Cool Websites!

a small collection of websites for your perusal :-)

some of these are more well-known than others, but I tried to give a good mix of types of websites (games, websites with a fictional narrative, educational sites, etc) in hopes that there's something new for everybody. Hope you enjoy!

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Fiction, Narratives, ARGs

17776 - What Football Will Look Like in the Future. This site is a piece of multimedia speculative fiction by Jon Bois. It answers the question, "What will football look like in the future?" I personally am not super into football, but this narrative goes in an interesting direction and includes concepts like sentient space probes, comically dangerous, large, and/or nonsensical playing fields, comically large footballs, and more. I think the concept of immortality is also interesting in this, and immortal humans' desire to not be bored leads to the most insane football games known to man, which is funny.

20020: The Future of College Football. The sequel to 17776. I haven't read it yet but am hype to do so at some point!

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Games & Miscellaneous

maze.toys. Mazes that get progressively harder.

https://neal.fun/. A website with various fun lil games.

optical.toys. Explore various optical illusions!

drawing.garden. Moving your cursor around the screen will make plants appear. Hovering your cursor over or clicking an existing plant will change the type of plant it is. Have fun making a lil garden :3

jacksonpollock.org. If you don't know Jackson Pollock, he was an American abstract expressionist painter; his more famous paintings were made in the 1940s and early '50s. His technique was to have his canvas lying flat on the studio floor so that paint could be dripped or splattered onto it; this also allowed him to work on his pieces from any angle. With that info out of the way -- this is a site where you can do your own Pollock-esque thing, albeit on a computer screen. Clicking changes the "paint" color.

coolmathgames.com. A classic site for me. I remember being on coolmathgames in the library at my middle school, feeling a hand on my shoulder, hearing the legendary phrase: "Go ahead and log out for me." The librarian just didn't understand the gaming grind.

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Education & Exploration

Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is, IMO, objectively one of the coolest websites ever. It's a nonprofit digital library where you can access millions of movies, books and other texts, music, and more for free. It's super helpful and is a great place to start if you're looking to borrow an online copy of some random, niche book. I always have a great time browsing it and have found a bunch of little-known films and novels on there.

Wayback Machine (from Internet Archive). The Wayback Machine, a subset of Internet Archive, is a place where you can search for, explore, and interact with websites that have been preserved; last summer, one of my favorite things to do was to look up Fall Out Boy's website and explore how it looked over the years. You can also find old online profiles on here (I found my dad's LiveJournal account from the 2000s lol). Super cool!

University of Victoria's Vault Website. Enjoyers of the historical side of Internet Archive might like this site; it includes various texts, silent films, documentaries, photographs, propaganda posters, and collections such as "Anarchist Archive Collection" and "FTM" (a collection of every issue of the FTM Newsletter, a publication published by the organization FTM International in 1987; FTM was the most widely-circulated newsletter focused on the transmasculine community). Everything on the site is free to view, obviously. Another super cool resource, especially when it comes to research and looking at random historical stuff.

Trans Reads. As censorship towards the queer community ramps up in... certain places... I would encourage people to collect and save written material by LGBTQ+ people, particularly trans people. Trans Reads is a very large digital collection of free, trans-focused literature of a wide variety including novels, zines, books, essays, journals, pamphlets, and more. As with most user-upload-based sites, you might have to dig a little for the really good stuff; however, the various first-person narratives that are available to read, particularly in the "zines" section, make this site valuable. Also, you can upload your own stuff to this site (as long as you adhere to the website's uploading rules)!! 

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Website & Blog Building!

Ichigo Directory. The Ichigo Directory functions as a collection of / guide to cute websites on the internet with a focus on pixel art and some fan sites. It's a cute site and a helpful jumping-off point for surfing the web, particularly if you're a fan of pixel art, sanrio, or are looking for web materials to use on your site.

Glitter Graphics (for your site!). Big fan of this one! This site has a variety of glitter graphics, text, blinkies, animated GIFs, and more that you can use for your website or blog :3

Whimsical! Another website for finding pixel art and cute materials for your website/blog. Everything is free to use on personal and non-commercial websites, as long as you give credit to the site with a visible link back to http://whimsical.heartette.net.