What aspects of the old web should we leave behind?

[Kallistero]

Now, the thing about edgy jokes back then is that if you actually believed in the edgy humor, it made people see you as stupid. An edgy cultural center of the Web in its transitional period, it had emblazoned something like "the stories here are works of fiction, only an idiot would believe in them," stuck right at the top of the page. That was the general sentiment, that it's not to be taken seriously, and if you do take it seriously, you're not very bright.

Over the course of a few years, people who probably frequented Tumblr had their communication missteps ridiculed, and no sooner than that, their opposition came out in force, with some of those people just proving their point that actual bigots were a cultural force. That's a big reason the Internet became serious. Web content highlighted a selected sample of people who weren't able to effectively communicate something serious, and people took that as meaning that the serious thing needs serious opposition, as well as serious advocates. Otherwise, the other side will seriously take over. So that's basically why edgier jokes were okay back then but not so much now, just because people who actually believe in the edgy things have become a visible force in the wider culture. You used to be able to take for granted that the person telling the joke wasn't actually a bigot, but now, you can't be so sure. Going back to how people used to be more flippant with language (and describing that as having hateful intent) actually IS looking at another culture and seeing things through the lens of your own culture.



A basis of that is what a lot of people miss from the culture back then: the Internet being serious business was just a silly meme. People don't say "it's just the Internet" in the sense that they used to anymore. The edge CAN'T come back because the culture has begun to take seriously viewpoints that used to be outright jokes and probably should've stayed as such. Poe's law manifested and took away the thing that made the edgy humor okay in its cultural context, where "bigoted" was synonymous with "stupid."

It was probably inevitable as more kids gained Internet access and couldn't tell the difference, meaning they'd grow up genuinely believing in things that people said to mess with them as jokes when they were kids. It's why it can still be irresponsible to use too-edgy humor on a public platform. 99.8% of people might know that it's a joke, but that 0.2% of people who might take it the wrong way will just grow as that happens iteratively with the proliferation of content from people who become trusted voices, the "influencer" landscape. You'd rather have created 0% bigots iteratively than having created 0.2% of them, only to have the next creator iterate over that same audience to turn another 0.2% of the rest of them, and so on. It chips away, almost silently, at the edges of culture, until it becomes loud. Therefore, you now need to be more responsible with the edge. It's toothpaste that doesn't go back in the tube until the wider culture has moved again, to recall (in a neutral sense rather than a factional one) why having genuine viewpoints like that is unbecoming of bright & honest people.

[Thorn]

I think one major aspect of the old web that has to be left behind is the idea of anonymity unfortunately. There was a pervasive attitude in the old web that you could be anyone you want to be and be freed from certain censorship online, that you could perhaps voice views and stories being suppressed by your locality and country through making your own website or using forums or any number of things, and while that may have been true for the initial years of the internet before law enforcement caught up to the pace of technology, it's certainly no longer the case. Even outside of social media, the capacity the governments of colonialist, industrialized countries have for data scraping, location tracking, web censorship, and identification even when one gives out no personal information is incredible, and far more extensive than most civilians really realize or think about in their daily lives. It should not be this way by any means, and the fact that governments do this at all (especially the U.S., Russian, and Chinese governments, as they're particularly aggressive with surveilling citizens online and restricting certain websites and news sources) is deeply dystopian and frightening. I get that by going back to the use of the old internet, we can protect some measure of privacy in a way that's not possible on social media. But it's critical to keep in mind that over the last 20 years, the governments of the world have hired way more tech experts and invested a crap ton of money into the latest and greatest in data processing and computing, and as a result they have gotten really good at monitoring online activity and tracking people at both a large population scale and a small individual one. Even if you use the old net and want to engage in anticapitalist action through that, you have to keep in mind that even obscure sites are not nearly as free and private as they were in 2003. Unless you are actively end-to-end encrypting things between entirely secure machines with people you know personally and are wholly and totally sure you can trust, always assume that anything you do digitally can be monitored, and that anything you say can behind a password can be cracked into. Again, hopefully this will not always be the case, but for the foreseeable future of the internet it is, and we can't let nostalgia obscure the fact that this is a fundamentally different legal world of the internet.

[Memory]

[removed by author]

[Memory]

Even if it's difficult to get 100% anonymity, the idea of anonymity (at least in the context of human-to-human-interaction) is important for the web culture and has to be carried high in my view.

The number of busted VPNs... even TOR is infiltrated (though to which percentage would be a good question). Seconding what @j said, if you want real privacy, don't go online. The goverments have the power to monitor everything, as they had it back then. In the 80s, people got their homes hijacked for running non-certified modems... the goverment found it out over telephone lines, even before the internet era. In that regard, the web was never fully open.

However being able to write a certain amount of nonsense (always with the question in mind: how defines what's nonsense?) without having the full name and address out there is quite worth something. Even if it's not safe from the goverment, being not exposed directly to a possibily violent horde is worth quite something. Be it in the old web, or the Web 2.0.

----

Technically, I'd like to see user-agents being dumped from the web standards. Browsers getting blocked by their user-agent is silly. When changing the user-agent leads to different results... with the same browser being behind it, that's technical nonsense. If the browser can do it, then let it do it's job. Pale Moon and Seamonkey users will notice this problem on certain websites for example.

[villiersterrace]

I actually don't think it's a bad thing to not be mobile friendly. If someone is using neocities, they are probably on a computer. I think we should leave behind the toxicity of the old web. If you go on the blog section of Spacehey, you will usually see people complaining about random things and drama posts. There is so much transphobia on that website, and it's one of the main "old web" sites. Also, one of the most popular neocities pages is open about being "gender critical."

[Memory]

Even if it's difficult to get 100% anonymity, the idea of anonymity (at least in the context of human-to-human-interaction) is important for the web culture and has to be carried high in my view.

However being able to write a certain amount of nonsense (always with the question in mind: how defines what's nonsense?) without having the full name and address out there is quite worth something. Even if it's not safe from the goverment, being not exposed directly to a possibily violent horde is worth quite something. Be it in the old web, or the Web 2.0.

Agreed! I think that anonymity is freeing. Part of the appeal of the web, particularly personal sites over social media, is that you don't need your name & face attached to everything. I think of it almost like a nom de plume. I also just find the move away from anonymity online to be really invasive. I'm taking a communications class as part of my degree plan, and a lot of what we learned was on the topic of anonymity, social media, how future employers can see anything you've said, & it just felt really dystopian. It's actually why I don't use social media. I should be able to just exist without being monitored. The fact that anonymity is often seen as a bad thing rather than a comfort or a virtue is disconcerting to me. I just don't understand it

[Memory]

I actually don't think it's a bad thing to not be mobile friendly. If someone is using neocities, they are probably on a computer.

Agreed! I think the act of sitting down & booting up your computer is far more purposeful than scrolling on your phone, because many aspects of phones and social media are by design intended to be addictive. I think that engaging with online content purposefully & not passively is much better for us, & this is why I haven't bothered making my site mobile friendly. Nothing I have on my site is a pressing matter, it's nothing you need to rush to see, so just boot up your computer & take your time. I like the old web because you're meant to take it slow.

[wygolvillage]

I hugely agree with both of Vashti's posts on the matter, they really speak to a lot of things I like about the web revival.

[fatgrrlz]

I kind of take issue with the idea of not needing to make the site mobile friendly because it’s “intended to be consumed by desktop”. Most people have phones nowadays - and many people, including folks in the Indie Web community, use them more than their actual computers, whether out of simply using them more, not owning a computer, or through disabilities that temporarily/permanently bar them from using their computers. The earlier posts in this thread exemplify this need for incorporating accessibility in our websites’ designs, and while responsive web design is only one part of a multifaceted response to accommodations for those that need them, it’s something that enables vastly more people to enjoy visiting your site and see what you have to say, disabilities or not. The “phone bad” rhetoric is silly at best and exclusionary at worst.

I also disagree with and am confused by the idea that mobile usage is inherently “passive”. While this can be applied to social medias, sure, isn’t the phone itself is simply another medium of accessing the website - like a tablet, laptop, desktop, or what have you? After all, what is a phone if not a computer with an alternative mean of user interfacing? Most apps on mobile can be on desktop, after all.

In that case, isn’t the onus on us as webmasters/webdevs to ensure that the experience of our own websites purposeful, regardless of the medium your site is viewed with?

At the end of the day, design your website however you want, but considering so many people in the Indie Web go out of their way to exclude people over the platform they use for the sake of “authenticity” or what have you, it becomes a real issue for those that can’t just “get a PC LOL”.

Editing rather than replying because my post sucked at getting my point across.

[Memory]

I kind of take issue with the idea of not needing to make the site mobile friendly because it’s “intended to be consumed by desktop”. Setting aside the obligatory discussion on the accessibility of phones, I disagree with and am confused by the idea that mobile usage is inherently “passive”. While this can be applied to social medias, sure, isn’t the phone itself is simply another medium of accessing the website - like a tablet, laptop, desktop, or what have you?

In that case, wouldn’t the onus be on the creator of the website to make the experience purposeful rather than passive, regardless of the medium used to access the site?

I can kind of see what you're saying, but I still disagree. I basically purged my phone of all of my apps & I'll find myself turning it on with nothing particular in mind. I've never turned on my computer without thinking about it. I think the phone's ease of access is kind of a bad thing, for me personally at the very least. You can open your phone pretty mindlessly, you know?

And as for "not needing to make the site mobile friendly," I'm of the opinion that I don't need to make my site any sort of way. I don't see why I should take the time to make my personal site work on mobile if I'm never going to view it on my phone. My site is for me, not others. I think part of it may lie in your site's purpose? My site just houses my writing & is only made with myself in mind, so I don't have others in mind when coding or adding to it. If I made my site with the intention of being seen, then I could maybe see myself making it mobile friendly, but even then, I don't want to. It's one thing for say your doctor's office to make their webpage mobile friendly, because it's so their patients can access it; It has an obvious purpose in being mobile friendly. People without phones can access it in a convenient manner. I don't see why my personal hobby site needs to be that way. I'm not a doctor's office, I'm not a business, and I don't personally care if my site looks wonky on mobile. I don't even super care if anyone actually looks at the site; It's nice & it makes me happy, but I'd still code away even if no one but myself paid attention to it. I also think that it's asking a lot to expect people to format their site to mobile. I mean, I have no clue how to do that.

I think that you & I may just have different philosophies behind our sites in mind, assuming that you have a personal site. When you said it's up to "the creator of the website to make the experience purposeful rather than passive," that's where I think we disagree. I don't cultivate any particular experience for anyone viewing my site, that's on them. I see them as people looking in, while the site is just for me.

All of this being said, I'm not against making my site accessible on mobile. If I didn't have to code it all & it was easy as the press of a button, I'd probably do it. I just don't see why I should go out of my way to make it accessible when I personally do not care about it.

[Memory]

My site is for me, not others.

Big believer that not every personal site has to be accessible to everyone. It's in the name IMO: Personal site.

I think it's important to leave behind carelessness in regards to the old web, and what I mean by that is we should strive to treat fellow net users with the same care and consideration as we do with those in our daily life. Anonymity is important, but it's also cool to be kind. I remember being really scared about talking in online spaces when I was younger because no one cared to be kind, or at least it was highly uncommon. Even now I sometimes get worried over sharing my opinion, and so I think it's important to be better and nicer to others compared to the old web. (I hope this makes sense!)

[Memory]

Honestly I don't care if you make your site mobile-friendly or not (still a good idea to do so if you can), but I wish people would stop acting like the only reason people use phones or mobile devices is for mindless scrolling. I use mine because I have bad fatigue and migraine days and it's easier to lay down in bed and do the stuff I need to do online on my phone rather than sit up in front of my PC feeling like I'm going to pass out or like my head is going to explode. Not only that, but PCs and laptops are often more expensive than mobile devices in my experience. I didn't have a PC or laptop until I was 17, but I did have a tablet before that because that was what my family could afford.

I don't know. I'm just tired of seeing those sort of assumptions about mobile users, it feels patronizing and insulting.

[Kolo]

I can kind of see what you're saying, but I still disagree. I basically purged my phone of all of my apps & I'll find myself turning it on with nothing particular in mind. I've never turned on my computer without thinking about it. I think the phone's ease of access is kind of a bad thing, for me personally at the very least. You can open your phone pretty mindlessly, you know?

This is interesting to me because I have the exact opposite problem, actually! :D I hated using my phone for anything and refused to download anything except a few games on it (that I promptly stopped playing). I don't actually even have a phone anymore (we noticed the battery swelling and disposed of it safely in one of those special dropoff locations) and haven't wanted one since. I'll need to get a cheap burner eventually because... well... society Needs one... but it's not a priority for me. I've never found it addicting.

But my computer is - literally almost always on. I sleep with it nearby me. I'm on it nearly all the time. Not necessarily mindlessly scrolling on it, I'm usually doing art or writing on it, but I've always felt more "addicted" to a laptop than a phone by all means. I don't even really know why... it's funny because my partner prefers her phone because she types faster on it/has gotten used to using it after not having a computer for so long, but she mostly uses it to communicate with me and play one or two little apps that interest her on her breaks at work.

Different perspectives! It's neat to see. Wonder how much it's related to the fact that I never got into most social media? I occasionally poke my head in but I get bad guilt spikes when I look at socmed feeds longer than a few minutes. Thinking....

[Absentmind]

Maybe a controversial opinion BUT I hate when a site has auto-play music. I know its supposed to be part of the experience but 99% of the time I get jump-scared by some really loud compressed bit crushed tune and I end up muting the tab. I think Melonking.net does a good job at handling music and sound where it sort of eases you into it.