Editor’s Note: I’m sharing so much of this post because it’s all good and I don’t have the skill to adequately summarize. I encourage you to “surf” to the full post.

“Just as it’s still possible (though seldom necessary) to ride a horse, it is still possible to surf the internet. It’s a thrill not yet lost to time.

By “surfing the internet” I don’t just mean going online. I mean exploring the internet solely by following hyperlinks from page to page, with no clear destination except for that one wonderful, as-yet-unknown website that will amaze and enthrall you when you find it, the one that will seem like it’s been waiting for you your whole life and which you can’t get enough of.

To surf, you must begin on a normal website with outbound links, and avoid all the algorithm-driven thoroughfares (Reddit, YouTube, X, any “apps”) that direct most of today’s internet traffic. You also have to be on a real computer, not a phone. If you end up on social media, you’re no longer surfing.

Younger readers may not even know that the internet used to be made entirely of websites, created by human beings, connected only by hyperlinks. Hyperlinks served as signposts, hand-placed by other humans, to point fellow travelers to unique locations they would not otherwise have known about. There were no corporate-owned thoroughfares, just many pathways shooting off from each clearing, marked by these handmade signs, beckoning you onward to some other place in the wilderness.

This internet, of the late 90s to early 2000s, offered a completely different sensory and emotional experience than today’s. To switch metaphors slightly, the old web felt like an endless city of conjoined, wildly decorated apartments, to be traversed by climbing through little chutes and portals in their walls. Each one sent you straight to some other eccentric space, built by some other eccentric character, each with its own array of chutes radiating out from there.

Surfing through this structure was characterized feelings of wonder and abundance. Just beyond that next portal was possibly something you’ve never seen. You were zipping around the universe, discovering things you didn’t know were even a thing, and the universe was expanding.

This era ended when we weren’t looking. In 2018, I came across an article that gave me a lump in my throat. It was titled I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore by Dan Nosowitz. He described a moment in which he was bored at work, tried to surf the internet, and realized he didn’t know how to do that anymore.

I realized then that I didn’t either, and hadn’t for a long time. Our online behavior, by that point, had been captured by big platforms that initially served as portals into that endless ramshackle apartment complex, but had at some point became the entire visible landscape. To “go online”, instead of typing in your favorite websites (fark.com, Digg, LiveJournal) and leapfrogging from there, people started going to their “home” on Facebook or Reddit and ended up wherever they were pointed to, which was usually another place inside Facebook or Reddit. The ethos had become capture-and-retain, rather than swing-by-and-say-hi. Open-water internet navigation – surfing – quietly went away, as these platforms designed slicker and more magnetic engagement routines for us.

While it will never be a habit again for most people, you can still surf the internet. You can pick a website with a lot of outbound links (they do still exist) and follow your heart.”