhere on the web. You’d “stumble upon” a site you’d likely never seen before with niches you may not be familiar with.

You could just keep clicking to keep stumbling upon fresh domains.

I used to love clicking through dozens of homepages to see what the internet has to offer me in the form of creativity, information or inspiration.

Speaking of that elusive inspiration — I needed it this morning and by some spark of magic, the idea of seeing if StumbleUpon still exists popped into my head.

I brewed my coffee, picked out my Mama Bear mug and got comfy; I typed stumbleupon.com into the browser. Excited. Slightly nostalgic.

The page that loaded threw a redirect to Mix.com at me, instead. My excitement deflated. Mix took the format of stumbling through websites and instead turned it into a stumble through social media video reels.

Freaking yuck. Let my old, achy Millennial bones feel the joy of seeing a good website or two rather than social media for once!

So, naturally, I searched for an alternative.

I’m pleased to report than one exists — stumble.to

The first website I stumbled upon with stumble.to was an informational blog about the Fediverse and Mastodon. Still about social media. Yuck, again. But I had hope there were gems yet hidden.

The next was a site that allowed me to play a digital piano, which was pretty cool considering how much my kids and I love to play. My coffee grew cold as I spent time messing around with its keys like some kind of wannabee digital Mozart.

The last caused me to have one of those cliché coffee spitting moments. It was titled something.com and had what appeared to be a blank page.

I thought the browser just wasn’t loading as the page stayed blank, but then I noticed the singular word on the page’s top left corner. It simply said, “something”.

That’s literally all she wrote. I giggled. People are funny.

It sure was something (I’ll be here all week).

Light hearted sites like those mentioned above popped up as I continued to stumble but, every now and then I’d come across those sneakily hidden gems I’d been seeking.

Posts about very personal, enlightening opinions and ‘old fashioned’ blogs began to make appearances on my screen. Reading through it all fired up my nostalgia and left me missing how the internet used to feel.

Unique. Nuanced. Groundbreaking. Rather than the usual regurgitation and stale echo chambers that reams of algorithms seem to create.

But then I realized that the internet still can feel unique. I was witnessing it live. The stumble site had just opened my eyes to its existence again. It’s amazing how the things we think are lost forever are still hanging on, if only we could figure out how to find them. What more appropriate way than through a stumble, too?

Beyond the nostalgia, though, it provided the inspiration I was looking for. Clearly. I mean, here I am scribbling about it, right?

So in the end, the spirit of the original StumbleUpon still lives on! It just looks a little different now. This morning’s coffee time was sublime because of it. Thumbs up for alternatives and the wonderful people who strive to keep the spirit of old gems alive.

Have you heard of or used StumbleUpon? Let me know if you try the alternative and stumble upon anything fun!

Keep the magic alive — Elle