IF YOU’RE READING THIS I NEED YOU to go to neocities.org and make an account.
It’s an emergency. Look. People are really getting into it now. Do you want to be the last kid on your block still depending on corporate social media for your self-actualization?
I sharpened my skills making psshaw.neocities.org and it’s still made up of mainly basic code like <img> and <table> tags. It’s only in the later pages that I’ve decided to try advanced stuff like responsive CSS.
naalbraxusmazkelix.neocities.org is even simpler, to resemble something built in the late nineties.
I feel like there’s so much personality that’s just waiting to be brought back into Web 1.0. It’s a whole sandbox you can learn how to wrangle, and shockingly fast. I want to see what everyone can do!
Okay, I’ve been on the internet since before the great Y2K scare and *old person voice* Back in my day, everyone had websites like this. I had several. It was normal, everyone’s websites were a reflection of themselves and their interests, and it was beautiful. I’ve been lamenting a lot lately missing this era because of how badly social media has distilled and homogenized the internet experience
Your sites remind me so much of web 1.0 and it’s beautiful. I love this. Please keep doing this. Please keep expressing yourself.
Please everyone bring this back. Bring back personality, bring back individuality, bring back fun
And if you’d like to have a fine pairing to go with your website, I suggest going to proboards.com and setting one up. Still want social media, but want a smaller and more close-knit community without the same constant fear of some rando finding you and sending you threats, or something accidentally going viral and giving you a panic attack? Individual forum communities. You make your own rules, you can make your own aesthetic, and if you use add-ons or know CSS you can get a lot of customization. Also, forum signatures! They’re a great quick little way of expressing yourself! Use imgur.com to host your images!
Seriously, Forums are AMAZING for sharing both long and shortform content, shitposts, art and writing, everything! Love roleplaying? They’re the best and most organized way to do that and be able to have everything tidily archived and easy to search for!
And best of all, you don’t have shit like twitter’s algorithm breathing down your neck or promoted shit being shoved in your face!
Please please please if you hate all this corporate homogenizing bullshit and attempts to do shit like manufacture fandom, this is a way you can fight back and express yourself!
I’m seeing people in the notes going “that sounds nice and all but I don’t know how to code.”
Friends!
And you don’t have to make a website that looks like a shining, professional corporate product. You can just kind of slap some colours and images on a webpage and add to it from there, as you learn. I learned to build basic websites when I was 10. It’s a little more work than just signing up for a social media profile and filling out a few forms, but it’s so incredibly rewarding when you start to see your idea taking shape.
And there’s a whole community of people out there who want to see you succeed and would be happy to help. Check out the Yesterweb, they’ve got a Discord community and a Mastodon instance and even a Minecraft server. Sadgrl/Sadness, who runs the community, is super sweet and helpful. They’ve got a ton of manifestos from community members about why it’s so important to bring back the spirit of the old web. Oh, and they hate crypto, so you know they’re not just a bunch of tech bros.
I’ve also seen people in the notes saying “But nobody’s going to follow me there.” That is always a concern when it comes to moving to any new space on the web, especially if it’s outside the big social media platforms, but even though I’m a huge supporter of reducing and/or entirely removing your presence on the big platforms, there’s no one saying you can’t stay on them in order to keep in touch with the people who matter to you — or even to use those platforms to promote your site! I’ve distanced myself from Facebook, for example, but I still have an account there and keep the Messenger app open. I’ve set it so I appear offline to everyone, but I’ve told the people I care about that I’m still there and they can reach me any time, I just won’t look like I’m online. You can use status updates/tweets/posts/whatever to tell people “Hey, I added an art gallery to my website!”, “Hey, I added my latest fic to my website!”, “Hey, if you’ve ever wanted to learn everything there is to know about snow leopards, they’re my special interest and I’ve built a web shrine to them now, so check it out at this link.” You can set up a guestbook or a forum on your website to keep the lines of communication open. And Neocities is set up in such a way that you can make new connections with other people in the community. So not only can you still keep in touch with everyone you still want to keep up with, but you can also make new friends and follow new people!
Really, the only big drawback is that you’d have to accept that it’s a bit of a slower space. The old web wasn’t about a constant deluge of new content from one source — it was about exploration. It was about going down rabbit holes and finding all the weird content that makes you happy in a bunch of different places, and keeping those sites bookmarked for whenever you want to check them out again rather than following their feed. But you even can follow them on a feed — even if they’re not on Neocities — if you use RSS. And with RSS, there’s no algorithm and no advertising. It’s just simple, chronological updates.
There’s a bit of an extra learning curve if you want to get in on this stuff, but it is so, so worthwhile, and honestly so much better for your mental health. A slower web built around your specific interests means less algorithmic outrage culture: you’re not constantly being shot with a firehose of all the most controversial content to keep you angry and clicking. You’re just having a nice time building your little dedication to nice things that you like, or expressing yourself, or learning new things, and meeting new people who are interested in those things. It’s lovely and especially if you were never around for the old web, you deserve to experience it.
