What I miss about the early (1996-2000) World Wide Web

[snowazalea]

• A simple HTML design that I could do based on memory, or off the top of my head, without the site being thought of as too plain or ugly
• No real names, no real-life photos of myself or the interior of my home
• The Internet was dominated by kind of counter-cultural people
• Inclusive, fanciful, random webrings featuring beautiful graphics for logos that I just joined for the heck of it, or to have another pretty image on my webrings page
• People’s galleries of collected fantasy art (Sue Dawe, Jonathan Earl Bowser, people like that) that I just pored over forever
• People’s original web graphics, like Moyra’s Web Jewels, and other amazing works
• No AI junk (until 2023, really)
• Handing out and receiving little graphical web awards just for the heck of it
• College professor personal home pages
• Blogs were for ranting, not curated, honed representations of one’s perfect self, home, whatever
• No visible "friends," followers, subscriptions, whatever
• No like or reblog buttons
• No dopamine

I feel like I'm on to something... sort of. It's like I want to de-program myself, or re-program myself, or something... How would I go about doing that? I've got to make the potatoes. I'm 10 minutes late to that. 

Comments

[beebalm]

I love the way all of this sounds. Are you thinking of creating something like this?

[yarnandglue]

> College professor personal home pages

I love those so much too ToT Do you ever use the Marginalia search engine? It makes it a bit easier to find such things: https://marginalia-search.com/

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>People’s original web graphics, like Moyra’s Web Jewels, and other amazing works<<

I knew Moyra and used some of her graphics on my then-website. It's nice to remember that.

>>I feel like I'm on to something... sort of. It's like I want to de-program myself, or re-program myself, or something... How would I go about doing that?<<

Look for other people who feel the same. Terms like "old web," "small web," and "indie web" may help you find them.

You can also recreate older things you enjoyed. You like picture galleries? Make one. I've heard that web rings are coming back, although I've seen few examples. I'm still watching.

What you put on your blog is up to you. It doesn't have to be overly curated. When I post about crafts I've made, I include the mistakes as a deliberate push back on trying to make everything seem perfect. Crafting doesn't work that way.