I guess it's a combination of the following:

• Queer people tend to be outsiders due to the feeling of being different, outsiders tend to become queer/discover their queerness due to contemplation. Outsiders want to discover communities beyond the mainstream to find welcoming and acceptance.
• There's a huge correlation between autism and queerness (I think the figure was 40% of autists do not identify as cis?) and autism attracts niche topics, and the yesterweb is one such topic.
• Feeling like you are different usually makes you seek out likeminded people on the web and obsessing in front of a screen all day, which is a good prerequisite to become invested in computers and tech, which leads to a DIY and general nonconformist attitude
• People who are queer tend to be politically active and politically active people tend to oppose big social media sites and look for alternatives.
• Mainstream culture is very targeted at cishet neurotypical people and can sometimes even be hostile to others, and any alternative subculture definitely does not meet on Facebook and Instagram, so those bring people here too
• People who are very much into their own identity also tend to obsess about aesthetics and bigger identity packages (I am going to convert to this religion/occult/obscure hobby I saw online because it comes with a new set of labels to apply to myself), which leads to them identifying more as fringe microlabels and applying aesthetics to identity, which leads them down this path.
• Neurodiverse people sometimes like things like categories, customizing worlds and spaces, daydreaming into their fantasies, which is pretty much not possible to have an outlet for on mainstream socials.
• Traumatized people tend to try and relive their lost childhood, and many of our (Gen Z) childhoods were spent on the retro web.

I think there's a lot of factors at play. I think my points are pretty solid indicators.

Wow, what a well-written list of reasons for this! I can definitely see myself in many of these, haha.

But to add to the question about retro web revival itself, I personally prefer the creative outlet it offers. But I think ultimately simple, minimalist sites are a part of that, because is that also not a way to express yourself and your preferences? But yeah, even with minimalist sites, I prefer something that has maybe at least a beige background or something, because the white-on-black websites actually remind me too much of the modern sterile corporate websites that I'm trying to escape @_@ But that's just my personal association with that. Inherently I'm just glad you have the option to choose what kind of website you want and there are no limits to it.

I've been meaning to get into X-files for a while now, haha. I think I watched like one episode and then just forgot about it, but I'm definitely gonna pick it up again. I've been using this website for drawing reference as well! I really like the general vibe of this show, and the screenshots are extremely good quality. Here's one of the redrawn screenshots I did recently:

I recently bought the first X-Files movie on VHS and I thought it was pretty good, both as an adaptation of the show with a more extravagant budget and as a standalone film. Even for someone such as myself who's not particularly obsessed with it, I do think it warrants respect. Hence this little sketch I made a while back:

Your post definitely makes me even more excited to watch this! And I love the posing in your sketch, very rad

Ooo this is a good one!

There is a certain... style of food that always reminds me of when I first was in university and had to lay low and crash for over a year on a friend's kitchen couch (1 room apartment). We were lazy and broke so we did all kinds of cursed stuff during that time: rice with TONS of tomato paste for the cheap flavor, cheap pasta with pureed tomatoes with pepper, cumin and badly diced onions as a sauce. Raw white bread with cheap vegan spreads from the store across the street with diet coke or plastic bottled water. Instant noodles from the Syrian store in the city.

That always gets me. Poverty-core, or something. Lmao.

Of course, everything that my mother cooks and I can't replicate (due to lack of skill or motivation) always reminds me of home.

Poverty-core LMAO. Student meals are notoriously a bit cursed for sure. My cousin said that during his college years tuna was super cheap, so he just ate macaroni with tuna like every single day. Every time I see the little tuna cans at the store, it reminds me of that lol.

I would have rather stayed home and been by myself most days, so I faked sick constantly to get out of going.

I actually did this a lot as well, haha. I even learned how to heat the thermometer with a lamp.... At some point my parents/teachers were getting worried though, like "you're sick like every month!" so I had to be more careful with the timing as time went on. But yeah, I had pretty good grades as well, so they didn't really view me as a "slacking student" or anything, that's probably why they didn't see through it. I learned to love solitude because of school.

• Not having control over what I get to eat at all... I remember begging my mom to buy a different yoghurt from the store from time to time, but she always got the cheapest ones that neither me nor my bro liked the taste of (we weren't that poor either, she was just super stingy). Same thing with every single food item.
• Internet being so goddamn slow, I think ours was like 5 MB... I remember downloading some games for legit 10 hours, and it was the worst when I would put it to download before going to school, and then my parent had turned off the PC while I wasn't home because "I noticed you left the PC on so I turned it off! Don't waste electricity!" dshgjskghs
• School. It absolutely ruined my motivation and love towards learning for a while, and I was bullied as well. The school drama was terrible as well, and the world felt so small in that sense, like your classmate doing x or y was the most important thing in the world. And being a kid and getting insecure about your hair or face or clothes... Ugh.

Do you have any distinct foods that remind you of a certain memory? Or the other way round, where a memory reminds you of some specific food? I feel like a lot of foods are tied to memories for me, especially with media, like these certain heart-shaped chips make me always think about one summer almost ten years ago when I was playing Mirror's Edge, and eating raw cookie dough makes me think about Hollow Knight lol. A combination of chocolate milk and buttery toast makes me think of this one time I was at my friend's place (we always ate that there) when she spilled all the chocolate milk because she tried to talk and drink it at the same time Like she forgot she had her mouth full of milk and tried to say something... Just another little funny memory from ten years ago.

Being an expert at denying the laws of everything.

Then I could live forever!

I mean, you can be an expert at *denying* the laws, but that doesn't mean they would stop existing

Hmm, this is indeed a very difficult question. I'd love to have expertise in mechanical/computer engineering so I could build anything! It's not really something I would go to a school over, because I don't want to do it as a living, but I'd love to build all sorts of gadgets and devices for my home, and reuse old washing machines and whatnot lol. Would also be super cool to build robots ÒwÓ Expertise in languages and music sound really tempting as well (I'm trying to learn how to make music for my games and I haven't really even gotten started, but I know it's gonna be loooong journey).

These are also called "sims", "sim games", or "play by post/PBP" and have been around forever!
Star Trek is one of the fandoms whose scenes is the most giant, with several sites hosting hundreds to thousands of players to this day.

I personally liked text-based roleplaying with graphical engine supplement more, as in GTA San Andreas roleplaying, but I also enjoy these forum roleplaying games.

 If you want to find some in your favorite fandom, just put in "<name> play by post" or "<name> forum sim" into the web search engine of your choice and see where it leads you!

An active news site for these kinds of games is Ongoing Worlds: http://www.ongoingworlds.com/blog/

(gasp) This is exactly it!! I love Star Trek, and I'm not surprised at all that they have their own one haha. Thank you SO much, I immediately found a lot of resources by using the "play by post" and "forum sim" search words! And Ongoing Worlds has a great catalogue of worlds as well, this is perfect

Maybe there's another term to it besides "roleplaying websites" but what I mean is those kind of websites/forums that had text-based roleplaying with other players. The site would have its own lore and history, and you would make your character, give them a personality and different perks, even add an image of your drawing or from online, and then you would send longer messages in some sorts of chats (they kinda looked like guest books in the sites I used) and interact with other players like this. The site would have events that you could participate in, by writing about your adventure alone in said event, or with other players who'd accompany you. But the point was to write longer pieces of text, so not like a chat room kind of vibe.

The ones I mostly used as a kid were actually usually about adopting like a creature, and then you would write about taking care of it, and playing with it, and visiting other kids and their creatures. <3 And you would get experience points based on your stories, money to buy items for your adoptable, and it would also grow older at the same time. I just think this kind of roleplaying is really cool, and I've been getting back into writing more lately so it'd be perfect for that as well. I've heard of the huge range of this kind of roleplaying sites, from zombie apocalypse to realistic horse-caring to playing as a dragon, but I don't know any active sites right now.

Do you folks know any roleplaying websites? Or did you roleplay in such sites in the past?

I like when the choice is left for me as well. I feel like in some websites every single link opens a new tab and it's just cluttering my already very much tab-filled browser When the link leads to a completely different site, like a youtube link or a wikipedia article, then I don't mind it though.

Linguistics

I don't know if it's just because it was the norm when I was young but I never minded low-poly graphics for some reason. I also don't know if it's nostalgia or some shit but nowadays I find some sort of charm in it that I don't see in newer games, especially when it's stylized like Crash, Spyro, or FFVII.

I love the original Spyro's aesthetics so much!! Especially the color palette and how goofy and adorable Spyro's model is. I don't know if it's nostalgia because I have that same feeling as well, but I didn't really play any of these games as a kid (Wii was my first console hfgsdkgs). Modern cartoony games all have that similar aesthetic to them (saturated colors, bloom effect, round shapes, that kind of fortnite-playdough-kind-of-vibe) so I'm def kinda fed up with it.

Majora's Mask is the one Zelda game I have tried that I haven't been able to finish. I always get lost and can't figure out what to do next. I need to look up a guide one of these days, because I love the darker style.

I prefer the 3DS version because the graphics have been enhanced quite a bit. I like low-poly games as well, but moreso the PS1 style than the N64 style. While technically superior, the N64's texture blending makes everything look very muddy whereas the PS1's textures are blockier but look really sharp. I think that's the style that holds up more today, since you can see it being replicated in retro-style games like Dusk.

I definitely needed to look up a guide a few time while playing it as well haha. I actually also have the 3DS version of this game, but I didn't really get super into it. The 3DS version is a lot more saturated and bright and doesn't feel nearly as sinister as the og. I also think the muddy colors add to the creepy vibe.

I love Bloodlines. I'm still waiting on the sequel but it keeps getting delayed.

Be sure to install the unofficial fan-made patch that restores and finishes a lot of cut content.

Aww dang, I hope they release it soon! Also I HAD to download the patch, it wouldn't even launch the game for me otherwise haha (playing on Linux is like that sometimes :happy:smile:.

I recently finished Majora's Mask (emulated N64 version), and I really loved it! I remember hating N64 graphics as a kid and thinking "who would think this actually looks good or immersive:dunno:" but I've grown to love the low-poly style these days I bought couple of games from the Steam Summer Sale and been playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines now, gotta love that early 2000s goth club aesthetic it has.

I read the original article and its follow-up. I think their point was encouraging in the end, to make a website about your niche interests and show your passions. But I agree that it was written in a mean-spirited and unnecessarily provocative way.

I agree with Pepyogurt that the opinion about "useless websites" is a very subjective idea of what a Neocities website should be about. I personally don't think people have to "offer" anything with their websites, as the article begs them to. I think a website can just be the person exploring the concept and having fun with it, no matter what it looks like, even if it's the basic "I love coding" type of website.

Hmm, I do think there are some useless websites though, that I hate seeing in my search results. I'm talking about the ones where I'd look up something like a question about a game, and the first few sites are some weird fake blogs that feel AI-generated; it's like an article, with a list of questions related to your search, but the answers are rarely correct and feel like copy-pasted from somewhere else. And many times when I'm searching something in different language, these kind of sites come up, with a terrible google-translate-esque text. I have no idea where these sites come from, and who's generating them, but I wish I could block them somehow. They literally offer nothing, since usually the answers they hold aren't actually helping with what I was asking in the first place.

I'm not sure if this thread's question was more about Neocities sites though, haha. Because I at least haven't come across any that I would think are cluttering the space too much or anything. Like if you wanna make a site that just has a spinning tomato in it and nothing else, I think that's cool, you know, it's your personal little footprint on the web. I think we see enough of that attitude of having to prove yourself, creating something entertaining and as the article also said "making (a site) is content creation", in social media. The whole word "content" feels sour to say at this point. I don't wish to see that kind of mentality in Neocities, where I hope people get to explore the art of web creation in whatever way they like (as long as it's not harming anyone or stealing people's stuff).

I just had a moment like this last night. There was a heavy thunderstorm, and it felt like a lightshow I could admire from my opened window. It was such a magical moment to see the lightning itself, drawn onto the sky, and hear the rumblings erupt, counting how close or far it took place. It was so incredibly entertaining to just sit there and feel it all happen and being anticipated to see the next strike. And albeit my view was to a parking lot where you could see the raindrops race in the light cast by the street lamps, it felt incredible to think about all the people in the past looking at that same kind of phenomenon and be struck by it.