my decentralized internet journey and rejecting social media: an introduction

i remember in my early childhood as an undiagnosed autistic kid, i was deeply fascinated by the internet and, having no real friends to talk to, i spent a lot of my time visiting websites dedicated to my interests and playing games that have been long-since lost to time. there are websites that are so clear in my memory but i can't ever remember the urls or find proof of their existence. there are elements of my childhood that are so formative to my existence as a person and yet those elements are fleeting and ephemeral and growing foggier and foggier in my memory as i grow older.

i remember this one website i used to frequent as a kid that was focused on these two animal sibling characters - an older brother and a younger sister? i think they were british. there were flash games. that site captivated me as a kid but i can't for the life of me recall what the site was called or any specific details regarding their appearance or names. even the detail of them being british is something i'm not fully sure on - i feel like my brain is filling in the blanks with that one disney junior show called charlie and lola. there used to be this website i would frequent that had abundant information on fire emblem and kingdom hearts that i don't think exists anymore, but i would go on that website every single day and reread all the pages. there was a fansite dedicated to the legend of zelda where the site operator pretended to be a character from the games that i would visit fairly often.

i used to dream of making my own websites relating to what i was interested in at the time, and i guess i sort of can now, but sites like carrd or rentry don't scratch the same itch as the sites i used to visit as a kid.

the modern internet as we know it feels so much less charming and interesting compared to the internet of the late 90's and all through the 2000's, and the pressure to engage with social media as a microcelebrity is something i absolutely cannot stand. i'm not wired for the modern internet. i don't have the energy to pay attention to what times are best to post things and to keep posting content every day.

sites like spacehey give me a little glimmer of hope that i can still engage with that decentralized internet experience that i grew up with.

i'm trying my best to expand my digital world and engage with sites like spacehey in order to sort of "detox" myself. tumblr is about the only form of social media that i actively use and post on, and even then there have been changes made to tumblr that are making it less worth it to stick around.

i've tried mastodon before, and while the instances make it a really unique and fun platform, it also just... feels too much like twitter for me to find it fully appealing. in general microblogging platforms are anathema to me; i have a lot to say and i like to put my thoughts out into the ether on my own time all in one post. spacehey, while i'm still new to it, does look pretty promising so far; i was much too young for myspace when it was still popular, but the website was something i would always wish i'd ended up using.

i want to use spacehey to document my journey of trying to gradually reconnect with those early childhood experiences while also trying to phase out as much of the centralized modern internet as i can. i want to find other websites that i find interesting and niche that i can talk about and share. i want to share my memories of websites i used to use and games i used to play - as much as i can remember, at the very least.

so, i guess this is an introduction to a long journey that i'm going to share. hi. i'm euclid, and this is my spacehey page.