It’s amazing where web surfing takes you.
This is a lost art of discovery that didn’t always take you some place safe, but it definitely took you on a journey.
Back in the 90s and 2000s – before the internet consisted of 6 main social media sites for the majority of people – people jumped from website to website (which were all wonderfully and horribly unique) making discoveries along the way.
This is what I was doing – via the old web search engine, Wiby – when I stumbled upon a website called Underground Online. A rather ominous title.
Little did I know, I would be spending the next 2 hours looking through that website, discovering it’s all about a magazine that was published in the late 90s about websites at the time, downloading said magazine from Archive.org, buying two physical copies off eBay, and then writing this article.
Oh, boy! That was time well-spent!
And this is exactly the type of thing you discover when crawling the old web: old site about topics that you end up enjoying and revealing.
While looking on eBay I also came across another old internet magazine, that was released in Australia, called Australia’s Internet Directory – the cover of which instantly brought back memories as I owned a couple of them back in the day.
The old web is just a joyous place! It is today, any way.
But on to the magazine.
Internet Underground Magazine
The magazine that was the Internet Underground was published from 1995 to 1999 and consisted of a monthly (and then bi-monthly) publication of all the quirky and weird websites that the authors could find.
If you want to read a short article from the editor, she wrote an article on her publishing life, which starts with a story about her stint at the Internet Underground magazine.
It sounds like it was a blast to work there:
For the first few weeks, our seven-member editorial team crammed into a single office in the Chicago suburb of Lombard, a nice enough place but even so, it was best known for its shopping mall. Despite our uncool geography, we decided we’d make the magazine funny and tech-y, kind of “Spy meets Wired.”
For someone who love 90s/2000s internet culture, and was at the time, well immersed in it, this find was amazing!
I downloaded all the copies I could from Archive.org (which is a great place to find scans of old magazines) and then checked on eBay for physical copies. I managed to get two issues for AU$40 (including shipping).
Having a look through these magazines via PDF was just an amazing experience. It brought back memories of early internet memes (back when they weren’t called that, and never really had a name – it was always just “something funny on the internet”).
It also has a treasure trove of websites that are mostly not around any more, but if you are lucky they will be saved via the Wayback Machine.
Unfortunately, back then a lot of website were hosted via their college’s web hosts, and so, while the Wayback Machine captures the college URL, it doesn’t capture most – if any – of the individual’s webpages.
Which is a shame really.
Having said that, there are a number of old websites that are captured via the Wayback Machine, so I will bring you them in due course.
The Contents
The magazine contained a mix of in-depth articles, top 11 lists, reader feedback, short snippets about various websites, internet trends – and just a slew of internet websites to visit.
I haven’t read all of the ones I have (and as of writing, I am still waiting for my physical copies to arrive – and yes, there will be another post about those!), but the few I have skimmed through are just brilliant.
At least for me. And for anyone else who wants to remember part of the 90s internet they forgot.
They tackle serious web issues like: Why are movies about the net so lame?
And
??
They do cover some fairly serious topics at the time, as well.
The one on hacking (in Issue ??) and is the internet safe (from Issue ??) were a fun look back at when the internet was new and pretty much unregulated*.
*The The Telecommunications Act was passed in 1996, but really didn’t do much to the internet and until well into the 2000s. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) were enacted in 1998.
But mostly the magazine is just filled with URLs of interesting, bizarre, silly, stupid, and downright odd websites.
With the issues I have, it is going to take me a long time to go through. But there will be spotlights on this site, so stay tuned!
Covers of Internet Underground Magazine
I thought I would leave you with some covers of the magazine. I always think magazine covers are just a snapshot in time – and I personally love them. You really get a sense of the time they were published and what the magazine was about by studying their covers closely.
Over to You
Did you ever read this magazine? Or one like it? Let me know in the comments below.