What do you like and don't you like about the Small Web?

[DrSchnautz]

I've been thinking about the Small Web. To me, it's a monkey's paw kind of deal, or more like a trade-off type of deal. I'm happy it exists, even if there are certain things I dislike about some of it.
In terms of what I like about it, I'd say:
1. Unlimited customization. You can build a site to your own standards and wishes, which is especially attractive with social media sites consistently limiting your experience over time, and everyone has a different need; you could build a site about video games, anime, technology, history, whatever, and create a UX specifically tethered to its needs.

2. Flexibility. You can run a site from Neocities/Nekoweb if you please, GitHub Pages (which is what I use) if you want to, buy a VPS or shared hosting, or even self-host it on your computer or Raspberry Pi if you can port-forward and use Apache/Nginx. You've got an assortment of ways to host your site and the world's your oyster.

3. Originality (to some extent). Since it does require a slightly higher barrier of entry (comparable to a children's track and field hurdle, but it is slightly higher) and with some effort put in in designing a site, it is a creative investment and I think should be considered OC, if not the fact they often house OC content. Furthermore, the customization element your own site conducive to OC of all kinds: web apps in Python/JS, pictures, music you compose, videos, etc.

In terms of what I don't like:
1. "Aesthetics", the price of unlimited customization. With a lot of people hopping on the bandwagon (many of which don't remember going on a static Web 1.0 site), a lot of sites boil down to garish, "ironic" re-enactments of the Internet of then. So you do get a lot of people who force eccentricity as a personal statement rather than what they actually are.

2. Politicization, a really controversial point. Nothing wrong with having a site about politics, but I think for some, the Small Web's their way of 'sticking it to the man', slacktivism, and a product of that is that many webmasters define themselves not in terms of what they are, but what they aren't. They aren't commercial, nor corporate, etc. The problem with this is you can never build something out of a series of "nots".

What do you like and don't you like about the Small Web?

[nyan]

Really good post. I agree with most of your points. The customization, flexibility, and originality are all definitely things I like. For your dislikes, I also agree with you that sometimes the rehashing of aesthetics can definitely be a downside and makes the small web a lot less interesting in some ways (I will say, I am guilty of this myself on occasion though). As for your take on politicization, I partially disagree, but not fully. I think that people engaging with political issues is typically good so long as it doesn't become one's entire presence. I think that the small web creates a unique space where politics can be debated in the open in a nuanced and detailed manner.

As for what I like:

1. Agency. People have the freedom to create whatever they want without restrictions. There aren't any "invisible hands" guiding the type of creations that are made. It is really refreshing seeing what people create without worrying about rules, algorithmic pressure, or platform confines.

2. The barrier to entry you mentioned in your second point. Because there is a small hurdle to creating a presence on the small web, entry is barred to the type of people I like to avoid. This is probably a contentious take, but I really don't like interacting with brainless normies - it actually just makes me upset most of the time. I don't want to see the worst of humanity, I want to see the best. I want to see passion, intrigue, curiousity, creativity, and originality! Normies don't offer these things.

3. Small footprint. Most sites on the small web have a smaller footprint and can be loaded up very quickly on a low powered PC on a bad internet connection. As someone who lived in a rural area with a literal dumpster-dive PC for a large portion of my childhood, I appreciate this. I feel I will appreciate this even more when I move to the middle of nowhere in a few months and will have a very spotty internet connection.

As for things I dislike, there isn't much. Maybe that I just don't have enough time to interact with the web at the degree that I want to anymore? hahaha

[Maypews]

I've been thinking about the Small Web. To me, it's a monkey's paw kind of deal, or more like a trade-off type of deal. I'm happy it exists, even if there are certain things I dislike about some of it.
In terms of what I like about it, I'd say:
1. Unlimited customization. You can build a site to your own standards and wishes, which is especially attractive with social media sites consistently limiting your experience over time, and everyone has a different need; you could build a site about video games, anime, technology, history, whatever, and create a UX specifically tethered to its needs.

2. Flexibility. You can run a site from Neocities/Nekoweb if you please, GitHub Pages (which is what I use) if you want to, buy a VPS or shared hosting, or even self-host it on your computer or Raspberry Pi if you can port-forward and use Apache/Nginx. You've got an assortment of ways to host your site and the world's your oyster.

3. Originality (to some extent). Since it does require a slightly higher barrier of entry (comparable to a children's track and field hurdle, but it is slightly higher) and with some effort put in in designing a site, it is a creative investment and I think should be considered OC, if not the fact they often house OC content. Furthermore, the customization element your own site conducive to OC of all kinds: web apps in Python/JS, pictures, music you compose, videos, etc.

In terms of what I don't like:
1. "Aesthetics", the price of unlimited customization. With a lot of people hopping on the bandwagon (many of which don't remember going on a static Web 1.0 site), a lot of sites boil down to garish, "ironic" re-enactments of the Internet of then. So you do get a lot of people who force eccentricity as a personal statement rather than what they actually are.

2. Politicization, a really controversial point. Nothing wrong with having a site about politics, but I think for some, the Small Web's their way of 'sticking it to the man', slacktivism, and a product of that is that many webmasters define themselves not in terms of what they are, but what they aren't. They aren't commercial, nor corporate, etc. The problem with this is you can never build something out of a series of "nots".

What do you like and don't you like about the Small Web?

I think what I like the most is the customisation for sure. I had dearly missed that aspect of the internet of yore around the time that I started working on my site, coming across a site and just being wowed by the personality that blows off the monitor. IMO web design has gone backwards in an attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator; a personal website basically gives you the freedom to make not-shit and browsable UI which is a huge boon for me. No giant 5 MB pngs webps, obnoxious fade animations, wasted screen space, clicking through what feels like a maze designed to waste as much time as possible just to find what should be on the front page but isn't.

With personal websites there's also a general laid back feel. On a lot of social media circles you're expected to be "active", to be constantly plugged into the Wired. On this side of the internet you can go at exactly the pace you want to and nobody will think ill of you for it. I've had a few e-mail chains going for a while now where we type long messages to each other and then patiently wait a few weeks or sometimes months for the other person to eventually get back to it, it's fun.

I 100% agree with you regarding politicisation. It's basically as you said; the manifestos and whatnot are self-defeating because when your site exists only in opposition to something it fails to develop an identity of it's own. This is no small part in why you see so many sites created with Sadgrls layout template that are barren save for an about me page and some assorted vomit of 88x31 buttons. IMO you should maintain a site because you think it's a fun hobby instead of trying to make it into some grand ideological vision.

[dokyun]

When people speak of the small web, two different things come to my mind. I have different things to say about them so I'll try to cover both.

The "small web" as a phenomeon, small independent sites, are the backbone of what makes the internet actually good and worth using. When the internet began to gain traction outside of the academic world, a non-insignificant amount of infrastructure were small ISPs, and a lot of them had grown out of prior art such as BBSes and so already had a technical knack for independent networking. You can watch the BBS Documentary [archive.org] [yt] and especially the parts about FidoNet and its aftermath to see what I'm talking about. The internet that's been made by people who want to encourage democratization of the network, the freedom to hack and optimize the dissemination of information, and filled with people who still want those ideas to surface in spite of the current state of affairs are the parts of the internet which I enjoy hanging around the most-- a hacker's network is, in my opnion the ideal one. The Fediverse is probably the closest answer to these ideas that's been adapted for the modern world, and while it's certainly not perfect it captures enough of that essence that I continue to enjoy contributing to it and seeing it evolve. It's also why I've tried to do my part for this site: contributing, inviting friends over, encouraging the admin, since I see a lot of potential in it for something fun with the kind of people I like hanging around.

The biggest difference between back then and now and the issue that the modern internet faces is not necessarily what's on it, but how everything gets there. There is no longer on a fundamental level very much space left for independent services: IPv4 addresses were scooped up and are sold back as real estate for outrageous prices, and even if you can get your hands on an IPv4 block (which, under certain circumstances you can actually get for free), you will have to negotiate similar ends with an upstream that will actually plug you in to the rest of the world. For a hacker's network, this is a sad state of affairs: you cannot run your own infrastructure and have it speak to the world without having to answer to someone bigger than you. So the solution, I think is to create resistant networks that merely use the existing infrastructure as a vehicle, among other ones if needed: Tor is a good example that has shown to work, but a more comprehensive one has yet to be seen--I think Revolver looks promising, and I am looking forward to hacking on it and seeing what it'll be able to do.

The capital S.W. "Small Web" as a movement mischaracterizes what makes the "small web" good. This is best said, I think by saying that when you only focus in on being "Small", you lose sight of the bigger picture. It's reductive in a sense to demand a return to the "Web 1.0" era of how things were while ignoring all of the technology which improved upon it, and refusing to build anything new. If you want a good example of this, take feeds. Personally I think having to manually check your favourite sites for updates all the time sucks, and apparently people thought so back then too, so they came up with feeds: if your site has an RSS or Atom feed, you can just point your feed reader to it and it'll fetch the latest indexes for you. A great and simple techology, which was at its peak in the late 2000s but saw a decline when Google killed off their feed reader, which was very popular. Google's tried to kill a lot of good stuff. However, a huge amount of sites still have them, mostly as a consequence of nearly all content publishing software supporting it out of the box. Now tell me dear reader, how many neocities blogs can you count which have a built-in feed? How many of them actually know what RSS is, or have any interest in making the experience of using their site better?

So, this boils down to me seeing it as reductionist: it's a tunneled view of a certain part of the prior internet. The net is a great library, sure, but that isn't all that it can be used for, and I'd rather encourage that if we're going to write books that we store them on our own shelves: the core issue is not content, but control. Having a static blogsite on neocities is fine, I think people ought to do what pleases them, but I'm not interested in things that don't push the art, and I don't think it's even a very efficient way to get your message out there: this is part of the reason I haven't had much interest in starting up a personal website, since if I have something to say I'd oft rather put it somewhere I can be confident people will see and respond to it, like here or on Fedi-- and on Fedi I have a far greater degree of control, and it's a living thing where I can see things happen. For the sake of argument if I had no choice to be a reductionist, I would prefer a return to the non-WWW internet: Usenet, IRC, etc. They did or can do everything we still do in a distributed manner.

[DrSchnautz]

The capital S.W. "Small Web" as a movement mischaracterizes what makes the "small web" good. This is best said, I think by saying that when you only focus in on being "Small", you lose sight of the bigger picture. It's reductive in a sense to demand a return to the "Web 1.0" era of how things were while ignoring all of the technology which improved upon it, and refusing to build anything new. If you want a good example of this, take feeds. Personally I think having to manually check your favourite sites for updates all the time sucks, and apparently people thought so back then too, so they came up with feeds: if your site has an RSS or Atom feed, you can just point your feed reader to it and it'll fetch the latest indexes for you. A great and simple techology, which was at its peak in the late 2000s but saw a decline when Google killed off their feed reader, which was very popular. Google's tried to kill a lot of good stuff. However, a huge amount of sites still have them, mostly as a consequence of nearly all content publishing software supporting it out of the box. Now tell me dear reader, how many neocities blogs can you count which have a built-in feed? How many of them actually know what RSS is, or have any interest in making the experience of using their site better?

So, this boils down to me seeing it as reductionist: it's a tunneled view of a certain part of the prior internet. The net is a great library, sure, but that isn't all that it can be used for, and I'd rather encourage that if we're going to write books that we store them on our own shelves: the core issue is not content, but control. Having a static blogsite on neocities is fine, I think people ought to do what pleases them, but I'm not interested in things that don't push the art, and I don't think it's even a very efficient way to get your message out there: this is part of the reason I haven't had much interest in starting up a personal website, since if I have something to say I'd oft rather put it somewhere I can be confident people will see and respond to it, like here or on Fedi-- and on Fedi I have a far greater degree of control, and it's a living thing where I can see things happen. For the sake of argument if I had no choice to be a reductionist, I would prefer a return to the non-WWW internet: Usenet, IRC, etc. They did or can do everything we still do in a distributed manner.

I hinted at this a little when I talked about unoriginality and politicization, but the fact of the matter is that looking to the creativity of the past and attempting to recreate it without addition is the main thing holding back the "Small Web", I think this links together those two complaints I had in that it should be considered more of a manner of organization than a proper "movement" with specific norms on what it is or should be. I think the problem is that it seems often like a reaction towards social media's lack of control, but when people decide to abandon it, they have absolutely no clue what to replace it with, so they just go for the closest and most chic thing at the moment, I suppose.

It's reinventing not the circumstances that brought about originality but the most glaring elements of it. Pure regression, really. In truth, Fediverse is fine though for my academic writings and that I like GitHub Pages since I can share it with potential academic advisors.

All in all, freedom is paralyzing, when you break off social media, it doesn't mean social media broke off from you. It's really a reinvention of everything that sucks about social media in the first place in saccharine GIFs. So it goes, though, so it goes... in the end the Internet will never really die to the extent that there exist individuals on it (even if there exists only one) that choose to build on it.

I'm still a firm believer in the Internet as the modern London coffeehouse and to keep it that way. I still believe my entire professional trajectory is owed to the Internet and shadow libraries and it would suck if this changed, but I don't think it will. I've chosen cautious optimism in the end and plan accordingly.

[Parzival]

I agree with pretty much everything that's said on here, so I'll just add that, as Schnautz touched on a little bit: a big problem is that for many of the Small Web people, web 2.0 never left them even if they left web 2.0. I think it's possible to build something new by going back to the past and taking a different trajectory, but what I mostly see is people latching onto the aesthetics but not that actual ethos that made web 1.0 so great. You have people on, say, Neocities calling for censorship, for the removal of "problematic" content, or content that merely doesn't align with their politics. Not to say this didn't exist at all whatsoever back in the day, but to have the censorious social media mindset so common on "The Small Web" speaks volumes of what many of the people in these spaces actually care about. It's not the freedom to create anything, per say, to have total control over what you can do, say, and put out into the internet- but merely the freedom to accessorize. In every other way many of these types still want the internet to be as it's become on web 2.0 proper.

I must say, that while I can appreciate the freedom to elaborate on and expound your ideas and put them out there, I think it also says a lot that much, if not most, of the ideation being exchanged that I see can be summed up as elaborate glee in and justification for the mere commodification of identity. And I think this shows in many of the sites. Elaborate signalings of and validation of commodified identity. There are interesting ideas being put out there, but it's nowhere near say the veritable Parisian café that was the late 00's blogosphere, and I think that's because there is still the shadow of web 2.0's culture of frowning upon dissent against the general vibe of of what me and the boys over at Schizopunk have termed "hypernormiedom"

[DrSchnautz]

a big problem is that for many of the Small Web people, web 2.0 never left them even if they left web 2.0. I think it's possible to build something new by going back to the past and taking a different trajectory, but what I mostly see is people latching onto the aesthetics but not that actual ethos that made web 1.0 so great. You have people on, say, Neocities calling for censorship, for the removal of "problematic" content, or content that merely doesn't align with their politics. Not to say this didn't exist at all whatsoever back in the day, but to have the censorious social media mindset so common on "The Small Web" speaks volumes of what many of the people in these spaces actually care about

What's more interesting is that a lot of them talk about it like they've instituted an analog to the Cultural Revolution of China, you hear it, "It's no longer like 2016!" or "2005!" or whatever other year. Like all of the "offensiveness" has been thoroughly washed away out of the Internet, never to be remembered, and anyone who attempts to bring it back is a traitor to the Revolution(tm).

[Maypews]

I will say that I think nyan had something of a point earlier in the thread when he said that the small web could be a vehicle for more informed and nuanced political discourse. The issue of politics on the small web really just refers to a specific kind of "politics", that of the sort of hyper-polarised terminally online idpol "discourse" you see on social media. Where issues are never discussed in any detail and tend to turn into shitflinging competitions where whoever can come up with the wittiest zinger is deemed the victor of the discussion.

On Nyan's site he has an article for example going into detail about how you can maximise your voting power in the Canadian election which I thought was a good read even though I'm not a Canadian myself. It remains as neutral as can be and just honestly informs the reader on how they can be more active in the political system. I think this article sort of embodies what's really missing from these discussions; that of good-faith and open mindedness. The reason I don't really bother engaging in political debates online is because 99% of the time the other person is just trying to prove you wrong or make you look bad rather than honestly hear you out. Lots of ad hominem and things like that tend to be staples of these kind of people's toolkits.

But the small web theoretically rewards longer form content and as such it could be a great medium for this sort of thing. The problem? Well it's pretty much as has already been pointed out, that these people "leave" social media but bring all of their shitty habits with them without any effort to correct them.

There was a post by a NC site that I browse sometimes which I think described this phenomenon really well;

"But the real problem is just a change in the general zeitgeist and the kinds of content people are creating. People just HATE each other nowadays. Whether this hate is genuine, a projection, or entirely fabricated in order to boost their own social standing amonst their peers does not really matter. The result is the same, and it’s poisoning Youtube the way it poisoned cable TV, with very insidious results.

What’s important to remember is that Imported Cheese is relatively moderate as far as the modern left wing goes, and has spoken against elements of the left-wing in the past for being too extreme or hypocritical. Yet still he believes, by his own admission, that there cannot be any understanding between him and right-wingers because right-wingers want him dead or oppressed.

But why would right-wingers want him dead or oppressed? I ask this because, when I see such opinions from the right, it’s usually because they believe that the left wants THEM dead or oppressed and that they have to strike first if they want to survive.

So each side believes the other wants them dead, and therefore that belief becomes true because they want to destroy the people who want them dead. It’s an ourobouros."

Social media platforms are breeding grounds for this sort of thing, I'd go as far as to say that they are the #1 cause of the increasing political polarisation in the Western world today. Especially Twitter since it artificially stifles the amount of detail that end users can go into and thus effectively coaxes them into making progressively more and more radical statements. In fact, thanks to that site's abhorrent influence, I like to refer to this as the Twitter Cycle.

The way that this Twitter Cycle works in my view is basically as follows; User A happens upon an opinion he doesn't disagree with which was posted by User B. Now User A, if they're new to the site, might try to earnestly reply to this opinion. His initial message contains... let's say 2-3 paragraphs, and also a few links to studies and some articles. Except whoops, that violates the character limit. So all of a sudden those 2-3 paragraphs become 1, statements which previously had qualifiers or honest admissions such as "But this data could have several flaws or external considerations influencing it" end up redacted from the post in order to comply with said limit and are instead replaced by generalisations, oh and the studies are also taking up too much space and end up removed from the final draft as well! So in the end your reply to User B just ends up being, at best, a reply missing a lot of important context often devoid of sourcing as well, and at worst just ends up coming off as scathing and aggressive.

So then User B will of course respond in turn with aggression. User A will also probably respond with aggression to B's provocation. And what ends up happening is that their posts just get progressively more and more ridiculous, to the point where it's obvious no real conversation is taking place at all and that the whole thing has just transformed into an excuse to insult the "other team". It is of course well-known that social media companies are essentially arms of the state and that big name politicians also use them to control the political narrative, and I don't doubt that much of this paradigm was constructed deliberately to keep the plebs dancing amongst themselves over nothingburger culture war topics and theatre.

The problem kind of goes back to what was mentioned earlier in the thread; that people leave social media but bring all of their habits from social media with them to the small net. This isn't exclusive to political matters either, it also manifests in more innocuous things. For example you'll see sites that have "DNI" lists on them, or people who just link to all of their social media accounts and update the roughly site 1/10th as often; essentially just using it as a glorified MySpace profile, or sites that have this sort of toxicly positive hugbox thing going on where you're never allowed to say anything that could be construed as even remotely critical or contrary to the popularly held viewpoints.

There are also certain kinds of graphics that just scream social media brainrot while being dressed up in the tired husk of an old web "aesthetic". I think there's really nothing that better represents the social medification of this space than those buttons. There's nothing wrong with having buttons or pictures of social causes that you genuinely support and would/have donated to, but there are some sites where they just dress their site all up in this kind of stuff where it becomes quite clear that they are just using it to signal their tribe allegiance. It's all just modern cancer skinwalking as something that it is not, nor that it ever will be.

This "You vs Me" shit didn't exist on the real old internet like it does on the modern day small web. I know that people might read this and go "Well lots of forums had anti-religion rules and you can find people shitting on Dubya/Obama/whatever well-known and controversial 00s political figure". And sure you could find that, and yes it has always been a problem, but I think the real difference is that back then people at least still interacted with the substance of each other's arguments and a lot of this sort of bad-faith engagement which has now become the norm was looked down upon and seen as flamebaiting.

But nowadays people just spend all of their time doomscrolling their carefully-curated evil ass rape algorithm which essentially functions as a hugbox where they receive constant validation for their ideas no matter how asinine they may be. They are never challenged on any of their stances, they simply expect constant asspats and never to be confronted; and if they are confronted, they'll just run from it by insulting the person doing the confronting instead of engaging with the substance of what they are saying. The irony in all of this is that these people often think they're taking some sort of brave stand against the Opposition in doing this but in actuality it's the utmost form of cowardice.

I was looking through an old online profile of mine recently. It was kind of like a MySpace cloan site where people would often use pictures of themselves and stuff as their profile picture. Was genuinely blown away by the sheer breadth of people who interacted with each other without issue. You had all kinds of different subcultures, creeds, races, age groups, nationalities and whatnot getting along without any issue in the world. You could look at someone's friend list and you'd see a most lively collection of characters contained within it. You just don't often see this stuff on the modern day "small web" now because of how atomised online discourse has become. I think it's the most noticeable way in which the movement fails to truly replicate the internet of old.

And in my opinion? That's the most beautiful part of the actual old internet. IMO the web revival's failure to successfully replicate it showcases a fundamental failure of the "movement". It's exactly what I want this site to be, what I strive for it to be. Because you know what the best way to fix a problem is? It's by being the change that you want to see. Reject modern culture war garbage, formulate your own spaces insulated from it, run your site not because you want it to serve as some form of grand ideological visage as I said earlier but rather because you take simple pleasure in doing so, and if you must talk politics or social issues on your site, write well-meaning and good faith articles instead of the rants or aggressive takedowns that have become oh-so-common in the modern day climate.

[nyan]

I will say that I think @nyan had something of a point earlier in the thread when he said that the small web could be a vehicle for more informed and nuanced political discourse. The issue of politics on the small web really just refers to a specific kind of "politics", that of the sort of hyper-polarised terminally online idpol "discourse" you see on social media. Where issues are never discussed in any detail and tend to turn into shitflinging competitions where whoever can come up with the wittiest zinger is deemed the victor of the discussion.

On Nyan's site he has an article for example going into detail about how you can maximise your voting power in the Canadian election which I thought was a good read even though I'm not a Canadian myself. It remains as neutral as can be and just honestly informs the reader on how they can be more active in the political system. I think this article sort of embodies what's really missing from these discussions; that of good-faith and open mindedness. The reason I don't really bother engaging in political debates online is because 99% of the time the other person is just trying to prove you wrong or make you look bad rather than honestly hear you out. Lots of ad hominem and things like that tend to be staples of these kind of people's toolkits.

But the small web theoretically rewards longer form content and as such it could be a great medium for this sort of thing. The problem? Well it's pretty much as has already been pointed out, that these people "leave" social media but bring all of their shitty habits with them without any effort to correct them.

There was a post by a NC site that I browse sometimes which I think described this phenomenon really well;

"But the real problem is just a change in the general zeitgeist and the kinds of content people are creating. People just HATE each other nowadays. Whether this hate is genuine, a projection, or entirely fabricated in order to boost their own social standing amonst their peers does not really matter. The result is the same, and it’s poisoning Youtube the way it poisoned cable TV, with very insidious results.

What’s important to remember is that Imported Cheese is relatively moderate as far as the modern left wing goes, and has spoken against elements of the left-wing in the past for being too extreme or hypocritical. Yet still he believes, by his own admission, that there cannot be any understanding between him and right-wingers because right-wingers want him dead or oppressed.

But why would right-wingers want him dead or oppressed? I ask this because, when I see such opinions from the right, it’s usually because they believe that the left wants THEM dead or oppressed and that they have to strike first if they want to survive.

So each side believes the other wants them dead, and therefore that belief becomes true because they want to destroy the people who want them dead. It’s an ourobouros."

Social media platforms are breeding grounds for this sort of thing, I'd go as far as to say that they are the #1 cause of the increasing political polarisation in the Western world today. Especially Twitter since it artificially stifles the amount of detail that end users can go into and thus effectively coaxes them into making progressively more and more radical statements. In fact, thanks to that site's abhorrent influence, I like to refer to this as the Twitter Cycle.

The way that this Twitter Cycle works in my view is basically as follows; User A happens upon an opinion he doesn't disagree with which was posted by User B. Now User A, if they're new to the site, might try to earnestly reply to this opinion. His initial message contains... let's say 2-3 paragraphs, and also a few links to studies and some articles. Except whoops, that violates the character limit. So all of a sudden those 2-3 paragraphs become 1, statements which previously had qualifiers or honest admissions such as "But this data could have several flaws or external considerations influencing it" end up redacted from the post in order to comply with said limit and are instead replaced by generalisations, oh and the studies are also taking up too much space and end up removed from the final draft as well! So in the end your reply to User B just ends up being, at best, a reply missing a lot of important context often devoid of sourcing as well, and at worst just ends up coming off as scathing and aggressive.

So then User B will of course respond in turn with aggression. User A will also probably respond with aggression to B's provocation. And what ends up happening is that their posts just get progressively more and more ridiculous, to the point where it's obvious no real conversation is taking place at all and that the whole thing has just transformed into an excuse to insult the "other team". It is of course well-known that social media companies are essentially arms of the state and that big name politicians also use them to control the political narrative, and I don't doubt that much of this paradigm was constructed deliberately to keep the plebs dancing amongst themselves over nothingburger culture war topics and theatre.

The problem kind of goes back to what was mentioned earlier in the thread; that people leave social media but bring all of their habits from social media with them to the small net. This isn't exclusive to political matters either, it also manifests in more innocuous things. For example you'll see sites that have "DNI" lists on them, or people who just link to all of their social media accounts and update the roughly site 1/10th as often; essentially just using it as a glorified MySpace profile, or sites that have this sort of toxicly positive hugbox thing going on where you're never allowed to say anything that could be construed as even remotely critical or contrary to the popularly held viewpoints.

There are also certain kinds of graphics that just scream social media brainrot while being dressed up in the tired husk of an old web "aesthetic". I think there's really nothing that better represents the social medification of this space than those buttons. There's nothing wrong with having buttons or pictures of social causes that you genuinely support and would/have donated to, but there are some sites where they just dress their site all up in this kind of stuff where it becomes quite clear that they are just using it to signal their tribe allegiance. It's all just modern cancer skinwalking as something that it is not, nor that it ever will be.

This "You vs Me" shit didn't exist on the real old internet like it does on the modern day small web. I know that people might read this and go "Well lots of forums had anti-religion rules and you can find people shitting on Dubya/Obama/whatever well-known and controversial 00s political figure". And sure you could find that, and yes it has always been a problem, but I think the real difference is that back then people at least still interacted with the substance of each other's arguments and a lot of this sort of bad-faith engagement which has now become the norm was looked down upon and seen as flamebaiting.

But nowadays people just spend all of their time doomscrolling their carefully-curated evil ass rape algorithm which essentially functions as a hugbox where they receive constant validation for their ideas no matter how asinine they may be. They are never challenged on any of their stances, they simply expect constant asspats and never to be confronted; and if they are confronted, they'll just run from it by insulting the person doing the confronting instead of engaging with the substance of what they are saying. The irony in all of this is that these people often think they're taking some sort of brave stand against the Opposition in doing this but in actuality it's the utmost form of cowardice.

I was looking through an old online profile of mine recently. It was kind of like a MySpace cloan site where people would often use pictures of themselves and stuff as their profile picture. Was genuinely blown away by the sheer breadth of people who interacted with each other without issue. You had all kinds of different subcultures, creeds, races, age groups, nationalities and whatnot getting along without any issue in the world. You could look at someone's friend list and you'd see a most lively collection of characters contained within it. You just don't often see this stuff on the modern day "small web" now because of how atomised online discourse has become. I think it's the most noticeable way in which the movement fails to truly replicate the internet of old.

And in my opinion? That's the most beautiful part of the actual old internet. IMO the web revival's failure to successfully replicate it showcases a fundamental failure of the "movement". It's exactly what I want this site to be, what I strive for it to be. Because you know what the best way to fix a problem is? It's by being the change that you want to see. Reject modern culture war garbage, formulate your own spaces insulated from it, run your site not because you want it to serve as some form of grand ideological visage as I said earlier but rather because you take simple pleasure in doing so, and if you must talk politics or social issues on your site, write well-meaning and good faith articles instead of the rants or aggressive takedowns that have become oh-so-common in the modern day climate.

I'm glad you liked my article! I really did just try to make it as informative and apolitical as possible, as I was more concerned with people participating in democracy in general over swinging them to "my side". I like seeing people engage with what they believe in, even if I disagree!

I wholeheartedly agree with you that mainstream social media platforms do have massive issues related to discussions of politics! I do also think that some of these issues definitely leak over to the small web in a negative manner, although I am not exposed to this very often as I quit subjecting myself to mainstream social media nearly a decade ago. I really like your "Twitter Cycle" explanation and illustrative example, I had also observed the same behaviour back when I used that platform. It is incredibly unproductive and self-compounding as you said. I have also noticed this type of behaviour often even leaks over into "real life" politics and discussion, which is truly sad to see.

I also completely agree with you that the diversity of the old net was one of the best parts about it! I think that frequent exposure to new culture, ideas, and differences is incredibly healthy for your mind. It is like attending a feast and being able to try anything and everything so that you can truly what your favourite is - what things make you you. The old net was an incredible tool of introspection and self-discovery through the experiences and interests of others. I think that is the reason why the small generation of people that grew up using it appear to have much more sub-cultural diversification, at least from what I've observed. Whereas, generations which were not exposed to much of the old net always appear to be monocultural to some degree.


Unrelated aside: I noticed you spell a lot of things the way things are spelled in UK English, not American English despite the fact that I assume you are from the Southern US based of previous things I've seen. Is there a story behind this? I'm so curious! Examples of the spellings I noticed would be "polarise", "maximise", "theatre", and "atomise".

[Maypews]

Unrelated aside: I noticed you spell a lot of things the way things are spelled in UK English, not American English despite the fact that I assume you are from the Southern US based of previous things I've seen. Is there a story behind this? I'm so curious! Examples of the spellings I noticed would be "polarise", "maximise", "theatre", and "atomise".

Your assumption is correct, the answer is basically just a mixture of linguistic purism and LARP. About 2 years ago I kinda noticed that my accent was fading, and I thought that sucked because I liked my accent (I wrote a blogpost about it on my site if you want to read it). So I embarked on a journey to start speaking more like how I used to. This also ended up getting me way more into anime as a whole than I was before previously funnily enough, ended up more than doubling my watch time.

With this endeavour I also picked up a few other things from the friend mentioned in that text such as wanting to return to an older version of the Southern accent via the use of non-rhoticity, a manner in which some of my older relatives spoke, and also by using the British spellings similar to how past Americans did (my interest in history kind of spearheaded all of this). I was never quite able to get the hang of doing the former in person but I did pretty much memorise the British spellings and now do it unconsciously despite the fact that I was raised on the American ones. I also just prefer how the British ones look honestly, I think they're more aesthetically pleasing visually.