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.

The first time I tried to surf again, I was surprised to find it still worked. I did successfully go onto the internet, poke around, and find fresh and unexpected things. I discovered long-running blogs with cult followings, thankless creative projects, nerdy data projects, and personal essays I wanted to print out and put on my wall.

The experience felt relatively free of the usual forms of bait and manipulation that characterizes the social media experience. I didn’t encounter any partisan bickering, “suggested” topics, ragebait, or rapid-fire video content.

The main reason web surfing is harder now, aside from the gravitational pull of social media platforms, is because outbound links are a lot rarer. Many sites don’t link out at all, because linking out subverts the advertising-driven business model most of them operate by.

Also, because people don’t web-surf anymore, they don’t find as many weird and remarkable online locations to link out to. Even when they do, they’re more likely to share them to their social media accounts, in exchange for some gratifying hearts or thumbs-ups, than on their websites. The bulk of attention gets funneled eventually to those big thoroughfares.

The old internet is still out there though, beneath and between the elevated freeways, but you probably have to surf your way there.

Three rules for surfing the web today

It was never complicated, but contemporary web surfing requires a few guidelines:

1. Start at an independent website with a lot of outbound links

Search engines like Google used to be good places to start, but those days are over. The results are gamed entirely by commercial outfits playing catch-and-retain.

The best starting points today are those rare blogs that still have blogrolls — lists of other blogs the author reads.

One fine launch point is Ben Kuhn’s blog. His work is good, and he links out to a lot of people who are also good, and who also link out. Whenever you find a good launch point, bookmark it.

2. Avoid opening multiple browser tabs.

In the old days, web browsers didn’t have tabs. You had to commit to jumping right into the chute to the next place. You could always zip back up if you weren’t into it, but you did actually have to leave the current apartment to see another one. This is part of the thrill, and it allows your mind to change gears fully from one space’s ideas to another’s, rather than splitting your attention across more and more sites and investing it fully in none of them.

Stick to one tab. Use the Back button as needed. Bookmark sites you want to return to, instead of opening a new tab.

3. When you get into a closed system, get out.

When you end up on a social media site, back up and go elsewhere instead. Take the nearest chute to an independent website, or return to the starting point. Don’t start driving on the thoroughfare!

News sites and Wikipedia, although they can make good topical rabbit holes, are basically a cul-de-sac. They only lead to more of the same type of content.

An alternative to surfing

Although web-surfing is now a hobbyist thing like riding horses or baking bread, there’s one bright source of outbound linkage that’s still popular: regular Substacks and other newsletters that share a weekly or monthly collection of links to exceptional content.

Curated collections can give you places to begin a surfing session, or replace the need to surf at all for landlubber types, by giving you chutes straight to the great stuff still hiding in the wild corners of the internet.

I publish my own curated links collection on a monthly basis for Raptitude’s Patreon community. These links are the gems from my own surfing sessions and haphazard browsing. The focus is on “old school” flavored links – exceptional writing and creative projects that give a hint of that feeling of abundance and wonder that characterized the early internet.

How Raptitude is still on the internet

This site began when most people still arrived by surfboard. The Raptitude project is now in its seventeenth year of talking about getting better at being human.

Many readers don’t know this, but Raptitude almost ended in 2019. This website is increasingly expensive to maintain, these posts take forever to write, and I have other projects going on. I reached a point where I didn’t know if I could continue to make it work.

The site was saved — and is now kept afloat and ad-free — by the small percentage ( ~1%) of readers who voluntarily pledge a few dollars a month through a platform called Patreon.

Over time, this stream of support shrinks, as people naturally move on to other things. It only grows on the rare occasions that I ask readers to consider joining it. (How the Patreon model works.)

Aside from helping Raptitude stay online, supporters get access to some extra stuff: monthly old school links collections, behind-the-scenes updates, and access to a second library of 100+ posts not available to the public.

Joining is completely voluntary. If you’ve gotten a lot out of my work here, and you have the means to do so, please consider joining the Patreon community, even just for a while. We’d love to have you.

I unlocked a few posts so you can see what it looks like on the inside:

[A free “bonus” post] | [A free links collection]

Thanks for all of your support, in every form, all these years.

-David