The Revival Beyond The Web

[JINSBEK]

I think broadly, the people involved in “Retro” (or Personal) Web crafting are more sensitive to the lack of fulfillment and self-expression associated with the recent developments in technology, hardware and software alike. Buying the latest, fastest smartphone didn’t make them less anxious (if anything, the opposite…) and more intimately connected with those in their personal lives. Being on Instagram and Twitter hasn’t made it easier to focus on your art. “Hustling” and dedicating yourself to sheer productivity hasn’t made your home a sanctuary for yourself or your children… And so on, and so forth. At a certain point, a person may get fed up with it and say “No!”, and we’re seeing this with increasing amounts of people, and I wouldn’t call it a “Revival” in particular—just discontent and a rejection of the miserable status quo.

But you bring up a fascinating point. I do wonder how much of the “Retro” Web are involved with other “anachronistic” hobbies. I’m into Historical European Martial Arts, for example. Will I ever use a sabre in real life? Ideally no, I should not find myself cutting down people with any sort of bladed weapon from any century. Is learning how to fence fun, though? Yes, yes it is. <3

Why do people do anything? What adds meaning, substance, texture, joy, and gratitude to our lives? I think the Retro Web “movement” is a symptom of that broader questioning.

[fauxclore]

I agree

Why do people do anything? What adds meaning, substance, texture, joy, and gratitude to our lives? I think the Retro Web “movement” is a symptom of that broader questioning.

I agree that the "movement" is about the lack of meaning people feel more and more in their everyday lives. Although I'm not religious in any sense, I feel this lack of meaning arises from a disconnect with the "spiritual", both in the poetic and literal senses. A clean, homogeneous, corporate web experience is completely disconnected with how human beings interact with the world around them, and the compound alienation of having to spend (by leisure or work) our whole life online, in those hostile spaces, makes it unbearable at some point.

All my desires for slow living and interacting in a mindful way with media and the internet in particular stems from a deeper lack of "spiritual" or "human" interaction with the objects around me. I believe in an internet where yes, you do feel the lack of bodily presence of whoever you are talking with, but you also feel genuine connection. Algorithmic, clean, ad-riddled webpages and websites do not make me feel connected to anything. If anything, they make me feel even more alienated than the real, fast, unforgiving, cold world.

I'm so happy places like melonland exist, little pockets of "freer" air dotted around the web. 

[JINSBEK]

@fauxclore I think you would appreciate this paraphrase of physicist and thinker Blaise Pascal, written shortly before his death in 1662:
“There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart.”

The actual quotation in translation, from his unfinished book Pensées, is:
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God Himself.”

Humans, for whatever reason, desire and require a sense of communion and awe in order to thrive. Without these both, one is left feeling petty, limited, and disconnected from anything that transcends the purely self-centred individual. The design of many modern websites and platforms—and frankly, hardware—are sterile and devoid of both “organic” sensibilities and the transcendent qualities of aesthetics. They are numbing at best and infuriating at worst. I like the personal websites made by the people who gravitate towards the MelonLand community. They seem to embody something of the soul of the people who made them.

[fauxclore]

I completely agree with you. "Ugly", "kitsch" or "gauche" some websites may be, they also have so much more personality than all the sterile "user-friendly" mass-media websites out there. I even have a soft spot for badly designed, under-updated, public service websites where the last time they were "revised" flip-phones were all the rage.

But yeah, there's something that is filled by arts, culture, crafts that the modern internet lacks, but older usenet had.

[Thorn]

I like using old technology because it physically has less restrictions on it for use by companies than newer technology and it usually results in artists getting more money for their endeavors. When I buy a CD or tape, I know the artist is getting a certain cut of money from their initial sale to the shop I got it from or from the online sale itself, and I permanently own the copy of the music and no one can snatch it back because "the licensing expired". When I use the radio, I don't have to keep paying for a subscription to use it once I own the machine itself, I can just turn it on and listen to 3 dozen channels live for free. When I make my own website, I can express myself and vent and display my life exactly as much or as little as I wish to, I don't have to censor my struggles under juvenile code words like on TikTok and Instagram, I don't have to wait five minutes to swear like Youtube, and no one demands my real information and ID to track me like Facebook or like what lawmakers in states I've lived in want me to do to access adult information. I use old tech because Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerburg haven't figured out or found the need to track a customer's every move with machinery from the 1980s or older yet.

[musicobsessed107]

That actually reminds me. I make mixtapes of internet-only songs I enjoy, so I can listen to them without needing the internet, and have been doing the same with Youtube videos to VHS. Although I don't watch the latter as often as I'd thought, but it's cool that the option is there! To an ever lesser extent, I also burn digital-only games onto disc and make custom covers and CD art for them.

I've noticed that it's changed my reaction to a song being digital only from "I refuse to even listen to it unless it's on a CD or record" to "Ah well, time to record it on cassette!".

In other words, it makes me feel like I'm taking matters into their own hands, which is kinda cool.

I've taken that a step further by creating DVDs of a mid 2000s television series that never got a proper official DVD release for whatever reason but can easily find online videos of (The Buzz on Maggie, in case you were wondering what the show in question was) via YouTube to MP4 websites and DVDStyler for creating the disc menu and the actual burning of the disc.

And of course, I've also been taking steps to reduce my time spent online and have been trying to go outside or at least do more offline things at home more often, and I'm really proud of myself for doing this. Hell, in this day and age, being able to go even an entire day without logging on seems like almost like a superpower of some sort given how addicted the world has gotten to it. Listening to music on either my MP3 player or on a burned CD and watching shows and movies on DVDs helps me quite a lot with reducing my internet usage to healthy levels, and in turn makes me feel more in control over myself and where my focus is going towards.