I guess that's a culture thing but its fascinating.
Definitely a culture thing! These are all based on stereotypes and these probably shouldn't even exist. But cultural stereotypes tend to have an effect on identity, so the statistics still hold up largely. Plus other spaces tend to be unwelcoming to alternative people. The retro web definitely is a very accepting and cozy place to be.
Edit: Also it just occurred to me, why would women be so prevalent here when they are on normal social media aswell?
I suppose it's mostly because creativity for the hell of it tends to be a "feminine hobby" while creating for profit and success is stereotypically a "masculine hobby". Nerdy women who can't draw or make music but still want to express themselves might become web designers for their own homepages while you see a lot of techbros with their own glorified CV websites on the other side.
(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
Oh you're in for a treat! There are hundreds of PbP games still ongoing and many of them have been running for decades! The system has been improved so much that there's dedicated software now to make playing them a blast, and people are active in these communities too. And they're always looking for younger people to join and carry on the hobby, because many of them are now oldtimers who started doing this by snail mail or usenet!
I agree that small forums are the best and outpace Reddit/Twitter/et al at every turn, really. I tend to check the unread posts multiple times a day to catch up and read everything, which is in my opinion the best way to utilize a forum like this. Bigger forums quickly become obtuse (which isn't always a bad thing, pick and choose the topics you like) but there's this sweet spot of about 10 new posts every few hours that supplies you with a big (but manageable) amount to read and catch up with if you want to. And Melonland hits this very well!
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.
tends towards a female and progressive user base, and is largely a part of the queer/neurodiverse community.
Off topic but I only just made the correlation between demographics, I wonder why it is.
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.
I don't know if a webring specifically would find enough participants (it do be a very niche topic) but maybe a collaborative shrine with links to individual pages would be cool? :O
then again, what more is a webring if not that? hmmm.
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!
I want the website to make no decision for me; I will do middle click if I want a new tab and simple click if I want the same tab. If the website overrides it with its own preferences, I am annoyed. Thus I voted same tab, because that's the default.
(I deliberately made some of the tags unusable because the forum would parse them otherwise.) As you can see, I could customize background images, colors, fonts, and so on of the body, and did extra styling for the links so they wouldn't be blue.
I'm in Germany, and I am sure we have many novelty drinks and snacks over here that you can't really get your hands on in other places, so if anyone wants me to go on a little hunt to a store and get something unique, I'm offering to send that to you!
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