On June 30th, StumbleUpon as we know it will come to an end after 16 years. Co-founder Garrett Camp announced on Medium that the internet discovery service will shutter, and all StumbleUpon accounts will be transitioned over to Mix, a curation platform that incorporates your social media presence. “This will help you find obscure but interesting content that has been recommended by people you know and trust,” Camp says.

The conundrum of the internet in 2018 is that, despite being more connected than ever, it’s increasingly a challenge to have fun online. Camp says that StumbleUpon taught its creators about the importance of filtering expanding web content. “We’ve learned from SU that while simplicity and serendipity is important, so is enabling contextual curation (ie. ‘cool space photos’) instead of just clicking ‘I like it,’” he writes.

StumbleUpon was a wacky game of roulette

Mix serves up content in the form of articles and oddities according to your preferences, but it fails to capture the feeling of being a wanderer on the web. StumbleUpon was a wacky game of roulette, one that allowed you to click a button and land somewhere unexpected. It offered discovery for a place where there is no real map and no right way to explore. Its popularity for a time was undeniable, before its eventual decline, with Camp calling out 40M users and 60B stumbles in all.

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My internet habits over the last decade and a half have changed dramatically. Where I used to spend my time frequenting video game forums, fan fiction websites, and eBaum’s World, I now spend my off-work hours cruising through Twitter. Social media has made me lazy, much as I suspect it has many others. Why spend time rooting around an in an invisible box when others can spoon-feed you funny videos?

The promise of the web is complicated, but its most intriguing aspect was always allowing niche communities to gather together and share what they loved. There was a place for everyone, whether you wanted to talk about obscure British punk bands, conspiracy theories, bacon, folklore, the best fan ships, weird memes, or Star Wars. People were encouraged to experiment, no matter how pointless the outcome appeared to be. You just needed a way to find it.