The piece was fine. I'm just not a fan of the characterization that this is an old thing that gen x people don't appreciate it because it doesn't sell ads?<p>This is the most gen x thing I've seen all day, and don't worry the new generation is just as sick of this ad-infested internet as everyone else, we just didn't know there was another way.<p>It's... Naive, imagining that this kind of content doesn't exist anymore. It exists, peruse reddit for 5 mins and you will find a similar site. But now we have so many apps that bring real value to our lives, I think what people really miss is the feeling of the internet being a toy, rather than a mature system that has both value and consequences.
I literally just went to Zombocom last night (you can do anything there, after all). I can't help but stay for the full audio loop every time. It makes me so happy that the site is still up and functional after all this time. To me it's like a small link back to the past when the internet felt more fun.
Zombo.com stopped Firefox development for a day back in, oh, 2011 or so. Somebody noticed that new tests were failing and the tree ended up being closed for new commits while the problem was investigated. Turns out that a month or so prior someone added a test that loaded zombo.com, and the site had gone down. This may not have been a coincidence, as all the racks of test machines had been running that test nonstop and effectively DDoSing zombo.com for a month.<p>Anyway, that's why the test servers are now firewalled.
Off-topic, but seeing Zombocom again reminded me of a video and I can't find it anywhere. It was a popular funny video about 15 years ago.<p>Basically there is a brand new startup and they are waiting for their CEO to arrive. Bicycle messenger turns up and gets mistaken for the CEO. Startup doesn't even know what they actually do (Beanie Babies?). CEO finally turns up, fires everyone.<p>Anyone remember this video? Know where I can find it?
Surprised that no one has mentioned <a href="https://theuselessweb.com" rel="nofollow">https://theuselessweb.com</a>.<p>That's how I was first introduced to Zombocom, among many, many others.
It seems like the site has changed since 2001 or whenever I first saw it. My memory of it was that it was a lot more subtle: just a white screen with lavendar circles that faded in and out on the screen. I also don't remember the audio having background music, but I could have misremembered that.
Sometimes I wonder, I posted about zombocom like a day before that (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006335" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006335</a>) on HN, and suddenly there is this on the front page?<p>Was it me? Did I give someone an idea to post this? I have seen NOTHING about zombocom for years
The voice reminds me very strongly of the one in the genius game „There is no game“ (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Game:_Wrong_Dimension" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Game:_Wrong_Dimens...</a>)
I remember zombocom from back in the day. This was a meme before memes were cool.<p>Fun fact: one of the first websites I made as a kid, in 2001, hosted in Geocities, is still around but I'm embarrassed to share it.<p>Edit: maybe not so fun for people other than me and my friends from that time
I once maintained a web browser widget for a 3D multimedia engine. Zombocom* was the perfect smoke test for it, since it has both a large animation and pleasant looping audio, and it never ever goes down.<p>*: at the time it was still flash, so we used html5zombo.com
> The site’s creator, Josh Levine, did not respond to an interview request.<p>I'm guessing maybe he's a little sad or fatigued that his lasting public legacy is a meme website from the dot-com era.