I forgot how this worked until I discovered NeoCities. I suddenly remenbered when so many personal websites would have some page that's like "links" or "sites I love" or "other cool people", etc. And it was just a curated list of sites the author thought were neat.

And your bookmark function was actually really helpful, because "web surfing" was literally jumping from link to link to link, following rabbitholes and breadcrumb trails across the web.

Nowadays, I bookmark things but I never go back through them. I know Firefox sometimes automatically helps you remember stuff in your bookmarks though.

But there was a time when it felt like finding some niche site was a sort of secret club or cool treasure, and you had to make sure you could find your way back. :)

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

When you didn't make the bookmark, you were basically trying to backtrack which links you followed and what sites you visited to get back to that one website.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Totally! And I loved those neat little animated web badges that became really popular, especially on forums.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

I still have those on one of the forums I occasionally still visit, but it might disappear soon after nearly 2 and a half decades.