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

[Ragnarok]

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.

I'm so glad someone else asked this because I've been meaning to as well. xD That's really interesting it all stems from your interest in history and in preserving your Southern accent. I would assume you'd be opposed (maybe not the right word but in general just preferring something American) to using the Bri'ish spellings considering the early US settlers risked their lives to escape the religiously oppressive UK. I understand I'm simplifying that a lot but I hope you understand what I mean. I picture you being very patriotic so to see you using UK spellings definitely throws me for a loop.

[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.

I'm so glad someone else asked this because I've been meaning to as well. xD That's really interesting it all stems from your interest in history and in preserving your Southern accent. I would assume you'd be opposed (maybe not the right word but in general just preferring something American) to using the Bri'ish spellings considering the early US settlers risked their lives to escape the religiously oppressive UK. I understand I'm simplifying that a lot but I hope you understand what I mean. I picture you being very patriotic so to see you using UK spellings definitely throws me for a loop.

Well, if you go and read the personal correspondence of lots of American historical figures from around that time, you'll see that they used the British spellings. The British spellings are (mostly, but not always) just the original spellings. The American ones became a thing in 1806 with Noah Webster's "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language", where he suggested using simplified spellings for some words. It took a while however for these to become the most popular form of spelling the words, according to a Quora post most terms took a few decades up to a century to catch on (which matches up with me seeing the British spellings still frequently used in 1800s letters as well). I can certainly see why it would seem paradoxical on it's face though!

[Parzival]

Classic Southern Anglophilia. People forget you guys were more gung ho about fighting the Germans than the North, almost entirely because until very recently you guys seem to have seen the Brits as your kin, more so even than Northerners.

[NonoEnjoyer]

Anglophilia is the second worst kind of philia practiced on this board. Don’t even ask about the first!

[Amlux]

A good thread. Honestly, I like so many things about the small web that I could list tons and tons. But I'll focus on a few:

Freedom: You can create a site that looks however you want it to. And don't have to deal with a lot of the censorship inherent in larger platforms (censorship through social pressure counts).

Simplicity: Most small web sites are very low on resources and not bloated full of ads and garbage, even the most "garish" and over-the-top sites.

Weirdness: You get the sense that these sites are made by real individual people. not the caricatures you get on places like YouTube which aren't very different from TV announcers and the like.

Some negatives:

Communities Are Hard to Sustain: A lot of forums like this require a lot of dedication and work on your end to promote and sustain, and it can be hard to come across as something besides a shill. I know I have a forum of my own, but sometimes I wonder about whether to make a thread there or on this forum instead, because it feels like the two are already small enough that both really need it. The good news I guess is that if my forum ever totally collapses and I don't feel like running it anymore, I will just try to move to this one full-time. Though I plan to keep my forum around even if it's just 2 or 3 posters because it's not the size or pace of a forum that makes it great!

Complex Software Support Is Limited: I have a stream on my site right now, but without the infrastructure of a Twitch or YouTube it can be hard to make people aware that I'm going live. The ActivityPub portion of my Owncast instance is apparently not working well (I wouldn't know though, I don't use any fediverse stuff). There are examples of this where you're just playing at a loss for convenience that is built in to a lot of larger sites.

There's a Lot of Nostalgiafagging: A lot of the small web is about recreating what was great about the internet before the enshittening around the 2010s. But let's be honest, we can never return to that time period. So I feel like way too many sites try to do their best to LARP as a late 90s website instead of trying to embody that MINDSET and WORLDVIEW in the modern period, thinking from the ground up "What would best suit my site's content?" I find all the overly fancy twinkly bullshit .gif overload look to be an example of this.

[RadioHades]

The good is the human stuff, finding people obsessed with unexpected thing or simply tending to their digital garden with love, posting regularly.

The bad is the Tumblr crowd and the overwhelming number of people who just make a website on a whim and abandon it. And as a Real Programmer^tm (though I did gave my soul to LISP) the fruity web devs who think Jabbascript isn't a luser flag.