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as stated on my profile i am forever entertained and intrigued by the way people behave online so in this blog post i will ramble about some Thoughts i've had about Spacehey!
There are so many kids here. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just interesting, and as a 17 year old i include myself in this! I think the way the world is right now and the way the mainstream internet is falling apart at the seams is often what drives people to Spacehey. It's why I'm here for instance, because I just quit instagram, i'm scared of tiktok, and twitter is The Hellhole. I use Discord, Tumblr, Deviantart, Toyhouse and Spacehey and I have my own neocities site and that's it.
The internet has always been awful in various ways, but for millennials on the OG Myspace, it wasn't the Horror that it is today. Enshittification of the internet (corporations turning their backs on both advertisers and consumers out of sheer greed) has eroded every major platform and there Is No escape from ads anymore. I have like 3 separate adblockers and I still see them. Gen Z was the second generation growing up online and I can still remember the internet being Good and Useful. Google produced helpful search results and AI hadn't flooded everything. Everything is bland and cookie-cutter and copy-paste. I'm sick and tired of it and that's why I'm on Spacehey and the other sites I mentioned. The freedom of my neocities site, however bad I am at coding, is liberating, Tumblr is Tumblr and i love it, Toyhouse and Deviantart i just use as portfolio spaces and Spacehey is an anthropological site. I assume lots of other younger people have come to Spacehey to escape the mainstream internet and to experience fun customizeable stuff with layouts. perhaps i will conduct a survey.
Spacehey is super interesting because it's a total mixing pot. A lot of the ingredients are kids (weird metaphor whatever) but a lot of them are not. Differnet ages, different cultures, different fandoms, people, subcultures, everything you could imagine. I know every social media platform also has all these different people but you will never get to meet them because of the algorithm. After experiencing Spacehey's lack of one and Tumblr's tagging system as an alternitive to an algorithm, I really wish other platforms would just get rid of it. I've heard that social media is becoming stale and I think chaos is perhaps a solution.
I met a guy who really needs mental help but he thinks the world is a simulation and it was super interesting (and kinda sad. i feel bad for him) to talk to him. Then I can go to the top blogs and find a cutesy callout post with 70 comments arguing about what's going on. Then i can go to recent blogs and find a gay guy struggling with being secretly in love with his roommate. I like seeing these little glimpses into people's lives through what they choose to write about. Everyone is caught up in their own little story and their story means the world to them but most people will never even know they existed. It's why I can't understand why some people think other people are NPCs. No one in the world has absolutely nothing going on. Somehow, it feels more authentic than Instagram or Twitter.
I want to play minecraft now so I will add more if I feel like it later. Thanks for reading, i would love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this stuff!! i'm super interested in digital anthropology and meeting random people on spacehey has recently become a hobby in expressing that
Comments
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Alex
I completely agree with you, the internet is heavily controlled by corporations nowadays and it's rare to find places that aren't constantly bombarded with ads. Tbh I really enjoy how Spacehey doesn't have an algorithm and I get to see posts from all kinds of people with all sorts of different values/morals. It's really interesting to see and I feel it's much better than being divided, and categorized into groups by algorithms.
alena
i really hope this site stays this way. i would probably leave if it gets sold and i have to see 300 popups a minute LOL. im also 17 i came on here to do like a digital diary type thing?? i also just love talking to people LOL
Ina
I kinda agree. Years ago, my access to the Internet was limited and my family shared one laptop. It was fun just searching the web and actually finding what I searched for and not sponsored results. Youtube was pretty neat but I mainly searched for content in my language. I played Club Penguin, Neopets and other flash games, and they were super fun.
Nowadays, it's way more difficult to find almost anything. Although corporations were already using the internet back in the 90s, these times have been very... sterile. I can blame the rapid shift in certain society behaviours and "minimalism", that swallowed a great portion of what we see today. When I was in my web design classes, I wanted just wanted to bang my head on the table. It's cool that we have frameworks that allows us to make something with more ease, but I feel like most don't explore the full potentials of the framework, like Bootstrap. Some companies make their own framework, but they don't pay much attention to the details, is leads to this aesthetically hollow web design.
Currently, I focus my attention on interesting web material. I use multiple search engines, but I really like Startpage, Mojeek and SEARX (metasearch with instances you can choose).
I usually don't get involved with any specific community. Even online, I'm quite on my own. But, when I feel something is worth my time, I engage.
Well, I don't think the world is a simulation.... Although, I can tell you some things are "pre-made" or "pre-planned" by some at the top. They're quite the nasty people.
People are not necessarily NPCs. That term is more hyperbolic than anything. It just means that certain people don't use much of their critical thinking and, therefore, will blindly follow the commands. They were used to be called "sheep". But, people can always defy that status if they want and become more aware. That's when they "exit the matrix". Matrix and simulation are not terms to be taken literally, but metaphorically.
Well, I wrote too much. I think I'll just do my own thing now. SpaceHey is cool. It has a good energy.
If you want more cool old net stuff to explore I recommend:
-Old'a Vista (a tribute to Altavista but with lots of archives, in partnership with Internet Archive);
-of course, the Internet Archive;
- http://theoldnet.com ;
- https://www.oocities.org ;
- http://frogfind.com ( a search engine for vintage computers that removes javascript and modern elements old browsers and pcs can't process);
- https://protoweb.org (they have their own "old browser" and instructions to use the old net. I like to use good old Netscape Navigator with the protweb proxy configurations. It's very fun!)
ALSO, use Ublock Origin. This adblocker is the king.
( ´ ▽ ` ) sorry for any typos
Chelly
I completely agree! I was born in the early 2000's, and I got to social media late. Everything had already gotten quite sterile-looking when I found it, so when I discovered MySpace's awesome customisation possibilities, I felt snubbed. Even though I'm literally just copying someone else's code, it feels so much more personalised. I love it.
jodiepik
i like spacehey because of the amount of customisation, but it feels so much better without the amount of ads being shoved down my throat. i feel like this is how the internet is supposed to be. its way too capitalised now. and the amount of bullying is CRAZY, i know bullying has always been a thing on the internet but jesus. some people are online too much
✮⋆˙363636˙⋆✮
It's kind of sad to see how social media is rapidly turning nto just a way to elevate one's image and life. I wish it was more about finding community, sharing resources and silly stuff. Utopic, but the internet is - while still being part of our "real" world bc it was created and it's used by humans - a world apart
✮⋆˙363636˙⋆✮
It's kind of sad to see how social media is rapidly turning nto just a way to elevate one's image and life. I wish it was more about finding community, sharing resources and silly stuff. Utopic, but the internet is - while still being part of our "real" world bc it was created and it's used by humans - a world apart
Kara✮
I really like Spacehey because it’s giving me a chance to experience the internet in a way I hadn’t been able to before. I feel like the early internet days were so much better because everyone was still figuring out how to use it and obviously because it wasn’t so commercialized. The internet today is so fucked I really do wish we could just start over again.
exactly!! google's barely usable anymore with all the ads
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