there seems to be an invisible division among people who can generally be counted as part of "our subculture": people who in some way use and create a web independent from the large players, usually utilizing an aesthetic inspired by the past, with a focus on personal expression and limited algorithmic and corporate influence.
On one hand, we have people who attempt to emulate what we used to have as closely as possible, and on the other hand, we seem to have people who attempt to build something new that combines the good aspects of the past with what we have learned during the 2010s and 2020s. This has some direct influence on web design: for example, do we use proprietary software or not? Do we think the browser wars were endearing or destructive (e.g. do we use iframes)? Do we think that corporate ownership of the internet as it was in the 90s through AOL et al was part of a more cozy internet or the beginning of the end? I have seen some people express this idea before, but I have not seen any larger discussion about it.
Is our general goal as individuals to revive the old web as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s? Or is our goal to build something new, perhaps merely inspired by what used to be there? Do we have an ideology and a goal for our indie web, or do we just think the 90s internet was better in every way? For example, very practically: do we use modern designed, but safe, free & open source, and self hostable chat protocols like Matrix (that might not be 90s-like, but do follow our general philosophy of independence and opposition to monetization), or do we use these MSN/ICQ revival services, which were arguably the beginning of corporate influence, spyware and costly "solutions" to commodify the internet?
Of course there are many different colorful individuals in this community and the indie web overall, so it is hard to make such hard divisions possible, but there seems to be a trend to both sides, generally. For example, Melonking itself definitely works with "old" components of web design like GIFs, older 3D modelling techniques and whimsical autoplaying, but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that I had ever seen anything like Melonking during the 90s or early 2000s. It's something entirely new, only really possible with 2020s internet speeds, tools and cultural impact. On the other hand, plenty of Neocities websites attempt to closely and uncritically emulate Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 without examining what was actually bad about the time: the culture for one, corporate influences like Microsoft running amok on our internet, and advertisements everywhere (even if it was the fun little blinkie banners). Plenty of people seem to have no ideology whatsoever about what makes the modern web bad, only that it does; and then fall in the same corporate pitfalls like Cohost, rehosting MSN/ICQ, repopulating old centralized social media, and so on, trying to emulate the 90s web.
It really is like the traditional-modern-postmodern division in art: are we just blindly imitating the traditional art of web design uncritically, or are we building a postmodern version of what we liked from back then, ironically remixed with a ton of self-awareness and today's influence into something new and better?
after months of absence and being frustrated with the concept and direction of Libre.Town as it used to be, I decided to completely reinvent the page from the ground up with a new goal, art direction and content.
I am proud to say that while the website has almost no content yet, it is accessible, ready to look at, and it works! I will update this thread with (significant) updates I do to the page, so check the thread every now and then if you like it. :3
It will contain journal entries, shrines, my creative endeavors, a link list, and much more. As you can probably see already, it is much different from what Libre Town used to be; and that is intentional. This one is much closer to an actual personal homepage like many people on here have. If you are wondering what led me to delete the entirety of old Libre.Town, which had way over a year of work put in it, feel free to read the blog post where I detailed all that happened: libre.town/thoughts/entry_1.xhtml
Oh, and if you have a cool lil website and want to be listed either as "friend of libre town" in the side bar or in the links section, feel free to reach out here or privately!
I am currently at a point where my website project (libre.town) has so many technical and design issues that I feel like I need to start over from scratch with it.
Now, I have been hesitant to rework the site, because I feel like it's throwing away a part of my history and substituting something new for it. In forms of art, writing or painting for example, people always stress that it is important to never scrap anything, for it might be worth something to you or someone else in the future, if only to look back at how far you've come. Websites do not have the luxury of being stashed away somewhere to read on demand; it's either online or not, and if they are online, there is still some expectation of the information on there being current or part of the author's view; for websites are information distributors first and foremost.
Are websites an inherently fleeting form of art because updating them is part of the idea? Should I start over, or preserve this in some way?
I noticed that I was one of the only people in my social group who were just not that much into anime. There was no particular reason for it, it just didn't catch on with me; plus the social stigma weighed down on me when I was younger, so I never bothered to try either.
I have since watched two seasons of Overlord, the entirety of Made in Abyss, most of Assassination Classroom, two seasons of Tokyo Ghoul, and started some that I only really got caught on for a few episodes before stopping: Haikyu!!, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and some others.
From those examples (with the exception of Haikyu!!), I inferred that anime was mostly based on gore & horror, absurdist/random loud cartoon humor, tense and heartbreaking scenes, fan service, and impressive action shots; things that I cannot really stand in media much. So, I never got further into anime.
But yesterday I started watching Cowboy Bebop (blind, for the first time), and holy hell, that completely caught me off guard! Atmosphere, art direction, music choice, all absolutely on point, on levels I haven't expected from any anime really. I just figured that I missed a lot by categorically being on the low about anime.
And that gave me the idea for this topic - along with the fact that I never watched Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or any of the big title movies really.
TL:grin:R:
So... what are genres or franchises you did not "get into" despite everyone else seemingly being familiar with them; and how come? I specifically don't mean genres or franchises you dislike, but those which you just knew existed without really engaging with them. And if you see that someone else never got into your fandom, well, try convincing them of why it is actually worth seeing! ;P
Memes. They existed then, called 'image macros' or simply as popular content online. Still, they are ubiquitous and a part of new and old internet culture alike.
I'd say that memes underwent a distinct three- or four-phase history:
1. Naive memes (not intended to be a meme): funny videos oe pictures with captions, rick roll, shock images, references to legendary chat quotes,... 2. Structured memes (intended to be a meme, follows a format): Rage comics, pepe, advice animals, demotivational posters,... 3. Absurd memes: The letter E, deepfrying, 🅱️, dat boi,... 4. Neo-traditional memes (reinventing and remixing old structures in new contexts): Wojaks, ironic memes, self referential memes,...
Interestingly enough, this maps perfectly onto the general traditional/modern/postmodern eras of art, just with a far faster evolution.
I intend this thread to be both a place for discussion about the history of memes, and to share old memes or even freshly made old memes in the vein of the retro aesthetic web revival.
Excuse the clickbaity title, but I have recently thought about alt-texts and captioning, and how it can help people beyond """only""" being accessible.
Obviously, accessibility. Blind people and people with bad vision can enjoy your content which they otherwise couldn't. This extends not only to entertainment, but also education, troubleshooting, socializing and much more.
No more image/link rot. Don't you hate that smug Photobucket smiley looking straight in your face stating that an image is no longer available? Hate broken image links because the hoster went down? Many old websites are now unusable because images with vital content in them (e.g. tutorials with images) were taken down upon the death of an image hoster. There aren't many good ways to combat that particular problem, but captioning images can help people in a few years or even decades understand what you meant, even if the accompanying picture is now gone.
Machine readability. Words are keywords, images are useless. Want to be indexed by a search engine? Well, your picture of text won't matter unless you have either alt text or captioning. Also, language research projects can use your text as data - how cool is that?
Backwards compatibility. Some browsers, especially old ones, cannot display images, or have serious formatting issues with them. Some others display only text by design, like text based browsers for your terminal; some computers are so old that they do not have a graphical interface at all, or are designed that way. I use Lynx sometimes, a text based browser, and I love when a site is simple and straightforward and displays without loss of information right in my terminal.
Inclusivity towards people with slow internet connections. Ever tried looking up a website with a 500B/s connection? They can turn off image loading to make it bearable, but then they might miss vital information.
Hopefully this can motivate some of you to use alt-text and captions more on your websites.
something really cool happened to me the day before yesterday.
I came across a random book in public, which I thought was kind of weird. It was Jane Austen's novel "Emma". I picked it up because, honestly, I decided I want to read Jane Austen because she is considered one of the classics usually and I have never read anything by her (not even Pride & Prejudice!).
I opened it up, and on the first page there was a sticker that said something to the effect of "This book is not lost or discarded, it is on a journey! Read it and then put it out to be found once more."
Apparently there's a thing called BOOKCROSSING which is kind of a mix between geocaching and take-one-leave-one libraries. You register a book at bookcrossing dot com, it gets assigned an ID, you put some information on/in it that explains the game, and then leave it in public somewhere. And when people find it, they are encouraged to register their find online using the ID (which notifies you) and leave a comment, then read it and send it on its merry way somewhere else. That way the book travels the world.
I thought this was super cool and a nice hobby to have. You can even go on little deliberate hunts for books; on the website it says roughly where there are still "wild" books to be found, and you can follow the steps to see where it leads you. It ought to be a really cool feeling to leave a book somewhere and get a mail a few weeks later that someone picked it up, read it and left a comment on it! You kind of made someone else's life a bit brighter.
I have recently noticed, that playing old games in modern times yields the best of both worlds and that really is what we are aiming for here, isn't it?
We have all the blockbusters of the olden days available for dirt cheap (or free :eyes:smile:, we can play everything on maximum graphics settings and fast loading times due to good hardware, have decades of mods, good Linux gaming support, can take advantage of modern hardware features such as portability (phones, Steam Deck, Switch, ...), touchscreens (I am currently playing Sims on a touchscreen laptop), legacy controllers, ...
Just some things that I can do today that would have blown people's minds a decade or two ago:
Play modded Sims 2 with all expansion packs (legally for free) on a touchscreen GNU/Linux laptop on the go
Own a modded PS Vita that plays hundreds of games from all retro consoles up to the PS Vita itself, all in one package that fits on a single SD card
Have a computer that can fit in my pocket but still play games like Skyrim or Civilization VI
Get from clicking 'play' to actually playing Sims 3 in ten seconds
Couple that with the ability to play modern games too, and the well-and-alive indie game subculture, and it's really a heaven out here. It's similar to the retro web really: combine the aesthetics and functionality of the old with the potential of the new.
I have recently thought about this; imagine you were an evil trickster demon or something ( ) on the mission to completely ruin the retro web/simple web for its users. The hiccup: you can only change one tiny thing about how it works. What would it be?
I'd introduce emoji reactions to forums and boards; you could like a topic or react with any number of emojis like on Facebook, but some of them would be obviously mean spirited or outright negative like a thumbs down button, an angry emoji or a nerd emoji. That'd surely change the culture a lot to the point where plenty of people would no longer be interested in it.
A lot of people in the retro aesthetic web revival/RAWR () subculture seem to be younger, too young to have consciously experienced the original web we are kind of modelling ourselves after. As someone who grew up during the last few years of forums and the old web, I see some things that are now different from what I am used to originally.
So, let this be a thread to collect little tidbits and ways in which our RAWR subculture is different from the original times.
I'll start with a few things:
People used to be very interested forum threads' position in the thread list, and would push them upward by posting nonsensical placeholders (often only the word 'push':wink:. That was frowned upon and often against the rules. You don't see this much anymore and people generally don't care about their thread being "buried" anymore.
There used to be a big obsession in forums with roles and ranks like moderator, administrator, helper, donator and so on to the point where I would notice their role first and their identity second.
Politics changed, and the RAWR subculture is much more diverse (gender, ethnicity, neurodiversity, age and so on), accepting, and progressive than I remember the original old web ever being, even on specifically progressive communities.
Low-effort responses are nowadays pretty rare because the kind of people who seek out the retro web are usually the ones who also strive to get away from shallow social media.
Many people who are participating in the retro web revival also seem to be reviving some other things — we have seen mixtapes getting back into circulation, people leaving their smartphones behind, old technology being utilized once more... do you think this can become a whole subculture? An anti-capitalist revival of the past, with associated clothing styles, slang, hobbies, meeting places?
Like, imagine just the same as there is a blues bar or a punk pub today, we'd all gather to drink homemade lemonade in a retro themed internet café...
seeing as quite some people here are into Star Trek, we should maybe try to organize a Star Trek webring! Not for just homepages of people who are into Star Trek, as that does not tend to be very interesting in and of itself, but perhaps we could choose to only accept Trek-related shrines, fanpages or subpages to the ring. I thought that'd be a super cool idea! That way you could click your way through the pages and find sites full of fanfiction, opinions, graphics, ships, gifs, reviews, blogs, and so much more, all Trek related.
I have never organized a webring before though so I don't know how it works but I could read myself into it. I'd gauge interest though before that, so, uh, hi, would anyone among you want to join? <3
I guess if we're all somewhat into alternative culture already, it'd be fun if we'd share our local artists here too!
That could be people you know personally, random gigs from your pub and the town over, or even your own music.
I'll start:
This isn't exactly specifically my own town or anything but I hung around with people who are also in her social circle:
Tags: Rap, Hip Hop, German
And this guy is actually secretly my history and politics professor in real life which is really hilarious because his second identity is "communist rapper".
I thought we should build up a general thread for people who are into GNU, Linux and free software in general to chat and share what we are working on/have discovered recently! There probably is a somewhat sizable overlap between GNU/Linux hobbyists and retro web enthusiasts simply because of the nonconformist tech aspect, so I hope we can make this a huge thread
As for me, I have been using GNU systems on a Linux kernel basis nonstop for the past years, practically since I got out of high school. For some time, I have dualbooted with Windows for gaming purposes but I was fed up with it pretty soon and switched to full time GNU/Linux.
Right now, I have the following machines:
Laptop: ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED w/ Arch Linux, XFCE4
Gaming Computer: Custom built w/ EndeavourOS, Budgie DE
Posts: 99/24hrs 
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) on the mission to completely ruin the retro web/simple web for its users. The hiccup: you can only change one tiny thing about how it works. What would it be?
) subculture seem to be younger, too young to have consciously experienced the original web we are kind of modelling ourselves after.
