where to go
Hi, it's me. I'm using capitalization this time (surprising, I know!), but I felt like it was important to be clear in this post, since I'll be talking seriously about this topic. I'll go back to being a dumb ghost cat thing afterwords.
I've been spending the past few months really diving into the whole 'Internet Revival' movement thing. I had always known there was a subculture of people making creative shit just beneath the surface that most people stick to, but I never really cared to dive down until recently. Before that, I just kinda accepted that the old Geocities wonders were probably behind us, and most were content using social media as a means of expression and connection (hot take: I think this is fine). Finding out that people were leaning heavily back into that old web culture, it made me want to explore it a bit and see what all everyone's created.
People today are amazing. I have no idea how you've all come up with such unique, vibrant designs, layouts, and interactivity. Some sites feature games, or scavenger hunts; some feature things hidden in the code. It shows a genuine love for creating not only a custom corner of the web, but an experience for those visiting. It's something deeply personal and private that gets shared only with those curious enough to seek it out, and that feels really special.
But the more time I spend exploring, the more I start to feel... disillusioned, I guess? It's a hard feeling to explain. At the same time as this resurgence of individuality and freedom of expression, there's a parallel push for reversion, for rejecting the use of modern web technologies and reverting back to the simplicity of the old Web 1.0 standards (or, at least, those found pre-Web2). There seems to be a fair amount of discussion over where the line is drawn in regards to using modern web practices or tech. Is responsiveness important? Should accommodations be made for accessibility, even if it means relying on newer coding standards? How much JavaScript is too much? Each person has their own take on it, and that's absolutely fine! You should have an opinion on it. But the language I'm seeing over dozens of posts and 'manifestos' is less opinionated and more resolute, more conclusive in its affirmation that this is how things should be done, and doing anything to the contrary is nothing short of asinine.
In a way, I can understand where people are coming from. Big Web today is bloated, to say the least. Redundant code, overly-complex and over-engineered APIs, and a lack of cohesion across different platform modules, means that you're downloading far more than you need in order to check a status post or a simple article. If I'm wanting people to read my posts, or check out my artwork, or see the things I'm interested in, why should they have to load a metric ton of excess junk along the way? I totally get the push away from all of that; less useless data being served is better for everyone (and the planet). And also fuck them for collecting exabytes of personal data on their users and then profiting off said data by selling it to other companies.
I think we're all in agreement that Big Web is bad. Nobody's really arguing for it (at least that I've seen), most everyone just kinda accepts that they're there and that's what they have to use (which isn't true, but if that's where all your friends are, that's where most people will stay). However, I don't think we need to completely strip away everything that we have today in regards to the modern web. JavaScript isn't the laggy, buggy mess it used to be. CSS continues to iterate more and more awesome features (like the aspect-ratio property, which was added sometime in 2020). The point being, it's fine to strip out the excess and go back to basics, but let's not expect everyone to run little more than a scaffolding of unstyled HTML elements.
That's kind of the whole point of this weird little blog post. When I sat down to write this, I just kept asking myself: Where do we go from here? I've read countless posts from people reflecting on the web of the past (often times through rose-tinted glasses), talking about how organic things were, and how much fun it was to explore the net. And in some ways, yeah, it was fun! But it was also niche, limited in what most people considered it capable of doing. Before search engines popped up, people very rarely relied on the internet for information, because they couldn't find it. Your own website could sit for months before anyone visited it, simply because nobody knew it existed. We used webrings and directories to help with that, but even those suffered from the same problem.
If you'll allow me, I'd like to make my own viewpoint clear for those who own their own slice of the web, or are thinking about getting into web development: Do whatever you want. Go nuts with it. Think rainbows are the shit?(they are) Add a whole bunch of glittery rainbow gifs, make all the text rainbow colors, add a rainbow cursor! Think Serial Experiments Lain is an underrated masterpiece? Got a deep love for Stephen Gammell's horror artwork? Maybe you just like dogs? Your site can be literally anything, and no matter what anybody says, you can use whatever tools are at your disposal. You don't have to do something wild and crazy; I keep my site clean and subdued because it doesn't hurt my head, and that's my choice. Others build interactive games and environments to explore in theirs, and that's super cool too! No matter what, your site is your own, and you shouldn't be afraid to do something just because somebody else says it's bad (within reason - being malicious or purposely hurtful ain't very cash money). TL;DR - Do what you want, fuck the haters.
Sorry for all the word vomit to say 'stop thinking too hard about it and just enjoy things'. I'm gonna go back to being a dumb ghost cat thing now.
