hi i’m rly glad people enjoyed this and i want to share that yes, i’m exploring Gopher, the archaic alternative to the world wide web aka every single website that starts with http://
for people who don’t know, Gopher “websites” uploaded with this protocol are exclusively plaintext directories that lead to either text files, images, or other downloadable files. its so stripped back, there’s zero advertising or corporate tracking, and everything uploaded there is hosted by random nerds who still have stuff up from the 90s.
if youre on a modern machine, where most browsers don’t natively support loading Gopher pages, the best way to explore it is to access it via an http proxy. this link takes u to one:
(alternatively u can pick up an old ass secondhand computer, and find a browser designed for its OS like Classilla on my 2001 iMac, which natively runs Gopher)
from there u can read some helpful text files about how to use Gopher servers, but i highly recommend scrolling down and just clicking on “All the gopher servers in the world”. and just click on random shit. there’s also a (unreliable) search engine, Veronica2. just typing random things and exploring servers is how i found this stuff.
I’ve genuinely not had this much fun in years being “on the internet”. so much random niche stuff and genuine cultural resources, as well as cool tools using those limiting constraints. its such an antidote to being on a corporate-controlled, advertising riddled web that wants to track you and sell you like a product for data harvesting. i highly recommend exploring it and feeling like ur doing internet archaeology
