Quiet Counterculture
December 7, 2021 at 19:56
I kind of miss GeoCities. Yeah, I said it. I don’t even remember what mine was called, but it was my pride and joy back in the 90s, when the internet was a younger, less polished, less… well, less miserable place. I remember the actual “city” I was in was Area51, which was the nerdy subculture area. That was definitely the right fit for me.
What I don’t like, though?
I don’t like the way the internet is now. I don’t like the ads (everywhere) or the fact that all the servers seem to be owned by giant megacorps. I loathe the necessity for privacy policies and data terms of service and cookie warnings- I understand why we have them, to keep those same corporations from exploiting our data- but I’m viscerally disgusted by the necessity for them. I don’t like that it’s so devotedly commercial, that “websites” are out in favour of social media, listicles, wikis and- you’ll laugh- blogs. Good blogs, where someone’s holding a conversation with you? Those I’m fine with. The fact that every third website now is a blog, though? That’s… genuinely kind of frustrating for me. In fact it’s genuinely spurring me on to make a couple changes.
First, this website. This one, right here, that you’re reading? It’s going to stop being a blog. There will be a blog on it, sure, yes, but it’s going to be a website. I have a couple pages- genuine, factual, here-is-some-information-and-it-doesn’t-matter-when-I-wrote-it there-is-not-a-wiki webpages- that I want to get up and running. One involves the work necessary to get a website very like this one up and running. Another involves the electronics project I’ve been working on for well over a year because my interest in my hobbies tends to wobble back and forth.
And I’m going to work on them here and there, where I have time, and they’re going to grow organically, and I’m not going to put a datestamp on them, because… I want to have a website again. Not flashy, not complex, just a collection of information that I want to share with everyone, and without (thanks, capitalism) any ads or slick themes or search engine optimization.