Digital Media Blog Post 1 (1/24/25)

General overview of digital media consumption this week:

Spent about an hour a day on Youtube watching things from meme compilations to opinion pieces on a variety of topics. I think I’m becoming less interested in watching Youtube. I read the first couple paragraphs of an LA times article in my email about Trump’s attitude around the fires in LA. I did not fact check. Watched a few episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m also really enjoying the edm sets Youtube is giving me.

Story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXDak-kmdeU&ab_channel=greenhoodiecat

I watched this video on YouTube called “The COOLER Internet,” and I thought it would be perfect for my digital media blog post. The video promotes the “indie-net,” a group of personalized websites and websites that invite personalization, run by small groups or individuals. It shares the ways that the indie-net has its own social medias, informational sites, and even artistic sites. This better approximates, they argue, a truer (and better) internet than the mainstream internet.

The argument is as much for these personalized websites as it is against mainstream websites, which are taking over the public sphere and abusing it for money with addictive algorithms and excessive monetization. 

The video was created very artistically, with a really cute little storyline in the background that looked just polished enough to be taken in by folks and be engaging, and just rough enough to be dripping with personality and artistic style. I think that the creator’s use of this art style is meant to represent how the freedom of personalization on the indie-net produces incredible amounts of less polished but very creative content.
Watching this video, I was very intrigued by the concept. Something about the giant companies’ polished, boring, addictive-algorithm driven, extractive, data-stealing websites just turns me off. Maybe it’s my rebellious nature, or maybe they are rotten. The indie-net, for me, was provided as an appealing option to be online –granted, in a smaller way than on sites like Youtube– that is more aligned with how I want to live life. If you go onto a site like neocities.org, you can see that there is massive focus on artistic expression and creativity. I think the internet as an artistic medium is an awesome idea, that is way cooler than an addictive slop pit that serves the wealthy. [Advertisement as a tool for the wealthy to get wealthier]. 

The person telling this story is a small Youtuber who goes by “Green Hoodie Cat” an artist with 6k subscribers on youtube. Personally, I was convinced by their argument. Mostly, it was an opinion piece, so I didn’t do any fact-checking. I did, however, look at a couple of the websites the video linked to. In fact, I learned about SpaceHey, the website I’m posting this blog post on through the video