textfiles.com (textfiles.com)

Article summary

The website textfiles.com has been online for nearly 25 years, providing a glimpse into the history of writers and artists who used ASCII characters to create text files in the mid-1980s. The site offers a collection of these text files, which are sometimes retooled versions of 1960s and 1970s works. The site is maintained by Jason Scott and is supported by donations. It has no ads or clickthroughs and is a unique archive of internet history.

Main themes

• internet history
• ASCII art
• textfiles
• online archives
• internet evolution
• commercialization of the web

What commenters say

• The community of people who wrote documents like those found on textfiles.com has largely disappeared or moved underground.
• The loss of personality on the modern web is due to the influence of commercial interests and the homogenization of online content.
• The old web is vanishing, and with it, the quirky and personalized content that once characterized it.
• Some argue that the decline of text-based content is a natural result of the internet's evolution and the growing popularity of video content.
• Others believe that the internet's early days were more anarchic and free, and that this spirit has been lost in modern times.
• The rise of social media and search engines has led to a decline in ad-hoc curation and the discovery of new and interesting content.
• The internet's early users have grown up and moved on to other pursuits, but their legacy can still be seen in online archives like textfiles.com.