non-linear flow of thoughts on the internet and recurrence:
im older than google
i was literally born in the last century
(this is slightly irrelevant but funny to say)
pre google it was search engines like Dogpile, Ask jeeves, altavista etc
this was long before corporate web consolidation, which imo only really got started in the late 00's w facebooks's ascendance over myspace, google buying youtube, digg being eclipsed by reddit
generally - less sites, you go less places online
previously it was the case that if you wanted , say, mods for Severance Blade of Darkness, you looked around till you found some cool nerd who had their own website
I still remember "big truck" from canada (a fansite exists here as the old one is gone :( https://bigtruck.altervista.org/ )
bookmarks *mattered* because you'd not necessarily just be able to search for the site and find it again
webrings helped you find stuff *from* sites you liked
you'd likely know usernames of site creators+trust them
you had an interest in something -> you'd talk to people irl or online / you'd do some searching for it -> you go through a few bad and find a few good sites -> you'd branch out from there
you'd find out who NIN were because some post on a quake fansite would mention them (it happened to me anyway :D)
you might drop into random chatrooms and get band recommendations from complete strangers (how I found out about Laibach)
etc
there was a kind of erratic motion through the earlier internet..... like crawling through a ....web, you might say
and then obv more people got online, businesses got advertising, sites got loaded with popups etc and everyone and their aunt signed up for facebook
the web shrank as it expanded
and now
now whenever I search for anything on google im getting "ai" text-generated websites instead
we have a qualitatively different problem but yet similar to a pre google era
back then it was just difficult finding anything
i remember spending over an hour looking for the name of the intro song to Soul Reaver (its a version of ozar midrashim by information society) and was overjoyed when I found it, im glad places like wikipedia exist for that kind of basic info *now* but the problem we have is trying to
1. step beyond the walled garden (FB, Google, Twitter etc)
2. actually find something created by a human
we might need to go back to webrings at this point, link friends to stuff we know is actually decent
im not kidding
tangent - I really miss stumbleupon, something about the curation of topics / interests was great and now is absent
other tangent -
you have doubtless failed to notice that half the shit anywhere is a screenshot from a different site?
screenshots of reddit/tumblr posts on twitter and vice versa, tiktoks using old twitter jokes read by a foetus, etc etc
isnt that ... grim?
back on topic -
if search engines, esp google, cant actually find a way to deal with text-generated websites clogging the results with plausible sounding nonsense results (which has RUINED my ability to find things) AND search engines like duckduckgo are (apparently) simplifying what operators you can use (as well as straight up lying about privacy https://www.digit.fyi/duckduckgo-tracking-controversy-explained/)
we might need to consider some type of mass curation, some kind of web of trust (thought not WoT because they were tracking people, lol https://www.pcworld.com/article/410966/web-of-trust-browser-extensions-yanked-after-proving-untrustworthy.html)
im not sure if im going to start banging the drum for "we need shitty web 2.0 self-hosted websites
but god, arent you just fucking sick of loading a site, getting a cookies gdpr form, a bunch of pop-over SUBCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER FOR 5% OFF + autoloading&playing vids
I feel like the entire fucking internet is screaming at me
oh and just in case you didnt know
go hack together something with html+css
death to videodrome, death to javascript
@MollyNoise Honestly, hell yes!
Distribute power again, give people back their agency.
This whole idea of 5 big sites was already used as a dystopian future image 20 years ago (I remember the memes!) and it's become reality now.
Bring back the chaotic, diverse, anarchist and beautiful web of the past.
@MollyNoise oh Jesus my website fucking sucks and this is making me think about it. I think I'm going to change it to just one page with a sample reel and a contact link
@ConorMahood i gotta update mine too, its too damn plain
I am, quite seriously, going to use stuff like this -
@MollyNoise YES
@MollyNoise Hello. In response to your thread here, I followed your link and made my first personal site after being absent from the website world for several years. This is it, all newborn and blinking in the light: https://davidbridger.neocities.org
@DavidBridger oh lovely :D
@MollyNoise Had to let my Neocities site go. I'm too chronically ill to concentrate sufficiently to learn the necessary coding etc. Wanted to, tried to, but can't. A friend has offered to have me contribute on her blog, where I need only write the posts, which is ideal.
@DavidBridger ah sorry to hear that David🖤 glad your friend can accommodate you
@MollyNoise Thanks. And thanks again too for your thread last night that got me thinking along these lines after several years away from blogging.
@MollyNoise @DavidBridger I love this idea!
@MollyNoise @pyoor I mean I’ve gone back to self hosting for a reason… even if my site is currently broken because a hard drive died…
@Aminorjourney @MollyNoise I never stopped... :)
@pyoor @MollyNoise technically neither did I… I just had a broken server for a long time ;)
@pyoor @Aminorjourney link to your website please!
@MollyNoise @pyoor My personal vlog is at www.aminorjourney.com - right now however, it's.... not feeling well (And I've not figured out why!)
@Aminorjourney @pyoor your poor website, its sick :/
(I have a basic ass website at this point, but more needs to be done with it https://mollynoise.neocities.org/)
I *adore* this site https://powderpaint.neocities.org/ (so what if they are my friends)
and yes, its 00's maximalism or w/e but its not selling me anything other than the music im there for !