"Old Internet" doesn't have a very defined meaning, but I think it has more to do with design and functionality than a hard date. While I don't think relevance matters, 4chan is much more relevant than you think. Having a niche is part of the old Internet. Websites used to be niche, but deep, instead of websites like Wikipedia, which are broad and shallow (compare the Castlevania dungeon [0] to the Wikipedia article for Castlevania, for example). Then compare 4chan's limited number of boards with reddit's endless subs. 4chan's design is early web 2.0, doesn't require you create an account, allows (pseudo) anonymous posting, content is mostly unfiltered, unmonetized, free & thought of as ephemeral, etc.

0 - https://castlevaniadungeon.net/dungeon.html

> 4chan's design is early web 2.0, doesn't require you create an account, allows (pseudo) anonymous posting, content is mostly unfiltered, unmonetized, free & thought of as ephemeral, etc.

That is hardly unique. There are any number of phpbb (and other) boards that allow mostly the same that were/are/will continue to be the same. The only difference is the clientele and noteriaty, but I'd argue 4chan is basically the same thing as somethingawful is/was in that regard. People act like 4chan was this ground-breaking thing but it was just one of many many similar boards.

Also for 4chan, you'd only go to 4chan to go to 4chan. People went to geocities and xoom and angelfire and all the other old internet things for niche website content from individuals, not because of the site that hosted it. It's like going to a bar to chat vs going to a library to study: going to the bar/4chan is an undeniable part of the culture, but let's not pretend it is anything significantly different amongst a constellation of other chat/forum sites (somethingawful, fark, ebaumsworld, discord, IRC etc etc etc)

The point wasn't about if 4chan is unique.

Exactly.

"Pre Dot Com Bust" is a pretty good definition for "Old Internet".

This is the dumbest nitpick, but:

> 4chan's design is early web 2.0

Web 2.0 (even early) was very JS heavy, coming down from the advent of Mootools/Prototype/etc and had a very specific visual design sense.

4chan is easily the last of the Web 1.0 sites, probably up there with Craigslist. They very much "just fucking work".

Geocities was going strong in the late 90's too! My first homepage was hosted there on Tokyo Towers.

22 years is old. Nobody knows what geocities is, it has no relevance. It’s like talking about brands of telegraph wire.

Geocities was the place to create and visit homepages for a large percentage of people using the internet in the 90s. You can see its influence in games such as Hypnospace Outlaw and modern hosts like Neocities.

Hypnospace outlaw and neocities, both even less known lol

What are the most popular games on Steam that focus on interacting with a 4chan-like website?

There are none because people can just go on 4chan and post.

Until now. But I hope they are able to get back up and running.

It is not very niche at all. 4chan served a gigantic volume of traffic.

Web 2.0 and before is now considered the old internet.

Side note: When you google "Geocities" the results are in comic sans