Can a website be "useless"?

[shevek]

Would it be wrong to feel bad for demo in this topic? Not sure how well he would take his blog post being dissected in a forum topic like this while being criticized. After all he would not have expected this if at all.

In my opinion, if you are publishing blog posts, you should expect people to read them, form their opinions and they may choose to respond or pick up on it - I did the same a while ago. Blog posts are usually meant to be shared, or at least will be, if they are of value or interesting for positive or negative reasons. It's just another article, and Dokodemo is one of the bigger sites on neocities and is probably used to the many eyes. And I think most of the replies are not really about the blog post, but it has only served as a starting point for a discussion about the initial question.

That said, I have also stopped engaging with that particular source because I find most of the blog posts "mean-spirited" as the OP said, or at least being in a questionable tone.

[ItzKey]

Everyone here makes very valid points and counter points.

My thoughts are that people put out their sites for themselves first and foremost, so any perceived social value doesn't matter. Just like "Saturn Devouring His Son" by Goyo. It wasn't intended to be seen, given value, or even a name except for Goyo himself, yet society has done all three despite never needing it to have any.

I don't blame mariteaux for being so outwardly biased about how websites could or should be, and he continues to make his opinion clear, if wild in his approach. He even says in his "I fucked up and I give up" post when he says his whole point was "fuck what I like, do your own goddamn thing". He wants you to make a website that calls to you as a person, not to make a website that only appeals to others. I personally have a negative opinion about flamboiant use of curse words to make a point, but when stripped of it the point becomes easier to understand.

I love his passion about individuality, and that people should upkeep that said individuality. He loves websites, and what people come up with. He's just incendiary as a point. He even made his own "Nostalgiamining" (I very much don't like this term) site and enjoyed it. It RPs as a site made from someone in the late 90's and is wonderful.

Make what you want, the way you want to, because that's how you want it to be. Be it for others, yourself, or both. Value be damned.

[shellsharks]

Never!

[NoxidKin]

I love that this article about Neocities page devolved so quickly into navel-gazing philosophy, that's what the web revival is about!  :D

I hope nobody thinks my page is too pointless, what a mean thing to say.  :(

I'm glad not many people seem to agree.  :)

[larvapuppy]

Who decides what is useful? Who decides which art is allowed to exist and which isn't?

Look up the term degenerate art as used by a certain historical political party and compare to this discussion of usefulness. What message does linking to the "delete your website" send? *I'm not being dramatic, I'm putting two and two together.

We don't have to like all art, and art that is "useful" to one person might not be useful to another. It's a bit sad that we still have to explain the concept of people having different opinions being okay to fully grown adults with large internet platforms. 

Reminds me of the story "The Rock That Changed Things" by LeGuin. The interpretation by those in power (often the most smug and self-satisfied people you'll ever meet) is taken as the only valid interpretation. The rest of us don't get to read the patterns or express ourselves in ways that suit us. We're individualistic without individuality.

[Memory]

i mean, i guess lots of those 'useless' websites are more like lures for me, lol
my ADHD gets caught on them for a whiile, and doesn't want to let go!

though, i can also see them being helpful for people who need a distraction. whether it's for genuinely horrible things or even just someone being annoying next to them, i think that's probably their purpose!

[boreal_cryptid]

many many many people here said it better than i would ever. i just want to add a small thing: you don't need to finish creative projects ASAP. you don't have to finish or polish them at all.

it's your space first, not others'. you can create a purpose for it yourself: train HTML/CSS skills? cool. try to code just because you're interested in trying things? good. create "art" code (when website looks like an art project itself)? cool. want to fill it with your creative projects? cool. want to unlink all pages and write only for yourself? cool. want to make it a links and bookmarks pile? cool.

not you, not your creativity don't have to be "useful". so it can't be "useless". you're good! :3

[Monoki]

“Usefulness” is rather subjective.

I get Doko’s zealous about passionate websites. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad.
But also you can kill other people’s creative passion by being hard-nosed about it.
So in a sense it feels a bit ironic to me.

[Aarix]

To a degree, I do sympathise with the frustration expressed in the article (which I can't seem to access at the moment even on wayback, but did read a few weeks ago while formulating a reply to this thread). Many websites do seem to be more retro style than substance, and it's a style that doesn't even do anything for me personally. But I would not use the word "useless" to describe them--they have a use to their creators, presumably. "Repetitive", perhaps... but what's the harm in repetition, apart from wearying a wayward websurfer? As others have said, personal websites do not necessarily exist with the goal of amusing strangers. Many do, but it's not a requirement, nor an expectation of mine. Do I wish I saw less recycled deviantart stamps and more bespoke content & stylings? Sure, but digging around for the things I like is part of what makes exploring the indie web so fun in the first place. Some people like comfy webcore chilltimes, and other people like other stuff--it's all good.

But, wait a sec... What is uselessness, anyhow? Must everything, or indeed anything, be justified by a purpose? The economic / Marxist engagement with the idea on the previous page was interesting, though my own impulse is to get more general...

Nevermind websites--is the wren in my garden useless? Certainly, she provides neither any direct use nor economic value to anyone. If we wanted to get teleological about it, I suppose we could argue that the her raison d'etat is to perform a role in the ecosystem. More teleologically yet, the bird simply provides me with some aesthetic enjoyment while I'm having my morning coffee on the verandah. I hope we can agree that the wren is, herself, probably indifferent to either of these things--her own presumable goals of survival and reproduction (as well as any unpresumable avian motives) may more accurately "justify" her existence.

But why does anything need justification in order to exist at all? Our species definitely haven't arrived at a consensus yet as to why the universe exists in the first place, and we've been thinking about it for thousands of years. The most scientific explanation is that our whole world is nothing more than a consequence of things fizzling into entropy in accordance with nature's rules; in other words, everything is useless. And when everything's useless....



...nothing is >:)

_{(wait, a vicenarian pop culture meme? isn't that just as unoriginal as covering one's page in dA stamps? Oh, the cognitive dissonance! my smug sense of individuality, it's unraveling! noooOOooOOoo!!!)}

[Memory]

i think i didn't even really read this. sorry..

personally i feel if someone wants their site to be the way it is, then that's fine. especially judging it could quite potentially kill their creativity - it might be just starting to grow.

it def feels a little deflating going into a site that's not a whole lot though, but i just move on and forget about it.

[lakes]

Threads like these are why i love forums lately.
I'd like to add something though: sites can start out as retro nostalgia bait and then grow into being about other passions.
At 1st, I just wanted a pretty site, to list my new socials at the time, that looked like windows 7 and I used a template for this.
But then I saw people post art, write blog posts and fanpages and went "hey i can do that!" So I did. Now people who see my site know what shows/movies/software/etc I like, know my perspective on issues, and can see my drawings and image edits. That's not to say that sites that aren't meant to have a point other than looking pretty are "bad" so much that we all start somewhere and I don't think if people discouraged me at every turn I would've gotten here.

[ヤーナム]

Threads like these are why i love forums lately.
I'd like to add something though: sites can start out as retro nostalgia bait and then grow into being about other passions.
At 1st, I just wanted a pretty site, to list my new socials at the time, that looked like windows 7 and I used a template for this.
But then I saw people post art, write blog posts and fanpages and went "hey i can do that!" So I did. Now people who see my site know what shows/movies/software/etc I like, know my perspective on issues, and can see my drawings and image edits. That's not to say that sites that aren't meant to have a point other than looking pretty are "bad" so much that we all start somewhere and I don't think if people discouraged me at every turn I would've gotten here.

I just want to say I really love your site, and I especially love your animated favicon. <3 So cozy.

[lakes]

I just want to say I really love your site, and I especially love your animated favicon. <3 So cozy.

Thanks. I also want to say your art is very relaxing. (At least the crescent moon one I saw.)

[rolypolyphonic]

I admittedly don't care for 'nostalgia-mining' (which is kind of a ridiculous term) because I generally dislike 'things are better because they are old' as a mindset (Things that are old can be better, but it isn't because they're old). I don't think it's a problem for something like 'motivation to create my own website' per se, so much as I associate it with larger frameworks/schemas of thinking that I don't really jive with, and I often see it alongside other disagreeable ideas.

With that said, I feel like the whole idea that 'useless' websites are bad not only on, say, an aesthetic level, but even an 'ideological' one because it's seen as, I don't know, giving into the corporate overlords and not truly 'letting go' of social media seems mean-spirited. I'm not familiar with the people name-dropped in the older posts of this thread, but based from context I assume the ideals are similar to something I see around indie web spaces in general: that social media has 'killed' creativity and made everything all about fame and 'engagement' (this in itself, while basing on truth, I still find to be a reductive idea, quite frankly, because it's been parroted around without nuance, and is often condescending) and so websites that are made based on what is 'popular' or perceived to be popular on the indie web (usually a comment levelled towards [so-called] imitations of the '90s/Geocities style') are seen not only as 'generic' but in some way almost politically fraught.

Or you know, maybe it's because a lot of these websites are made by younger people and/or beginners and that demographic tends to learn first by imitation? I don't even care for these types of so-called 'useless' websites but I see it as having just as much gravity as a beginner artist drawing bug-eyed anime girls with their arms behind their backs so they don't have to draw the hands. An individual creation being 'good' ipso facto is sometimes not really the 'point' of it existing, and the way that some people have oriented the 'advocacy' for webweaving as being about 'defeating' corporate social media and its 'lack of creativity and human soul!!!111one!' instead of being about the act and craft of the actual website itself is a bit dispiriting.