nice little website ya got here
hello. my name is not important. i use the handle "fiestabucket" pretty much everywhere. you can call me fiesta if you wish. but like i said my name is not important.
remember when the internet was fun?
my newest obsession: personal websites. the old web. somewhere between web 1.0 and 2.0. if you're like me, and i can assume that since you're on this small web blogging platform, you've been having the same thought as i have: the internet is not fun anymore. long gone are the days of learning html to make your Neopet's page look really cool. cheat codes and walkthrough guides decorated with ascii text art are simply an ancient relic. flash games, forums, unique websites, rss feeds, dollmakers, virtual pets, quizilla quizzes (did anyone else use quizilla? that was probably my first intro to the concept of a personal webpage) are just not around anymore.
well...things are changing. fan projects like grundo's cafe have brought back the older, simpler neopets. the "small web" or indie web is having a bit of a moment. website hosts like neocities and nekoweb allow you to finally rebuild that shrine to your favorite character, complete with a sparkly mouse pointer and a million blinkies and gifs. smaller social media projects are around mainly through word of mouth, like spacehey or the midnight pub (also found on the gemini protocol, which is a really cool project i'll yap about in another post). also the fediverse exists out there. i don't really understand it but it has its fans. let me say here i don't necessarily think that bringing back a past that no longer exists is feasible. that's not really the point of the indie web anyway. simply put, people want privacy, control, and to have fun again, damn it.
why does everything suck now?
dubious tech companies have tried to turn the world wide web into a walled garden of paid or freemium services that leech off of your personal data. webpages have become micro video content which flashes by in snackable chunks. before you've had time to process what you've just seen-you're onto the next piece of content. bigoted and inflammatory content thrives while oppositional and marginalized voices are suppressed and banned. ignorance is celebrated. creativity is punished. bad taste runs amok. and not even the good kind of bad taste! and while these efforts to suffocate the power of the web have accelerated in the past couple of years, let's not forget that this has been ongoing for sometime.
after the murder of George Floyd by the hands of police, protests spread throughout the country to demand racial justice and a call for an end to the carceral state. the Black Lives Matter movement was thoroughly documented online, with many turning to social media to unlearn racism and white supremacy, to learn locations of new protests, look up guides on how to protect oneself against a tyrannical government, research local political and activist causes, educate oneself on social justice, etc etc etc. in the wake of this broad movement, one social media website, tumblr, aggressively banned and suppressed black bloggers. tumblr even attempted to make the ridiculous claim that these bloggers were "russian agents". some believed them. i and many others however, did not. such active censorship continues to this day, overwhelmingly targeting transfeminine users. this is unfortunately far from the only example of online censorship that had real world political consequences, but it stands out in my mind because i was an active user on tumblr when this went down. looking back, this was probably the singular moment that radicalized me.
an urgent plea
i do not think that it is coincidental that so many age verification laws are suddenly being introduced globally. some of these laws demand the verification to happen at the OS level. think about that: if such a law were implemented, theoretically you could not use a computer, smart phone, potentially any other smart device without the device making invasive demands:upload your driver's license, scan your face, upload your fingerprints, something of that nature. this has terrifying implications. activists, journalists, marginalized private citizens, literally anyone who has expressed any opinion at all online is essentially doxxed. all the id data gets sent to a federal database. i do not think that the efforts to identify every user on the web makes anyone safer, let alone children. the internet, for all its faults, has undeniably connected the worker class on an unprecedented level. it is a tool that can be used for very good causes or very terrible things. i do not think that walling off the internet, eliminating digital anonymity, and closely monitoring all activities of every web user will fix the internet's issues. all these efforts will simply completely erode the only third space (a public "town square" if you will) that we have left.
the ability to see how the rest of the world lives, to connect with each other as a worker class, is very dangerous to the elite class. they do not want us to share ideas and find commonality. they do not want us to have empathy for those different from us. they do not want us to realize that a better world is possible, because such a vision requires the elimination of the capitalists, the elite class, the epstein class, the 1%, the bourgeoisie, however you refer to this class. this elite class is trying so desperately to monetize and control every single aspect of our lives so we cannot create, we cannot connect, and we cannot enjoy a life that does not concern serving the 1% in every way possible.
it might seem silly to think that reviving personal websites will fix everything, but that's not the point i'm making here. of course webhosting isn't a panacea to the world's ills. what me and many others are trying to build is a decentralized network, a positive creative outlet, a healthy alternative to social media, a way to connect with like-minded people worldwide, and so much more. all we have is each other, and i like being able to hang out online and have fun. i personally feel that the internet is a fabulous tool that should be treated more like a public utility. i'm no policy maker nor am i exactly in expert in tech/web services so that's probably quite a lofty concept, but there's got to be a better way than out of touch governments bending to the will of tech companies with, to put it in plain language, incredibly fucking evil goals.
we can fix this
the good news to this is that, yes, the internet can be fun, if you're willing to put in a little effort. re-learning html to make fun little websites is rewarding in and of itself. you could potentially make all sorts of friends and find new communities (exercise care when interacting with others, remember basic internet safety). i can personally say that investing in a dinky little thinkpad and coding on the couch while i watch tv is a million billion times more fun than endless scrolling. consider this web 1.5, small websites that anyone can learn to create, a very intentional way to interact with the web and make a tangible project(if you consider a webpage tangible, which i personally do).
my bong hit is wearing off and i'm now realizing i typed way more than i intended to for this first blog post. i'll end it here. stay tuned to this site, ill be sporadically updating it and sharing my various small web project.
toodles,
fiesta