Reinvention - The key to keeping Web 1.0 "alive"

While the latter was better understood as a almost 1 to 1 recreation, I think websites like spacehey, which feel more like a reimagining than other platforms, have great potential in bringing back this nostalgic style instead of being a website to make a profile on and then immediately forget about.

The problem is that people who are interested in these websites only do one thing; recreate the feeling of 2000's social media. While that is fun, and the main draw to the platform, it doesn't last for a reason. People want their profiles to look like a wayback machine link so badly that they end up just impersonating a scene kid from 2009 and friending everybody online to up that friend count instead of making a profile and connections like those websites intended. Sure, the gimmick is to recreate the feeling of being a 2009 scene kid, but that doesn't mean that you can't add yourself in there as well. You can say that you like all these things, you enjoy modern movies and shows and music but your profile doesn't show that, and that was always the idea.

Sure, you can have your profile look nice. I'm using the old computer template for a reason. Does that mean that you need to have a glittery sanrio background like everybody else does? Sure, if you actually like it. Although, I find it hard to believe that every other person on this website with a completed profile feels that way.

To a majority of people on this website, it is just a fun way to relive the 2000s, for a lot of us, that is totally alien, and is instead a first experience of it. However, there are people on here, like me, who miss and want Web 1.0. There are people who don't want Web 3.0 to happen because they think it'll damage the internet and turn it into just a commercial battleground for cryptocurrency. Although there is nothing that a few hipster teenagers can do to stop the rich people of Twitter from ruining this for us, I can assure you that creating a wannabe myspace page won't convince anybody. 

The thing about these profiles is that the template is made to recreate the look of personalized accounts from the era. What happens when you take somebody's personalization and use it for yourself? It means nothing, even if you like how it looks. 

Web 2.0 has the chance to be  personal, messy, and fun without just being a rehash of everything the decade prior. Sanrio backgrounds and Invader Zim can only carry the style so far. Put new things into the mix, put something more than just an aesthetic in your profile and there is a chance that this small corner of the internet that doesn't want the Google and Amazon takeover will remain when it continues to upgrade.

Anyways, this was a long rambling.