⤹ old web is so fun to explore

Hello hello! So once again this isn't a formal blog post, I'll prolly be doing more of these small and short essays on SpaceHey just so I don't die trying to write another 10k word essay on here again lol. That essay put me off of here for like almost 4 months so might as well try to take smaller bites from now on. Anyways, no intro about it, go read >:( Enjoy reading!

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I've been trying to be more active on SpaceHey and as a result of that, I've gone through atleast a few hundred blog posts, groups, forums, and bulletins that have peaked my interest in actually sticking to some of these recreations of older media and one group that I've been in that I believe really sparked my general interest of it has been the Reclaiming the Internet group.

Now I am going to be dead honest, I only really joined not out of curiosity but just to flex the fact that I know some indie sites. Yes, yes, I am a poser, sue me. The more time I've actually spent on here though I've less focused on the title of "liking the old web aesthetic" and actually enjoying it as one of the reasons for that is how authentic some of the pages on here are.

I think that's what appeals to me the most about these old web recreations and old web based sites, now I wasn't born in the era when these were made popular. Well technically I was but I mean to say that I didn't grow up with these kinds of sites. MySpace and Geocities were never sites that I genuinely got to experience growing up, as I was more introduced to sites like Instagram and TikTok. By the time I was old enough to use a phone and have access to the internet, the oldest social media application I had ever touched was still quite far from the old web that I'm sure a lot of people here are on for.

I had Dubsmash and Musical.ly, my earliest introductions to social media was those two applications. It's like a baby or even toddler version of what TikTok is today but those were nothing compared to what users had the power of making back in the early 2000's.

A staple of social media today is the very similar interface between applications, the only customizable options between accounts being only the profile picture, banners, and bios. Take for instance Facebook and Twitter that allows you the option for banners, Instagram with their profile picture and bio, and Discord for their pay to customize your banner and the colors of your profile and application. 

Now when I first joined SpaceHey I expected much of the same, perhaps a bit outdated UI to match the ones from back then and customizable profile pictures and all that but then I saw a tiny little button just next to all of the other buttons beside the home button that said Layouts.

Curiosity got the better of me and holy crap the surprise I had when I realized that profile layouts were just entirely customizable. This was a surprised to me because like I said, I grew up around the more modern era of social media. Minimalist, simplistic features that forced you into showing off your creative prowesses by posts but even those are extremely limited. I saw a video the other day looking into how profile customization like this has just completely been lost throughout the years, I'll leave a link to it here but I share alot of the sentiments that this creator has to say regarding the disappearance of such features especially in modern socmed.

Back then in the old web it was much more unruled and chaotic but as larger corporations began to take over a lot of the social media pages that we knew it became more and more sanitized and more advertisement friendly than it is user friendly. I don't think I've ever entered an application anymore nowadays that doesn't have an ad either straight up at your face or every time I scroll.

Back to my first mention of how the old web was with it being unruly and chaotic, somewhat under-moderated as well, despite all that people were allowed to freely express themselves and find others of the same niche though it may have been a difficult find because of how slow and absolutely daunting the amount of times I have to click buttons to return to a profile I saw a week ago, this freedom of customization allowed individuality between profiles. Each being a representative of what kind of personality hides behind the profile picture, though sometimes it isn't completely accurate (the coquette profiles with ratty ass personalities, i'm looking at you) it made it fun to see the different kinds of aesthetics that a person was interested in simply through the style of their profile.

That's something you aren't able to do nowadays and honestly I wish it was more normalized, though it takes some heavy work and sometimes long lines of HTML code to be able to achieve the profile you want, it makes it easier to find your person amongst all the profiles. I can't scroll through profiles on Instagram and tell what kind of person the account holder is based on their lone bio and profile picture. Some people here have really pretty, sometimes chaotic, sometimes absolutely eye shattering profiles but based off of their profile's sense of style I would be able to easily befriend them. Quick as a bird.

I can honestly tell how entertaining scrolling through the old web would be if they allowed such open forms of self expression through sites would be. Take Neocities, a modern revival of Geocities, now I have never heard of Geocities before this. The moment I heard that it was a website host I honestly thought that it would either have a really tacky layout but to my surprise! Alot of the sites hosted on Neocities require quite a shit ton of skill. I've scrolled through hundreds of sites, each unique, each with their own content, some for bullshit, some for genuine updates and honestly? Man why did we stop this? 

What I thought was a loss of individualistic and unique profiles and sites at all on the internet ended up just being on old site revivals like this the entire time! And honestly god's work to anyone that takes the time to create such pieces of art websites with strings of letters and tags.

Though the old web wasn't perfect I am eternally grateful to those that take the time to create these old revival sites to allow those who wish to remain in this era or those that didn't get to experience it to have a modern recreation of it and with no ads nonetheless! Hope to find more old web sites like these </3

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I forgot to add a footnote to my last blog so here it is now! Visit some of my favorite sites on neocities, here's one of them: https://ribo.zone/ I'm planning on designing my own neocities site and who knows maybe once i'm done i'll post it here the same way I do with my other blogs </3 thank you to anyone that reads this leave me your thoughts and i'll see you in the next one! p.s. the autoplay is midwest emo minecraft music

with matsalab,

bethie