I actually don't believe in the "production" theory. I think its narcissistic (on a species level) to think that the things we make represent any kind of identifiable "product" or evolved matter. We are energy, the things around us are energy; we are simply part of a process of energy transfer that happens everywhere.
So to me the web revival is not about reclaiming production in any form, it's about transcending the idea of it entirely. It's about saying that the idea of use and value is irrelevant
But we are humans, to us things do have use and value, regardless of whether you want that or not. You need food, so food has a very objective use value to you, lol. Without it, you die. And you need to produce food.
We can abstract anything to ridiculousness if we want: if nothing is actually produced because a product is just rearranged matter, then we also don't exist in the first place, because we are all just made of neurons that push energy towards each other. We don't think either, everything is predetermined, and no objects exist at all besides quanta and atoms.
While technically true on a physical level, a bit bleak of an interpretation if you ask me. Also it isn't really useful to us to interpret the world that way, because our minds after all do think in these categories: we see individual objects as individual objects even though they are made of millions of tinier objects in various relations to each other, with no real barrier to other objects.
Or in other words; it isn't useful to say that a river technically is not a tangible thing as it is just individual tiny particles of water with no relation to each other, if we want to redirect the river. And if you like it or not, coding a website is producing a website.
Honestly, if one's perplex about how this false focus on "usefulness" could emerge in someone's mind, and this entire narrative that we all need to be producing content in our free time or else it's "wasted" and "useless", it can be easily explained using a bit of scientific Marxism.
Let me give a little primer on Marxist economics.
The foundation of all societies is production. Production is all around us: if you cook a meal, you produce. If you write a book, you produce. Even if you wipe the floor, you produce. When you write a website, you also produce. The entire point of human existence is production: whenever you do anything that results in a result, you produce something. This is not bad, this is, in fact, very good: changing our environment and making objects become other objects by using our labor power is, after all, kind of the point of life. You cannot survive without production, since you need regular sustenance. This is not just the case in capitalism, but all of human existence.
Production results in a product (this does not necessarily need to be physical, a service such as a haircut is simply a product consumed immediately at production). Every economic system thus incorporates production in some way, and the specific manner in which that productive process is organized socially (since you usually need more than one person, plus tools and resources and capital to produce something, like food) is the basis of society.
One of the defining aspects of capitalism specifically, the economic system that we live in, is commodity production. In commodity production, we do not simply produce products to consume them, but to exchange them. We produce commodities. Commodities do not only have a use value (value through the human need it satisfies), but also an exchange value (value through what it can be exchanged for: money, mostly). Commodities are produced in order to be exchanged, not used directly. That is how capitalists are able to enrich themselves: they do not produce to satisfy a need, they produce to get something in return from the people who have a need. By the way, when people who know what they are talking about talk about "commodification", they talk about converting ordinary social processes outside the capitalist economy, into commodity production, by turning ordinary products into commodities. This happened, for example, with many services like childcare, transport, food delivery, and in some countries, love or friendship.
Anyway.
What this retro web debate is all about is a difference in culture. The retro web can potentially be an expression of opposition to commodity production. In ordinary social media, we all produce commodities for the social media service owner, similar to unpaid employees. We produce data, they can sell it. We "produce" engagement, they can sell the resulting clicks to ad agencies. We produce content for their websites, which increases the use value of their service: a social media site with many users will be more useful than one without. And in many creative hobbies such as art, we directly produce: some of us as commodities (those who sell their art, writing in exchange for a price, or regular donations such as ko-fi or Patreon), and some of us simply as a hobby, as a product with a use value.
And that is the crux of the issue: Many people start making personal websites in order to produce their content without an exchange value: they do not want to participate in commodity production. They produce art, writing, websites, blogs, that all have a use value (entertainment, socializing, ...), but publish them for free, without any exchange. They produce only to satisfy a social need.
Now, people like the one who wrote the blog on the other hand cannot fathom that people want to produce without an exchange value. Capitalism shaped them to the point where they actively dislike anything BUT commodity production. This is not a personal failing in many ways, but they are simply a product of their environments, as we all are. Naturally, in a world that constantly tries to underpay and exploit those whose labor is commodified, aka the working class, insisting on receiving something in exchange for your labor is a very natural self preservation instinct.
You can also see this effect in people outraged about looking for people to work on your project with you for free; people saying that you are looking for "free labor" and quoting hourly rates at you when all you want is someone to help you work on a project without exchange value: something BUT a commodity.
Of course, since we live in capitalism, our economic worth and well-being is directly tied to our devotion to exchanging our labor for money. We ourselves are commodities: commodities for people who own means of production: business owners, for example, who buy our force of labor in exchange for money in order to use our labor to produce other commodities: the things we produce at work. They can then sell these commodities for their exchange value, and their profit margin comes from what amount of more value it is worth compared to what they pay you for your labor. Since your labor was the force that initially produced said commodity though, you are being undercut: but they can freely do that to you because you do not own capital, you know, a big office building, a farm, a factory, or industrial size machines. They pocket the surplus value between your labor and your pay, when all they have contributed to production is owning something, aka no labor at all.
In socialism, which is nothing but the negation/antithesis (opposite) of capitalism, commodity production would hence not exist. All production would be similar to what we do here in the retro web: producing to satisfy a use value. There would not be a middle man such as a business owner since there is no exchange value to even undercut: labor is no longer a commodity, and commodities themselves do not exist anymore. Incidentally, people focus too much on the ownership-of-capital detail, so what you will read online and even from many self-proclaimed Marxist organizations and countries such as China, Cuba, the USSR and so on will contradict this: but their regimes did nothing more than usurp the role of the capitalist in the ownership of capital and concentrate it in the hands of the state. They did not abolish commodity production (you still got a wage, your labor was a commodity and you produced and bought commodities), hence capitalism was not negated, hence why none of these states have ever achieved socialism, regardless of what they might say.
Ahem. Sorry for the tangent. But it might explain the difference between our way of thinking and this person's way of thinking.
Wow, that article was bleak. Some people really have absorbed the notion that everything they ever do has to be productive, be efficient, result in content, and is theirs and theirs only because other people interacting with or taking their material was a threat to them; when really, the only thing they lose when someone copies their code is their high horse.
I wonder how much of the retro web revival is actually also built around the same psychological mechanisms, just less obvious. We still live in the same society that rewards all the toxic things after all, and it shapes us.
Like, are we all just kidding ourselves here? Isn't a significant part of our participation in the retro web subconsciously driven by yearning for recognition and belonging to in-groups like yesterweb or melonland, and becoming a well known site/user/person? Isn't one of the reasons we dislike mainstream social media the fact that we don't stand out enough due to the oversaturation of content, and migrate here for the potential of becoming prominent in a niche? I can't tell, I don't trust my own judgement.
And if that's so, is that even something bad and undesirable, or a healthy natural byproduct of being creative, wanting validation, acclaim and approval? Is attention not a good thing? Is perhaps the vilification of attention and validation seeking behaviour the real scourge social media inflicts?
I have just finished Mafia: Definitive Edition and it became one of my new favorite games! Open world but linear crime game, 1920s-1930s, gorgeous graphics, movie-level voice acting, impressive animation work, a shitton of cars, simulation driving and an optional ultra hard mode!
Thought about calling it the Great Link, because that'd be hilarious, but that already was a webring back in the days apparently and I don't want to step on anyone's foot.
That's why it's going to be called Communication Relay Station 47 - or simply Relay Station 47, or CRS47 for short.
... I set up the deck and all but it ain't working. QwQ Trying to rewind or play just makes a mechanical grinding noise for a few seconds and it stops. Friend of mine services hifi and they said it's probably a snapped belt. Ugh.
Also remember to go and take walks every so often, it's good for clearing your mind on a lot of things.
Absolutely. And always remember that a specific site on the internet is not representative of the real world. It attracts people of some certain demographies.
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.
Im gonna introject pedantically and say the steam deck is not a console. Its a mini pc And as for steam decks.. I don't really understand them.. like.. Iv never wanted to play PC games on the train.. and at home a normal pc/console is much better value.. but people seem to be into it!
Well, it is a strong handheld PC, which means all the advantages of PC gaming in a handheld form factor, for a small price point, with a library bigger than any other console.
Im super guilty of using way too many big gifs and images, and i think alt text and image captions are awesome, but apparently not awesome enough to have implemented them anywhere on my sites. Its kind of ridiculous because I love describing things and I needa get off my butt and start. I have never heard of Lynx before, and i find that really interesting and exciting, and I think both the original post and finding out about that is definitely starting a snowball. I can't wait to try... Its like reading sites like a book... Thats so cool
I mean, that is basically what the internet was intended to be: a way to serve static documents from other computers to yours, wirelessly. Early browsers also let you theme websites locally — font size, styles, textures, colors... It was meant to be simply formatted text sites with information on it. At some point, the internet just started to grow like a tumor and demanded more and more features: hardcoded styles, frames, interactivity, 3D rendering, random code, cookies... Some of it beneficial, other things contradicting the point of the internet in my opinion.
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Also it isn't really useful to us to interpret the world that way, because our minds after all do think in these categories: we see individual objects as individual objects even though they are made of millions of tinier objects in various relations to each other, with no real barrier to other objects.
